sethapearce's blog

Bumped.

Over the past several months, Harvard's Student Labor Action Movement has been fighting layoffs in solidarity with Harvard workers with support of many members of the student body, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and more. Through protests, a petition, vigils, letters, and more, SLAM has brought the message that workers are valuable members of the Harvard community to the forefront of campus and even Cambridge politics.

Recently SLAM worked with the Harvard College Democrats to produce a video about the human cost of layoffs:

In an open letter to Harvard University President Drew Faust, co-signed my many organizations including Harvard's Undergraduate Council SLAM writes:

We write to you as members of the Harvard community because we are concerned with our University’s response to the economic crisis. We recognize that Harvard confronts a difficult challenge with a significant drop in the endowment announced in November 2008. However, Harvard remains the wealthiest university and one of the wealthiest non-profit organizations in the world. In this difficult moment, Harvard faces a choice: we can choose either to use our wealth in order to strengthen our community—students, faculty, and workers together—or to allow greed and fear to divide us and erode our institution of higher learning.

We call upon Harvard in these times to act, not out of a logic of fear, but out of a logic of courage and creativity. In recent months, it appears that Harvard is taking the former path by laying off workers and generating an atmosphere of divisiveness. We reject this approach. Accordingly, we demand that the University suspends layoffs and recalls all workers, full-time and part-time, who have been fired since October 2008.

***

First, Harvard has not demonstrated—through transparent, full disclosure of financial information—why job cuts “cannot be averted now.” Second, even if the need for further budgetary cuts were to be transparently demonstrated, the moral logic that should animate a non-profit institution whose motto is “Truth” can never justify forcing its lowest paid workers to pay for a crisis that confronts us all.

Because this is a crisis that involves the entire Harvard community, we must be involved in formulating a comprehensive response. This response must be grounded in an ethos of shared sacrifice and democratic participation. We insist that this process be opened to the community, and thus request a meeting with the President, the Corporation, University administrators, members of the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM), and other relevant groups in order to begin working together on creative and alternative solutions.

After over a week, the Harvard administration has still not responded to the letter.

Harvard has justified their actions by the recent decline in its endowment, but it refuses to disclose its full budget to the public and executive salaries remain as high as ever.

As Harvard students, we know that we must use our voice to support the workers in our community through this economic crisis. We ask Harvard to fulfill both its mission of education and public service by supporting its workers when it matters most.

We all expect to make sacrifices during these uncertain times, but by targeting its lowest-paid and often immigrant workers, Harvard sends a clear message that some members of our community are more expendable than others.

Join us in fighting for Harvard to protect its workers. Help us show them that people all over the Country are watching their actions by signing our petition and telling others about our campaign.

Together we have already gotten Harvard to rehire Bedardo Sola, the custodial worker in the video, we need everyones help to make Harvard rehire all the workers who have been laid off and to pledge that the richest University in the world will not add to unemployment during this time of economic crisis, but work towards creative solutions that value all members of the Harvard community including students, workers to faculty, administrators, money managers,a residents of the Cambridge and Allston-Brighton communities and more.

We can only rise together.

Another reason why fiscal conservatism doesn't work.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information.

And then some of them tried to kill it.

Microsoft, acting in their logical self-interest, felt threatened by the prospect of a drastically cheaper laptop in the hands of millions of children, seriously undercutting their currently dominant product. As Bryan Appleyard points out in his Times Online piece, "Computers only cost as much as they do because the makers of the software – primarily Microsoft – go to enormous lengths to make their products necessary and expensive." Microsoft was also concerned because the new laptops would not use the Windows operating system but instead the free OS, Sugar.

Intel was upset because Negroponte's computer, the XO, uses an AMD chip, AMD being the second largest chip-maker in the world after Intel. This could cost Intel their status as the number one computer chip producer in the world, costing them their "market leadership."

So the two companies both set out to kill the XO. Intel created a cheap laptop called the Classmate and along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, set about trashing the XO in the press.

Obviously it is in Microsoft and Intel's best interests to destroy the XO, this computer that could bring tons of new information, education and communication technologies to communities that are in dire need of it. The XO, and projects like it, should be aided by the US Government, they should be well funded and protected from these corporate madmen.

It would be a great thing for the world to further connect people and strengthen our global community, introducing a new generation to the intellectual, cultural and economic marketplace of the future. Getting all the information and ideas that one can find on the internet out to the developing world is important as a cure for extremism and push for democratic thinking.

