I love Thanksgiving for its illusion of abundance. It brings back early childhood memories of the one day each year during the Depression when the food on my family's table was not the leftover produce that my Uncle Leon could no longer sell at his stall, or the nearly spoiled organ meats that our local butcher offered at a steep discount.
But Thanksgiving day was quite the opposite, and while I obviously can't recall what was served in 1936, the year I was born, the holiday was soon seared into my childhood memory as the day when the good times looked upon us in the form of charity gift baskets from philanthropists of various religious and political orders, much like the needy will be served today in volunteer kitchens across America and just as soon will be forgotten.
It did not take long before I was old enough to realize that the largesse of Thanksgiving was the rare exception, and that "just getting by," as my mother's brave optimism would have it, was the norm. Getting by, thanks to Mom's piecework in the downtown sweatshops and my mechanic father's signing on to one of the New Deal's public jobs programs.
Then came the economic miracle of World War II, dismissed in its day by some Republicans as Franklin Roosevelt's treachery, and my parents and other relatives got their jobs back. The relevance of the wartime jobs to Thanksgiving in our family was that my Uncle Edward, the welder, was rewarded every year at his plant with one enormous turkey or two smaller ones.
The result was what I recall as an annual day of bloating, as if my extended family was frantically storing calories in preparation for a severe economic winter that was certain to return. But for us it didn't return. Not with the good union jobs that abounded in the postwar boom and the opportunities provided by the GI Bill and the spread of affordable college education that made upward mobility a truly plausible American goal.
Every time I need to be reminded of what was done for my generation in the way of generous government-funded programs, I reread the part of Colin Powell's inspiring autobiography where he writes about the educational opportunities and vigorous community support programs that postwar kids in the Bronx were afforded. Powell and I were engineering students in the same class at the City College of New York, though I didn't get to know him until he was famous and I spoke with him as a journalist. But the great opportunities available to us, as compared to what is available to the poor today, is a recognition we share.
I thought back to those buoyantly optimistic times at CCNY, the working-class Harvard as it was justifiably called, last week when students protesting onerous tuition hikes at the University of California got pepper-sprayed for their efforts to keep hope alive. The once excellent and very affordable UC system, like the publicly funded colleges of New York and elsewhere across the country, was the proud boast of moderate Republican and Democratic politicians who believed as did the nation's Founders that equal opportunity leading to a land of stakeholders was the essential bedrock of America's experiment in democracy.
No more. On this Thanksgiving we have been cheated of the bounty of that harvest as the stakes have been pulled up on the millions of Americans who have lost their homes or the many more who face that fate with half of US home mortgages now underwater. The housing crisis haunts a majority of Americans, even those who own their homes outright but have lost their jobs and must now sell in a downward-swirling housing market.
Good public education on every level, from preschool through college, is now a matter of inherited privilege reserved for those who can pick and choose affluent neighborhood settings for their children's schools. And the prospect of affording one of those settings is dim for most parents in a country where securing a good job is beyond the reach of so many highly motivated people.
How many folks from my generation are honestly sanguine about the economic future of their children and grandchildren? What I have heard constantly, and just this week from a former top investment banker addressing a college class I teach, is that our offspring probably will face a decade of lost opportunity. I thought back to my college days and how shocked any of us, even those from the most impoverished of circumstances, would have been to hear such a prediction.
As the New York Times editorialized this Thanksgiving, "One in three Americans -- 100 million people -- is either poor or perilously close to it."
A bummer of a message, I know, until I think of those pepper-sprayed college students linking arms, and of all the Americans, young, old and between, who have occupied their minds with a challenge -- that it doesn't have to be this way. For their brave spirit of resistance we should be most grateful this Thanksgiving.
Foreclosure crisis rippling out putting city neighborhoods on the offensive
It Takes a Village to Stop the Foreclosure Crisis and Save Homes
Most items purchased by consumers on Black Friday were made overseas. Most purchases were made on credit. Those purchases add to the US trade deficit and US consumer debt. They weaken the US economy, not strengthen it.
The first thing everybody has got to do to break the hold of the global corporations and banks over American government and society is to STOP SHOPPING.
-- Bertrand Russell
And all of, no doubt, due to machinations of ...fill the Chomsky Lite terminology.....
There is little thanksgiving in 2 party Crony Capitalism
Next stage is to cut Payroll tax in 1/2 cutting SSA Revenue and making entiltlements a reality.
Next is a WAR with Iran because we America can be the only country to Drop Atomic Bomb, Drones and have Unprovoked WAR, Occupation and ATTACK all others who try this. And all those who don't like Iran.
We are failing economically, democratically, and socially. No need for a Thanksgiving of delusion. We need leaders that are not following the Water Fall approach of the past Decade and the 3 Decade of Reaganomic that distroyed the New Deal for Hedge Fund profits and Multiply and Subdue the earth
― Louis L'Amour
Nobody wants to buy USA DEBT anymore, or Europe.
