(photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Got Oil?

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

We couldn't have gotten a much smarter guy into office, or one who saw the problems more clearly, or understood them more deeply, or spoke about them more eloquently.

And he made real advances, such as ensuring children have medical coverage in all cases. He saved the economy from tanking by pumping money into it to keep it going at a moment when it looked as though it could have contracted into a black hole. He's done a lot of things, but in every case he has found it necessary to appease corporate fiefdoms and accommodate atavists, with the result that the medical insurers benefit too greatly from the healthcare changes and the stimulus was too lean to last.

We have come to a disheartening realization: this is the best we can do under our system of government, especially at a time when all power has moved toward wealth and away from the people.

The pending question is whether we will we surrender to our dejection or soldier on, returning to the polls to keep a ghost party into office. Will we really stand by and watch the profoundly muddled anoint the other party that represents the very forces that have swindled us, sold us, and shortchanged our children?

There is a temptation to say, "Let them pursue their folly. Let them vote to bring disaster. Get it over and done with, then in the aftermath we might be able to rebuild. We can't go on like this."

Shall we sit back or try one last time to refute the idiotic litany of "Tax and spend Democrats!" ? (Carter and Clinton balanced the budget much better than Republican presidents who busted it with tax breaks to the rich and a war in Iraq.)

Shall we ignore "We need spending in cuts in social programs, now!" ? (It was the wealthy who perpetrated and gained from the Ponzi scheme on Wall Street, not the working class who must now pay --in taxes and cuts in services, potentially-- to bail out the institutions they hollowed out.)

Shall we let them get away with "We need to increase our military budget!" ? (The US already spends as much on its military as every other nation on earth combined and has bases in nearly all of them, so spending any more would take some creativity.)

Everything is up in the air. It's as Yeats described.

Hi,

I'm a small business, only the word "small" is misleading. Contrary to popular perception, it merely means there are a limited number of owners, and the size of the company can still be quite large.

I just scored a victory over the union at my plant. I told them if they didn't take a cut in benefits and agree that replacement workers wouldn't receive pension benefits, I'd move the operation offshore. I didn't get everything I wanted in terms of reduced wages immediately, but as I replace retiring workers I can hire new at a lower rate. So the future looks bright.

My good fortune doesn't stop there. I was able to extort tax concessions from local and state governments with the same threat to go overseas. "You want to keep these jobs here, don't you?" Ha ha ha!

It gets even better though. As workers retire, I replace them with "casual" workers who don't get benefits, and listen to this: they are trained at the local junior college on how to perform operations specific to my business AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE!

Things are really sweet. I'm flush with cash and my CEO got millions in bonuses this year and the board of directors -who are CEOs themselves- are doing great too. The only fly in the ointment is that sales are off. I can't comprehend why demand for our product is down, but I'm not worried because the reduction in labor cost has made me much more profitable this quarter despite falling sales!

Greed is good -at least in the short term.

A recent survey shows an overwhelming majority of Americans think Republicans would be better at managing the economy than Democrats. This despite clear and obvious evidence that our country's deficits were incurred during Republican presidencies. Tax breaks to the wealthy, more than any other factor, have led to the current massive deficit, a deficit for which American working families are about to be subjected to harsh austerity measures to repay. We have a meme regarding Republicans' mastery of the economy which is as wrong as a belief that the sky is orange.

We must give great credit to tireless purveyors of right wing propaganda for this. They have repeated (or paid to have others repeat) the mantras "regulation is bad" and "tax-and-spend Democrats" so loud and often that they have dispelled the facts. The media also gets credit for indolence and complicity in this because they merely echo current popular beliefs rather than inform the public. Doing so is easier, cheaper, and sells a lot more advertising.

Then too, there's an understandable inclination on people's part to believe, incorrectly, that because Republicans represent the interests of the rich they must know more about about money than the average guy. That is in fact right, they do. They know how to take from the working poor and middle class and keep it flowing toward the wealthy!

Finally, there is a masochistic streak in American workers that allows them to readily step up for a good flogging whenever anything breaks, assuming that it's somehow the fault of themselves. They welcome a good hard spanking from their authoritarian Daddy, Republican overlords to put the world back on its axis again. After the November's elections they will accept draconian cuts to programs, the de-funding of which will rob their children's future of comforts and wealth.

In believing only Republicans can save them even while the wealthy elite are screwing them into the ground, ordinary Americans are revealing an inferiority complex and an ignorance of patent political machinations that aren't shared by working people anywhere else in the developed world.

Awaking from the American Dream

Globalization, neo-liberalism, NAFTA, the IMF, the WTO are paving stones in the road to hell for the population of Earth. Surely, a small proportion, an economic elite, have become immensely wealthy by virtue of these policies and institutions, but many, many more have quite literally been brought to starvation by them. Not to the brink of starvation, but starvation. And thirst.

The "Greed is Good" philosophy hatched and championed by the Chicago School of Economics has laid waste to the lives of hundreds of millions in developing countries and has come home to roost in the US, sapping the wealth of the working middle class, destroying lives and robbing succeeding generations of their rightful prosperity. It's a winner-take-all game that can only be won by the lucky few and is running now toward its inevitable conclusion.

Government can't stop this. Government is so thoroughly corrupted by money that no law can be enacted which doesn't fete and reward big business first. Any other effect a law may have is secondary to that purpose. For example, you can have modest heath care reform, but the prerequisite is that the health insurers must gain enormously from it. In truth, all three branches of US Government have been supplanted by corporations.

Money has triumphed over democracy in a decisive and final victory. America's once vaunted middle class is disappearing and will vanish. It was birthed and nurtured by livings wages, and those are now an anachronism. Poverty, suffering, desperation, and soon hunger will overtake the majority in the US, while an economic royalty will continue to distance themselves from the pack.

So where's the light at the end of the tunnel? There isn't any. The choices are either hunger or upheaval, perhaps both. If it's upheaval, it must be violent if it comes before the complete disintegration of social structures. The elite will not yield without a fight while they have any power left. On the other hand, if social structures merely erode over the coming decade, old regimes will fall by default and be replaced ad hoc.

A revolution is unlikely to begin in the US. We are too preoccupied with ludicrous wedge issues contrived by the elite to divide us and throw any opposition into disarray. We are too uninformed, too complacent, too tractable, too beguiled by tricked-out cellphones and other trinkets to asses the situation and act. If there is a revolution, it will start elsewhere, although that doesn't mean the US will be spared revolution's paroxysm. And in the end, there is no reason to think revolution will result in anything better.

We had our shot at peace, prosperity, and an equitable society. We got close, but then decided to chance it all and go for a killing. We blew it.

There should be a new political party formed around a single-issue, the Living Wage Now Party. Thirty years of "trickle-down" economics has decimated the wealth of the average working family and led to diminished prospects for their progeny.

The middle (working) class is being devoured. Jobs cut, wages slashed, homes devalued, and all the while the rich get richer off the proceeds. Neither political party is standing up for working people for the simple reason they are put into office by wealthy individuals and corporations.

