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P3 author Reese Erlich has a nifty piece on Truthdig today called “The Difference Between a Terrorist and Someone Who Flies an Airplane Into a Building.” Very instructive.
Reese’s next book, scheduled for fall, is Conversation with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire.
The Invisible Hand – The podcast on business, economics and strategy gave an interview with P3 author Dean Baker recently. The audio can be played below.
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Radio host Jeff Farias recently sent us some audio clips of interviews he has done with our authors. Here’s a great discussion with Reese Erlich, author of Dateline Havana, from January 27, 2009.
For more interviews with Progressive thinkers visit TheJeffFariasShow.com.
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I just came across this review of Todd Farley’s Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry. It’s by a retired middle school teacher in Oakland and was posted on The Education Report, Katy Murphy’s blog on Oakland schools.
Of course I was gratified that the reviewer, Steven Weinberg, enjoyed the book and endorsed Todd’s message. Even better that Todd’s humor had him and his wife in stitches. (Me, too.) But Weinberg took it a step further, adding his own experiences with the testing industry in California. Those experiences point to a disturbing lack of accountability and deepen the critique of the current testing regime.
When we acquired this book, we had teachers like Steven Weinberg in mind. Also concerned parents. Here’s the upshot of the review: “Making the Grades reveals some shocking truths about how we are judging schools and students; Farley’s book deserves a wide readership.” Amen!
There’s a fine excerpt of Dean Baker’s False Profits on AlterNet today. As I said in my last post, Dean knows how to break it down, and this excerpt is a perfect example.
Leslie Thatcher reviewed Dean Baker’s False Profits for Truthout yesterday. “False Profits,” she concludes, “combines impeccable scholarship – assembling an array of relevant facts and data totally accessible to non-economists – with Baker’s acerbic, but unforced, wit and verve.”
It’s gratifying to see Dean’s work recognized this way. He does have a rare ability to combine expertise with appropriate moral outrage. Given the suffering Wall Street’s recklessness and DC’s deregulatory mania has wrought, one or the other doesn’t do this topic justice.
Murray Hill Inc. in a recent photo.
This just in from p3 author Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
News Release
Supreme Court Ruling Spurs Corporation Run for Congress
January 27, 2010
Following the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited corporate funding of federal campaigns, Murray Hill Inc. today announced it is filing to run for U.S. Congress. “Until now,” Murray Hill Inc. said in a statement, “corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.” Murray Hill Inc. is believed to be the first “corporate person” to exercise its constitutional right to run for office.
“The strength of America,” Murray Hill Inc. said, “is in the boardrooms, country clubs and Lear jets of America’s great corporations. We’re saying to Wal-Mart, AIG and Pfizer, if not you, who? If not now, when?” Murray Hill Inc. added: “It’s our democracy. We bought it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it.” Murray Hill Inc., a diversifying corporation in the Washington, D.C. area, has long held an interest in politics and sees corporate candidacy as an “emerging new market.”
The campaign’s “designated human,” Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to “antiquated, human only” procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork. Hensal is excited by this new opportunity: “We want to get in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store is bought by China.” Murray Hill Inc. plans on filing to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.
Campaign manager William Klein promises an aggressive, historic campaign that “puts people second” or “even third.” “The business of America is business, as we all know,” Klein says. “But now, it’s the business of democracy too.” Klein plans to use automated robo-calls, “Astroturf” lobbying and “computer-generated avatars” to get out the vote. Added Hensal: “This is the next frontier of civil rights.”
P3’s bestseller is The Blue Pages, which (among other things) shows readers how much money corporations contribute to the two major political parties. The idea is simple; money talks, so let’s listen, draw our own judgments about who’s benefiting, and patronize companies that share our values.
But now the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to lift restrictions on corporate giving to politicians. That effectively sets up an open auction for Congress and the White House. It also recalls the old Bob Dylan line: money doesn’t talk, it swears.
What to do? P3 author Dean Baker has an idea. In exchange for granting limited liability to corporations, Congress should impose restrictions on them similar to those for tax-exempt organizations. Dean outlined his idea in this piece on Huffington Post.
I love the simplicity of that idea. The question is, will Congress and the White House push back on their patrons/paymasters?
