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|Passover Vanilla Coconut Macaroons
Created by Penny Wantuck Eisenberg, cookbook author and baking expert. Amazing Dessert Recipes.
You are in for a treat – Penny has shared her recipes for both vanilla and chocolate macaroons.
Vanilla is essential for this macaroon so if you cannot find Passover vanilla, use vanilla sugar or vanilla bean. Some packaged vanilla sugar is extra-strength, so check the package for the amount to use. Coconut has a tendency to either fluff, or pack when it is measured in cups. Because of this, the moistness of the cookies will change every time you make them, unless the coconut is weighed and remains constant.
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon sugar
PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350°F, with an oven shelf in the middle of the oven. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Put the sugar, coconut, matzo meal and potato starch in a food processor bowl. Pulse-process for 10 seconds to grind the sugar a little more finely. Add the egg whites, vanilla, and honey. Process until everything is well mixed. Place the coconut in a bowl and stir in the egg mixture.
Drop the mixture by well-rounded tablespoon onto the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Using slightly damp hands, shape the dough into a tear-drop or "kiss" shape.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until the macaroons tops are beginning to brown and the cookies are barely firm to the touch. Slide the parchment onto a cooling rack. Drizzle with chocolate, or dip the bottoms into chocolate, if desired.
Fudgy Coconut Macaroons
If you'd like to make fudgy macaroons with sweetened coconut, use the above recipe, substituting cocoa for the potato starch.
The following recipe is from my CD-rom, Amazing Passover Desserts. While experimenting with lower fat recipes, I developed this one which I think is more fudgy and delicious than my recipe originally published in Passover Desserts.
9 ounces unsweetened coconut (about 3-1/2 cups, lightly packed) (if using sweet coconut, see the recipe above using cocoa instead of potato starch)
PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 325°F, with oven shelves in the middle and lower third of the oven. Place parchment paper on 2 cookie sheets.
Put the coconut, cocoa, sugar, and matzo meal (if using), in a food processor bowl. Pulse-process until the coconut is finely ground, about 10 to 20 seconds. Add the egg whites, vanilla, and honey. Process until everything is well mixed, 10 to 20 seconds.
If desired, garnish the macaroons with melted chocolate, either drizzled over them or the bottoms dipped into the chocolate (set them in an egg-crate to dry).
To see step-by-step instructions of this recipe, go to: Amazing Desserts - Passover Macaroons
How to Quick-Temper chocolate for small decorating jobs:
Heat the chocolate on defrost (#3) for 1-1/2 - 2 minutes. This should be sufficient to get the chocolate melting. If it hasn't started to be liquidy, you'll need to give it a little more heat (if you have a thermometer, you want to keep the temperature under 110 degrees F.). Add the remaining chopped chocolate and keep stirring until the chocolate is melted and smooth. (The temperature of the chocolate should have dropped down to about 85 degrees). Now, reheat the chocolate for 10 seconds on defrost (#3). This should bring the temperature to between 88 and 90 degrees F. QUICKLY, decorate or dip your baked goods.
Recipes: Passover, Desserts, Macaroons, Parve, Kosher


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Rutland to talk surveillanceBy Gordon Dritschilo
Staff Writer | February 07,2013Surveillance cameras have entered Rutlands crime debate.
The Board of Aldermen will discuss the idea of using cameras to monitor the citys most crime-ridden neighborhoods. A local landlord brought the notion to the board Monday night after one of his properties was the site of a home invasion.
Cam Johnston, owner of 110 Maple St., has been in front of the board several times in recent weeks complaining about proposed or existing city policies he believes infringe on private property rights. He said that he believed there was a strong distinction between private and public property and has no problem with cameras monitoring people walking down the street.
Johnston suggested that the area around Maple and Pine streets might serve as a test case in using cameras in crime reduction. He urged the board to pursue grants that might fund such a program an opportunity he said Bellows Falls missed.
In 2005 and 2006, officials in Bellows Falls discussed using a $98,000 federal grant to place security cameras around town in an effort to combat vandalism and other crimes. The village trustees abandoned the proposal after a fierce public backlash.
In Rutland the issue was referred to the Public Safety Committee with almost no debate Monday. Alderman Christopher Robinson, who made the motion to refer, said he did not think he agreed with the proposal but a discussion would not hurt. Alderman Christopher Siliski said there was potential for it to be a good idea, but he needed to see relevant research.
City Police Chief James Baker said in an interview that a surveillance program in residential areas would have to be a community decision and that he would want to hear from the community before weighing in.
But he noted the city already had a number of privately owned security cameras around businesses. He said vandalism around the downtown train station dropped after cameras were installed there.
Theyre very helpful in solving crime and theyre often very helpful in preventing crime, Baker said. It does force-multiply. ... Im a big fan of public places like parking lots, banks the federal courthouse has them.
However, the chief said putting cameras in residential areas is an entirely different discussion.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said any effort to bring greater security comes with a trade-off.
When you lock your house every day to go to work, youre giving up the convenience of not having to carry a key ... in exchange for the security of believing youre not going to have your house broken into, he said.
So what might Rutland residents be giving up?
There are hundreds of private things that we all do every day that youre going to think of in a slightly different way when you know you are being monitored and a permanent digital record is being made, Gilbert said.
Gilbert said that while many Vermont businesses have security cameras, and about 30 law enforcement agencies in the state use vehicle-mounted cameras, he was not aware of any Vermont towns using fixed cameras in residential neighborhoods.
email@example.com IN Local & StateRecovery takes time, patience and a desire to change. Full StoryMayor Louras wants the city to have a better idea on what to pay its department heads. Full StoryThe Rutland Town Select Board plans to appoint a new member next week who will serve until a... Full Story
- Most Popular
- Most Emailed
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day 1739, 'Richard Palmer' identified in prison at York Castle as the notorious outlaw DICK TURPIN; IN 1836, Battle of the Alamo begins near San Antonio de Bexar, Texas; 1896, the Tootsie Roll invented by LEO HIRSCHFELD.
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1472, Orkney, Shetland islands put up as collateral by Norway to Scotland in lieu of dowry for MARGARET OF DENMARK on her marriage with JAMES III, king of Scotland; 1962, JOHN GLENN first American to orbit Earth.
- TOMORROW'S HEADLINES TODAY: City mayoral candidates debate campaign issues; Hartford, Conn., woman still missing; Neal Goswami reports attempts to legislate suicide; local woman loses 100 pounds through TOPS program.
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1878, JOHN TUNSTALL murdered near Lincoln, New Mexico, by the outlaw JESSE EVANS; in 1930, ELM FARM OLLIE first cow to fly in aircraft, first to be milked airborne; 1955, nuke test WASP; '79, snow in Sahara.
- TOMORROW'S HEADLINES TODAY: Rutland Herald News Editor Alan J. Keays and staff writer Gordon Dritschilo discuss stories planned for the February 18, 2015, edition of the newspaper: Winter budgets maxed, legal marijuana, Springfield bank job, USPS slowdown
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1249 AD, ANDRE of LONGJUMEAU is dispatched by LOUIS IX of France to meet the KHAGAN, ruler of the Mongol Empire; in 1804, during 1st Barbary War, STEPHEN DECATUR scuttles the pirate-held USS Philadelphia in Tripoli.

subset: commoncrawl


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See other Rio de Janeiro properties
The LightHouse
Barao da Torre, 175. Casa 20, Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Distance from city centre: 9.5km
Real Reviews
Real reviews from fellow travellers
These are trusted reviews from guests who have actually stayed here. We hope you find them helpful.
Note: we only give a property a rating once it has received a minimum of 3 reviews.
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- " I chose The Lighthouse because of the good reviews, and I was not disappointed. It fully lived up to the expectations. Great location, great staff. "
- 13 May 2014 Anonymous Denmark
- " Great location with extremely helpful staff. Facilitate is also great, exactly what we were looking for. Everything is clean and perfect. Unfortunately we experienced bed bugs, otherwise we would have given it a perfect 10. "
- 10 Mar 2014 Anonymous USA


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The CDE-121 is the affordable single-DIN solution that steps up your sound to premium Alpine quality directly from the front USB port.
Price: U.S. $109.95
(Now Available)
Professional installation available at authorized retailers.
With a dedicated USB input and USB cable, you can even connect USB memory devices like thumbdrives or an iPod. Song lists on USB devices are displayed in alphabetical order, and allows eight levels of file / folder search capabilities. This unit will find music files while ignoring other file types on the USB device.
Note: MP3 device or cell phone cannot be independently controlled through the head unit.
The CDE-121 is more than just a CD player, it is designed to work with your iPod or iPhone – so you can enjoy all your favorite music wherever the road takes you.
Connect your iPod or iPhone and get instant access to all your music, right from your head unit (KCU-445i cable, separately). With Full Speed you get convenient control so you can scroll through all your Playlists, Artists, Albums, and Songs – and view all your song information right from the display on your head unit. Enjoy all your music whether from your iPod or iPhone, Alpine always brings the music to your car.
Compatible iPods / iPhones
Tons of music? Find it fast! With Alpine's exclusive QuickSearch technology, you'll be able to find what you want, the quickest and easiest way possible. With so many ways to listen to thousands of songs, now you can get super-fast access to artists, songs, albums, playlists, and radio stations. Large control buttons and a rotary encoder make it easy to scroll through all your sources, including your iPod, Radio stations and CD's. No interruptions, while you search, just let the Alpine play.
