Sherry Chandler

Saturday browsing

Some recommended reads:

Kevin Drum on The End of a Dream (which might be subtitled How the Robber Barons Won). He has graphs:

Everyone knows that income inequality has been widening dramatically in the past three decades, as the rich get (lots) richer and the working class mostly stagnates. But hey — this is America! At least we still have lots of social mobility, right? People here go from rags to riches all the time, unlike those stagnant European hellholes where…..um….what?

Washington Post: In Kentucky, Toyota Faces Union Rumbling, subtitled “Downtrodden UAW Makes New Push”

GEORGETOWN, Ky. — Dissident workers at the Toyota plant here gather at the Best Western Georgetown on Wednesdays between shifts to shape a battle plan. The workers are angry at conditions at this flagship Toyota site, where the best-selling Camry is built.

The United Auto Workers has launched a big new push to organize the plant, trying to capitalize on fears of lower pay, outsourcing of jobs and on Toyota’s treatment of injured workers. The stakes for the UAW intensified this month as a private-equity firm agreed to buy Chrysler, raising fears that the union will be unable to block cuts in jobs and benefits at a privately owned automaker.

Spencer Ackerman’s The Bitter End. This article at The Washington Monthly argues that we should not judge the success of the war by the enthusiasm of troops on the ground but I was struck by these points:

To put all this in context: Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without sectarian reconciliation among Iraqis the “strategy won’t work.” Indeed, the entire point of the surge is to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates’s words, “buy[ing] the Iraqis time.” But that’s the problem. The United States is ever more dearly buying time, and Iraq is ever more freely spending it. As this article goes to press, the parliament is set to embark on a two-month vacation, during which, if current trends hold, 200 more American troops will be killed.

…The uncomfortable reality is this: nothing in Iraq worth fighting for remains achievable, and nothing achievable in Iraq remains worth fighting for.

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