National Capital Lyme & Tick-Borne Disease Association Announces its February Speaker
Helene Jorgensen
Helene Jorgensen (Ph.D. American University, Economics; M.S., George Mason University, Environmental Science and Policy) studies health care, labor markets, and employment benefits. Her forthcoming book, Sick and Tired: How the U.S. Health Care System Fails Its Patients (Polipoint Press, February 2010), tells the story of her own battle with Lyme disease and examines the institutional failures of the health care system.
BOOKS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Presentation & Book Signing: 2 – 4 PM
Ernst Auditorium
Sibley Memorial Hospital
5255 Loughboro Rd., N.W., Washington, DC 20016
Click Here for Directions
Helene Jorgensen spent many sleepless nights worrying about her growing pile of medical bills. Since being diagnosed with neurological Lyme disease in 2003, her good-on-paper health insurance repeatedly denied claims. She got stuck with paying thousands of dollars out-of-pocket, because of quantity limits on prescription drugs and out-of-network care. At the same time, she had to fight for continued treatment for her Lyme disease.
Sick, sleep deprived and frustrated, Jorgensen set out to uncover why the health care system was failing her and so many other patients. What she learned surprised her and compelled her to write the book: Sick and Tired: How the U.S. Health Care System Fails Its Patients (Polipoint Press, February 2010).
In Sick and Tired, Jorgensen combines her own experiences as a patient, with her background as an economist, to discuss the role of insurance companies in determining care. She examines the incentive structures of health care providers. She exposes pharmaceutical companies influence over prescription patterns, and the deceptive billing practices by laboratories, such as Quest Diagnostics. Based on the lessons she learned, Jorgensen offers practical advice to help patients reduce their health care costs and demand better care.
A new article in Education Week asks whether or not it’s practical to include better open-ended questions in high-stakes standardized tests.
The answer, in short, is that there are many practical obstacles to doing so. In his article, Stephen Sawchuk mentions p3 author Todd Farley.
For some, the idea of expanding human-scored items raises issues of reliability: Performance-based items are typically less mathematically reliable than those based entirely on multiple choice.
Todd Farley, a 15-year veteran of the test-scoring business who detailed his experiences in a recent book, Making the Grades, is among the skeptics. In the book, Mr. Farley alleges that the scoring guidelines for open-ended items were frequently counterintuitive, and that as a “table leader”—an individual supervising other scorers’ work—he occasionally changed other reviewers’ scores.
Though test publishers interviewed for this story dismissed Mr. Farley’s account, independent sources do point to areas of concern. At least two reports issued by the Education Department’s office of inspector general last year, for instance, found lapses in Florida’s and Tennessee’s oversight of test contractors charged with scoring open-ended items.
If I were angling for a piece of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund, I would dismiss Todd’s account, too.
P3 author Dean Baker appeared on NPR’s “Morning Edition” yesterday and added a measure of sanity to the budget discussions playing out in DC.
With double-digit unemployment rates, and after eight years of a two-front war and occupation, some lawmakers think it’s high time we cut entitlements. Recall that Sen. Judd Gregg of the Senate Budget Committee claimed a few years ago that we face a classic guns-and-butter tradeoff, and that we need to cut the butter (i.e., non-military domestic spending, the stuff that actually helps American families).
Dean’s suggestion is that we deal with jobs and health care now and worry about the deficit in 2012. He also suggests we consider a financial transactions tax and cuts to the Pentagon.
Dean’s new book, False Profits, was just released.
P3 author Reese Erlich appeared on KPFK’s “Uprising” with Sonali Kolhatkar. Reese’s recent trip to Afghanistan puts him in a good position to comment on the latest round of violence there, and Sonali is an exceptionally adroit host, especially (but not only) on this topic. Reese talks about corruption, the drug trade, the U.S. support for the current narco-state there, and the dubious effects of the recent U.S. troop escalation. Highly recommended.
P3 author Phil Longman (Best Care Anywhere, The Next Progressive Era) just wrote an article on Agent Orange for Washington Monthly. It highlights how difficult it is to determine whether or not the illnesses that afflict veterans were actually related to their service.