For especially big music libraries, Percentage Search function uses the preset buttons for quick jumps to specific parts of the list. Save yourself from scrolling through each song one by one, when you can just jump to a segment of your library with a touch of a button.
In addition to additional devices via USB or the auxiliary port, the CDE-121 offers first-rate CD,MP3, WMA, and AAC playback. It's the perfect way to fire up the music on your drive.
The signature Alpine rotary encoder offers easy adjustment and USB menu search capability. The CDE-121 is also remote control ready, simply add on the RUE-4202 model remote, sold separately, to make it even easier to control your head unit functions.
With Alpine, expect the premium sound your ears deserve. This head unit allows you to customize your crossover adjustments so you can control where you send high and low frequencies, so you get the best sound out of your factory or upgraded system. Of course for a true power upgrade just add-on the KTP-445 Power Pack to instantly increase your head unit-s power to a true 45Wx4 RMS, now we-re talking about some serious sound!
This unit is equipped with red illuminated buttons, and a 1-Line LCD display for select CD text.


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Mall ownership: It's an alphabet soupBy Gordon Dritschilo
Staff Writer | January 03,2013Who now owns the Diamond Run Mall?
It turns out that the seemingly straightforward question may not have an answer.
Gemini Real Estate Advisors is surrendering the 400,000-square-foot mall to its mortgage-holder, identified in documents filed at the Rutland Town clerk's office as "GCCFC 2007-GG11 Rutland Retail LLC." The Vermont secretary of state's corporations database links that cumbersomely named entity with LNR Partners, which bills itself as "the world's largest commercial mortgage special servicer."
However, a New York City-based spokesman for LNR said the company does not own the mall, but will manage it on behalf of its owner, something called a CMBS trust. CMBS stands for "commercial mortgage-backed security."
"Basically what happens is, the bank that makes a loan — that loan is securitized with other loans and then sold as bonds," LNR spokesman Bud Perrone explained. "LNR is a special servicer. Since there is no one bank, they act on behalf of the trust."
Perrone said he did not think there was a way to see who owns the trust.
"It could be any number of people," he said. "It's pension funds, hedge funds or institutional investors who buy these things. It's not like you or me buying a share of Coca-Cola."
So, what are the plans for the property? On that question, Perrone said he could not comment except to say the plans did not include closing the mall and that Zamias Services, which built the mall in 1995 and sold it to Gemini, would continue as the property manager.
"It's still business as usual for the companies that do business there as well as the people who shop there," he said.
Calls to Gemini went unreturned Tuesday and Wednesday, but a November report by CoStar Group, a "real estate information company," described the mortgage on the mall as more than 90 days delinquent with more than $30 million outstanding.
Town Clerk Marie Hyjek said that there were more than 500 pages of documents on the transfer — Gemini had more than 30 investors with stakes in the mall — and that she expected it to be a couple of days before they were all properly recorded.
When Gemini bought the mall in 2007, a news story described it as having 52 stores. Thirty were operating Wednesday afternoon — including all the anchor stores, a kiosk selling phone accessories and the bouncy-house playground in the food court.
A spokesman for Gemini at the time of the purchase expressed an interest in bringing in more restaurants and referred to the soon-to-open Sports Legends. The spot occupied by Legends was vacant Wednesday, and the only vendor operating in the food court was Orientaste.
email@example.com IN Local & StateRecovery takes time, patience and a desire to change. Full StoryMayor Louras wants the city to have a better idea on what to pay its department heads. Full StoryThe Rutland Town Select Board plans to appoint a new member next week who will serve until a... Full Story
- Most Popular
- Most Emailed
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day 1739, 'Richard Palmer' identified in prison at York Castle as the notorious outlaw DICK TURPIN; IN 1836, Battle of the Alamo begins near San Antonio de Bexar, Texas; 1896, the Tootsie Roll invented by LEO HIRSCHFELD.
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1472, Orkney, Shetland islands put up as collateral by Norway to Scotland in lieu of dowry for MARGARET OF DENMARK on her marriage with JAMES III, king of Scotland; 1962, JOHN GLENN first American to orbit Earth.
- TOMORROW'S HEADLINES TODAY: City mayoral candidates debate campaign issues; Hartford, Conn., woman still missing; Neal Goswami reports attempts to legislate suicide; local woman loses 100 pounds through TOPS program.
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1878, JOHN TUNSTALL murdered near Lincoln, New Mexico, by the outlaw JESSE EVANS; in 1930, ELM FARM OLLIE first cow to fly in aircraft, first to be milked airborne; 1955, nuke test WASP; '79, snow in Sahara.
- TOMORROW'S HEADLINES TODAY: Rutland Herald News Editor Alan J. Keays and staff writer Gordon Dritschilo discuss stories planned for the February 18, 2015, edition of the newspaper: Winter budgets maxed, legal marijuana, Springfield bank job, USPS slowdown
- RICHARD'S POOR ALMANACK: On this day in 1249 AD, ANDRE of LONGJUMEAU is dispatched by LOUIS IX of France to meet the KHAGAN, ruler of the Mongol Empire; in 1804, during 1st Barbary War, STEPHEN DECATUR scuttles the pirate-held USS Philadelphia in Tripoli.


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History's Missed Moment
The epic financial crash of 2007–2008 should have produced a massive political defeat for the conservative ideology whose resurgence began three decades ago. Its signal achievement, liberated finance, did not reward innovation, enhance economic efficiency, or produce broad prosperity. Rather, the result was a speculative bubble followed by a severe crash. Along the way, the super-rich captured a disproportionate share of the economy's gains, while other incomes stagnated. In the aftermath, ordinary people have suffered large losses of earnings, assets, social protections, and hopes for their children.
By any measure, therefore, 2008 was primed to be a political watershed on a par with 1932. History delivered a profound teachable moment for American progressives and European social democrats. But, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, between the idea and the reality fell the shadow. Three years after the financial dominoes toppled, right-wing ideas are ascendant and right-wing policies reign. Instead of reform and recovery, governing elites are delivering austerity. As the economy keeps sinking, the democratic left is in disarray nearly everywhere. In most Western countries, center-right parties govern and far-right movements are on the march.
The historian A.J.P. Taylor described the revolutionary year 1848—in which abortive liberal democratic revolutions across Europe were all crushed—as a moment when "history reached its turning point and failed to turn." It would not be an exaggeration to view 2008 as the most stunning missed moment in modern political history.
How could this have happened? If laissez-faire could not be reversed as a practical and intellectual failure after a second massive financial crash on the conservative watch, when can progressives ever expect to rebuild a broad popular constituency for a managed form of capitalism? The explanations cannot just be idiosyncratic or personal—Barack Obama's conciliatory temperament, Gordon Brown's dour manner, or Strauss-Kahn's predatory libido. The patterns are too pervasive. The story has to be deeply structural.
Many Americans look to Europe, long the home of a more social brand of capitalism, as a counterweight to American conservatism. A month of conducting interviews in six European countries, however, persuades me that Europe is afflicted by deep trends common to both sides of the Atlantic, though with instructive variations on the theme. If American liberals and European social democrats are ever to regain political momentum, we need to understand why we don't have it now.
Fatally Compromised
One key explanation is that supposedly center-left governments were complicit in the financial deregulatory policies that led to the collapse. So when the crash came, the moderate-left parties of Bill Clinton in the U.S., Tony Blair in Britain, Gerhard Schröder in Germany, Wim Kok in the Netherlands, and several others were not a credible alternative. Barack Obama turned out to be more Clintonian than Clinton.
Blair had continued Margaret Thatcher's policies of making London as hospitable as possible for the bankers whose recklessness would bring on the collapse. Clinton and his aides were, if anything, more responsible for financial deregulation than either president Bush. That legacy lives on in the Wall Street–oriented team advising Obama. Schröder not only destroyed a more stable and regulated industrial/financial system in Germany but sponsored labor-market reforms that weakened unions, undercut wages, and widened inequality. In the Netherlands, Kok promoted a version of labor-market flexibility that led to relentless pressure to cut labor costs and job security and split the constituency of his Dutch Labor Party.
Given this legacy, social-democratic parties from the Baltic to the Balkans have neither the political credibility nor the economic program to be a plausible opposition-in-waiting. Protest has splintered, with far-left parties, Greens, and especially right-wing populists all making gains at the expense of social democrats. Also, over three decades, as left parties mellowed into "center-left" ones, they came to think of themselves as parties of government. When times turned hard, social democrats were the quintessential establishment party that was failing to solve problems.
There are two basic schools of thought on why the left moved toward the center. For some, the Keynesian welfare state hit a wall. By the 1970s, welfare protections had become too generous, taxes too high, bureaucracy too stultifying, labor markets too rigid, and growth too slow. This was, of course, the right's critique, but many moderate leftists concluded that the neo-liberals, with their call for a bracing dose of market competition, were not entirely wrong.
In fact, the exaggerated story of welfare-state rigidity more nearly described Britain or the Netherlands than flexible Sweden or Denmark. But after the hard-right Reagan-Thatcher interlude in the 1980s, chastened labor and social-democratic parties (except in Socialist Francois Mitterrand's France) returned to power with a more temperate form of neo-liberalism, both to steal the right's thunder and to preserve what they could of welfare capitalism.
