Come Home America

We will focus on Utah Owl’s recommendation of William Greider's new book, “Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country” on his ideas about why America is losing its global leadership position and how ordinary people can use profound global changes at hand to build a more equitable society. You can download audio of Diane Rehm's interview with Greider at http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/04/08.php#25615 - second segment of this show. The book is available at your local library or from Amazon.com for $16.52 new & $14.17 used + shipping.
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UtahOwl
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Come Home America

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Originally posted by UtahOwl on Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:23 am
6 views between April 11 and selection at May 13th meeting

Another possible topic is William Greider's new book, Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country on his ideas about why America is losing its global leadership position and how ordinary people can use profound global changes at hand to build a more equitable society. You can download audio of Diane Rehm's interview with Greider athttp://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/04/08.php#25615 - second segment of this show. The book is new - available from Amazon for $16.52, and new & used from $14.17. I have not read this one, but have ordered a copy.
Some provocative suggestions quoted by one Amazon reviewer:
We'll be hearing a lot about national character from the Republican Right in coming months as they try to tell Americans why some of Western Europe's terribly over- civilized refinements won't work in rugged, entrepreneurial, risk-taking America (universal health care, for starters), and so it's about time we make some "national character" assertions of our own from the left: since when have Americans ever submitted to Blinder's "almost immutable laws of economics and history?" And just as Bill Greider has rejected Kevin Phillip's seemingly inevitable "declining empire" fate for the US, he rejects the fatalism of our high bishops of free trade, even if they have passed through a mild, secular Reformation of sorts. Something should be done, and something can be done. So what does Greider propose?

Steps to Reverse the Trade Deficit
Before Beltway insiders read what follows, this reviewer wants to issue his own "Fair Warning": keep aspirin and cell phones handy, you are not going to like this.
* "First, stop the bleeding. Cap the US trade deficits and force them to shrink gradually until the country reached a rough equivalent of balanced trade with the rest of the world. This can be achieved by a general emergency tariff authorized under the WTO's Charter...
* Second, impose national obligations on the actions of US multinational corporations and investment capital firms. These requirements can be enforced the old fashioned way - by taxation...
* Third, launch a broad, aggressive strategy to rebuild the national economy at home and restore economic equity and security in society. ..Rebuild the common assets of society...and finance the development of new industrial sectors that will create millions of new jobs..."

Well, that should spur discussion .... There are several reviews on the lberal blogosphere; here's the Kirkus review
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2009
The Nation’s national affairs correspondent diagnoses America’s perilous state and calls for a rebirth of participatory democracy.

After nearly 40 years as a reporter and author of several books, Greider (The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, 2003, etc.) has earned his reputation as a serious, thoughtful, albeit “uncredentialed” critic of our democracy. He has consistently warned about America’s trade deficits and national debt, our crumbling infrastructure and inadequate health-care system and a greedy and gluttonous capitalism unconcerned with equity and security. He has inveighed against a costly, overreaching militarism, environmental depredations and, most of all, against a deformed democracy where big business gives orders to governing elites hopelessly out of touch with the people they pretend to serve. It’s a left-leaning critique, closely approximated by the soundly rejected political campaigns of Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Ralph Nader. Greider’s moment, though, may have arrived. Given the current, gloomy circumstances, all neatly summarized here, it’s more difficult than ever to argue with his analysis, and he’s surely correct that “in crisis lies opportunity.” There are, he warns, wrenching changes ahead, changes too important to be left to the same stewards who’ve created the current debacle. Greider hopes that the anxious and angry electorate will attempt an end run around our “betters” to seize control from the current concentrations of power. With the times propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused—in the manner of the late 19th-century Populists and the early New Dealers—to demand accountability from a system that has failed them. If they do, historians may point to this book as one of the prairie fire’s first sparks. Astute, hopeful and humane commentary.

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