Appleyard comes to an interesting and accurate conclusion:

Computers are like drugs, literally. If the drug companies wanted to do the most good in the world, they would divert all investment from the illnesses of the rich – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes – to the much more catastrophic ailments of the poor, primarily malaria, but also Aids. But they don’t; they sit comfortably on their high-margin drugs. Equally, if the technocrats really believed in the human value of universal connectivity – and all of them say they do – they would find ways of wiring southeast Asia and Africa. But they don’t; they sit comfortably on their high-margin laptops.

For all these reasons, we can see the that the best interests of a few corporations can often disregard or even seriously oppose the health and livelihood of individuals, the economic success of a large part of a world, and the moral welfare of our Nation.

Bill Scher had a great post up yesterday at Blog for OurFuture about the latest offshore drilling/tire inflating madness.

On Thursday, conservative radio host Sean Hannity claimed Obama said, "All you need to do is inflate your tires. That's all you need to do. If every American would join in this effort, of inflating one's tires, then it's all going to be fine. And we can still import 70% of our oil from Saudi Arabia. Just keep those tires inflated."

Conservatives -- lovers of childish mockery over substantive ideas -- later today are apparently planning to distribute tire gauges at an Obama energy event.

However, as it turns out inflating your tires will actually save you more money in the next year than offshore drilling will save you in the next twenty. How much more? DOUBLE! Bill continues:

Where did he get that crazy idea? From George Bush's Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency. (hat tip: Get Energy Smart! Now!)

Their joint site fueleconomy.gov is loaded with fuel-saving, money-saving tips. Keep your tires properly inflated, for example, can save you up to 12 cents a gallon.

Compare that immediate savings from that single tip, with what coastal and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling combined would get you two decades from now: 6 cents a gallon.

And that's being generous, because Bush's Energy Department says we can't expect any impact on prices from coastal drilling until the year 2030.

So yes, McCain's energy plan is so ridiculously dumb that you'll save more money on gas by just inflating your tires, than you would from the core of his energy policy! And you won't even save any money more McCain's plan for another 20 years!

Ben Smith also notes that "As Republicans mock Obama for saying you can save gas by inflating your tires, the noted environmental activists at NASCAR back him up." These people know cars. They know how to make them run efficiently and they advocate the same solutions that Obama is proposing.

Add to that all of the other energy proposals Obama has put forward and you've got a pretty clear distinction on the energy issue.

But there is another aspect of this story that has largely been missed. And that is that by asking Americans to inflate their tires, Obama is giving more and more people responsibility for protecting and strengthening our Country and our planet and bringing more people into the political process.

He's asking them to take some personal responsibility, to make a small (but very important) change in their regular lives for the good of them and their fellow man.

It's amazing how big of an impact little actions like getting your car tuned up, your tires inflated or eating a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich for lunch, can have on the world. These are actions that all Americans, whether you're a millenial, a boomer or even a little kid, can do.

So kudos to Obama for offering a plan that empowers people to take action, and that will hopefully do some good for our economy, our environment, and our pockets. In short, Obama is asking America to live liberally and we like it.

by Travis Craw, Living Liberally

The McCain Campaign today uncovered the shocking and unexpected information That Barack Obama is in fact a black man. Senator John McCain discovered this after a comment Senator Obama made on Thursday that “Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Further investigation revealed that the democratic presidential hopeful does not only look different, but is a different race than any other president in American history.

In response to the Senators comment, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager has said that Mr. Obama has, "played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck." It appears that for many years the race card has been kept safely out of site at the bottom of the deck, and only through some cheap slight of hand has the Illinois senator been able to pull it out. Fears are mounting in the McCain camp that in addition to being a savvy statesman Mr. Obama might also be a skilled Magician.

Davis further said that Obama’s remarks are "divisive, negative, shameful and wrong." It is shocking that the Obama campaign is trying to inform the American People about the senator’s history of being a black man. We should be sticking to the issues and not side tracking with things as irrelevant to the American people as race.