According to the second school, what occurred was mainly a power shift. In this view, the stagnation of the 1970s was initially the result of the collapse of the stable, pro-growth Bretton Woods monetary system and the OPEC oil-price increase. Though not the fault of social democracy, stagnation and its remedies empowered the right. "The opening up of capital markets gives multinational companies and banks immense leverage to influence policy," says Ola Pettersson, chief economist of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. "It's the politics of blackmail."
With the turn to laissez faire, a nation with progressive taxes, high wages, economic regulation, and decent social benefits stood to scare off investors and lose market share. Under Mitterrand in the early 1980s, France learned to its chagrin that in a global capital market, democratic socialism in one country couldn't work; investors fled, stressing the franc. A sobered Mitterrand moved to the center. Other social democrats, such as Schröder in Germany and Blair in Britain, embraced the neo-liberal recipe more deliberately, even ardently. They were rewarded by a political alliance with the banks. In Scandinavia, social-democratic governments in power in the 1990s attempted a suppler blend of market incentives and welfare protections. But everywhere, left parties found themselves with less room to maneuver.
There are elements of truth in both ac-counts. Undeniably, however, neo-liberalism has fed on itself. A little leads inexorably to more. Liberate capital, and you increase its political power. Weaken the state with privatization and deregulation, weaken unions with more "flexible" labor markets, and you not only reap more of a free-market economy, you end up with less civic solidarity and a fragmented polity. You remove the political and institutional counterweights to the power of organized business. In good times and bad, capital rules.
Over the past three decades, some on the center-left convinced themselves that the hegemony of financial capital could coexist with a progressive "supply side" formula of more investment in human capital. That strategy, necessary but not sufficient, is now defunct. It has neither produced enough good jobs nor rebuilt political majorities. It failed either to contain the steady erosion of core social protections or to prevent rapacious bankers from wrecking the economy.
Much of this story has close echoes on our side of the Atlantic, but there are three uniquely European elements: immigration, demographics, and the role of the European Union.
Indigestible Immigrants
On July 22, tolerant Norway suffered an improbable episode of terrorism. A lone gunman slaughtered 69 people at a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utøya, after setting off a car bomb in downtown Oslo that killed 8 others. At first, Islamist extremists were suspected, but the gunman turned out to be an anti-Islam extremist—a militant former member of Norway's right-wing Progress Party.
Norway, as it happens, is the sole nation in Europe with a popular and effective left government, led by the Labor Party. The country has a well-regulated financial system, 2.8 percent unemployment (in July 2011), and a budget surplus, and it has largely escaped the global economic crisis. It helps that the place is swimming in North Sea oil.
Yet the Progress Party is Norway's second-strongest party, with 22.9 percent of the vote in the 2009 election. Nativist parties take similar shares in Denmark (14 percent in 2007), the Netherlands (16 percent in 2010), Finland (19 percent, virtually tied with the Social Democrats, in April 2011), and Austria (28 percent in 2008)—all nations that have been the heartland of European social democracy. In France, which has a runoff system of presidential elections, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front could well edge out the Socialist candidate in the first round of next year's election, just as her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, squeezed Socialist Lionel Jospin out of the first round in 2002, leaving the entire political mainstream to elect conservative Jacques Chirac in a landslide.
One reason immigration pushes European politics to the right is cultural isolation. Much of Europe's immigrant and refugee population is less interested in becoming "Europeanized" than most migrants to the U.S. and their offspring are in becoming American. Rather, Europe is a place to earn a living and replicate one's own cultural community. Native-born Europeans with their own deep cultural traditions tend to reciprocate that sense of otherness. "With our xenophobia, we have a hard time recruiting highly skilled people from nearby European countries, much less scientists and engineers from India or China," admits Lars Goldschmidt of the Confederation of Danish Industry, "in part because spouses are made to feel so unwelcome."
Although the U.S. has its own checkered immigrant history, it no longer strikes most Americans as odd to hear someone from an unlikely background speaking accentless American English. To a Dane, however, listening to the children of Somali refugees speak perfect Danish still seems weird, and of course, they often don't speak perfect Danish, making it harder for immigrants and their children to assimilate and succeed.
A related problem is the impact of immigrants on Europe's generous welfare state and stressed labor market. Jobless and poorly skilled immigrants are major consumers of services and frequently willing to work for lower wages. The native-born working class bears the brunt. Immigrants settle in their neighborhoods and are seen (rightly or wrongly) as taking the jobs of native citizens, crowding their schools, disrespecting their culture, pushing up their taxes, and raising local crime rates. The economic and political elite, cosseted in safe, charming sections of Amsterdam or Paris, can afford to be more cosmopolitan. A friend living in a fashionably diverse quarter of gentrified East Berlin describes his neighborhood as "G-7 diversity": just Europeans and North Americans, thank you.
Because social-democratic parties rely on the native working-class vote and are champions of tolerance, they suffer the most from the anti-immigrant backlash. "We lost the working-class voters who are the losers of globalization," says Tommy Waidelich, the Swedish Social Democratic Party's chief of economic affairs.
The Assault on Welfare Capitalism
Even without the immigrant influx, slower growth has collided with an aging population and dwindling birthrates, requiring unpopular adjustments in a costly welfare state. High taxes buy less of the good life than they used to. Social Democrats, as prime stewards of a social model of capitalism, face a more skeptical electorate. But while some of the erosion of the welfare state is the natural consequence of demographic trends, much of it is the unnatural result of deliberate and cynical center-right strategies.
The governing conservative parties that dominate Europe today have grown astute at posing as defenders of the welfare state while subtly undermining its foundations. To a visiting American liberal, the degree of privatization and fragmentation in Europe's once universal welfare state is shocking. The political consequences are far reaching.
Consider Sweden. The Social Democrats, who last governed from 1994 until 2006, creatively introduced measures intended to make the welfare state more flexible and provide citizens greater choice—some of them building on reforms from conservatives. Any group of Swedes, for instance, can organize a local school that competes with the official state school. Many government agencies providing services have to compete with private rivals to win contracts. The pension and unemployment systems have enhanced elements of choice. Many of these reforms made sense, both to keep the bureaucracy on its toes and as an inoculation against further privatization.
But when a center-right coalition narrowly won power in the 2006 election, and kept it in 2010, the new government twisted the left's reforms to weaken Sweden's ingeniously efficient full-employment system and undermine the trade unions that form the core of the Social-Democratic constituency.
In the old Swedish model, collaborative bargaining between unions and employers, combined with substantial state outlays on retraining and job creation, allowed Sweden to remain at full employment without overheating the economy or causing inflation. Unions kept wage gains in line with productivity growth so that Sweden would remain competitive. The formula famously combined an egalitarian "solidarity wage policy"—raises for the lowest paid got first claim—with an "active labor-market policy"—lifelong training to increase Sweden's productivity over time and soak up idle workers during downturns.
This highly successful model, regularly and consensually refined, was the labor movement's crown jewel. Its architects were brilliant, union-affiliated economists like Rudolf Meidner, Gosta Rehn, and Clas-Erik Odhner, household names to ordinary Swedes. Nearly every Swedish worker was a member of a union. The unions were key custodians of the model and the soul of the Social Democratic Party, which was the normal party of government for most years between 1932 and 2006.
In just five years, the conservative government has demolished much of this model, drastically cutting outlays on active labor-market policy. It has raised the cost of unemployment insurance and reduced benefits, causing fewer workers to opt for coverage. The government has also made it less attractive to get unemployment coverage through union membership, as a strategy of weakening unions.
According to Pettersson of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, "The government has found traction with the idea that lower taxes will produce increased employment. But theirs is the low-wage, low -- productivity road to job creation. Today, when you see a TV report on the government's labor-market policy, you see people working on their CVs instead of getting training for good jobs."
The government has also changed hiring rules so that corporations can try out new workers at lower wages for a time period of 6 months (though in some cases employers have extended it to 24) without giving them regular employment. These young workers, marginally attached to the labor force, are harder for unions to reach. "The right sincerely believes this will cut unemployment," Pettersson says, "but these cumulative policy shifts undermine both the high-wage, high-equality, high-productivity Swedish economic model and the Social Democrats' political support."
Today, it isn't just local citizens who can establish what an American might call a charter school. The players include for-profit, multinational corporations. Many hospitals have also been privatized. As service providers cease to be public institutions, their employees are less likely to be members of a union.
Joakim Palme, who heads a leading policy research institute and teaches political science at Uppsala University (and is the son of the revered, murdered Prime Minister Olof Palme), says, "Social Democrats led the way in introducing more competition in the public sector, but you have to be very careful about which sectors and what rules, because it's a slippery slope."
Waidelich, the Social Democrats' economic leader, told me, "The shift has gone too far. Originally, school choice in Sweden was for local people who had a different idea of pedagogy. Now, under the conservatives, you have big multinational companies based in tax havens, not even paying taxes in Sweden, running tax-supported schools. In Sweden, 40 percent now go to alternative schools. The schools run by corporations hire younger teachers and work them harder. The public school takes the pupils whom the others don't want or who don't have parents with the time to contribute."
Sweden, once a destination for worldwide social-democratic pilgrimages, increasingly looks like the Heritage Foundation's idea of utopia.
