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Deer Hunting With Jesus: Joe Bageant interview (video)
American News Project via The Real News
ANP: Goes to rural Virginia to visit Joe Bageant, author of "Deer Hunting With Jesus"

Much has been said about white working-class voters. But those who've been doing all the talking are pollsters and political operatives. As part of the Long View series, ANP traveled to rural Virginia to talk to someone who's lived the life and knows from personal experience what those voters are thinking -- author Joe Bageant. His highly-acclaimed recent book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, was lauded by one reviewer as a "raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck." In addition to being that, it's also one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year.
(30 October 2008)
Joe Bageant has been an EB favorite, writing on peak oil and other sustainability issues. One thing that surprised me in the video is how calm and reasonable Bageant appears. In his essays, Bageant comes across as ... um ... excitable. See for example:
Nine Billion Little Feet

The interview also appears on Bageant's website. -BA

Seismic Shifts in the Political Landscape
Tom Engelhardt, The Nation
There's clearly a new political landscape forming in the U.S. That's what the polls are telling us. It's not just that the first major-party black candidate for President is leading by significant margins in the national polls ...

... [Consider] three recent polls in the context of the Bush years. Obama and McCain are now in a "statistical dead heat" among born-again evangelicals, those Rovian foot soldiers of two successful Bush elections, according to a recent survey; and the same seems to be true in Sarah Palin's "real America," those rural and small town areas she's praised to the skies. According to a poll commissioned by the Center for Rural Strategies, in those areas which Bush won in 2004 by 53%-41%, Obama now holds a statistically insignificant one point lead. To complete this little trifecta, Gallup has just released a poll showing that Jews are now likely to vote for Obama by a more than 3 to 1 majority (74% to 22%).

If present projections come close to holding, this could prove to be a rare reconfiguring or turning-point election -- as Wall Street expert Steve Fraser first suggested might be possible at TomDispatch.com way back in February 2007. If so, the Republican Party, only recently besotted by dreams of a generational Pax Republicana, might find itself driven back into the deep South and deep West for who knows how long, "an extremist rump, reduced to a few stronghold states and obsessed with causes that seem not to matter to the general public."
(29 October 2008)
It may be time for a Republican make-over. See also Rednecks for Obama. -BA

A scary Halloween with Sarah Palin (text and video)
Rebecca Traister, Salon
In central Pennsylvania, the Republican base is afraid of Obama, and lost in fever dreams of a neo-Soviet nightmare. But it's all in God's hands.
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... [Outside the Palin rally], supporters answered questions about what kept them up at night. Their answers spoke volumes about the terrorizing effects of the McCain-Palin ticket's relentless drive across this state. Supporters of the Republican candidate for president believe they are looking down the barrel of a gun loaded by Karl Marx, held by Barack Obama. The McCain-Palin fear-mongering tour is exposing -- or exploiting -- unrest and anxiety wherever it goes.

One of the many things that had 84-year-old World War II veteran John H. Gay on edge was worry for Sarah Palin's safety. "She's a brave woman, an old-fashioned American woman who's not afraid to have kids," said Gay. "She's one of the bravest women around, and someone might just assassinate her." But he was tormented by images of a fantastical Stalinoid world to come. According to Gay, Obama believes the communist "mantra" "from each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs"; that "if we go the socialist way, you young people will lose all your freedoms -- mentally, physically and religiously." As he envisioned a possible future under Obama, he spoke of scarce hot water and hulking Soviet-era high-rises of the sort that ring Moscow.

And he was not alone in his concern that if the Democrats win on Tuesday, it'll only be a matter or time before Americans are getting in bread lines. "I'm afraid of the slippery slope to socialism," said 51-year-old Mike Brecht,
(1 November 2008)

Stiglitz: Reversal of Fortune
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair
Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity.
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When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come.

Virtually all the indicators look grim. Inflation is running at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, its highest level in 17 years. Unemployment stands at 6 percent; there has been no net job growth in the private sector for almost a year. Housing prices have fallen faster than at any time in memory—in Florida and California, by 30 percent or more. Banks are reporting record losses, only months after their executives walked off with record bonuses as their reward. President Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton; this year the federal government announced the second-largest budget deficit ever reported.

... This tangled knot of problems will be difficult to unravel.