OK, granted. But as Phil sensibly points out, do we really need to figure that out? Wouldn’t it be easier, better, and more productive to simply treat the illnesses of all veterans?
And of course this question goes to the health care system as a whole. Does any other country spend as much time and energy trying to figure out why Organization X shouldn’t treat someone?
P3 author Dean Baker (Plunder and Blunder, False Profits) appeared on the PBS Newshour last night to talk about the economy.
What’s refreshing about Dean is his focus on America’s working families. What do they care about? Their jobs, of course. But it’s amazing how often the experts on such programs look at the GDP, or corporate profits, or the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, and skip any consideration of how ordinary people are actually living. In fact, we’ve probably all seen discussions in which economists have openly fretted when unemployment numbers go down.
The unexamined assumption, which seems to be shared by many professional economists these days, is that America’s large middle class is the natural consequence of free market activity. Is that because their training is heavy on the quantitative side and light (perhaps very light) on economic, social, and political history?
In the business, we call that a rhetorical question.
Stefene Russell’s review of Curt White’s The Barbaric Heart was too thoughtful to paraphrase. Here’s the whole thing:
Last June, I read Curtis White’s essay “The Barbaric Heart,” in Orion Magazine. It got me right in the solar plexus, so when I learned it was being expanded and released as a full-length book in the fall, I pre-ordered a copy. I’m not the sort of person who does that—most often, I build my library by ambling through book sales at the Y, because it doesn’t matter to me whether the text is contemporary or 1000 years old.
The day it showed up in my mailbox, I burned through the introduction (written by the editors of n+1) and the first few chapters. Then I entered a gear-grinding phase, got busy and put it down. It was only due to some airport time last week on my trip home to Utah that I got the time and space to finish it. (It now goes into the canon of appropriately transcendent books read on airplanes: Hesse’s Siddhartha, and Bolano’s Amulet.)
If you didn’t see the essay, you can still read it here. And if you haven’t read the book, its thesis is explained by its subtitle: “Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature.” That is, White believes our current ecological crisis has its roots (and they are very deep roots—he begins the book with a quote from Edward Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire), in a way of being he calls “the Barbaric Heart.” It was what gave shape to the relentless and bloody expansion of the Roman Empire, and is the fuel behind global capitalism’s push for infinite growth, no matter what the collateral damage. White admits that the Barbaric Heart, in its own way, is admirable—it certainly is intoxicating, which is why the world’s been in thrall to it for so long—but trying to talk it into playing nice is pointless at best, a Faustian bargain at worst. In fact, White feels that the environmental movement is deadlocked in a diabolical arm-wrestling match with the Barbaric Heart, trying to make minor changes in a system that needs to be displaced, rather than revised.
White has said that this book is “symphonic in its architecture,” and I’d agree. (That quote comes from this great blog post, where White suggests a musical playlist for the book.) Rather than a self-helpish book with the narrative trajectory of a bullet, White, who is also a novelist, draws a portrait of the Barbaric Heart throughout history, quoting Asclepius, Rumi, William Blake, Tom Waits and Adam Smith. The text is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and its evocation of art as well as science defies the dry, spiritless, hyper-rational way of being that White feels strips the natural world of its mystery (and is at the core of its destruction). Ironically, some of the reviews prove White’s point about how pervasive this hyper-rational way of thinking really is—they complain White is great at pointing out problems, but not solutions. But early in the book, he addresses this plainly:
“What would I put in capitalism’s place? In reply, I am always tempted to quote Voltaire’s response to the complaint that he had nothing to put in the place of the Christianity he criticized. ‘What!’ he said, ‘A ferocious beast has sucked the blood of my family; I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, what shall we put in its place!’ Unlike Voltaire, I would also suggest that what has the best chance of defeating the ‘beast’ is spirit.”
Spirit? That’s no solution! Or at least it doesn’t seem so to a culture snuggled deep inside the Barbaric Heart, bred to love those easy-peasy “50 Ways” books, and This-and-That for Dummies, with their checklists of concrete quick-fixes, where the only thing that matters is matter. White points out that we cannot extract ourselves from our ancient cognitive errors with little checklists, or bamboo sheets for that matter. He advises instead embracing what he calls “thoughtfulness,” which is not just a spiritual thing, but an aesthetic thing too: “‘Don’t think profit,’ it argues, ‘think beauty. The beauty of the polis, the beauty of culture, the beauty of human beings freed from the slavery of regimented work, and the beauty of an untrammeled natural world.’”