The corporate owned news media does not report what's going on except to point to how bad things are, but steers clear of drawing any conclusions or pointing out that working people are the big losers. So the devouring of the middle class goes on unabated because it isn't even acknowledged to be taking place.

After thirty years of Voodoo Economics, aka trickle-down, the once mighty American middle class is evaporating. The economic elite have waged a long, strategically planned, and highly successful class war against working people. They played us for fools and they played their hand well. It is excruciating to view the dismal future we have left to our children, the children of the onetime middle class, and to our grandchildren. We are the profligate generation.

Where's the Peacock?

Democrats came up with a bill to fund medical care for 9-11 workers. Republicans tried to amend it. Democrats wouldn't accept odious amendments.

NBC Nightly News covered the event and this was their commentary: It was the all Democrats' fault the bill didn't pass because they refused to swallow the poison pill.

Pretzel logic and propaganda on NBC's part. Uh-oh, the Fox has eaten the peacock!

two things are inevitable: right wing bullshit and taxes

according to the august 2010 harper's index:

"Percentage of their personal income Americans paid in taxes last year: 17%"
"Last year in which Americans paid so little: 1971"

for nineteen out of twenty people, taxes shouldn't even be an issue. if taxes are high but you have money in your pocket and the bills are taken care of, in other words, if wages are good, what do taxes matter? what's happened is that ad reagan, wages have been kept low while taxes have stayed the same or gone down for working people. but the very well-funded right wing disinformation machine has screamed that it's the taxes, not wages, that are skinning working people!

this is particularly slick, because taxes are naturally a rich man's concern, not a working man's beef. the secret of working wages is that employers know how much they have to pay you to keep you alive, and if your taxes go up they will grudgingly raise wages to offset that increase. but as the above says, the taxes have actually gone down anyway!

ever wonder, where is the msm in all of this? well, as Pete Seeger sings, "which side are you on, boys/ which side are you on?"

Tea baggers say they "want their country back". From whom? Well, from you and me and all those other cheeky upstarts who voted for Obama. So what makes it "their" country? They are middle aged, white, middle class people with a little more education and a higher income than the average person, all of which gives them a claim to ownership, in their opinion.

You can smell their sense of entitlement!

The question is, are you going to stay home in November and let these Smurfs take "their" country back?

Have Another Beer?

Republicans in Congress are playing a game for which they should be personally ashamed and publicly repudiated, but for which they will most likely be rewarded.

They vote against or else filibuster nearly every piece of legislation, typically floating the excuse that they are defending against a deepening budget deficit; however, that excuse is contradicted by the fact they are lightning-quick to back tax breaks for the wealthy, which have contributed significantly to the existing federal debt! So their professed concern is shown to be pure baloney.

Clearly, they are operating according to a naked strategy of blocking everything in the hope the general pain and suffering caused by government's inaction will translate into voter dissatisfaction and result in their taking back power in November. Is this even reasonable, let alone patriotic? Is a willingness to gum up the gears of the nation in order to inherit political power consistent with deservedness of the mantel of leadership?

Of course it isn't, but the electorate doesn't consider where the blame truly lies. It follows the rudimentary calculus of ousting the party in power when things are bad or returning them when systematically frightened into believing it would be worse under under the opposing party. Then they vote for the guy they'd like to have a beer with. Better buy a case.

Gotcha Fiscal Responsibility for Ya, Right Here!

President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility? Really? Here's all the fiscal straitening out we need: 1) pay the working person a LIVING WAGE; 2) if deficits are really a worry, TAX THE RICH to reduce them (and refrain from waging expensive wars); 3) restructure the economy so that 40+% of GDP isn't generated in the financial sector, that is, from gambling.

Reduction in Social Security? Folding back Medicaid and Medicare? Cuts in education? Austerity? Need I remind you that as the average wage has slipped, millions have be thrown out of work and tens of thousands out of their homes, the income for the richest 1% during the same period doubled? The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and the people who dreamed it up are correct in their unspoken assumption that we the people ARE stupid, and ignorant. But at some point even we will have figured out how badly we're being raked over. And that point might arrive sooner rather than later.

The Game

The inherent first purpose of any civilization, regardless of its mores or political system, is to assure the primacy of its powerful elite. Whatever institutions, industry, culture and achievements a civilization may claim, the primacy of its powerful elite is paramount, and all else will be sacrificed before their primacy is surrendered. Any civilization, no matter how accomplished, will forsake its creed, murder its citizens, and burn its cities before its elite relinquishes their privilege.

The role of organized religion in assuring this first purpose is as follows: its mythology is sculpted to give solace to those who live in subjugation, providing analgesic against the pain of degradation and denial resulting from unrelenting domination. While this service is on the one hand an act of mercy, a most valuable side effect is to defuse anger and resentment toward the powerful elite, thus warding off rebellion. Organized religion's service to civilization, and hence to preservation of the powerful ruling elite, is to be the citizenry's handler. Ultimately, the church keeps the dogs from turning on their master. Naturally, the powerful elite emphasize the importance of religion to the citizenry and work to infuse it into institutions. The elite will continue to do this so long as they control the church's own elite.

When will this all end? When power is no longer attractive, when power loses its power.

I Love a Charade

The other day I received a petition via email. It was to be signed and sent to my representatives, calling for a green energy policy. Well, I live in Georgia, so I may as well write to ask that the state motto to be changed to "We're all in this together."

But the atavists who live in, vote in, and hold office in my state actually are not the primary roadblock to adopting an enlightened energy policy, not by a long a shot. In fact they are incidental. What really keeps us on the path of burning fossil fuels, sending our young to fight for, kill, and die for oil is the corporate energy oligarchy. That's that same oligarchy that wrote our operative energy policy during the first year of the Bush Administration, utilizing the stenography skills of then VP Richard Cheney. They insure we preserve a pattern of energy use that's right out of the 1950's .

Fact: we have a damn energy policy! It was written by the corporate oil pushers. We can sing Kumbayah until we're dizzy and hoarse, but their will shall be done. Get over it.

Just as we pulled for radical reform of our spastic healthcare system and wound up with a massive giveaway to insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, whatever we try to accomplish on every other front will be subjugated to the will of corporations. They will subvert and pervert at every step. They will win, because they have limitless resources and they are relentless. They are the real power in this country, and their only obligation is to their shareholders.

This country is a piss-poor example of democracy. (Right wing pundits denigrate even our meager degree of democracy, equating it to communism.) We have government by corporate design and desire, not government by popular decree, and we have a corporate media that keeps us from focusing on this fact, achieving this feat by constantly tossing chaff in the air to obscure our view.

So, what-the-fuck is the point of signing a petition to a bought-and-paid-for corporate stooge to effect change that would run contrary to the interests of corporations that own this government and this country?