You might think all these incursions would cause a citizen backlash. But the government has softened the blow by cutting taxes. "The Conservative Party had been the party of wealth," says Allan Larsson, the former Social Democratic finance minister who also headed Sweden's labor-market system in its glory days. "In 2006, the right shifted their story. Now they say, 'We are the party for people who work for a living, not for those who rely mainly on benefits.'"
In the most recent election, the center-right four-party coalition reduced the once dominant Social Democratic Party to just 30.7 percent of the vote, its worst performance since the election of 1920. "I am afraid," says another former Social Democratic cabinet minister, "that a lot of the structural damage to our model and political damage to our party is irreversible."
The conservative strategy, says Joakim Palme, boils down to four elements: Reduce and fragment the welfare state while preserving core benefits. Give tax cuts to the middle class. Lower the reservation wage (the lowest wage that will attract workers), but subsidize it with tax credits. Dilute active labor-market policies. Add drastic financial deregulation, and this describes the right's formula throughout the continent. The view from the Netherlands, or Denmark, or Germany, allowing for national variations, is remarkably similar. The right's common strategy of embracing the welfare state while undermining its foundations seems to work nearly everywhere—and the center-left laid some of the groundwork.
Germany, for example, wins praise for its ingenious system of subsidized short working time (kurzarbeit) to reduce unemployment. Employees cut their hours, but the losses are shared between the state and the workers, who typically keep around 85 percent of their usual take-home pay. The company gets to retain its skilled workforce rather than helplessly watch it dissipate due to layoffs in a downturn. German unemployment actually dropped between 2007 and 2010.
This innovation, however, is the work of a center-right government, the Christian Democratic Union under Angela Merkel. And kurzarbeit is part of a suite of labor policies—of which Social Democrats were prime architects—most of which have weakened unions, undercut wages, and splintered the welfare state.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Germany was governed by a coalition of Social Democrats (the SPD) and Greens led by Chancellor Schröder. Reunification had imposed huge costs, unemployment was rising, and neo-liberal panaceas were in the air. Schröder made the fateful decision to liberalize capital and labor markets.
Postwar West Germany used a "corporatist" model of capitalism, otherwise known as Deutschland, A.G. (Germany, Incorporated). Banks owned huge blocks of corporate stock that rarely traded, so corporations enjoyed cheap, patient capital and did not have to face shareholder pressures for high quarterly returns. Unions participated in corporate governance through works councils and well-choreographed collective bargaining. There was generous investment in worker training.
But by the late 1990s, shareholder rather than stakeholder capitalism was in fashion. So the Schröder government changed tax policy to discourage bank dominance of the corporate economy and make the shareholder king. Pressure for short-term high returns increased. Schröder drastically reduced unemployment benefits and compelled workers to take available, low-wage jobs or lose welfare benefits entirely. Industry-wide collective bargaining declined by nearly 30 percent in just a decade. Union membership dropped by almost half. Wages lagged behind productivity.
In the neighboring Netherlands, Labor Prime Minister Wim Kok brokered a grand bargain in 1999. Employers got more discretion to hire temporary and part-time workers, but these workers were supposed to be accorded the same protections as those with regular contracts. Unemployment fell. "He was hailed as a miracle worker," says economist Paul de Beer of the University of Amsterdam, "but it had a lot more to do with North Sea oil and favorable macroeconomic trends—higher worldwide growth, low interest rates—than with Kok's reforms."
In the meantime, "flexicurity," a term coined by a Dutch sociologist in the 1990s to describe the new Dutch model, became a buzzword much promoted by the bureaucrats of Brussels. Workers would trade job security for employment security. Their protections would be social rather than connected to a given job. The state would invest more in worker training. Employers would get more freedom to hire and fire. There was nothing new or centrist about this idea; the Swedes had been doing it well since the 1960s, under social-democratic auspices. But as events played out, Dutch flexicurity delivered more on the flexibility than the security.
The deal gave new powers to employment agencies and made it easier for corporations to keep workers in a long-term "temporary" classification. Fully 48 percent of all workers are now part time, and it has become progressively harder for part-time workers to get full-time jobs.
The changes in labor law have interacted with privatization. Even the Dutch post office has been privatized. (An EU competition directive requires that private-sector contractors may bid to provide public services.) Self-employed messengers under contract to the successor postal companies now deliver the mail at minimum wages—or less.
The overall consequence of these shifts is declining security and declining earnings. Among young Dutch workers, fully 61 percent have low-wage jobs. Meanwhile, the center-right government, which took power in 2002 with Labor as a junior partner since 2006, has acted to splinter other welfare-state programs. "Health insurance used to be mandatory and fixed," de Beer says. "Now everyone has to insure themselves, there are many different kinds of policies, and companies engage in cherry-picking." This story is all too American. What's surprising is to find it in the Netherlands, much less as the partial handiwork of a labor party.
The Brussels Paradox
There was a moment when European progressives looked to the emergent EU as a bastion of social democracy against the Anglo-Saxon forces of rampant free markets. But that moment, which peaked under the European Commission presidency of the French Socialist Jacques Delors (1985–1995), has passed.
The EU, after all, has free-market roots. Its antecedents, the European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1951, and the original Common Market, started in 1957, were all about reducing barriers to trade. As the European project evolved from a customs union into a political confederation, many on the moderate left imagined that trans-European social policy would serve as a counterweight to economic liberalization within Europe and worldwide. However, this hope proved illusory on several counts.
First, while the creation of a European single market in 1993 increased the power of EU commissioners in Brussels, the basic EU law gave priority to economic liberalization. Under the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, free movement of capital, goods, services, and persons is fundamental constitutional doctrine. These basic doctrines, in turn, are carried out by directives issued from Brussels. While orders by the Brussels bureaucracy have strengthened a mixed form of capitalism in such areas as antitrust, the environment, and the rights of women, on balance they have weakened protections in the core areas of finance and labor.
For example, since 1993 workers have generally been free to take jobs anywhere within the EU. Much of this labor migration, however, is orchestrated by large corporations. So the European Commission in 1996 issued a directive on workers "posted" from one country to another. On paper, the rules seem balanced. The company gets to deploy workers as it pleases; the foreign contract workers get the same minimum rights as the locals. In practice, however, foreign workers often end up at the bottom of the local labor market, unprotected by either unions or regulators. In addition, a contractor need pay only the (usually low) social-security contributions of the worker's country of origin—giving a further cost advantage to the contract worker over local workers. In France, the gap is estimated at around 25 percent. The whole process, though seemingly regulated, drags down prevailing wages and contributes to a more laissez-faire labor market.
In three notorious cases, the European High Court over the past decade held that a ferry line based in Finland could fire its Finnish workers in order to hire cheaper Estonian workers; that a German state could not impose minimum-pay standards on the Polish subcontractor of a German contractor; and that Swedish unions could not compel a Latvian company to bargain collectively on a contract for work in Sweden.
These rulings not only allow transnational business to undermine national labor standards. They weaken European labor solidarity by amplifying divisions in the self-interest of national labor movements.
By contrast, consider one of the directives intended to strengthen regulation of capital. Thanks to the tireless prodding of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former Social Democratic prime minister of Denmark, the European Commission recently issued a directive on the governance of hedge funds and other lightly regulated financiers. Hedge funds and private-equity companies, which have neither the reserve nor the reporting requirements of banks, have been faulted for several kinds of abuses. They are fond of acquiring operating companies and then stripping their assets for quick gain. Hedge funds are also the prime speculators betting against sovereign debt, often using "naked" credit-default swaps, and were big bettors in the American International Group and subprime debacles. Generally, their operations have been totally opaque.
It was a breakthrough that this directive was issued at all. But while the directive was being developed, lobbyists for industry overwhelmed reformers. The final measure, published in July 2011, is full of loopholes. You can evade most of its provisions by incorporating offshore. The hedge-fund and private-equity business model will continue pretty much as before. If labor solidarity is shaky, capital solidarity is relentless.
The post-Maastricht EU weakened social democracy in a second respect. Power is divided among national governments, the European Commission in Brussels, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice, and several quasi-autonomous regulatory agencies. The winner? Laissez-faire capitalism. Europe, once the home of nation-states strong enough to regulate capitalism, now has something more reminiscent of the U.S. Articles of Confederation.
In the U.S., at the peak of the financial crisis in September 2008, you could put the Federal Reserve chair, the Treasury secretary, and the legislative leadership in a small room and hammer out a rescue package. It turned out to be the wrong package, but that's a story for another day. Together, the Fed and the Treasury have regulatory power over the banks as well as the power to print money and issue bonds. The 2008 program, if misguided, was at least internally consistent in its use of fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy.
In Europe, however, with a weakened governmental apparatus, private finance retains that much more power to block structural reform. For instance, though the Greek mess had a fairly straightforward remedy of partial debt relief and longer-term repayment, the divided EU institutions dithered for over a year as Greece sank into deeper recession. Even if by some miracle a majority of social-democratic national governments won power, they would be stymied by the EU's institutional quagmire. Where Mitterrand, trying to go it alone three decades ago, had "only" the power of global capital to block his program, a modern successor would also have to reckon with Brussels, at once a bureaucratic force for neo-liberal contagion and a dysfunctional obstacle to structural reform.
Further, expansion of the EU has created something close to a permanent center-right majority. Of the 27 current member states, most of the nine former Soviet satellites now in the EU have conservative governments. Their ideal successor to Marx is not Mitterrand but Milton Friedman. The new member states generally see their comparative advantage in offering Western European multinationals cheap labor forces, low taxes, and light regulation.