The Barbaric Heart is a pleasure to read (with Edward Abbey long gone, it’s nice to see another cantankerous guy with a sense of humor and an ability to tell a story writing about ecology). Though it’s a slim book, it’s not—well, at least not ideally—a “quick read.” It is intellectually rigorous, dense and provocative, part of the current movement (partially spearheaded by Orion’s editors) to align Nature Writing with the realities of the world–i.e., it’s all “nature.” (Granta published a brilliant issue, “The New Nature Writing,” that grappled with this as well.) There is no need for exile or separation—not for us, or for the birds and the plants and the rocks, either. Or as White more eloquently puts it, “We are that strange and wonderful animal that has the metaphysical comfort of knowing that she is part of the tragic chorus of natural beings. We are members of that faith that knows that life is indestructibly powerful and pleasurable. And the mark that we will leave upon the world will not be the mark of brute force clothed in the false virtues of the barbarian but the mark of the ultimate realist, he who makes his own world, demanding the impossible and calling it Beautiful.” White demands the seemingly impossible—the discarding of global capitalism in the name of the natural world—and I’ll call it beautiful, and recommend it to all, robots, tree-huggers and barbarians alike.
Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh rose to Fed chair Ben Bernanke’s defense this week. Addressing criticism of Bernanke from various quarters, Hirsh asks “if any of this reflects a fair assessment of the man and his tenure? The answer: not even close.”
With that opening, I expected Hirsh to debunk Bernanke’s critics, who include p3 author Dean Baker. But when Hirsh turns to Dean’s specific points, he acknowledges their validity. Dean noted that Bernanke “felt that the Fed should not concern itself with asset bubbles, or call the attention of financial markets or the public to these bubbles by using its regulatory power to rein in lending, or explicitly using interest rates to target a bubble.” Here’s Hirsh, in Bernanke’s defense:
Actually that’s not quite true; the paper with which Bernanke made his name in Washington, published in 1999 with his coauthor Mark Gertler, did argue against a strategy of using interest rates to deflate asset prices. But the paper defended the Fed’s use of other tools like regulation, especially in markets in which there was high leverage (which was not a major problem during the tech bubble Bernanke and Gertler were addressing). And in July 2008—though it was far too late to make a difference in the subprime scandal—Bernanke announced a new “Regulation Z,” which finally created some common-sense lending rules such as forbidding mortgages without sufficient documentation.
So let me get this straight. Did Bernanke use his power at the Fed to prevent or even call attention to the housing bubble before it ruined the economy? No.
Moving on, Hirsh addresses Dean’s point that Bernanke failed to get anything from the banks when the Fed began shoveling money in their direction. According to Hirsh, this “typical lament” also misses the mark. Because it’s inaccurate? No. Hirsh concedes that “we could have and probably should have” demanded restrictions on the banks in return for the cash. But the blame, Hirsh claims, should go to Treasury and Congress. Evidently it’s too much to ask the Federal Reserve, whose specific purpose is to regulate the banks, to take responsibility for a bank-fueled disaster.
Unable to refute Dean’s points, but having done his best to confuse the issue, Hirsh returns to his original thesis and adds some Biblical imagery. It seems clear, he concludes, that “what’s going on right now is more of a legislative cruci-’fiction’—with an emphasis on the fiction.” OK, got it. Bernanke is dying for our sins.
Sorry, Mr. Hirsh. Not even close. If you actually want to understand Bernanke’s role in all of this, be sure to read Dean’s forthcoming book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy.
Great reactions to Todd Farley’s appearance on “The Leonard Lopate Show” yesterday. The comments on the website indicate that Todd not only got his point across about standardized testing, but also that the message resonated with parents and teachers.
Check out this really nice review of our Fall 2009 title The Barbaric Heart
“If you only buy one book this holiday season, make it Curtis White’s The Barbaric Heart.”
