Capitalism IS Charity?
On the Neoliberal Attack on Philanthropy
You would understand it if you heard a right-wing libertarian like Ron Paul or Paul Wolfowitz say:
I believe that ‘government,’ as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.
But Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, wrote that in his book Banker to the Poor. Read more
Air Powered Car in US by 2010
According to www.BusinessGreen.com, “Fresh from securing a deal with Indian automotive giant Tata to build its innovative air powered car on the subcontinent, French green car firm MDI has revealed details of how it plans to crack the US market.”
The cars (the OneCat, pictured above, and the CityCat) run on air below 20mph and then begins to burn small amounts of fuel. It can travel 800 to 1,000 miles on one tank of compressed air and only takes an hour to charge.
We can expect the cars to cost around $17,800 when they release in late 2010.
Source: Air Powered Car Could His US Roads by 2010
The Plan to Gentrify DC
Last week, This American Life featured a segment on gentrification in Washington, DC. Gentrification in DC, residents say, is not led by market forces, but is rather an orchestrated plan to displace blacks from neighborhoods to make way for rich whites.
“The Plan” is incredibly moving and persuasive. It highlights gentrification signs like local government closing public schools, libraries, and hospitals to replace them with condos and, among other things, sushi restaurants. Others, from around the country, discuss how their cities purposely allowed neighborhoods to deteriorate so developers can buy land for cheaper prices.
Is “the plan” a conspiracy theory? Maybe. But the results are striking.
Full Episode: 350: Human Resources
Cities making life even harder for the poor
Cities across the country are passing ordinances that could put panhandlers in jail. According to a USA Today article, “Cities crack down on panhandling”:
Cities have enacted laws targeting the homeless for two decades, including bans on sleeping outdoors or loitering. In the past few years, the focus has turned to panhandling restrictions, said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
Cities are criminalizing the poor in an effort to revitalize their downtowns. Since manufacturing jobs have mostly left America, cities must rely on the service sector and tourism to boost their economies, therefore elevating their interest in hiding the poor and homeless. This puts the poor in a doubly bad situation–first you lose your manufacturing job, then your considered criminal.
So rather than criminalizing the poor–aren’t their lives hard enough?–we should give them housing. Yes, GIVE. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll say it again. It’s cheaper to house the homeless than it is to put them in shelters or send them to jail.
So as the coldest month of the year creeps closer, I’m going to start cataloging all the stories I can find on KnowledgePlex, and other sources, about cities trying to stop low-income housing, or panhandling, or giving out food in public. In the end, I’ll list my findings of shitty things cities are doing to criminalize the poor during the coldest month of the year.
In my view, this is a national war on the poor that’s going under-reported. Let’s see what we can do to put urban issues into the national focus.