The EU, finally, is increasingly seen by ordinary Europeans as an elite project. In a time of economic troubles, the popular backlash against an ineffectual but meddlesome Brussels is not unlike the backlash against Washington. A general mood of anti -- government sentiment is a poor climate in which to rebuild social democracy.
On reflection, it is not surprising that a far-flung confederation should result in weaker government with diminished capacity to regulate transnational capitalism. In 1939, the godfather of modern libertarianism, Friedrich Hayek, a proponent of European federation, predicted that with a federation, "certain economic powers, which are now generally wielded by the national state, could be exercised neither by the federation nor by the individual states." Hayek should be thrilled with the result.
Politics Is Teaching
An enfeebled movement produces feeble leaders, and weak leaders don't rebuild movements. Today, it is hard to think of a center-left president or prime minister who is any kind of public hero.
One of the 20th century's greatest social-democratic leaders, Olof Palme, was fond of saying "Politik är att tjata." The phrase can be literally rendered as "Politics is pestering," but with more positive connotations. "Tjata" is a word Swedes use to describe encouraging their kids to finish homework. Palme meant it as hectoring the citizenry to rise to its best and legislators to produce effective and creative results. According to Palme's former colleague Allan Larsson, you could loosely translate Palme's dictum as Politics is teaching. Though the current crisis could be a teachable moment, we don't see much creative teaching from the democratic left.
Are there any bright spots? One can take some hope from Denmark. There, the center -- right government, in power since 2001, has tried many of the same gambits as its Swedish counterparts—the fragmentation of once comprehensive services, the weakening of the active labor-market system, the use of tax cuts and privatization to split the upper middle class from the coalition that supports the welfare state. But more bureaucrats are now required to supervise private vendors of social services, and the new labor-market system has deteriorated into a paper chase. The government has internal divisions and has lost popularity. A left coalition seems poised to win this fall's election.
The Danish version of flexicurity has been much more universal and politically popular than the Dutch one. A series of reforms, by the last Social Democratic government under Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in the 1990s, increased pressure on unemployed workers to find jobs but with enhanced social supports. There was no pressure to pursue low-wage work. That last Social Democratic era, when unemployment fell and earnings rose, is remembered as a time of broad prosperity.
The current Social Democratic leader, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, told me that she thought a lot of the damage done to the model could be reversed but added that "the fiscal room to maneuver is very narrow." Her party promises a new social bargain that would raise taxes on wealthy Danes and banks, increase public investment, lengthen the normal workweek (reportedly by one hour), repair the damage to the labor-market system, and redouble investment in education and training. These small steps in the right direction are constrained by Europe's wider recession but in context are considered bold.
Elsewhere, the right is wearing out its welcome. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's brand of near fascism has run its course. David Cameron's right-wing British coalition government has lurched from crisis to crisis. Merkel is effective but not popular.
A failed right, however, doesn't mean a successful left. Even with several center-left governments, if European social democracy continues on its present path, these gains would neither solve the economic crisis nor restore the left's broad credibility. Impromptu events loosely connected to economic distress, like the August riots that broke out in Britain, or the capture of Greek anxiety by far-left anarchist street protests, demonstrate what occurs when left parties cease to be effective carriers of pocketbook frustrations and their remedies. Protest turns apolitical or ugly, or worse.
In my interviews with progressive European leaders and scholars, I encountered few optimists but two different kinds of pessimists. The first kind contends that because of demographic, fiscal, and economic trends, the social-democratic welfare state that thrived during the unique circumstances of the third quarter of the 20th century is doomed. That brand of pessimism is excessive. The Scandinavians have demonstrated that the welfare state can be continuously refined and combined with an efficiently productive economy. In Sweden, conservatives have outmaneuvered social democrats for now, but the Scandinavian economic model broadly survives. To make it work, though, you have to contain private finance.
The second kind of pessimist concludes that a different road exists but doubts that today's democratic left has the political nerve to follow it. That sort of pessimism can be fatal.
One key difference between Europe and the U.S.: Because of Europe's multiparty parliamentary systems, center-right coalitions govern while the far-right stands outside. In the U.S., with its presidential two-party system, the far-right has now taken over one of the two major parties. This reality, combined with a constitutional system that facilitates blockage, prevents government from addressing a dire economic emergency and reinforces citizen disaffection with government in general, further energizing the far right.
Another important difference between the American and European versions of the hegemony of the right is that the Europeans have several legitimate alibis for the left's weakness—the perversity of the EU, the fiscal pressures of an older population, and the greater political and cultural distance between Europe and its immigrants. There is simply no European equivalent of California, much less of Los Angeles—places where recent immigrant populations are key elements of an effective local progressive coalition.
Both the U.S. and Europe now have constitutional systems biased against government activism. Of these, the European version is the more intractable. There were good reasons for progressives to cheer on the EU project, not the least of which were anchoring a democratic Germany within a larger democratic body and overcoming the economic disadvantage of separate small economies and currencies. Europe's social democrats, however, were outplayed in the neo-liberal architecture of the EU and its multiple institutions.
By contrast, the impact of the multiple veto points deliberately built into the American constitutional system can be overstated. None of it stopped Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt. Politics is always a blend of the structural and the fortuitous. The difference between 1933 and 2008 was partly in the economic circumstances that gave FDR a more dire crisis to combat. But it was also our good luck to get a leader with the jaunty fortitude of Roosevelt in the last great crisis of capitalism, and our bad luck to draw Obama today.
In America, radical reform is losing out because a Democratic president, captured by financial elites, failed to seize the moment. In Europe, reform is blocked because most social democrats, decades ago, ceased to mount a strong challenge to ideological and bureaucratic currents that were ultimately toxic to their movement. Here is where Europe and America converge: Though much can be blamed on our constitutional structures, today our politics is more dysfunctional than our institutions. On both sides of the Atlantic, the cure is a more robust democratic left.
To repair managed capitalism and to redeem its own credibility, the progressive left needs to abandon its 30-year dalliance with neo-liberalism and to embrace far stronger remedies for the current economic crisis. They include a re-regulation of capital to abolish the purely speculative part of the financial economy and an abandonment of the premise that the current deflation is cured by belt-tightening. These things go together, of course, because it is the rentier class that is demanding austerity.
The left does not have the power to implement these reforms anytime soon, but it does have the power to teach. In the near term, left parties will be mostly in opposition. They should behave like an opposition—and they may regain the credibility to eventually return to power. ª
Mark Nadel (not verified)
Wed, 2011-09-28 12:02
This is a brilliant critique. I would also suggest that folks read "Reckless Endangerment" by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, which addresses the culpability of the center-left in the policies that led to the 2008 financial collapse--particularly the housing bubble. De-regulation and laisez faire economics was not discredited because both parties had their fingerprints all over it.
Mike caton (not verified)
Wed, 2011-09-28 13:28
I am a French-speaking American. I listen to the major French tv news networks every morning, streaming on my computer. On their equivalent of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, etc it has been months since the name of Marine Le Pen has been mentioned, and months since they last showed her face.So it really doen'y't matter what Marine Le pan says,
in the "democracy"of France, she has been "disappered" from the French media.
LillithMc (not verified)
Wed, 2011-09-28 16:17
SWBarnett (not verified)
Wed, 2011-09-28 19:10
A very good essay, but at the end Kuttner's dislike of Obama colors his objective analysis. He takes many pains to describe structural conditions that explain why radical reform is losing out, then lays the American failure in Obama's lap. "The Left does not have the power [votes, control of public media, etc.] to implement reforms," he writes, and no jaunty monocle or cigarette holder on Obama can change that.
Charles (not verified)
Fri, 2011-09-30 00:19
Thank you for the interesting though sad insights about why the left is growing weaker in Europe and for honestly writing about Obama, who is doing the work of Wall Street and trying to deconstruct the American social safety net in a way that a Republican could never get away with. You fail to mention one important phenomenon: Obama has been able to split and fragment American progressives to such a degree that there is not even a Democratic primary challenger willing to run against his neoliberal policies. At least in Europe there is still a significant if struggling left. After the election of Obama, however, the American left has been virtually silenced and is in complete disarray.
Smeyer0513 (not verified)
Fri, 2011-09-30 11:11
because it wasn't caused by laissez-faire capitalism. it was caused in the US by government social policy (the ownership society) mestastasized into economic policy and then into banking policy. ironically it was only the conservatism of the Canadian banking system (and a lot of oil and gas production to keep tax revenues high enough to avoid massive government debt) that saved our neighbors to the north. as a former canadian, i never thought i would look to canada as a model.
Chicagoalbert (not verified)
Fri, 2011-09-30 19:14
Absolutely brilliant essay, but I agree with the comment that Mr. Kuttner's (and progressives, in general) dislike of Obama colors his objectivity. The actions of presidents can't be separated from the political climate under which they serve. The real finger has to be pointed at Americans and Europeans. They are inclined to accept the conservative argument--no taxes, no regulation--making it impossible for any progressive president to do anything but capitulate. Though I am dealing in counterfactuals here, I believe we would have a stronger Obama presidency if Americans in a united voice told him to do whatever we need to do, spend whatever we need to spend, and unabashedly invest in the American people as needed. But, they have failed to do so. The worse thing for the Obama presidency was to elect those Tea Party Republicans to Congress. We are complicit in our own mess.