Radio host Jeff Farias recently sent us some audio clips of interviews he has done with our authors. Here’s a great discussion with Curt White author of The Barbaric Heart from September 2, 2009.
For more interviews with Progressive thinkers visit thejefffariasshow.com.
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Apparently, we’re all supposed to hate socialized medicine. That’s why some U.S. senators oppose the public option. But then why do these same senators feel it’s their duty to provide veterans with government-delivered (not just government-funded) health care?
Peter Dreier asks this very pertinent question in his Nation article this week. Happily, Dreier also mentions p3 author Phil Longman’s Best Care Anywhere, which shows what can be done if we ever manage to get away from the fee-for-service, profit-maximizing approach to health care.
Curtis White reads from his latest book, The Barbaric Heart. 21 Nov 2009 @ Disjecta Gallery, Portland OR .
Todd Farley’s Making the Grades, his lively account of 15 years in the standardized testing industry, has received a solid review in the Washington Post.
The reviewer, Sarah Halzack, notes that Todd’s anecdotes, though often funny, “add up to a sharp criticism of an industry deeply entwined in our education system.”
The review is dated Sunday, November 22; presumably will appear in the newspaper that day.
The USDA report released this week was a shock to some. Its main finding: 49 million Americans (14.6 percent of housholds) experienced food insecurity at some point in 2008.
President Obama called that number “unsettling.” Well, yes. And if you want to go beyond the statistics, check out Sasha Abramsky’s Breadline USA. To get the flavor, start with his latest piece on The Daily Beast.
Time reports that Fannie Mae will begin leasing homes back to foreclosed owners if loan modifications and other measures fail to keep those families in their homes. Barbara Kiviat’s article quotes p3 author Dean Baker and identifies him as a long-time proponent of the plan.
P3 author Todd Farley has an eloquent op-ed in today’s Christian Science Monitor. As he notes, the for-profit standardized testing racket may not be the best place to put our faith when it comes to President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative.
Here’s Todd: “The 15 years I spent scoring student essays and written responses to state K-12 tests revealed a process that was less ’scientifically based research’ (a heady phrase dropped more than 100 times in No Child Left Behind) than a theater of the absurd.”
As the father of two college students (and an educator myself), I thought the standardized testing thing went overboard long ago. Now we have an insider’s account of how the psychometricians have taken over.
Michelle Malkin's favorite targets?
Frederick Clarkson has an interesting exchange with David Neiwert about the role of religion in the right-wing tendency to depict ideological adversaries as “beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in [the right wing's] vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination.”
Eliminationism isn’t restricted to the religious right, of course, but these comments on “imprecatory prayer”–essentially a curse directed at one’s adversaries–brings out an especially potent aspect of Dave’s argument.
P3 author Daniel Weintraub (Party of One) is leaving the Sacramento Bee on Friday. He will write a weekly column on politics for the Bay Area edition of the New York Times, which launches the same day. According to LA Observed, Dan will also start a nonprofit website on California health policy.
Marine corporal Rick Reyes listens to Afghans in a refugee camp there.
Unemployment line in Charlotte, North Carolina
Let’s see, who does that leave out? Oh, right, the nation’s working families, who are facing double-digit unemployment rates. Here in California, that rate is the highest since 1940.
All in the fullness of time, proles. And don’t forget, none of that class-war business. It might disturb the personal equanimity of the prosperous.
P3 author Joe Conason has a solid piece in Salon about the sleaze machine targeting President Obama now. Joe’s in a good position to comment; his first bestseller was about what he called “the hunting of the president.” In that case, it was Bill Clinton, but many of the same players are back at it, this time with more resources and reach.
Curt White's Barbaric Heart: Not just for bedtime reading.
My friend Mark Ettlin and I dug The Middle Mind, Curt’s 2003 book with Harper San Francisco. (Actually, I saw the Harper’s Magazine excerpt first.) When Curt wrote about his publishing experiences in Stop Smiling, one of the coolest magazines out there, I thought I might be able to publish his work at p3. That led to two extraordinary books, The Spirit of Disobedience and The Barbaric Heart.