On the implementation of the "65ft. Rule" keeping press at a distance in the Gulf

They (BP & gov.) have done a crappy job of booming, so blatantly ineffective as to make it obvious the whole effort is just for show in BP's calculation.

Thad Allen has been faithfully repeating BP's line five minutes after they say it. He's done this so often that it remains to be seen what kind of bogus high-paying job they give him now that he's retired from the USCG.

Restricting access will make Winston's Smith's job easier in future by keeping the record to a manageable size. "What oil spill? When? Oh no, you are mistaken. See, there is no mention of a major event during that period."

There is very little daylight between government and corporation here. This would be true regardless of which pro-business party were in power at the moment.

Independence Day celebrates a rebellion that in large part was against the abuses of the British East India Company, a soulless corporation. We need to earn the right to party all over again by confronting current corporate control and abuse. Or we could just continue waving the flag and acting as if that were all there is to it.

Dear Washington,

There is really only one question that counts, and it's one that's not being asked: how are you planning to restore the middle class? Obviously, it can't be done without people's making a living wage, because that was the whole basis for the expansion of the middle class following WWII. All kinds of ideas are roiling in Washington, like reducing Social Security, Medicare, privatizing government functions, etc, but none of them directly addresses the problem that the next generation is set up to do less well than their parents.

All the VATs, immigration reforms, and deficit reduction schemes in Washington do nothing to address this directly. In fact, if the American society were a car, and that car had a faulty transmission, these fixes would be equivalent to putting new tires on the car and giving it a paint job. Car looks better, but it still won't go.

My point, dear Washington, is get real and either start restructuring the economy to direct wealth back to working people, or just stop bloviating about all that has to be done to protect and strengthen the economy, because without fundamental change it's an economy designed to exclude most of us and our progeny. Just tell us we're serfs and we really haven't any large stake in the economy or any real say in how society is shaped any longer. The truth would be better than this charade. Leave the tires on the rack and the paint in the can if you're not going to fix what's broken.

george's take

Apparently, placing booms around oil spills can be very effective in protecting sea coasts. But the booms have to be tended 24/7 and constantly adjusted. If done right, which means doing it without letup for an extended period, devastating pollution can be almost completely avoided. This anonymous tirade, which came from Harry Shearer's wry and essential "le Show", lays out the case that the present effort in the is very far from the ideal. In fact, it's a sham.

BP, Bloody Pathological

When the president of Iran announced plans to nationalize oil fields, BP went to the CIA and said, "Make him stop!" So the CIA contrived an overthrow and installed the Shah. No blow-back on that one so far, eh?

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was blamed on a drunken sailor, but he was primarily a very, very tired sailor because BP had demanded he and his crew work around the clock for several days in port just to make operations more profitable for BP.

Recently, a BP refinery blew up, and many died. BP had cut corners, as usual being more concerned with profit than people's lives. Now BP has converted the Gulf into a murky minestrone, having shortcut safety once again for profit. Eleven died outright. Several states wane slowly.

The leader of BP avers his company's spill is very small in relation to the vastness of the Gulf of Mexico, implying it's really not such a big deal. Using that same logic, if he were to shoot himself between his own eyes it could be argued that was no big deal either because, after all, a bullet hole is very small in proportion to the total surface area of his skin.

Endless Corporate Power

As much as we decry Obama's centrism, his (too) reasoned approach to dealing with the hostile and intransigent political opposition, and his deference to corporate concerns, corporate honchos nevertheless hate his fucking guts, no exaggeration. They are giving copiously to the opposition party in order to neutralize him for the duration of his first term, and all of his second, if that should become necessary. Corporations play the roll of tyrants now. They brook no democratic opposition. Even a twenty first century Hoover is too irritating and too much a challenge to their hegemony, so must be subjugated. We the people are in DEEP trouble.

An anecdote portraying how really extensive corporations' present control is over the land and the citizens of the US: a network TV crew in the Gulf off the Louisiana coast was attempting film a section of the shoreline being polluted by spilled oil. The TV crew was not intruding on or hampering cleanup efforts in any way. They were just out to get the story. Still, they were accosted by employees of BP who ordered them not to film the environmental damage occurring on shore as a result of BP's deep water oil well blowout.

You would think the TV crew would just tell the BP thugs to go shit in their hats, but they didn't, reason being the BP goons were backed up by two US Coast Guard officers who threatened the TV crew with arrest if they didn't comply with BP's orders! Obviously, BP has enough power over our government to demand that a US military agency enforce BP's rules irrespective of the Constitution. The state, in league with the corporation, will not allow any news coverage that might negatively impact BP's profits or stock price. The upshot is that a branch of government which we pay for with taxes has become the obedient servant of Brutish Petroleum. What more proof is needed to show the US is engulfed by corporate fascism?

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Drill Bozo, drill!

China needs the oil. Exxon-Mobile and BP want the profits. Not much will come our way from it, while the ecological risks are immense. Still, you say you want to drill. Where, here? When, now? For cryin' out loud! Why?

You know it, I know it, the oil conglomerates know it. Too bad the perpetually bamboozled whose only source of information is the MSM aren't clear on the point. Drilling offshore won't appreciably increase world supply, either now or in the future. Further, what's produced will go into the world's oil bucket, not exclusively into US supply. Finally, it's impact on gas prices is incalculable but probably infinitesimal.

China needs that oil for future growth, and Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobile and friends desperately, passionately, greedily want the profits. We shmoes on main street can only look forward to tar balls washing up on beaches, reduced and contaminated seafood, and new green-washing TV blather from the oil corps which will be purchased with profit from new offshore oil exploitation -"Drill Bozo, drill!".

Not much else can hasten our slide into ecological, economic, and societal oblivion faster than perilously piercing the earth's skin below the waves for a fast buck.

Capitalism and democracy do not mix. The former holds maximization of profit to be the only goal, whereas the latter sees profit as just a piece in life's mosaic. Capitalism does not compromise, and is dedicated to dissolving democracy, which presents an impediment to unrestrained pursuit of profit. Capitalism has been doing a fucking good job at it lately too.

Obama can't be as good a president in the war against terrorism as Bush was, because now whenever something bad happens, or almost happens, Obama doesn't make me feel as terrified as Bush did. Heck, if Cheney didn't come out of his moray eel hole at the hint of anything bad, I'd hardly be scared at all.

Brian, say it ain't so

Heard you playing "Social Security is Dying" on the hurdy-gurdy tonight. Missed who it was you were quoting, but it doesn't matter. We both know it'll be a long time before SS becomes unable to pay 100% of benefit. We both know also that the far-off shortfall could be easily averted by raising or eliminating the yearly ceiling on SS withholding. Further, we understand that those who push SS scare stories have a vested interest in redirecting SS taxes Wall Street's way.

I understand who you work for and therefore why you have to crank the hurdy-gurdy. Sad that you have to compromise your integrity this way, but that's business. What I found to be even more outrageous than shilling for Wall Street though was your ending statement to the effect that the SS burden might lead to reductions in other spending, such as for DEFENSE.