Steven Auerbach (not verified)
Tue, 2011-10-04 14:37
Kuttner's call for the Democrats to turn left is essentially correct. However, what will probably be necessary is for the Left to take over the Democrats. As to those claiming Kuttner is bashing Obama; nonsense. He is bashing the entire neo-liberal drift of the Democratic party which goes back to Carter/Clinton as well as Obama. Obama is just the latest.
PeterGrfx (not verified)
Wed, 2011-10-05 13:02
Obama was not without choices. He chose to be the handmaiden of Wall Street. Look at the cabinet he chose: not a single progressive (except the Labor secretary, and that doesn't count; it's just a sop for liberals without any influence on economic policy: just ask Robert Reich).
He also chose to limit his foreign and military options to those the Pentagon provided him.
As Bill Clinton once said in a campaign appearance with Obama in 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown, "He asked for us to come up with the best policy, and he said he would sell it" (I paraphrase, but only slightly). In other words, Obama chose to be the salesman of the corporate warfare state.
Guest (not verified)
Thu, 2011-10-06 10:37
I think history failed to turn in 1987-1991 when, after a decade or more of unprecedented UN success stories and the end of the Cold War, the world needed to see the West strengthening the fabric of the international communty, and in particular the peacekeeping (war avoiding) abilities of the UN. I think the US should have led this effort. With increasing globalization, improved global governance is the next step history is inviting us to take.
(I believe one factor working against this needed historical shift has been the role played by corporate media in America, reducing international news coverage and promoting US nationalism.)
Btw, would a fair (if simplistic) summary of Mr. Kuttner's economic, social, political and cultural critique be the following: Tom Friedman is wrong?
Tim (not verified)
Thu, 2011-10-06 14:46
We did not draw Obama out of bad luck. A president reflects the politics of the era, and I severely challenge the idea that Lyndon Johnson could have gotten himself elected in this day and age. We did not draw Obama out of "bad luck", but out of the platform that he made very clear in his election.
Also the comparisons to FDR are rather inaccurate. FDR campaigned as a budget hawk, assailing Hoover for his profligate spending, and also had very few progressives on his team. Unlike what Kuttner calls for now, Roosevelt was fighting for the survival of capitalism a rising communist tide, and to compare the unemployment situation or the political one to FDR's 1932 (where the number of unemployed was roughly 3 times as high) is absurd.
Jim (not verified)
Thu, 2011-10-06 20:58
aligatorhardt (not verified)
Mon, 2011-10-10 09:00
This is a good summery of the conditions leading to our present crisis. Where I might disagree is with the label of center-left applied to today's democrats. It seems to me that money has corrupted politics to the extent that the left is not represented in government. What was considered the center in the past is now moved to the right of center. The US democrats are more similar to the extreme right republicans. The voters need to see the lessons of the past few decades, and support true progressive reforms as outlined by the Green Party. As Sweden has demonstrated, when society rises together, full employment and prosperity can be had.
thykingdomcom (not verified)
Thu, 2011-10-13 02:54
DuaneCampbell (not verified)
Sun, 2011-10-16 22:53
Excellent essay. Thanks for the information. The details of the decline of social democracy had been alluded to, but the specifics are helpful.
Since, capital has essentially subverted social democracy, then perhaps we should conclude that the effort to achieve social democratic reforms in the U.S.are not well targeted. Perhaps we on the left should just plain seek democratic socialism.
A second major issue, how are we going to organize to get there? That is a tough question. Many of the anti Obama analyses are simply repeating their prior positions about the Democratic Party and elections with no adjustment for what did the Obama victory mean, and what does the Obama compromise to the right mean? We need some sharp analysis to understand this.
One thing that is clear, the U.S. left missed the boat on the economic collapse. This was an event where a left analysis should have been popularized. The left, in general, failed to educate the millions of common people about the crisis. So, lacking a left analysis, the Tea Party analysis gained traction.
Miss Cocoa (not verified)
Mon, 2011-10-17 23:16
I wonder too, if the collapse of communism is not a factor in today's swing to the right, despite the failure of crony capitalism. The author rightly states that the left needs to educate before it can regain credibility with the people. Of course in Roosevelt's era the communist party was very actively educating, including publications and workers education. At that time, before the German/Russian pact, the evils of Stalin were not widely known, as far as I know. Now, of course, there is only a small remnant, and the word communism is widely identified with despotism. Just look at how many in America view the word "socialism" as inherently evil, and see any program to help anyone, no matter how desperate, as "stealing" from the powerful.
Barrie Cowan (not verified)
Wed, 2011-10-19 00:25
The DLC attempted to retain some relevance for the Democrats, in the face of the comprehensive Reagan political triumph, by suppressing almost all expression of center-left thinking and alternative policy development.
It was effective, after a fashion. We got Clinton, the first time only barely - and only because of Perot; and then by the good fortune (for Bill) that the aged, juiceless Bob Dole presented the bill for his long service to the Republican party and demanded as payment the right to run for the Big Job.
However we also received the honor of having the following milestones on the road to disaster occur on Democrats' watch: Glass-Steagall repealed, welfare "as we know it" (together with all prospects of improving it) abolished, and the "reinvention" of government (in a form that no longer can tax, spend or regulate) achieved.
We now see the full cost of the DLC doctrine: we have nothing to offer as a Progressive alternative when the neo-liberal dream collapses, because we helped in every way we could to convince the electorate that the dream was real (or at least the most relevant dream).
We looked on in horror as GWB and his fascist henchmen added scenario after nightmare scenario that we had never imagined were part of the dream, and which we have since learned (and yet really knew down deep) were always at its core. But we had rendered ourselves helpless by hanging on to power without hanging on to the reasons we should have power.
It's sad. But, as Kuttner says, we should start developing now for when the next chance to achieve power for progressive ideas and policies comes along, as it no doubt will. I just wish the DLC had not undermined the faith in progressive ideas and policies with "post-partisan" delusions back in the '80s. We would probably have continued out of power through the nineties, but we would have been ready in '06 with somebody who not only knew how to articulate and rally progressive opinion, but also thought it was worth fighting for.
Fri, 2012-08-24 04:51
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text:
International terrorist.
Public enemy number.
Pakistan's public frenemy number 1.
The Michael Jordan of hide-and-seek.
All of those sound way better than "movie villian understudy." Maybe Osama didn't hate America so much as the Hollywood rat race made him snap.
Some people find self destruction, I mean, "winning", with sex and drugs. Others find it in jihad.
Dont judge >:-(
Really though, this is one of those "man, i wish I thought of that!" pieces.
Found this at iOwnTheWorld (where else?)


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The painter Karen Agnete (1903-1992) was one of many Danish women who married an Icelander and moved with their husbands back to Iceland from Copenhagen in the first half of the 20th century, after both having studied at the Danish Art Academy. She was fascinated by Iceland and Icelanders, and for six decades she painted and exhibited her works all over Iceland and became a respected and well known painter here. This exhibition highlights the types of paintings she concentrated on, portraits, moods of nature, flowers and still life. The exhibition's title is a line from the poem "Bláskógavegur" by Einar Benediktsson. The exhibition is curated by Hrafnhildur Schram.
Further information on Karen Agnete.
Sunday 22 January 3 p.m. Kjarvalsstaðir – Karen Agnete Curator's talk with Hrafnhildur Schram.
Sunday 4 March 3 p.m. Kjarvalsstaðir – Karen AgneteGallery talk with historian Sigurlaugur Ingólfsson.
Karen Agnete
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Join us ALL SUMMER LONG for FREE, UP CLOSE & PERSONAL, LIVE MUSIC PERFORMANCES.
With special guest Nick Waterhouse!
Sunday, July 15th @ 3pm
MOSCOT BACKYARD @ MOSCOT Court Street
159 Court Street (Between Dean & Pacific Streets)
Nick Waterhouse is the new breed - An R&B fanatic who combines an uncanny old-school sensibility and with a charged, contemporary style. For Waterhouse, his muse is the over-modulated sound of vintage '50s R&B and Rebel Rock n' Roll. His take on such a time-honored tradition evokes the back-alley thrill of New Orleans, Detroit and Memphis in their heyday. He combines an astute attention to detail recording on all vintage equipment with an honest desire to match the emotional impact of the music that inspires him.
Attendees will receive 20% off purchases of MOSCOT branded glasses day of show with display of web flyer or copy of email blast. A portion of music purchased from performers will benefit The MOSCOT Mobileyes Foundation, which provides free quality medical eyecare and prescription eyewear to those who would not otherwise have access to such care. For more information visit moscotmobileyes.org.


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Conference 2014
May 22-26, 2014 | Minneapolis, MN
SAA's 16th Conference aims to be a high point of inspiration for all participants!
Led by a team of more than forty enthusiastic teacher members, this mega-event will be brought to life by the participation of all who come together to learn and share ideas and inspiration.
Join your colleagues May 22-26, 2014 in Minneapolis and experience "Powered by Community!" You are an essential part of our Suzuki community, and your presence at the conference enriches the experience for all of us. Don't miss the chance to expand and share your vision for the future, and bring home tools to enhance your teaching, while making new friends and reconnecting with long-time acquaintances.