Curt has had a distinguished academic career, but it’s his ability to reach general readers that really distinguishes him from his fellow academics. One of those readers just sent Curt a remarkable photo (above) that we simply had to share.
Obama and Progressives
News Channel 8 – Thursday Sep 24, 2009 8:03PM
Michael Huttner, author and CEO and founder of the group ProgressNow, has advice on how to help Obama.
P3 author Todd Farley (Making the Grades) has a beautiful op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times.
After recounting some of his misadventures in the standardized testing business, Todd delivers a sensible message: let’s not hire non-educators to score high-stakes tests. Or, as Todd puts it, “We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me.”
Todd’s book makes the full (and consistently entertaining) case for this position. Actually, Todd learned a lot about the standardized testing business and was doing quite well in it. But his story shows, among other things, that business considerations are a big part of the problem.
P3 staff, from left: Scott Jordan, Peter Richardson, Darcy Cohan, and John McAlester.
Gotta start with publisher Scott Jordan, who saw the value and encouraged me throughout.
Melissa Edeburn, our managing editor, did all the photo research and commented on the entire manuscript. Huge. Her husband, Michael Sexton, took the author photograph, scanned all the images for production, and took dozens of other shots, including the one above, at book events this week.
Darcy Cohan gave me publicity advice. Webmaster John McAlester has almost dragged me into the 21st century, even though my snout has been buried in the 1960s for a couple of years now.
Controller Monique Lusse couldn’t attend this week, but she had a good excuse; she’s in Paris. If she were in this photograph, you’d see the full team. Who knows, maybe someone will write a book (or whatever people are reading then) about us in forty years.
The rave reviews are rolling in for Curt White’s The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature. Here’s the latest from David Kinchen, who offers this comparison:
“The Barbaric Heart” is a profoundly disturbing — in a good sense — book that is full of fresh ways of looking at the world. We need to be disturbed from time to time. I found it as stimulating as another book I admire wholeheartedly: Neil Postman’s prescient look at media, “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.” Just as many of the ideas Postman presented in his 1985 book have come to pass — all too often unfortunately — so I’m hoping that White’s “The Barbaric Heart” will provoke a major change in our way of thinking.
I’m pleased but not surprised. Curt always brings a fresh perspective to the really big questions. More specifically, he’s willing to ask the right questions, and to permit his readers to do the same. I’m not always disturbed, even in the good sense, by Curt’s work, but I always feel transformed by the reading experience.
TakePart Exclusive: Interview with Curtis White, Author of The Barbaric Heart
www.takepart.com - Posted by Danny Jensen on September 22, 2009 at 7:33 pm
In his latest book, The Barbaric Heart, Curtis White argues that the present environmental crisis will not be resolved by capitalist or technological achievements that have landed us in this predicament – but rather that our desire for aesthetic and spiritual beauty will be our guiding solutions.
A novelist, essayist, and professor of English at Illinois State University, he has written several widely acclaimed books, including The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves. Curtis kindly took the time to answer some questions about The Barbaric Heart, and explain what can be done to reshape and improve our approach to protecting the planet and ourselves.
www.forewordmagazine.com
REVIEW BY: Ryan Michael Williams | September/October 2009
Curtis White believes that it’s a mistake to blame the global environmental crisis on greedy corporations or self-interested polluters. In his provocative and intellectually acrobatic new book The Barbarian Heart, White—an essayist, novelist, English professor, and the author of The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Them-selves—argues that pointing fingers toward “powerful corporate evildoers” only leads us to “think in cartoons,” thereby obscuring the underlying causes of environmental degradation. But the truth, White warns, might be difficult to face: that our destructive ways originate in human nature itself.
Julian Brookes | Thursday, September 10, 2009 02:29 PM
www.progressivebookclub.com
As noted in our last post, 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America by Michael Huttner, a guide both practical and inspiring to how you–we–can “make that change.” The book explains what you can do from home, in your community, across our country, and around the world, to fulfill the vision of change that inspired so many of us during the presidential campaign.
Packed with stories from the front-lines, practical information, and tips for action — each one connected to something President Obama advocated as part of his campaign for change or to something he said or did himself —50 Ways is a book for everyone who wants to do more to advance the cause of change.