Heaven forfend! As it is we barely manage to spend more on defense than every other country on earth combined! Heck, we only have military installations in 173 countries, so any reduction in defense spending would be catastrophic, at least to Exxon-Mobil.

I can picture Diane Sawyer reading these things off a TelePrompTer and remaining blameless, but you're probably the smartest person in broadcast television, so it's pretty sad.

Is Tea Party Diatribe a Ruse?

When I heard that Tea Party members were more affluent and better educated that most, I had an epiphany. Taking seriously their addled statements and outlandish actions might just be falling into a trap they've set. Perhaps they play act at being lunatics to keep the fatuous, amnesic MSM preoccupied and to bog down the left.

Looking back, it's clear we spent too much time deconstructing the Tea Party during the healthcare fight, as if it were serious opposition that couldn't be ignored. That time would have been better spent marshaling our resources to fight for single payer. Now, we on the left go about fact checking to expose Teabaggers' lies and crackpot allegations. In doing so we squander our capital for little real gain. Instead we should be campaigning aggressively for essentials like a living wage, free higher education, fair trade, and an end to No Child Left Behind, which is a subterfuge for public school privatization.

However, so far every time the Tea Party has thrown the ball we've chased it. I think we should stop reacting to their moronic antics and press forward with our agenda as forcefully as Teabaggers stymie town hall meetings. (I do think we should hammer the MSM without letup for following the Tea Bag circus so enthusiastically, just to point out how vapid the MSM really is.)

Consider that there's a good chance the Teabaggers are following Karl Rove's patented strategy of attacking the opposition on one's own weaknesses. In a time of great economic difficulty for most working people, these affluent recipients of government benefits like medicare and social security might be expected to keep a low profile in order to avoid drawing censure for their hypocrisy. They are living securely and comfortably while very many others who have no security and a great deal to worry about are footing the bill for those programs Teabaggers are enjoying.

But instead they are screaming their faux victimhood from the rooftops and displaying a callous disregard for their fellow citizens. Repeating over and over again reality's inverse has worked quite well for the right. Recall that John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, was derided as a cowardly opportunist by an incumbent administration led by a chronic AWOL from the Champaign Squadron and a five-deferment draft dodger who said he didn't go to Vietnam because he "had other priorities". I'm afraid we are being fooled by these Teabaggers who know exactly what they're doing.

exquisite farce: Tea Baggers run around squealing about government taking away their freedom while corporations are taking out life insurance policies against their continued breathing.

Living Wage is Fundamental

Infuriating that nobody in the media addresses the real reason the economy is a lead zeppelin. They blame bankers, who are inarguably amoral pigs, but I think the system has an obvious flaw that goes unmentioned:

How in the world can an economy be sustained, let alone recover, when a large portion of the population isn't making a living wage?

To compensate for low wages, most of us have been borrowing to maintain our standard of living, but now we're tapped out. We maxed out our credit cards, then took out equity loans against our houses to pay off the balances and ran up the balances again. Now the house has become a financial albatross worth less than the loan principle, and we've hit the wall.

Almost nobody talks about this. Not mainstream economists, not politicians. Bob Reich touches on it now and then, but he's almost alone. Others hint that we might never be affluent again, but they won't say why. They act as if that prediction is based on arcane economic theory that's too hard to even try explain.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but I really don't think there's any mystery. The reason children of working class Americans will be living less well than their parents is that they aren't paid a living wage. Obviously, if politicians and pundits came out and said this is they'd have to try doing something about it, and that's not what they're into. Not by a long shot.

This economy is a Monopoly game, and we've been cleaned out. All we can do now is sit and watch while the survivors play on without us.

Republicans in Congress have one aim and one aim only: throw sand in the gears of government hoping public anger over the resulting paralysis will improve their chances in the November election. The question is, will the Democratic base reward Republicans for their reprehensible tactics and nihilistic strategy by staying home in November. All that's necessary is a weak turnout so their base of frantic crazies can tilt the election their way.

Liquidating the Public School System

The prevailing business-oriented approach to reforming our educational system, which apparently even President Obama subscribes to, is doing to education what free market fundamentalism did to the US and world economy: pummel and mangle it, render it FUBAR. Their business approach promises to improve education by introducing competition via formation of charter schools that are often run by for-profit companies. This is another manifestation of the "private industry can do everything better than government" credo. This assertion is simply a fallacy.

The only thing private business inherently does better than government is turn a profit. The fundamentalist myth says this is achieved through efficiency, but the reality is it's achieved mainly by destroying unions in order to pay workers less and gain greater power over them, and secondly, by cutting of corners to boost profit. These two things are really what's meant by "business efficiency". Screw the workers and then screw the customer. This isn't radical, it's a sacrosanct economic axiom: "homo economicus" - man gets the most he can for the least amount of effort he can put out.

Still, the common wisdom of this era, although the quicker ones are beginning to anticipate its deposing, is that everything should be run like a business, and that includes our educational system and the schools within it.

Note that not only is the educational system to be RUN like a business, but the desired end-product has been redefined to accommodate the requirements of businesses at large. It's now said by all the major figures that the aim of educational reform is to produce workers having the requisite skills to be competitive in the global marketplace.

No! That is a definition of mere training. A real education expands the grasp, illustrates connectedness, and stimulates a lifelong appetite for knowledge and understanding. Without these benefits of a true education, a worker with only the "requisite skills to be competitive in the global marketplace" will live out his or her life as a near robot, unable to contribute as required of a citizen in a participatory democracy. Reminds me of a Woodrow Wilson quote: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." Chilling, but apparently Obama et al are still thinking along those same lines.

Consistent with this narrowing of educational objectives, there are only two subjects looked at during the carnival of high stakes testing, reading and math. Since the fate of a public school, its principal, and its teachers rests entirely on the ability to show continual improvement in these two subjects, science, history, literature, art, and civics are neglected or jettisoned altogether. Thus, children of the lower class (we're getting it down to just two now!) attending public schools must forgo a liberal education. Schools are almost curriculum free now except for two subjects.

NCLB represents just another quixotic idea for changing the system overnight, based on utopian free market ideals. The current incarnation under the Obama Administration is not much different. In the end it's a vapid fad imposed on children and teachers. The ultimate price for this folly will be the under education and lost intellectual potential of countless kids. The major change when the dust settles will be that the public school system will have been destroyed because every charter school formed means a public school closed. This will make some anti-union zealots and free market fundamentalists extremely happy. But that's all it will accomplish.

If the idea was to improve education, smaller classrooms and better teaching methods and materials would have made very good start. Recognize that the greatest impediment to education is popular culture, which denigrates work, lionizes the superficial, destroys attention span, and promotes immediate gratification. Once "Lives of the Rich and Famous" came on TV, it seemed stupid to sweat over algebra anymore.

The irony is that pop culture is the handiwork of marketing and advertising, the spearhead of business, but it is to business which politicians have turned to rescue the educational system. LOL.

