"The first Democrat to run New York in 20 years pledged to move swiftly on an agenda that calls for affordable housing and community health centers. He renewed a proposal to tax the wealthy to pay for universal pre-kindergarten classes and after-school programs, a levy that would require state approval in an election year. “We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” de Blasio, 52, said in his 18-minute address delivered on the steps of City Hall in lower Manhattan. “And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.” Business Week
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"We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities"
That could not be more clear. This is a call for socialist revolution. Will Albany allow de Blasio to realise his goals? I know not. If he does not succeed in his program or if his measures result in adverse results in NYC then the Clintons may regret their early and ardent embrace of this left wing politician.
HC was challlenged on the left when last she ran for president. George Wallace lost an election early in his career for the House of Representatives to a man who ran specifically on the basis of an advocacy of segregation. Wallace said afterward that he would never be successfuly challenged by a segregationist again because he would be more segregationist than they
Has she/he decided that like Wallace she must be as extreme as any of her possible challengers for the nomination? pl
The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Broward County Chamber of Commerce, and The Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce would like to say thank you to His Honor deBalsio and former Secretary of State Clinton bringing fairness to New York City, may you succeed in all your endeavors.
Hillary will follow BO’s script: talk left to the people, while talking center-right to big donors. If she wins in ’16, it will mark the 5th term of Bush/Cheney policies.
Remember, it was Bubba who ended welfare as we knew it, ended Glass-Steagall (days before HRC announced her run for Senator from Wall Street), signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (which enabled rampant, secret trading in oil and other commodities), and signed the PNTR China, setting off the great sucking sound of jobs going to China.
The Democratic base has to get real about who Hillary is and who she represents. That is a tall order, since most of them are still in denial about BO’s intentions, which include cutting Social Security and military pensions.
Jose
You are a spokesman for these groups? “Fairness?” Really? My word, my word. pl
JohnH: Why should Hillary be President? I’ve never heard a Hillary supporter answer that question.
You forgot about NAFTA.
De Blasio intends one of his first acts in office to be the banning and shutting down of the traditional horse-and-carriage rides in/around Central Park. He offers various reasons for it but the probable real reason is described near the end of the article.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/horse-drawn-carriage-ban-bill-de-blasio_n_4532093.html
dc
de Blasio should go out to visit the abbatoirs where the horses will be slaughtered. pl
The core that got Bill re-elected as Governor is oiling the gears right now. Their motto: “There are only two ways Hillary will not be the next President: she’s dying or she’s already dead.”
The Clinton’s never fail to learn from their mistakes.
I’m not a spokesman for these organizations, but the progressives want fairness based on cronyism, nepotism, and of course patronage.
One wonders if protesters ( of whom one hopes there will be some) might demand in public that he do just that. Perhaps they might post to “save the horses and carriages” websites videos
of horses being slaughtered . . . and say “this is the de Blasio plan for one of our more enjoyable traditions. Who opposes this?”
I see nothing wrong with getting the State involved in eliminating inequality.
It’s done such a great job at increasing it and enforcing it, these last 40 years, i think it’s about time We the People get involved in making it work for the rest of us, rather than the thinnest layer of the upper crust.
The Clinton’s real legacy to DEM politics may be made clearer this year by events and elections. The new mayor may be kept busy by the fact that MOTHER NATURE DOES NOT GRANT VARIANCES!
Also promoted and passed when Bill and Hillary Clinton were in the White House was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with its World Trade Organization (WTO) that hears and decides trade disputes in secret. The GATT is basically NAFTA for as much of the world as possible and is just as bad; it trumps U.S. law, such that if Congress passes a law that contradicts a section of the GATT, then sanctions kick in against the U.S.
Mickey Kantor, whom some called a Hollywood lawyer, was the U.S. trade representative active in negotiating NAFTA and GATT. The point man working in the Clinton White House to get NAFTA passed by Congress was none other than Rahm Emanuel, who had been a Clinton campaign fund raiser and who became Barack Obama’s first chief of staff.
And further, when the Clintons were in the White House, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, which changed the law so that one entity could own more than one AM and one FM radio station in one market, leading to massive consolidation of radio station ownership, and led to TV and newspaper ownership by one entity in one market, etc., and also permitted the “Baby Bell” phone companies, which came into existence when AT&T was broken up in the early 1980’s, to merge with one another, such that now in the U.S. the radio, television, newspaper, and telephone (including cellular) businesses are owned and controlled by only a few owners (an oligopoly).