Plan to arrive on Thursday, May 22. Check-in begins at 4:00 pm. Conference sessions will begin at 5:00 pm, followed by a 7:30 pm keynote address by Dr. Robert Cutietta. Dr. Cutietta is dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. An internationally recognized authority on the theory and practice of music education, specializing in learning theories and the psychology of music, he is the author of Raising Musical Kids: A Parent's Guide.
Sessions, concerts and events (close to two hundred separate sessions and events!) will continue throughout the weekend, culminating in the Suzuki Americas Concert on Monday morning. Conference events will conclude at noon on Monday, May 26.
Conference Events
You can expect many of favorite events and session, including, but not limited to these:
- Special Benefit Concert by guest performers
- Keynote by noted guest speaker
- Research Symposium on Talent Education
- Pre-conference events, including Every Child Can!
- Master classes for Suzuki students selected by audition
- Inspiring performances by guest artist clinicians
- Sessions in pedagogy and technique, instrument-specific and general
- Opportunities to re-examine and renew our commitment to the Suzuki philosophy
- Student choirs and ensembles
- Suzuki Youth Orchestra of the Americas
- International ensembles Concert, including a performance from the 2014 Latin American Ensemble!
- Piano Concert student performance with teacher orchestra
- Tradeshow exhibits
- Heritage sessions
- Suzuki Early Childhood Education sessions
- Social time to reconnect with new and long-time friends
- Creating Learning Community Awards presentation
- Sponsor presentations
- And much, much more!
View the 2014 Conference Events Overview page for further details on daily highlights and new events for 2014.
The Session Preview page (coming soon!) gives a sneak-peak at the many sessions the Conference will have to offer. Click on each session to view detailed descriptions and information on each presenter.
Student Events
The SAA Conference provides numerous events directed towards Suzuki students across the Americas. In addition to instrument-specific masterclasses taught by guest clinicians, students also participate in pre-selected ensembles which each perform at the conference. An exciting addition to the performing ensembles at the 2014 Conference will with the Latin American Ensemble, a tour group of over 40 students from across Latin America.
While participation for most student events is audition based, this year, the SAA is additionally hosting "Suzuki Americas 2014," which is open to all Suzuki students across North, Central, and South America. This mega-event will be held both locally at the Minneapolis conference and in studios across the Americas via online streaming.
View the Student Events page for more information about conference student performances.
Support the Latin American Suzuki Ensemble
Colombian Suzuki Students
With piano teacher Dilva Sanchez
The Latin American Suzuki Ensemble is a tour group of students from across Central and South America who will perform at the 2014 Conference in Minneapolis, MN.
In May 2008, the SAA brought together the first Latin American Suzuki Ensemble, which played at the Conference in Minneapolis that year. It was a very touching experience that involved the work of many people—teachers, parents, students and friends. Many postcards remain from that experience: the hopes and expectations of the children and their families when they submitted the videos, the anxiety at the first rehearsal, the joy of sharing the work with teachers from all parts of the continent, the shining eyes and the concentration of the children at the concert, the standing ovation at the end of the concert, the words and the warmth of many experienced teachers from North America, whose voices are still an incentive to move forward.
While these children from Latin America have worked very hard to develop their abilities, many of them unfortunately do not have the financial resources to afford the travel expenses involved in participating in the conference. This is where you are needed. Make a tax-deductible donation to make this opportunity possible for these students—your support will make a huge difference in the lives of these children, the growth of the Suzuki method in Latin America, and the rich connections made between all students participating in the conference.
Thank you for making this opportunity a reality!
View the Latin American Ensemble page for more information about how you can help.
Suzuki Americas 2014
Highlighting the community of Suzuki found across all the Americas and celebrating the music that brings us together.
Dr. Suzuki encouraged us to devote our efforts to educating children to have beautiful hearts and noble souls. Is there any greater calling than this?
The connections within our Suzuki community give us the resources to make this task easier. The SAA is a community representing great social, economic, and cultural diversity, and yet we all share the common language and love of music. We all have the potential to reach a level of proficiency to be able to share the gift of music with others. It is important to provide children with many opportunities to share these gifts in order to instill within them a nobleness of spirit.
Suzuki Americas 2014 will provide an excellent vehicle for bringing children together to share the beauty in their hearts. Students from the Latin American Ensemble and other conference student performing ensembles will join forces with children from all over North America to perform music from many cultures. It will be recorded as a webcast so that children from all over the world will be able to play along in a gesture of global solidarity through music. Together, we will illustrate that talent has no national or cultural boundaries.
View the Suzuki Americas 2014 page for more information about this event and how you can participate.


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Remembering What Matters About the Affordable Care Act
On the Affordable Care Act front today, there's very good practical news, and not-so-good political news. That gives us an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves to keep in mind what's really important when we talk about health care.
Let's start with the good news. First, as Marketplace reported this morning, a new report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers shows that the average health insurance premium on the exchanges is actually lower than the average premium in employer-sponsored plans. And it isn't because the coverage is inadequate; according to a spokesperson, "even when you factor in all the out-of-pocket costs, the average top tier gold and platinum plans are similar to employer ones." It's hard to overstate what a success this is. If you've ever bought health insurance on the individual market before now, you know that if you could get covered at all, you were likely to get a plan that was expensive but had lots of gaps and lots of cost-sharing. The whole point of the exchanges was to give people buying insurance on their own the same advantage of pooling large numbers of customers that you get when you're covered through your employer. If it's working, then that's something to celebrate.
Second, as Jonathan Cohn tells us, Wellpoint, one of the nation's largest insurers, is reporting that exchange sign-ups are meeting their expectations; they have 400,000 new customers, and expect the number to rise to a million by the end of open enrollment. Even more critically, although their new customers are slightly older than the population as a whole, they expected this because people with a more pressing need for insurance would be the first to sign up, and they already incorporated that into their rates for this year. That means they're unlikely to lose money, there is unlikely to be a huge rate spike next year, and the dreaded "death spiral" looks less and less likely.
This supports the contention I've had for some time, that in its first few years the Affordable Care Act is going to basically be fine—it may not create a health care paradise, but nor will it be the disaster conservatives are so fervently hoping for.
Before we get to sorting through what matters from what doesn't, let's look at the not-so-good political news. The Kaiser Family Foundation is out with their latest health care tracking poll, and there isn't a lot to be glad about. More people have an unfavorable than a favorable view of the ACA. Most Americans are unaware that almost all the provisions of the law are now in force. And maybe most troubling, nearly half of Americans are still unaware of the law's most popular provision, that insurance companies are no longer allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions:
Before you say, "Obama should have told people about it!" I must remind you that during the last four years you spent away from Earth, the administration and its allies did in fact repeat over and over and over again that the ACA prohibits insurance companies from denying you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. There are many reasons why so many people haven't yet understood, but you can't say they didn't try (you can read more about the myth of the bad sales job here).
In any case, here's what we have to remember: On the scales of history, a person with a pre-existing condition who gets health coverage weighs much more than a person who doesn't know that because of the ACA, people with pre-existing conditions can get health coverage. We spend so much time talking about politics that it's easy to forget that politics are not an end in themselves, they're a means to an end. Liberals advocated for comprehensive health insurance reform for so many decades not because it was politically advantageous (at some times it was, and at other times the voters didn't seem to care), but because it was right. The fact that so many millions of Americans had no health security up until now was a moral obscenity. The ACA is beginning to fix things—slower and less completely than we might like, but it is a beginning. And if it never becomes the political boon you were hoping for, it was still the right thing to do.
That isn't to say that political effects don't matter, because they do. If the Republicans take over the Senate this fall, bad things would result, particularly if they also win the White House two years later, and if the ACA's political troubles contributed to that turn of events, it would be unfortunate. But in the long run, what matters most is the effect on Americans' lives. When you get distressed by a story about a Democratic member of Congress who's in a tough race where her opponent is hitting her for supporting Obamacare, you can think of the families who never had health coverage before, but do now. For millions of people it will life-changing, and for many, literally life-saving. Try not to forget.
Fri, 2014-01-31 01:21
Obamacare may be the final blow for a country that is struggling financially, ethically and morally, the governments involvement in the healthcare system is the worst idea any of you social geniuses ever thought up. Unless, of course, your goal is to is to bring America to its knees. Government involvement in anything is bad thing. Our country is full of cowards who would prefer the government take care of them. The government full of officials that want a population that is dependent . What a great way to control people. Get them on the government medical chart. We're screwed people. Wake up!!!!!!!!
Fri, 2014-01-31 01:22
Obamacare may be the final blow for a country that is struggling financially, ethically and morally, the governments involvement in the healthcare system is the worst idea any of you social geniuses ever thought up. Unless, of course, your goal is to is to bring America to its knees. Government involvement in anything is bad thing. Our country is full of cowards who would prefer the government take care of them. The government full of officials that want a population that is dependent . What a great way to control people. Get them on the government medical chart. We're screwed people. Wake up!!!!!!!!
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:14
Yes, let's end air traffic control and safety regulation, food inspections, drug testing, weather forecasting, and so on. Let's start by ending subsidies to farmers, the leasing of federal land to miners and oil/gas drillers, and medical care to veterans. We will see who the cowards are.
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:32
Fri, 2014-01-31 18:26
It's not the left that's framing it that way. It was Laddp25 that said "Government involvement in anything is (a) bad thing". He (or she) seems fairly conservative to me. And what is this obsession with thinking that the government is trying to control you? No one wants to control you more than corporations. How about a little consumer protection or a little freedom... as in the freedom not to have to worry about going bankrupt if someone in my family gets sick?