Misrepresenting the Polls on Healthcare Reform

Republicans are chanting the public didn't want "Obama-care", implying the majority thought any reform was a bad idea. But in fact, a national majority wanted single payer, a position to the left of anything the Obama Administration seriously considered while the bill was being drafted. So the insinuation that the public stands to the right of Obama, and hence, with Republicans on healthcare reform is another brazen sham from the party whose survival depends entirely on using wedge issues.

The mandate that everyone must purchase health insurance is a direct result of preserving the insurance industry's place in the healthcare delivery system. If a mandate were left out of the legislation, private insurers would face a "death spiral": only the sickest would continue paying premiums, claims costs would soar, in turn forcing insurers to raise premiums, and around and around until the system collapsed.

Therefore, the only alternative to mandating coverage would have been to remove insurance companies from the healthcare equation altogether and go with single payer. Those are the two viable choices. Anything else is specious chatter meant to confuse the issue, and in reality betrays support of a third, inhumane option: leave things as they are and let the poor die in the snow.

Apparently, Congressional Democrats were loathe to antagonize their large donors in the healthcare industry, so we got the present reform package that includes a mandate. Republicans, of course, were and still are in favor of the above third option.

Dear Representative:

I can think of a good reason or two for our military to stay in Afghanistan, but these haven't been offered by government at any point since the initial invasion. Instead, we are told troops stay to fight terrorism. Well, 9-11 was paid for and carried out by Saudis, so let's stop repeating that old bromide, please.

Seems to me it's about the gas pipeline, dominance in the region, protecting energy companies and advancing their interests, and trying to fix it so that in the future China has to come through those companies to put gas in their tank.

The USSR had 500,000 troops there and lost. We have only 100,000 and perhaps another 100K mercenaries. We can't win. I think it's high time to give up our "pipe dream" in Afghanistan. The alternative is to further bankrupt our economy, which brings up the question: is that the real objective?

You didn't get mad when...

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans...oh hell no!

Soon Everywhere will be Detroit

In the post Reagan era jobs were outsourced, unions busted, wages suppressed, and tax revenues reduced by exempting the wealthiest from paying their share. The only thing that kept the economy rolling forward was credit. People were pushed and lured into running up credit card bills and subsequently paying them off with cash from equity loans on their houses. Now, like a dog on a long chain chasing a cat, that economic model has reached its limit, very abruptly.

US businesses made enormous fortunes for stockholders and corporate officers by outsourcing jobs, then selling their foreign produced goods here to the underpaid and underemployed on credit. That game's over now. The wealth of the working (a.k.a. middle) class has been mined out.

Now the political challenge will be to convince the devastated majority that they are solely to blame for their plight. Given the resources and skill of TV and radio to bamboozle, it'll work.

Join Tea Baggers sing in the choir of the Church of Predatory Capitalism

Laissez-faire theory looks great on parchment, but even Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) remonstrated against corporations, warning they would overtake the free market. With corporations unbridled, the thumb of the invisible hand has been crammed into the marketplace's visually imperceptible rectum, as Smith predicted.

As a result, capitalism in practice has come to resemble a Monopoly game: when the game runs to conclusion, there's only one winner and everybody else is cleaned out. Sound familiar? Take a good look at how deregulation has set wealth free to migrate from the working (a.k.a. middle) class to the top 5% in the years zero through twenty-nine AR (Ad Reaganum).

You might not have been aware of this massive migration of money until just recently, because we were all extended copious credit (in lieu of wages) to keep on buying electronic trinkets while our wealth was going out the back door. Between the shiny trinkets and a corporate media that religiously avoided and continues to avoid broadcasting any actual news, we were kept occupied while the goods were loaded on a truck in the alley and carted off.

Nothing we can do about it now but join the Tea Party. They have all the answers. All their answers are contradictory, muddled, mean, fear-driven, nihilistic, and self-defeating, but why bother to pull our thumbs out at this late stage?

Al and Milton v. Adolf and Uncle Joe

Let me get this straight, the guy who more than any other person is directly responsible for the fiscal crisis and wipeout of middle class wealth, Alan Greenpan, is now coming back on a mission to screw the same people out of the promised Social Security stipend in their old age. This guy never stops! Does he know he's a demon?

Honestly, the duo of Milton Friedman and Greenspan rivals that of Hitler and Stalin when it comes to damage done and the suffering inflicted upon millions. That's not a joke, just look at the misery and death wrought by application of Chicago School of Economics principles throughout Central and South America, then look at the devastation to middle (working) class existence and aspiration here.

Utopian idealists, whether devotees of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx, are wagon masters on the trail to hell.

Iraq's Death by Globalization

Shock and Awe; invasion; occupation; birth defect inducing uranium pollution; sectarian violence; ethnic cleansing. All of these have brutalized and drained the Iraqis. What will ultimately subjugate them is none of these, however. What will destroy them is the extreme privatization that has been foisted on them. Globalization has come to Iraq at the end of a gun.

Soon, demonic blessings from the Chicago School of Economics will be seen to have destroyed the people of the US too. The process has already begun and is now quite advanced.

Milton Friedman: Destroyer of Worlds

Republican governors and state attorney generals are going to spend taxpayer's money pursuing a dead end lawsuit against the federal government over healthcare reform legislation. The only point is to make a political statement to satisfy their conservative base. Incredibly, they're doing this during a deep fiscal crisis. Squandering money in this way gives credence to the charge conservatives are achieving their long sought goals of ending social programs and privatizating the commons by making their states destitute.

Raising the Stakes

Conservative members of Congress, not just pundits and former politicians but current officeholders, keep egging on the crazies with inflammatory statements and coded calls to violence. They are doing this because their party is so bereft of ideas it can't appeal to people in a rational way.

It knows it can't compete in the realm of ideas so has reverted to courting nuts with violent tendencies, then using them to intimidate the Democratic opposition. If this continues a Kristallnacht is inevitable. Question is, once it comes will it engender upheavel like the sectarian killing in Iraq, or will the thugs just be allowed to triumph as the Brown Shirts did in Germany?

There is a third possibility, and that is rational people will censor both the frenzied crazies and the craven politicians who cynically stoke their paranoia. These are interesting times.

No Healthcare for You!

Republican politicians talk as if they think there's no reason to alter the existing healthcare system. To them there's nothing wrong at all with parasitic insurance companies controlling access to medical care, boosting profits by denying patients treatment. In fact, the present system with its uncontrolled cost increases, abandonment of the sickest when they're most vulnerable, and inability to provide healthcare to the working poor is a paragon of the free market in their eyes.

Anyone who votes Be-thug-nican and makes less than $150K a year is a complete tool. Everyone else who votes for these asswipes is a sociopath.

Dear Congressman Kucinich (on his support of the healthcare bill)

Appreciate the difficulty, depth, and nuance of your decision. I don't blame you at all. In fact, I see it as consistent with your trademark, relentless drive to get the very best you can for the average person. If you had dug in at this point, it would have been ideologically pure but inexcusably callous with regard to the public interest.