Bill Clinton was the biggest Republican president of the last part of the 20th century.
What does DeBlasio think these critturs are going to be doing if they aren’t standing around munching oats out of buckets and strolling through Central Park towing a carriage the weight of which they don’t even notice? Has this city-bred clown ever seen draft horses with a real freight wagon, or watched horses pulling tree stumps?
First impression of de Blasio mayoralty: There was a snow storm, not as bad as predicted. The plow was up and down our street ten times during the night; the street is clear. Schools closed. No people or cars on the street. Everyone has stayed home. Brilliant!
I’m usually annoyed by Jose’s posts, but I found that one both amusing & accurate: Florida will be glad to accomodate ever more rich expat New Yorkers fleeing onerous taxes on their hard-earned money.
I have reason to believe, though that Jose & I would not agree on where to draw the lines defining “onerous” and “hard-earned”.
A “call for socialist revolution” or just a clever marketing campaign? I suspect another “hope and change” bait & switch operation will be the end result with de Blasio.
His mildly liberal rhetoric got him elected. It also helped that Christine Quinn imploded herself by greasing in Bloomberg’s sleazy 3rd term.
Now that he’s in, I predict he’ll turn his attention to shafting his supporters in the same manner as Barack Obama.
Just as Obama showed his colors with his first appointment, namely, the sleazy Zionist Rahm Emmanuel, de Blasio showed his with the selection of Rudy Giuliani’s police commissioner.
Prepare for “more of the same” in NYC.
Why shouldn’t she? Could she possible be as unqualified as Santorium, Bachman, Cruz etc etc etc?
She is intelligent. She is articulate. She has international as well as senatorial experience. As the first lady, she knows the ins and outs of the White House.
I would vote for her and I’m sure there are many more who will support her also.
The blog Naked Capitalism has run a fairly detailed analysis of the social and economic destruction visited upon Mexico itself by NAFTA. It describes how NAFTA engineered the destruction of bulk commodity agriculture throughout much of Mexico, among other things. Here is the link.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/beer-explains-20-years-naftas-devastating-effects-mexico.html
(Also, early in that link’s thread, blogger Yves Smith herself posted a comment with links to
many posts she has written about TPP and TPIP, which are extensions of the original NAFTA concept. Someone mentioned TPP and TPIP on this thread so maybe the links will be useful.)
“If you like Obamacare, you’ll love Obamatrade.”
I do not expect de Blasio to call for expopriating the expropriators. He has longterm ties with the Clintons and isn’t known as a firebrand, although I’d not be surprised if he locks horns now and again with Andrew Cuomo and more power to him if he does. He’s catering to a large segment of the New York City voting population that hasn’t been catered to by recent mayors.
I would not be surprised if Clinton or any other eventual Democratic candidate does talk a great deal about inequality, which is unarguably getting worse. The stock market rolls along and the rich have recovered from the recession while the rest of the people continue to struggle with low employment and wage stagnation. People continue to struggle to keep their homes and lose them. These are real problems. The GOP could not take advantage of Obama’s weaknesses on this score in the last presidential cycle because of their candidate and a general terror of anything that smacks of class warfare. Obama didn’t even bother to mention unemployment in his second inaugural address. Fortunately for the Dems the opposition is in no position to exploit such openings.
DeBlasio’s not igniting a socialist revolution, he’s riding the inevitable middle class tide of resentment after 12 years of a mayor who turned NYC into Luxury City. He’s a very smart pol so don’t expect anything remotely resembling left wing firebrand-y kind of legislating from him (although I’d be pleasantly surprised if he did). How hard he’s willing to step on Real Estate and Wall Street’s toes is anybody’s guess, but that’s what we elected him to do. So far all I know is that he got the streets cleaned up pronto after the snow.
DeBlasio probably does not have national aspirations. Cuomo probably does. DeBlasio worked for Cuomo when Cuomo was at HUD and reportedly they have a lot of respect for each other. So I’m inclined to expect more cordial relations than normal between the mayor of NYC and the gov.
