Molly Ivins: Molly Ivins: Economic democracy is buried beneath the bull

[Dudley_DUright]

Haven't had so much fun reading a book since I was 12 and found "The Three Musketeers."

Thomas Frank's "One Market, Under God" is a populist romp over the most delicious idiocies of the past decade. The obligatory subtitle is "Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy," which doesn't sound promising, but this is a ring-tailed tooter.

The book is a delicious chronicle of the hubris of capitalism in our time, and it contains some of the most savagely funny cultural criticism I have ever come across.

Of course, it's really not fair — all Frank has to do is quote them: business as God, technology as divinity, the New Economy as the end of history. We live in a culture that produces books like "God Wants You to Be Rich" and "Jesus, CEO."

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22252&mode=nested&order=0

[whistle]

1. This quote from your link.....

..."The book is a delicious chronicle of the hubris of capitalism in our time, and it contains some of the most savagely funny cultural criticism I have ever come across."

Fritz Lang, the German director in the 1920's German Weimar Republic, who fled nazi Germany in 1933 and came to the U.S. where he worked and lived for the next 30 years. Lang directed a 1922 feature silent film on the same "hubris of capitalism" in "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" and "Inferno". It was modern thinking for its time and I just watched parts of it recently and it applies to much of what is happening today.



Reminds me of the Economic/Social Policies of Lyndon LaRouche:

<snip>
LaRouche is the author of " So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics?" and "The Science of Christian Economy".
1. Taxes & Spending:


Increase federal spending and taxes--if needed to provide services and protection to the Americans.

Regardless of increases or decreases, it is vitally important that federal spending and taxes are balanced.

Full employment for all Americans should be federal policy.
Advocates a national program modeled after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and its TVA, including a detailed plan to create a "Super-TVA" to upgrade and fix the country's transportation network, with high-speed magnetic rail. Such emergency infrastructure resolution would make millions of jobs, and be the first step toward America becoming a producer society again. His program reportedly influenced Kucinich to announce his running as an "FDR Democrat."
"We must shift from the Wal-Mart to reality. Reality means infrastructure building as the leading edge of a revival of durable goods production."
source


2. Social Services Funding:

Disagree
See the article "faith-based looting,"
On Monday, Sept. 3, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. denounced the efforts to legalize a so-called ``Faith-based Initiative.'' He stated: ``I have been investigating the development of the Faith-Based Initiative now hitting Congress, and what I see shaping up in the United States, under President George Bush and John Ashcroft, is a move to turn religion into a form of state-run prostitution.'' He said: ``This measure must be defeated now.''

<more>
<link> http://selectsmart.com/president/LaRouche.html

[eridani]

2. LaRouche is not particularly original

Sanders and Kucinich have been advocating economic democracy for years, and they actually hold public office. For officeholding, it always helps to not be a taco shy of a combination plate.

[Dirk39]

3. Please help a stupid german:

There are so many articles posted on DU, starting "Molly Ivins:":
where does she live, what does it mean?
Why do I get this:
"You don't have permission to access /article.php on this server."
if I try to find out, who the f*ck is Molly Ivins?

Give me some truth!

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[acmavm]

4. Absolutely one of the best journalists in this country today. She's known

bush** for years and she doesn't like him either. And she's not at all afraid to call him an idiot. She's written a books about him, best sellers that pulled no punches. She's written books about him:

Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America with Lou Dubose (Random House, 2003)

The Betrayal of America : How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (2001) with Vincent Bugliosi (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001)

Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush with Lou Dubose (Random House, 2000)

The following is her biography on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram webpage

http://www.star-telegram.com/system/static_content/bios/ivins.htm

Molly Ivins


Political Columnist

Molly Ivins, best-selling author and widely syndicated political columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, says politics, particularly in Texas, is great entertainment -- "better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball."

One of the nation's wittiest and best-known political pundits, Mary Tyler Ivins, better known as Molly, was born August 30, 1944 in Monterey, Calif., but grew up in Houston.

Ivins, the author of the best-selling book, Molly Ivins Can't Say That Can She?, is the former co-editor of the liberal monthly Texas Observer and former Rocky Mountain bureau chief for the New York Times. She has also worked for the Houston Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Dallas Times Herald.

Ivins' freelance work has appeared in Esquire, Atlantic, The Nation, Harper's, the Progressive, Mother Jones, TV Guide and numerous other publications. She is a frequent guest on network radio and television shows.

Ivins has a B.A. from Smith College, a master's in journalism from Columbia University and studied for a year at the Institute of Political Science in Paris.

She served for three years on the board of the National News Council, is active in the Amnesty International's Journalism Network and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She writes about press issues for the American Civil Liberties Union and several journalism reviews.

She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist three times, and has won numerous journalism awards, including a 1991 Headliner's Award for best Texas column. She was named Outstanding Alumna by Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1976, and was a member of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize jury.

She speaks both French and Spanish and has a love of the outdoors.

Her column appears in 113 newspaper besides the Star-Telegram.

[woofless]

5. What's stupid Dirk?

Stupid is not asking. Molly is the voice of truth and reason. Common Dreams has over 400 hits for Molly Ivins in it's archive. Check them out. She is very witty and sharp. Enjoy.

Woof


http://www.commondreams.org/archives.htm

Just put Ivins in the search box.