Too bad this is an era in which corporations have a stranglehold on government, but thanks for striving to preserve whatever you can for the benefit of the people.

There are not many like you. Not now, not ever. But there will always be some, because great quality of character is as perennial as the grass.

{Amazing fact: there were probably enough votes in the Senate (52 or more) to pass a public option, but Democratic leadership just didn't want it, so didn't ask for it.}

Save the Commons -They're really all we have.

When are people going to realize that most of the wealth working people have access to is that which is held in common by the public? Privatize everything and education, parks, roads, infrastructure, even public water supply will be taken away from us, having been turned over to private hands and run for the benefit of wealthy owners and corporate shareholders. At some point those of the working class who still tout lower taxes, smaller government, reduction in services, and less regulation will come to the realization they have been carrying water for the wealthy elite all along. Sadly, these dumb clucks, these wal-mart republicans, won't discover which side their bread's buttered on until the bread's long gone.

To: FCC

Look, it comes down to this: free market fundamentalism has had its 15 minutes. Our internet is inferior to that of most other rich nations because we keep passing the ball to corporations which care about the consumer very little, and then only as an afterthought. Please don't let blather from the right dissuade you from protecting and strengthening the country's internet resources. It would be nice to have at least one area of the commons not ravaged by doctrinaire privatization.

Right Wing Bullies Around the World

Recently, Naomi Klein has been slimed by Israel's Reut Institute for being too coddling of Palestinians, too pro peace, and not unwavering enough in her support for all of Israel's policies. This I don't much care for because I regard Ms Klein as an honest intellectual, a keen analyzer of the political and social landscape, and great investigative writer. Above all, I perceive her as being a good person. Since I was a kid, whenever I've seen someone set upon by bullies I have responded reflexively with a counter attack. Can't help it, and today is just another day:

For all of my nearly 60 years there has been almost continuous conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. For the first half of my life I only knew that the world owed European Jews big time for allowing the holocaust to go on once everyone knew what was really happening. Also, I accepted the common wisdom that Palestinians were merely spoilers standing the the way of the world's repaying that debt.

I gradually let go of some of my prejudice against Palestinians, enough to admit they have been very harshly dealt with. I've come to view their mistreatment as being comparable to that of Native Americans by European settlers. Now when I see peace accords unravel I don't automatically blame one side or the other.

I have noticed that lately though, Israel seems to have written off peace, and makes no pretense about wanting it. Along with that, it seems to have taken an extreme "with us or against us" posture that brooks no criticism. Israel has morphed into a high tech security state, and apparently has abandoned any intent of dealing with Palestinians as equals because technology has made that accomodation unnecessary. I suspect Israel is not too shy about applying its technological prowess to pursue its detractors elsewhere, such as here, either.

If you don't accept entirely whatever Israel does nowadays, Israel finds that entirely unacceptable. You'd better watch what you say, because if you don't, Israel wants you to know it'll be watching you. At home.

Big deal. Reut can eat my crusty shorts.

Jim Crow is alive and well in our law enforcement and judicial system. This fact is irrefutable and obvious to everyone. What's more, it is intentional as well as institutional. Many laws are designed to ensnare people of color while leaving others untouched.

The pedigree for these laws reaches back to the Nixon era when right wing conservatives passed laws that punished people of color in order to indulge white working class fear and racism. They thought this would bring in votes, and they were right, sadly. I know this to be true because I'm caucasian and I saw how it worked in my own house growing up.

Let's cut the bull right now and scrap these detestable laws.

Last week Field Marshal von TeaBag was slamming progressives. This week he directly and without reservation equated democracy with Soviet Russia! What's he going to do for a topper next week? Marc Maron put it pretty well when he described Beck as "Rush Limbaugh's foreskin."

Just prior to 9-11 the right wing talk jocks were openly bashing democracy, but backed off afterwards for fear of inviting accusations of being unpatriotic. Eight years later it seems they think it's safe to start shilling for the oligarchy again.

Do You Know Who Your Friends Are?

From Dan Eggen's column in the Washington Post, February 17, 2010: "Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court's Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent "strongly" opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits."

... and, "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republican lawmakers have praised the high court ruling as a victory for free speech, however, and have signaled their intent to oppose any legislation intended to blunt the impact of the court's decision."

Now I ask you, who do you think wants to put your grandchildren in irons?

K2 Hysteria

point #1: law enforcement is worried about K2 (an herbal marijuana substitute that is presently legal) because it's unstudied and therefore may have unknown negative effects on users.

point #2: primarily, people have considered using K2 because, unlike marijuana, it will not result in a failed drug test or arrest.

let's close the loop here: there's a lot known about marijuana, such as it's less addictive than alcohol or cigarettes (both legal), doesn't make young men aggressive and violent, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera; the whole appeal of K2 is that it is legal, versus marijuana, which can result in job loss an/or incarceration.

therefore: decriminalizing marijuana would negate the appeal of this un-researched substitute.

however, that is anathema to politicians who garner votes by pandering to authoritarians and the perennially fear-struck, law enforcement which is addicted to government grants for drug enforcement and proceeds from the sale of property seized in drug cases, and the prison-industrial lobby that has a bottom line interest in keeping as many things in the statutes as possible so as to increase their business volume.

thus, as working people in this country slip further into a permanent state of poverty, we will not only continue to fritter away billions on the failed War on Drugs, but instead expand its scope and spending to encompass yet another target. we all know the cliche about insanity being repetition of the same thing over and over and expecting the result to be different. in this case, the cost of that heedless repetition is helping to accelerate all of us into economic oblivion.

The tea bagger movement is really nothing new. For thirty years there has been a portion of American society willing to pay for its own pony ride to serfdom. I have been vexed to no end at being unable to understand why people of low social and economic stature would take up the causes of the rich when these undercut their own interests and the future of their children.

For a long while I posited they must be really dumb and therefore easily led astray by media shills for the ruling elite. This was never a satisfying explanation though, because some of them appear to have the ability to walk and chew gum for limited distances. What could the reason be for their habitually and gleefully cutting off their noses to spite their own faces?

Then it occurred to me that it's the "Larry Syndrome": Moe slaps Larry, Larry slaps Curly. Moe is analygous to the powerful elite, Larry to their tea bagger sycophants, and Curly to the poor and downtrodden. (Note that Curly occasionally rebels and challenges Moe directly, while Larry seldom if ever steps out of his place.)

These people, either by nature or nurture, have arrived at a defeatist world view that says there will always be abuse from above, and that the only way to salvage any personal redemption is to abuse others in kind whenever the opportunity presents itself. It is this "Kiss-up, kick-down" approach to existence that compels them to accept degradation on the promise they will be able to reign over others at some point in order to feel empowered.

This fits well with the observable attitudes and actions of tea baggers and wal-mart republicans. On the one hand they capitulate perennially to the powerful while simultaneously showing vehement hatred of the powerless. They are the hollow people in the middle.