After 30 years of the bottom 90% in the USA getting hammered, it’s nice to see some Democrats finally starting to take notice. The last time I checked, NYC is still an island off the coast of America. It’s funny to see everybody trembling at the thought of DeBlasio fever spreading to the mainland and natives embracing anything resembling a NYCSSR “socialist revolution” that hasn’t happened yet.
HRC’s a smart pol. She’ll adapt. I don’t like her neocon FP outlook, but suspect she’s already ideologically close to Bill D, at least in her heart. But then Elizabeth Warren had already begun to shift the center back to its more traditional spot.
At least until the New Yorkers start trying to vote for more taxes and more government.
We see it out West with Californians having turned their state into a shithole, and then fleeing the mess they’ve made only to attempt to recreate their old situation in the new one. Seeing a lot more anti California sentiment directed at these transplants.
You’d think they’d learn, but being a progressive means you don’t have to.
Ha ha ha the liberal mindset in a nutshell.
Worry about the horses, to Hell with the unborn babies.
DiBlaseo is either going to continue Bloomberg’s policies or he’s going to be Dinkins 2.0.
Who knows if that’s the “real’ reason or not, but for the record, every major Dem candidate except Christine Quinn supported the carriage ban. So did De Blasio’s opponent in the general election, Republican Joseph Lhota. Also for the record, most NYers could give a damn.
An additional thing he did. Unlike his predecessor, he opened city shelters to homeless families during the storm, allowing them to bypass the normal (lengthy) admission process.
Viva la Revolución!
If the following figure are accurate, then I doubt DeBlasio is really any sort of great socialist:
– The top 1% of NYC residents earn 39% of all income
– Anyone taking home $1m/yr would pay an additional $973/yr for the new mayor’s proposals. (Less than 1/1000th of their income.)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/04/bill-de-blasio-new-york-mayor-inaugurated
The blogs that I read (other than SST) are econ blogs.
There is plenty of recent research related to public health, as well as economic performance, that suggests that an economy that skewed toward the top 5 – 1% becomes very unstable, and also that all members of society (even the wealthy) have more health problems as inequality rises.
I’m a left coaster, not familiar with NYC.
But from what I see, DeBlasio is simply responding to a situation that has begun to put so many demands on government that some of the rules need to be renegotiated.
The bigger problem for DeBlasio would seem to be the fact that he has never administered a large organization before. Here’s hoping he manages that feat capably.
As for HRC, she’s going to have a very, very difficult time given the economic damage done during the Clinton years, which JohnH and robt willmann have identified in earlier comments.
The recent work that’s been done at UTIP by James Galbraith fully supports all that, and more.
One can view “economics” as “the science of money,” or one can view “economics” in its original, intended sense: the laws (nomos – “laws of the field”) that govern the distribution and trade of household (oikos – the extended household of traditional extended families) resources.
If one acknowledges that inequality is a state where adequate resources are concentrated in the hands of a few while the many do without and suffer (or where the suffering is concentrated on the many, while the few continue on in comfort, plenty, and fearlessness), then i don’t really see how one can advocate for the second, original intent of the science.
Adam Smith is considered the father of economics, and the entire point of his tract was that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is an unnatural, immoral state. The entire second half of WoNations is about the evils of monopolies, and how they only arise in conditions where they are enforced – in his era, that was “enforced by the State.”
We may not have monopolies, these days, but we definitely have state-enforced corporate oligopolies. That is undisputed.
Of course, if you just take “economics” to mean “the study of money,” then hey, yeah -inequality isn’t a big deal.
OTOH, Pope Francis (and the entire history of every organized religion and tribal culture on the planet, going back to earliest pre-history) have a few choice words to describe the sort of person who obsesses over money. Those words aren’t kind.
Many on the right are more concerned with the baby before it is born than after. Look at their zeal in reducing food stamps, cutting education, cutting pre-school, cutting Medicaid, cutting school lunches, the list goes on. It is easy to care about that innocent baby in the womb and not take into consideration why the mother might want an abortion, such as rape, failed contraception, mother or embryo health issues, or the parents decision that they are unable to care baby financially or emotionally at the present time,
In the perfect world there would be no need or desire for an abortion and every infant would be health and born into a loving family.
We do not live in a perfect world.