So, lamenting the decline in PORK seems absurd ?
http://chronicle.com/article/Californias-Public-Colleges/125910/
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/immigrationnaturalizatio/a/caillegals.htm
But then not giving Green Cards to all the illegals to identify them and let them stay as long as they have a job and have not broken the other laws and alow them to come and go as long as they have work is also stupid.
Only an idiot or self motive would deal with a problem with a solution of ignorance of the problems
Public education is their responsibility, which they have failed all of our children consistently.
College education affordability? They have single-handedly turned the vast majority of our college graduates into indentured servants, backing and granting loans that the market would have most certainly rejected.
Housing is no longer affordable because the government strives day and night to keep prices artificially high so that the banks with large foreclosure holdings are not harmed by suffering massive loses in equity.
ALL of this can be traced back to government manipulation of the marketplace.
All I'm thankful for is the strong libertarian movement that has grown in this country in the last 4 years. In 2007 no one knew what a libertarian was, and today 1 in every 6 voters considers themselves libertarian.
Separation of church, CORPORATION and state, and we will get back to being a truly prosperous country.
You seem to think Corporations are a person and not a Business Entity owned by Stock Traders who do not work for the Corporation, they don't sweat or give genious. They simply trade ownership and pay only 15%. The jobs creators don't exist as you are lied to. NYSE and ASE don't put cash into a corporation that is an IPO and 90% of all employment are corporations in NYSE and ASE. The only way to create jobs is TAX the Corporations, Dividend and Capital Gains forcing Corporations and Stock Traders to raise wages, hire and build corporate capacity which are deductions and lower these taxes.
Ron Paul is the only one I would vote. But I am convince I will write Paul and Kucinich end so I can be proud of not voting for either of these 2 parties of crony capitalism
Corporations are not "people" but they are owned by people. Corporations are not owned by "traders", you strongly misunderstand the premise. They are owned by shareholders, who while not being employed by that corporation, have skin in the game because their money is at stake.
Investors are absolutely job creators. That is not a lie, because I am at the forefront of that argument. I own a small motorcycle shop, and without my investors I could have never afforded to expand and hire additional mechanics.
Taxing the corporations and raising wages? That makes no sense, all you are doing is more of the same- manipulating the marketplace with government policies.
If you want to create jobs, you remove taxes and regulatory burden, including minimum wage. Just let the market work.
I am happy to hear that you would vote for Paul. He is by far the best choice.
Like it or not Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Kyl, Ryan, and their pay-to-play friends are bad for you!
The underprivilidged and disadvantage are probably MORE than the Rich Stock Trader and sure in the hell have less than their wealth and income. Since 20% own 90%. And if 80% with have10% that is the disadvantaged and underprivleged you just NAMED
So out of 305,000,000 people in AMERICA you seem to think 61,000,000 own the other 244,000,000 who are underprivilidge and disadvantaged. And this owning is the way it ought to be
Just 11 years ago Capital to Labor was in balance with the UNDERPRIVILEDGED AND DISADVANTAGE recieving 60% of the fruit of the labor for DOING ALL THE WORK.
A corporation and stock treader cannot make 1 thin DIME withut Labor. And you seem to think that doing no work and ADD NO VALUE to the economy is worth more than those who do all the work. if all the CASH is in the hands of these non worker or non job creators you don't have a democracy and you don't have capitalism. You have cronyt capitalism and an Oligopoly
Nice delusion, but a very unworkable situation that is mathematically heading to a very abrupt ending. That Justice could prevent and all including those with more would benefit rather than falling of the edge of humaity
So you are not of the Fence Clan. That is Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Kyl, Ryan, and Obama are
Thinki for yourself is why we are MORE THAN ONE.
If the DUST BOWL GREAT DEPRESSION, and WWII is not enough to convince you. Election to 4 Terms of Office and 12 years of service make you HIND SIGHT very silly.
What you would have him Cut Taxes on the RICH who don't even create JOBS in any great fasion. Our Congress use their Insider information to get rich while in office with new IPO's. These initial public offerings are a Primary Market. And no quarantee of a new job at all. How many IPO's don't create 1 more job.
The NYSE and ASE are the secondary stock market of EXISTING STOCK only. No initial investment or potential for JOB CREATION. And where $300 Billion is trader every year and where America is EMPLOYEED. The only job creation here is thought TAXATION. Corporation and their Stock Trader OWNERS will avoid TAX by Hiring, Raising Wages and purchases to expand the economy. As well as increasing the stock value by increasing the Asset to Price values. Another folly of your REAGANSOMICS
Every under privileged person in America (self caused or not) is a negative drag on the opportunity that will ultimately be available to the next generation of American's. While, it is true that it may not matter to the ever increasing number of self serving, self righteous winners of today, it will limit the future for both them and their offspring.............that is, if they manage to find anytime outside of self worship to find time to procreate :-)