Check out Norman on C-SPAN.. Made Love, Got War makes a cameo appearance.
Book Wars: Michelle Malkin vs. Michael Huttner
voices.washingtonpost.com – September 16, 2009
In a recent posting on her blog, Michelle Malkin declared that liberals have launched a campaign to dislodge conservative authors like herself from the top of the best-seller lists. She said the left is pushing a particular book, “50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America” by Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman, as its battering ram against titles from the right.
Malkin, author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies,” writes on her blog: “Co-author Michael Huttner urges his fellow Obama cultists to buy the book so they, too, can be inspired to ‘help Obama pass health care reform, enact other core campaign promises, and move the country forward.’” She also notes that Huttner is “asking for help from every last nutroots activist out there.”
We invited Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman to respond to Malkin’s posting. Huttner is founder and chief executive of ProgressNow, an online progressive movement. He has worked for former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and for the Office of the Counsel to President Clinton. Salzman is co-founder of Effect Communications, which works with nonprofits and campaigns.
P3 author Norman Solomon (Made Love, Got War) appeared today on “Democracy Now!” along with CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin (who happens to be married to p3 author Kevin Danaher). Norman just returned from Afghanistan and has some thoughts about the effects of the U.S. occupation there.
Here’s the description of the program on the “Democracy Now!” website:
As Obama Escalates War in Afghanistan, US Peace Activists Call for Near-Term Withdrawal of Foreign Troops
The coming weeks hold critical significance for the US occupation of Afghanistan. The Senate is expected to vote on the Obama administration’s $128 billion request to fund war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for the coming fiscal year. Next week, the Obama administration will unveil a report on whether US benchmarks for success in Afghanistan are being achieved. It’s widely believed President Obama will receive a military request to escalate the Afghan war with thousands of additional troops. The apparent congressional unease over a troop escalation comes near Friday’s eight-year anniversary of the vote authorizing the attack on Afghanistan. We speak to Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy on his recent trip to Afghanistan and CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin.
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P3 author Norman Solomon, just back from Afghanistan, has a new piece on CounterPunch and elsewhere. He ends with this excerpt, updated to reflect current realities, from a Martin Luther King speech on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before Dr. King’s assassination. (The written version appeared in Ramparts magazine, by the way.)
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Afghanistan. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Afghanistan. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
Check out the piece Media Matters for America ran on a recent episode of Fox News’ Hannity. For some reason, Mark Fuhrman (!) was hazarding comments on VA health care. Happily (at least for those who care about veracity), Media Matters cited Phil Longman’s work to set the record straight.
P3 author Curtis White has an essay (“Why Are We Unhappy?”) in the September issue of Playboy. I haven’t conducted a thorough search, but I think it’s the only piece in that issue that mentions Arthur Schopenhauer. There’s also a picture of the fully clothed (or collared, at least) German philosopher.
Curt’s essay–which is paired with one by Slavoj Zizek on the political uses of fear–is drawn from his new book, The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature.
P3 author Rose Aguilar gives a stirring opinion piece on Laura Flanders’s GRITtv. Hang with it and the audio blips will go away.
P3 author Dean Baker appeared on national television twice last night: on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and on C-SPAN’s coverage of Netroots Nation, where Dean joined Kevin Drum, Anna Burger, and Jon Corzine on a keynote panel.
Look for Dean’s next p3 book, False Profits, this winter.
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Breadline USA’ Explores the ‘Hidden Scandal’ of Hunger in a Nation of Plenty
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history — George Bernard Shaw
Free-lance journalist Sasha Abramsky uses that quote from the great playwright in the concluding chapter of a brilliant and moving exploration of hunger in the land of plenty, “Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It” (PoliPointPress, Sausalito, CA, 208 pages, $23.95). The quote reminds me of a similar one contained in a 1905 book by philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Last night, Howard Dean guest anchored Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. For the show, Dr. Dean interviewed PoliPoint author Phillip Longman on virtues of theVA model of care, as detailed in Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours. Check out the clip here:
You can also watch the segment on the Progressive Book Club’s blog, which hosted a follow-up Q & A with Dr. Dean and Phillip Longman after the show:
http://www.progressivebookclub.com/blog/