That’s an argument that the likes of David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo like to trot out to soothe easily rattled Park Avenuers but the fact is, there is little-to-no evidence to support the proposition that rich NYers would flee to FL (or CT, or NJ) if forced to pay higher income taxes.
Are Californians still fleeing to AZ?
The last time I checked, Cali dumped their GOP governor, kneecapped the GOP in Sacramento and raised taxes and now the state will have an operating surplus of some $10 billion/year by 2018 fiscal year if they stay on course. All while Jerry Brown is busy pouring money back into education and large-scale infrastructure projects. That’s some mess.
Are you familiar with the “just price” concept, Kyle Pearson? The Greeks originally came up with it as a way to set standards of fairness in financial transactions. Thomas Aquinas and Medieval theologians refined it further, calling for the regulation of the price of the necessities of life. English Parliament acted on it and for centuries regulated the price of bread, meat, lodging, etc. American colonists followed the tradition to some degree, and price regulations were challenged and upheld in court as proper exercises of govt’s power to protect the public welfare.
They sure are.
Last time I checked California still had insane budget shortfalls that were only masked with the most creative of accounting, and who’s regulations and taxes made it nearly impossible for affordable family foundation unless you happened to be a government dependent or insanely wealthy.
This is the state that was licking its chops at Facebook going public because of the tax windfall, and you’re going to argue that they’re not an economic basketcase? Ahahaha. Sure thing. How’s that “high speed rail” working out for them?
Ha!
Everything you mentioned is plagued with abuse and shows no sign of slowing down its growth. Eventually you have to pay the piper.
The idea that its the government’s job to take care of everyone from cradle to grave is the liberal wet dream I know, but that’s not the case.
The percentage of conceptions from rape is miniscule, yet that old horse gets trotted out any time abortion is brought up while the Kermit Gosnell story is ignored and then treated as an abnormality (hint: its not as abnormal as you think).
I’ve got a great idea Nancy, maybe people should be responsible and either use protection or not have sex if they don’t want a baby, instead of being infanticides. Or is that the government’s job as well?
You conveniently left out all the cuts to staff, pay and benefits enacted over the years before those Jerry Brown tax hikes and money ‘pouring’ into education.
As a once and future Floridian I would be happy to have them all stay up North. They arrive with a mentality of entitlement. When asked to support local schools or infrastructure projects always retort “we paid for that up North”. Obviously Floridians owe them; they, however, have no obligation to future generations in the state they now live in.
The Boomers have always felt entitled! Oddly so do many Seniors! So very few left to heavy lifting to build community!
Disclosure: I am 71!
Don’t worry be happy! Like Washington D.C. NYC largely propped up by the flight capital brought in by EUROTRASH!
The FIRE sector of the economy is a casino!
FIRE=Finance, Insurance, Real Estate!
And by the way the Chinese want HC for President!
You are right, Fred. I should have also included Brown’s spending cuts in addition to the tax increases.
You’re right, I was a little too glowing, Cali’s still mired in debt and Brown freely admits it. He says he wants to the new taxes and cuts to pay the debt down. Good luck with that. But at least budgets no longer need a 2/3 vote to pass.
But Cali didn’t “turn their state into a shithole” by voting for “more taxes and more government.” They got there by demanding more gov’t and tax cuts.
What do the major Democrats have against horses and carriages? Not “Twenty First Century” enough for them? For the record, how many New Yorkers actively resented and opposed the horses and carriages? Do the carriages cost New York more than what they earn from paying riders? If not, then what drives the active opposition?
I couldn’t tell you. The GOP mayoral candidate was against them too. It’s an issue for carriage drivers and animal rights activists and I guess tourists. I couldn’t care less. Sorry.
I wonder if either HRC or de Blasio will call for firing this gun toting New Yorker? Maybe Governor Cuomo can explain why all this law breaking is being done by one of his executive employees?
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Ready-aim-point-talk-5116592.phphttp:/#photo-5683949
I am cursorily familiar with the efforts of the church to legislate against usury, and in favor of the poor during the “German Renaissance” and the Middle Ages, but not familiar with any details. Why do you mention it?
It had to do with your comment in general, and specifically about the original intent of economics and your final paragraph. Thought you might be interested.
I’ll look it up. Thanks for the heads up.