I intend no offense here to the memory of Larry Fine, who was apparently a gentle soul whose pleasure was going to the track whenever possible and betting on the dogs. My point is that the humor of the Three Stooges springs from tragic faults in human nature, and it goes a long way toward explaining the right wing deviants who are driving our nation into oblivion. These people are just like the rest of us, except they've had honor, integrity, and humanity wrung out of them.

Filthy, Stinking Tea Baggers

Tea baggers are referring to immigrants as "filthy, stinking animals", demonizing workers from Mexico, Central, and South America that our business community has long lured across our border for cheap labor. It is worth noting that the same vitriol has been directed in turn toward Irish, Italians, Blacks, French Canadians, and every group that was exploited for profit but nonetheless excoriated by the profoundly ignorant amoung us.

Our social-economic system is such that at any time in history there have been and will continue to be those brought here for the purpose of driving down wages. At the same time, in the natural distribution of our citizenry there will exist a category of despicable haters, animated colostomy bags, who will heap abuse on them. These abusive fecal bags do this because they overflow with self hatred but nevertheless feel entitled to attack and intimidate others to get relief from their well founded self loathing.

I see no practical way of dealing with these mindless, heartless nuggets of nose flux except to stand in front of them at close range and tell them to STFU!!! We can't afford to let these know-nothings to go on spewing their racist vomit unchallenged.

December Emigration Schedule

Sen. Dodd is repeating the same move Max Baucus made, allowing Republicans to weaken finance reform just as --for no apparent good reason-- Baucus let them dilute healthcare reform.

Does the DSCC have any idea how disappointed and disgusted this has made their base? Man, senate Dems are going to lose so stupendously this November, THEY'LL be thinking about emigrating to Canada. (Bart Stuputz can take over when they're gone. He's a real winner.)

There is a high school in R.I. whose students are extremely poor and many of whose families are transient. These kids are doing poorly overall and have a low graduation rate, although their performance has improved over the last several years. The cause for the students' unsatisfactory academic outcome has been deemed to be unrelated to their existential plight, but rather the fault of the school's faculty. Therefore, the local school board's response has been to announce the firing of every one of the school's staff at the end of this school year. A lot of people think this is a bold, non-nonsense action on the part of the school board.

I don't. I look at it as management by tantrum. There is an intractable problem, so the board chose to get mad and blame the teachers. No thought, just righteous indignation and lashing out at a scapegoat. Too bad for Rhode Island, but apparently too bad for everyone else too, because President Obama's education czar thought this was a good move on the school board's part! both he and Obama are proponents of high stakes testing and private charter schools.

That's terrific. It ensures the further erosion of public education through the continued teaching of a narrowed curriculum, leading to more failed schools which will in turn be replaced by private charter schools. Ultimately, only children of the wealthy will have the benefit of a complete education, while the rest will attend low caliber schools that teach only the limited skills required by low wage employers. Thus, three hundred years of effective public education will have been sacrificed on the altar of free market fundamentalism, and a two class society assured. Thanks Mr. Obama, and a special thanks you Milton Freidman!

It slays me that people can't put themselves in other's shoes. If you have a job, you're in a position to help out someone who doesn't, especially where it concerns healthcare. On the other hand, if your job's in jeopardy, you would thank your lucky stars if there was healthcare available to you after the ax fell. If we as a society can't get past this rotten "I've got mine" philosophy soon, I'm afraid we're going down the drain.

Forget Recovery, We're Headed for the ICU

Current use of the word "recovery" implies the economy eventually will be fully restored, so that working people will again enjoy their previous standard of living. That's not going to happen as long as a very large segment of the population continues to make less than a living wage.

There is no indication that bread winners' making less than $20/hour is even perceived to be a problem by either government or the movers and shakers. However, it's obvious you can't have a consumer-driven economy if too few can afford to buy anything beyond the bare essentials. For decades wages have stagnated or dwindled. The reality is that we have been spending beyond our means.

In lieu of wages, we charged to our credit cards, then payed those off by taking out house equity loans. Thus we were able to forestall coming to grips with the fact we weren't cutting it anymore. That gambit has come to an end with the financial crisis. The crisis merely put an end to what was already an unsustainable practice of borrowing to stay afloat.

In the present political and social environment, there is no will to develop a sustainable economic model based on a living wage, nor will we be able to continue borrowing to keep up our standard of living. Where does that leaves us? As a third world economy without a middle class and no safety net for those in need, of which there will be very many.

The Brawndo* Decision

Five Supreme Court justices have guaranteed corporations the same free speech right as a person and deemed that money is equivalent to speech. Now corporations, with their vast wealth, can pick winners in political contests and swamp public discourse with their preferred point of view. And if an incumbent votes against a corporation's interests at any point, he or she can expect to lose in the next election to a well-funded challenger, hand picked by that corporation.

Since corporations will dictate policy anyway, it really seems unnecessary for elected officials even to show up. It would be more efficient for corporations to send their own people to Washington and the state capitols to sit in for elected representatives. Cut out the middle man. That's how Musillini did things, he sent elected politicians home and gave their seats to corporations.

The Obama years, like the Clinton years, provide only a temporary slowing of the march into fascism.

    _{* from the movie, Idiocracy}

The constant drumbeat in the media at present is that the economy seems to be recovering, except for the lack of jobs. What this translates to is that things are looking up for everyone but those who work for a living! Small comfort then for most of us. However, even the premiss that all that's wrong is a lagging job market is off base. It confuses effect with cause, like saying the only problem with plague is those unsightly buboes.

Working people don't have jobs for the simple reason they have been dealt out of the economy, made redundant. This paring away has been ongoing for several decades, and only a series of bubbles has forestalled our having to confront the truth until now.

Since the creation of real wealth through manufacturing has ceased due to outsourcing, the employment we have been furiously engaged in as of late has been largely a boondoggle. A telling indication of this is the stagnation of wages we've experienced, even while the economy grew, the elite became hugely richer, and supposed productivity doubled or tripled. The unfortunate fact is that we weren't paid much because what we did wasn't essential. For many years we have been effectively on the dole without knowing it, going through the motions. All the while we have been receiving unemployment payouts through the largesse of the Chinese Government.

China has dutifully bought up US Treasury notes which has in turn allowed our financial sector to funnel unemployment payments to us via the bubble scam. This scam is based on pretending some asset or other is worth orders of magnitude more than its actual worth, and then loaning out China's money against the fiction of our asset's worth.

But alas, the scam has run its course. China has wised up and is looking for a way to back away gracefully from being our financial enabler. Nobody else is lining up to underwrite our stealth unemployment system, so make-work jobs will not be forthcoming any time soon. The American Dream has become the American Hallucination. We of the non-investing class have landed back in a position roughly equivalent in political and economic standing to our immigrant great-grandparents.