... There are a number of economic tools at the country’s disposal. As noted, they can yield contradictory results. The sad truth is that we have reached the limits of monetary policy. Lowering interest rates will not stimulate the economy much—banks are not going to be willing to lend to strapped consumers, and consumers are not going to be willing to borrow as they see housing prices continue to fall. And raising interest rates, to combat inflation, won’t have the desired impact either, because the prices that are the main sources of our inflation—for food and energy—are determined in international markets; the chief consequence will be distress for ordinary people. The quandaries that we face mean that careful balancing is required. There is no quick and easy fix. But if we take decisive action today, we can shorten the length of the downturn and reduce its magnitude. If at the same time we think about what would be good for the economy in the long run, we can build a durable foundation for economic health.

To go back to that patient in the emergency room: we need to address the underlying causes. Most of the treatment options entail painful choices, but there are a few easy ones. On energy: conservation and research into new technologies will make us less dependent on foreign oil, reduce our trade imbalance, and help the environment.

... Our ethanol policy is also bad for the taxpayer, bad for the environment, bad for the world and our relations with other countries, and bad in terms of inflation. It is good only for the ethanol producers and American corn farmers. It should be scrapped.

... this is not the time to turn to the old-time fiscal religion. Confidence in the economy won’t be restored as long as growth is low, and growth will be low if investment is anemic, consumption weak, and public spending on the wane. Under these circumstances, to mindlessly cut taxes or reduce government expenditures would be folly.

But there are ways of thoughtfully shaping policy that can walk a fine line and help us get out of our current predicament. Spending money on needed investments—infrastructure, education, technology—will yield double dividends. It will increase incomes today while laying the foundations for future employment and economic growth. Investments in energy efficiency will pay triple dividends—yielding environmental benefits in addition to the short- and long-run economic benefits.
(November 2008)
Also at truthout.

Barack Obama lays plans to deaden expectation after election victory
Tim Reid, London Times
Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair”.

... Yet Mr Obama and his aides are under no illusions about the size of the challenges the Democrat will inherit if he enters the Oval Office. Tom Daschle, the party’s former leader in the US Senate and a strong contender for the post of White House chief-of-staff in an Obama administration, said last month that the winner next week would have only a 50 per cent chance of winning a second term in 2012.

Not only will the next president take office with the country sliding into a potentially long recession — and mired in debt — but the challenges abroad are immense. There is an unfinished war in Iraq, a worsening situation in Afghanistan and an unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan to contend with. Iran appears intent on acquiring the bomb and there remains the ever-present threat from al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists.

If he wins, Mr Obama will inherit a Democratic-controlled Congress, and might even have the benefit of a 60-seat filibuster-proof “supermajority” in the Senate. Such a scenario would allow him to push through legislation largely unfettered by Republican opposition.
(31 October 2008)

The Senate and the union hall: Where American climate policy will succeed or fail
J. Timmons Roberts, Gristmill
... To get 60 votes and move serious climate legislation through Congress, "greens" need to pay attention to their "blue" colleagues. The unions represent important blocks of organized voters with ties to senators, but they also provide key potential partners for environmentalists in gaining a workable alliance on this issue.

A More Climate-Friendly Union

After the failure of the BLW bill, I did interviews and research to find out how major labor unions stand on the climate issue. Despite early resistance, nearly all have moved significantly over the past two years toward recognizing the links between addressing climate change and creating good-paying jobs in the next phase of America's economy. Each of the major unions has somewhat different positions, but many of them could be addressed in the next round of climate legislation.

The Boilermakers and the building trades (like plumbers and plasterers and electricians) realized early on that a serious piece of legislation to transition the U.S. to a new economy would require huge numbers of government contracts to build the new infrastructure. New green buildings require skilled craftsmen, and a national effort to insulate the old buildings has the potential to create massive employment in their trades. They therefore early sought and got "prevailing wage" clauses (the Davis-Bacon Act) in the BLW bill, a point specifically mentioned in President Bush's June 2 letter explaining why he would veto it. When Boxer's office called a press conference outside the Capitol on that same day, it was these unions that stood behind her and the bill's other authors.

The United Steelworkers have been working for years with the Sierra Club in a "Blue Green Alliance," and in the process have grown fairly supportive of the cap-and-trade concept. They've recognized that it takes a lot of steel to make a huge modern wind turbine and the powerlines to move its electricity.

J. Timmons Roberts, Chancellor Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary. He was director of the college's Program in Environmental Science and Policy from 2001 to 2008. He is coauthor of six books and more than 50 articles, including A Climate of Injustice. From 2006 to 2007, he was James Martin 21st Century Professor at Oxford University.
(1 November 2008)
Related: Labor conference on global warming fails to address energy (Energy Bulletin).