Fri, 2014-01-31 14:47
Note the writer brags about how wonderful the "top tier" plans are. He's full of _rap. The prices are way too high, with NOTHING attractive about them unless you have a big health problem now. You'd have to be crazy to spend your hard earned money on a non-subsidized policy while still healthy. My wife and I will only buy after one of us has a very serious health problem.
Fri, 2014-01-31 14:53
Sheer nonsense. This law has hurt far more people than it has helped. What about the cancer patients who lost their doctors or their health plans because of Obamacare? What about the reports of 125 sick children in WA who lost their coverage because of Obamacare? What about all the people who get their insurance from their employers and are now finding out their coverage is worse, and the amount they pay is more, and that their deductibles are much higher, and that they cannot see their regular doctor anymore? This law is a complete failure and is going to get much worse.
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:09
What about the cancer patients who lost their doctors or their health plans because of Obamacare?
Name one such patient -- just one.
What about the reports of 125 sick children in WA who lost their coverage because of Obamacare?
Provide link.
What about all the people who get their insurance from their employers and are now finding out their coverage is worse, and the amount they pay is more, and that their deductibles are much higher, and that they cannot see their regular doctor anymore?
How many are there? Provide credible sources.
Fri, 2014-01-31 19:54
Lol, you are a joke. You seem to think its all a bunch of lies, the statements that people have lost their plans and their payments have gone up on the new plans. I wasn't going to post on here until I saw your comment. Your attitude is pure crap. Because you don't know anyone, well it must not be real. Am I real enough for you ? Let me get in your grill for a second. All my families policies were cancelled. The new plans premiums were double what we used to pay. The deductible, increased to 8,000 dollars. So when my daughter had a significant accident just recently, we got smacked for Eight grand. The new plans cover none of the costs of doctor visits. My old plan gave me at least 35 percent of the bill covered. There is reality, and then there is the world of propaganda that you are choosing to operate in. Speak your views all you want, but don't lie to yourself for one second and believe your are in touch with reality.
Bufort T. Justice
Fri, 2014-01-31 22:15
Previous post: "What about the cancer patients who lost their doctors or their health plans because of Obamacare?"
Your reply: "Name one such patient -- just one"
No problem. Here's one that's losing her doctor(s) and hospital(s) that have kept her alive the last seven years as she fights stage 4 cancer:
Edie Littlefield Sundby
Previous post: "What about the reports of 125 sick children in WA who lost their coverage because of Obamacare?"
Your reply: "Provide link."
My pleasure. Here's two of them. Ironically, it's health CARE that's denied, which is quite different from health INSURANCE. They are always being conflated.
Previous post: "What about all the people who get their insurance from their employers and are now finding out their coverage is worse, and the amount they pay is more, and that their deductibles are much higher, and that they cannot see their regular doctor anymore?"
Your reply: "How many are there? Provide credible sources."
More specifically, it's those losing hours, pay or their jobs due to Obamacare. The employer mandate was illegally/unconstitutionally delayed by Obama all by himself without congressional legislation until next year. However, businesses have already begun to make the needed cuts, while many more await until the fall when more of the costs are revealed and businesses cannot wait any longer. Here's a sample so far of 300 businesses (including government) that have cut hours and jobs because of Obamacare:
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:31
The real question for Obamacare's future is whether or not Democrats will entertain changes that make the law more popular. The most obvious would be changing the individual mandate. That should be easy since the solutions are known (they were researched during the Supreme Court case), and even Republicans would be crazy to oppose making the individual mandate more palatable. I suppose the next most obvious ones are the 30 hour work week and the religious objections to contraceptives. The 30hr week is easy, and Republicans probably can't object there either. I'm not sure how to address the religious objections since I honestly haven't paid all that much attention, but it's obviously an area causing passionate opposition.
If Democrats do want to rescue Obamacare, I hope they make those changes this year before the wave of retirements already announced. You're losing Waxman, Baucus, etc. which are some of the most knowledgeable about how HCR works. New members of Congress, even Democrats, have a strong tendency to be less friendly towards Obamacare. So it's only going to get harder to make changes that don't undermine the law.
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:39
Americans - Republicans, Democrats, Independents, whatever - are itching to show their appreciations for this utopia called Obamacare.
January is already over.
Ten more months.
On November 4, politicians will learn how much their constituents love them for this wonderful gift of Obamacare.
Unfortunately, you people in the media will walk away scratch free from the carnage.
You see, both the Republicans and Democrats are true to their form. Loyal to their core.
Its the media who have lost its responsibility.
Instead of being Government watchdog, you guys have turned in to Government mouthpiece.
I hope this new media will bring your senses back, maybe the hard way.
Fri, 2014-01-31 15:46
Peoples' lives is exactly what I'm worried about in the the months and years to come.
Obamacare is bringing millions of more Americans into Medicaid. This is worse than the flouting of the president's own 2009 remark that Medicaid is a "broken system" when it comes to financial costs. It is also a prescription for disaster when it comes to our nation's overall health. Here's why:
"People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences." -From the book "SuperFreakonomics"
"Chelsea Byers of Flagstaff is insured for the first time in her life through Healthcare.gov and couldn't be more pleased. She might even go skiing for the first time, now that any injuries from an accident would be covered." -Arizona Daily Sun, January 21, 2014 - http://azdailysun.com/news/local/15ee088c-80d9-11e3-b40d-001a4bcf887a.html
That in mind, see:
"Obamacare: Making a bad situation worse"
Fri, 2014-01-31 16:44
Employment based insurance plans are heavily subsidized by the employer. Exchange plans are not. So even if the average premium on the exchange is comparable to the premium cost of employer based insurance, the employee is paying only a fraction of it. I have seen the prices for gold and silver plans, and there is no way that the average employee is paying of can afford to pay that amount for insurance on a monthly basis.
Also, as the Marketplace article that was cited points out (which Waldman fails to mention), prices on the exchange may be comparable only because their provider networks are so narrow. A lot of people who may be forced onto the exchanges if their employers drop or change their coverage in response to ACA will find that they lose their doctors even if they like them.
Fri, 2014-01-31 20:30
Yeah, children in Washington State are doing great under Obamacare:
Searching 38 plans through Washingtonhealthplanfinder, NONE of them had Seattle Children's Hospital as part of the coverage. Here are the facts taken directly from the Seattle Children's Hospital web site:
Seattle Children's is currently not covered by all of the plans. Children's is covered only by any plans provided by:
Group Health
Community Health Plan of Washington (Community HealthEssentials)
Molina Healthcare of Washington – Children's reached a verbal agreement with Molina on Oct. 22, 2013. We expect to become an in-network provider on the Molina Exchange plans.
If you choose an Exchange plan from another company, Children's is considered "out-of-network" for these Exchange plans, and your plan may not pay for your child's care here.
Norwegian Blue
Fri, 2014-01-31 22:50
It is a ruse, a red herring, a canard, a falsehood, that the web site, the exchanges, the "implementation," or the incompetency of government, is the problem with Obamacare. These are small things compared to the constitutional abomination that is the program itself. The president and his fellow democratic leaders are either evil or stupid. Most republican leaders are either stupid or cowardly. The Tea Party is an improvement. Libertarians offer some hope. Peggy Noonan's WSJ editorial today sheds some light on the fundamental problem. God save this country.
Sat, 2014-02-01 07:04
There an old adage: "Statistics can lie and liars ALWAYS use statistics."
The author's very first statement is another ObamaCon half truth. "The average PRICE for an ObamaCare plan is LESS than the private market." Well, yeah but the deductible is three times higher. Higher the deductible, lower the cost.
To keep our health insurance cost at about the same price, we went from a "Cadilac" plan to a "catastrophic" (hospitalization only) plan. Even then our deductible is, in fact, THREE TIMES higher.
This is just lie piled on top of lie piled on top of "The Lie of the Year."
This whole program needs to go away.
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Patrice Elder rejoined the Athletic Training Staff at Tennessee State University in August 2007.
Elder's primary responsibilities include providing treatment for football, track, and other sports as assigned. In addition to her duties as an athletic trainer, Elder is also a professor for the HPSS department. Elder returns to TSU from Morgan State where she worked as the Lead Assistant Athletic Trainer and the Senior Sports Medicine Administrator for Women's Sports for two years. While there, Elder supervised the medical coverage for football, women's basketball, and softball. She was responsible for the daily functioning, management, and organization of two athletic training rooms in addition to coordinating team practices and games. Elder also taught Health and Athletic Training courses at Morgan for two years. Prior to her stretch at Morgan State, Elder worked as an assistant athletic trainer for Tennessee State University. She administered medical coverage for men's and women's track, volleyball and cheerleading. She also assisted with providing coverage for football and women's basketball. Following her tenure as a graduate assistant athletic trainer for Tennessee State University (1999 to 2000), Elder worked as a certified athletic trainer at Brewster High School and Northern Westchester Physical and Occupational Therapy PLLC in Mount Kisco, New York. Elder, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, serves as the assistant faculty leader for Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). In addition, Elder is a National Athletic Trainer Board of Certification Home Study Reviewer.Elder received a B.S. in Physical Education from Kent State University in 1999 and completed her M.A. Ed. in Sports Management at Tennessee State in 2004.
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