Daily Archives: 01/05/2011

(Community Matters) It’s not up yet but it’s coming – MiniDonations.  I met with Leo Ramirez this morning and am quite intrigued.

(Community Matters) on The Economist website

(Community Matters) Our neighbor, Prof James Galbraith in Foreign Policy

In the United States, the financial crisis has left the country with 11 million fewer jobs than Americans need now. No matter how aggressive the policy, we are not going to find 11 million new jobs soon. So common sense suggests we should make some decisions about who should have the first crack: older people, who have already worked three or four decades at hard jobs? Or younger people, many just out of school, with fresh skills and ambitions?

The answer is obvious. Older people who would like to retire and would do so if they could afford it should get some help. The right step is to reduce, not increase, the full-benefits retirement age. As a rough cut, why not enact a three-year window during which the age for receiving full Social Security benefits would drop to 62 — providing a voluntary, one-time, grab-it-now bonus for leaving work?

Hat Tip: AmericaBlog

(Community Matters) Another little red book, this one from a 93-yo French resistance hero, has created quite a sensation.

Indignez vous! (Cry out!) , a slim pamphlet by a wartime French resistance hero, Stéphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the “insolent, selfish” power of money and markets and by defending the social “values of modern democracy”.

“It’s true that reasons to cry out can seem less obvious today. The world appears too complex. But in this world, there are things we should not tolerate… I say to the young, look around you a little and you will find them. The worst of all attitudes is indifference…”  The Independent

Hat Tip: AmericaBlog

(Community Matters) a thoughtful essay on how the LGBT community should prepare for next steps