REWIND - A Week of Quotes and Cartoons
SUNDAY
Quote of the Day
April 7, 2013
'This [peace settlement] is the most significant thing that we could present to our people. Today is not only my birthday, but is also rebirth of a people.
'... Without looking whether they are poor or rich, old or young, man or woman, I call on those who say I'm honorable and decent, to take place in the settlement process and contribute to it. Everybody must know that the life [in Turkey] will be different.
'Let not a drop of blood be shed during this settlement process.'
Abdullah Ocalan, founder and leader
of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
following a meeting with a Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP) delegation
which visited him April 3 as part of
ongoing peace efforts to end the
decades-old Kurdish conflict
Global Post
April 4, 2013
Toon of the Day
Chained CPI - Bad
Keith Tucker
MONDAY
Quote of the Day
'The fact that the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is today remembered as an exceptional moment in American economic policy is evidence of the serious blind spots Americans have developed in the way we think about government. Even Millennials, who have experienced perhaps the worst impacts of the current recession, have often celebrated entrepreneurship as a solution to their employment woes, rather than calling for the robust public action that has always been a part of effective responses to economic crisis.
'...it's no wonder that many Millennials believe that entrepreneurship, creativity, and technological innovation will provide the foundation for economic recovery. But the start-up economy can no more build 78,000 bridges than it can create the close to 9 million jobs needed to match growth in the labor force since the start of the recession. Well-designed public policies alone will not convince young people - or Americans more generally - of the need for a progressive economic agenda modeled on the WPA. We must also literally map the interventions of the past. Only by making the legacy of public investment more visible can we push back against myths that mute the powerful role government has repeatedly played in leading economic recovery.'
Elizabeth Pearson, a Roosevelt
Institute Pipeline Fellow and a PhD
candidate at UC Berkeley
Next New Deal
April 8, 2013
Toon of the Day
Flammable
Jeff Danziger
TUESDAY
Quote of the Day
'...Beyond her policy decisions, she was part of a values shift.
'Today, bourgeois virtues like industry, competitiveness, ambition and personal responsibility are once again widely admired, by people of all political stripes. Today, technology is central to our world and tech moguls are celebrated.
'Tony Blair and Bill Clinton embraced and ratified her policy shifts. Millions more have been influenced by her idea of what makes an admirable individual.'
Conservative columnist David Brooks
on Margaret Thatcher
New York Times
April 9, 2013
Toon of the Day
Jobs, Jobs,,Jobs
Stuart Carlson
WEDNESDAY
Quote of the Day
'After all, if whoever it is that Obama is trying to appeal to here - I guess it's the Washington Post editorial page and various other self-proclaimed "centrist" pundits - were willing to admit the fundamental asymmetry in our political debate, willing to admit that if DC is broken, it's because of GOP radicalism, they would have done it long ago. It's not as if this reality was hard to see.
'But the truth is that the "centrists" aren't sincere. Calls for centrism and bipartisanship aren't actual demands for specific policies - they're an act, a posture these people take to make themselves seem noble and superior. And that posture requires blaming both parties equally, no matter what they do or propose. Obama's budget will garner faint praise at best, quickly followed by denunciations of the president for not supplying the Leadership (TM) to make Republicans compromise - which means that he's just as much at fault as they are, see? '
Economist Paul Krugman
New York Times
April 10, 2013
Toon of the Day
The Gullotine
Mike Luckovich
THURSDAY
Quote of the Day
'The Obama budget also continues to demand more
sacrifice from federal employees than from Wall
Street. Federal employees did not cause the Great
Recession. They did not cause the deficits that
resulted from the Great Recession. Yet their pay
and their retirement keeps getting cut. Why?
'Putting aside the injustice of demanding sacrifice
from the innocent while letting the guilty off scot
free, the Obama budget falls short of putting our
economy on a path towards higher wages and full
employment. As we have said many times, the
greatest economic challenge facing America is the
jobs crisis, not the deficit. Yet the administration
cuts the part of the budget that pays for investments
in worker training and jobs, which has already been
cut to its lowest level since the Eisenhower
administration, by another $100 billion. This
austerity budget is bad economic policy at a moment
when the economy remains weak and we urgently
need more job-creating investments.'
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
April 11, 2013
Toon of the Day
Barber Obama
Stuart Carlson
FRIDAY
Quote of the Day
'While employment and housing show signs of improving for the nation as a whole, conditions in lower-income neighborhoods remain difficult by many measures," Bernanke said in prepared remarks that made no direct reference to monetary policy.
'... Substantial coordination and dedication are needed to break through silos to simultaneously improve housing, connect residents to jobs, and help ensure access to adequate nutrition, health care, education, and day care.'
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a
speech to a Fed community affairs conference
Huffington Post
April 12, 2013
Toon of the Day
Just Crazy Enough
Tom Toles - Washington Post
SATURDAY
Quote of the Day
'But who exactly wants to cut Social Security and Medicare? Not many people, according to this recent Washington Post poll: Just 17 percent supported cutting Medicare benefits, and 21 percent said the same for Social Security. These are policy ideas that never poll very well. But for elite media the "middle" is where brave politicians go in order to slash benefits for everyone else.
'... The implication is that both "extremes" will be unhappy, and maybe that means the "middle" is happy? But that's a middle that exists only in the corporate media's mind.'
Peter Hart, activism director at Fairness & Accuracy
in Reporting (FAIR) and co-producer of CounterSpin
FAIR
April 12, 2013
Toon of the Day
Chain of Fools
Jen Sorensen
Spread the word