Without these sort of card tricks and evasion, the American public might have never even noticed Barack Obama’s alleged Blackness. McCain on the other hand has been committed to an unbiased policy-based campaign, being himself entirely unaware that there are other races or that he him self has a race. Shame on you Mr. Obama and shame on all of those who might dare to call this a historic moment in American history.

by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally

Here at Living Liberally, we want to give you all updates on the current goings on in the blogosphere and progressive movement. That's why, today, we're giving you the newest news on one of the blogosphere's most important tools: the Googlebomb. From WikiPedia.

A Google bomb (also referred to as a 'link bomb') is Internet slang for a certain kind of attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions. Because of the way that Google's algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if many sites link to the page in this manner.

For example, if I had wanted to Googlebomb, Laughing Liberally comedian Lee Camp, and associate him with a negative phrase, I would write something like "What a loser?" Where the word "loser" is linked to Lee's site Lee Camp. This would make Lee's site more likeley to come up under a google search of "loser". But we wouldn't want to do that because Lee Camp is not a loser, and is in fact a very awesome comic.

This trick was used in 2004 with George W. Bush's campaign site and the words "miserable failure." But according to WaPo's campaign blog The Trail this method of googlebombing might be done for:

That's right, the online behemoth best known for its search engine says that it has rejiggered its legendary and proprietary technology so that online efforts by bloggers to manipulate its top-secret search algorithm to create cheeky, offensive and decidedly off-message answers to searches will no longer work.

"It was fun" while it lasted, said Rick Klau, a member of the Google strategic partner development content acquisition team, at a search engine optimization training session for political bloggers in Washington, D.C., this afternoon. But, he said, "Google bombs don't work anymore."

...
That doesn't work anymore, said Klau, because the company today can spot these swarms and neutralize their effect. "We are far more perceptive when it comes to these link swarms that show up in a matter of hours or days," said Klau.

Fortunately, our good friend Chris Bowers over at Open Left has an answer:

So why haven't bloggers stopped trying to game the system? Work-arounds may be one reason. So might the increasingly sophisticated nature of today's Google bombs -- what Open Left's Chris Bowers calls a "2.0 version of the Googlebomb" -- where the goal is to influence the search rank of a slew of negative news articles about a politician rather than tie his name to a keyword.

...
As Bowers explained it, "What I'm doing isn't a Google bomb." It's a much harder to detect effort "to alternately optimize John McCain" in the Google search engine rankings, by linking his name to nine mainstream new organizations's stories that raise questions about the GOP presidential contender.

So, the blogosphere triumphs over the Google once again!

John McCain, John McCain, John McCain, John McCain, John McCain

by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally

This week Living Liberally launched Praying Liberally, our new network of local liberal meetups of progressives from a wide range of faiths to talk politics, say a collective prayer for "the least of these" in our world, and build community to organize around our common causes.

Since Monday, when Praying Liberally launched over at Street Prophets and got some mention on Daily Kos and Hullabaloo, we've gotten several requests to start new chapters, many from Boomers, some who've said they felt too 'old' for the Drinking Liberally crowd, which is fine. Different Liberallies appeal different people. But we still haven't gotten any requests from millennials.

This leads us to ask: is Praying Liberally just for the Boomers? Will the religious left die out?

It doesn't have to.

With interest in religion and spirituality rising on college campuses, and the fact that the millennial generation is one of the most liberal ever, the community potential is there.

Plus, The fact is there are many progressive religious youth orgs, such as Mitzvah Corps, that get young people engaged in social justice and other progressive causes.

But unlike conservative religious youth groups, progressive ones don't usually self-identify in ways that would explicitly denote them as progressive organizations. Also, these groups haven't formed solid coalitions with the progressive movement, and in that they fail to act as a legitimate gateway for youth into the progressive movement. Introducing youth involved with religious programs into the greater movement was one of the Religious Right's key skills as they grew their power in the last decades of the 20th century.

The progressive movement needs to build connections with these progressive religious youth groups through more liberal faith communities such as the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist and Episcopalian churches, and the Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish movements. As well as the younger, more liberal generation of church-goers at traditionally conservative churches.

This relationship between "Church" and Progressive Movement could provide us with great new leaders, who like Barack Obama, would come to the progressive movement through their faith community. It could also infuse these religious organizations with new energy, connecting young people to faith in new ways and expanding the opportunities offered to them by their religious community as they see their church, synagogue, mosque or temple becoming more connected with their everyday lives.

But for now, while we try to convince the progressive movement to get involved with this kind of outreach, are there any millennials out there who want to start a Praying Liberally chapter?