There are several ways forward from here. For most of us the preferred one would be to restore our manufacturing base, pay workers a LIVING WAGE once again, and ultimately rebuild an equitable society. That would be the best outcome for the majority. It isn't going to happen though, because the wealthy don't want it to happen. Quite the contrary, they consistently have backed policies that led to an extremely unequal distribution of wealth, and further, they followed up by engineering a prolonged reduction of federal receipts, thus bankrupting government. This ensures there will be no institution left standing to attempt redistributing wealth downward. It's a done deal.

The wealthy elite have even taken the extra precautionary step of enlisting angry, muddled, white middle class older people to defend their interests. This melange of racists and fools forms a buffer between the elite and the common people. Unnecessary really, since few of the vast number of people affected have any notion the fait accompli has even taken place, and in any case lack the conviction to respond in any effective way. Multilayered planning and flawless execution have assured success for the wealthy elite and cemented their standing as the de facto government.

What then does the future hold for the mass of working people? More than likely, they who are already the most disposable workers in the first world will become even more overtly disposable. We will be used to control, repress, and jail our own here domestically, and fight in wars of empire elsewhere.

Doubt that? The professions with the largest growth even now are law enforcement, corrections, and the military. We incarcerate more of our own people than any other country on earth, both as a percentage of population and in absolute numbers. The privatization of jails has created a prison-industrial complex whose lobbying guarantees this trend will escalate.

We are the world's largest exporter of weaponry, and our own defense spending is roughly equivalent to that of every other nation on earth combined. We have costly military installations in over 150 foreign countries, but not universal healthcare at home. Given the trend toward authoritarianism at home and militarism overseas, the future bodes the antithesis of peace, liberty, and prosperity for the majority.

Is this the inescapable fate of the American people, to become dehumanized and exploited under control of the wealth aristocracy? Not necessarily. Our government is meddling in a brutal fashion in the Middle East for a reason, and it isn't just to get the oil there. No, the actual reason is more nuanced. The point has been to gain CONTROL of Mideast oil so that China would have to come to our elite to obtain the oil it requires to grow and prosper.

Essentially, the plan was to reclaim our Treasury notes from the Chinese Government by cornering the market on oil and making China pay through the nose for it. The idea was to do to Chine with oil exactly what England had done to it with opium two centuries earlier. The English silver reserve was drained by trade imbalance with China, so England became a drug pusher to snatch it's wealth back. Our elite were planning to do the same via the sale of oil.

That plan seems to have been derailed. China remains our banker, and ultimately may be forced to foreclose in one fashion or another. Given the way our own wealthy elite plan to use us, this may be the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, China may opt to obliterate us if we resist too strongly.

If only we could create a few more jobs that paid crappy wages, everything would be okey-dokey, right?

Stack neither Hero nor Terrorist

Some people are calling Joseph Stack a terrorist, and others a hero. Both groups are attempting to pin a contemporary, narrow label on him to the exclusion of all the facts.

Stack correctly identified the inequity of the tax system insofar as corporations paying progressively less while individuals are forced to bear more and more of the burden. He was an activist in his beliefs, and had he persuaded the government to any degree to reform the system, he would have done us all a service.

However, he fought city hall and lost, which led him to commit suicide. It occurs to me that only an egotist would have expected a different outcome and then been unable to accept the inevitable. Also, his disregard for the lives of others betrayed a deep narcissism. He obviously intended to kill many more people than he succeeded in doing. Stack had a valid beef, suicide was his personal choice, but who was he to take others with him?

Finally, think of that IRS worker he killed and compare that man's plight with Stack's. Stack chose to battle the IRS over a combination of principle and self interest, a fight that was apparently brutal, arduous, and took a great toll. On the other hand, the man on the ground had once slogged through jungle, put his young life on the line for his country, which had a dubious rationale for even placing him in that horrific situation. The man on the ground had experienced his own tribulations at the hands of the government. He however, didn't go out and kill anyone last week merely to trumpet his indignation.

Want a label? We had one we used as kids that fits a narcissistic egotist pretty well: Stack was a DINK.

Hey, we're going to build nuclear plants again! Aside from the fact it's really, really expensive, there's a small problem with the spent fuel. Nuclear waste is to the planet what herpes is to skin: nobody wants it and it never goes away.

def. Dolt: a person who perpetually argues the case for a merciless, winner-take-all society when that person him/herself would be incapable of surviving in such a system based on social Darwinism.

Pigment Paranoia

It was agonizing to watch Haitian people suffer day after day and no help arrive. It's a foregone conclusion that leaving people in the lurch for too long will eventually make them desperate and angry. But still the food and water didn't move. The balking rescuers seemed phobic.

During Katrina's aftermath the media described black people's scavenging as "looting" while white people doing the same thing were said to be merely "foraging". The majority white media and power structure are so uncomfortable with dark skinned people they project the worst possible urges and motives on them. Pigment paranoia. It's great living in a post-racial society!

We got about what we should have expected

If we Lefties look at things objectively, Barach Obama represents an improvement of orders of magnitude over his predecessor, who was an unabashed cheerleader for the monied elite. Why then are we so dismayed over the inarguably rational, measured performance of the able man heading the present administration?

The reason is that we are in denial about the truth of the situation we're in. We have romanticized representative democracy, insisting that we as individuals can still exert control over our own destiny. We refuse to accept the new paradigm: democracy has been supplanted by corporate control of all aspects of life worldwide, and this change is irreversible.

Corporations not only dominate politics and the economy but dictate culture through ownership of media. This extends throughout the planet via globalization. This is the era of High Tech Feudalism. The current president had no role in bringing this about, nor is there anything he or anyone else can do to change direction significantly. Only a violent global uprising could do that, and that is beyond contemplation given the vast power of international corporations to control and punish.

So, when we wind up with "reform" that fetes industries responsible for the healthcare miasma, we must accept that is that best possible outcome under these circumstances. Likewise, garrisoning the planet is unavoidable given the vested interest of private armies, defense contractors, and the paramount needs of energy corporations. Further, now that corporatist judges in the Supreme Court have green-lighted absolute ownership of US elections by international corporations, we must realize that the Obama Administration will in future be looked upon as the dying breath of democratic rule. Corporations will hitherto embody the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government.

Corporations uber alles

In 1886, a clerk slipped wording into a court document that established the rights of a corporation to be the same as a person. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court has affirmed that corporations have the same right as an individual to contribute to political campaigns.

The result of this is as follows: corporations now have all the rights guaranteed an individual in the US Constitution and Bills of Rights; however, in practical terms, an individual in the shadow of a corporation's vast power now has virtually no rights.

This is a triumph of American Corporatism over democracy. In the words of Benito Musollini, "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of the state and corporate power." We're now there, thanks to the judicial activism of corporatist Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy.

Conservative mouthpieces say endlessly that they want to preserve freedom by keeping government small and out of the way of business. Indeed, we have fostered the freedom of big business to operate unhindered ever since Reagan's "Morning in America". That's why the wealth of the nation has concentrated at the very top while the average person is on thin ice financially and hasn't seen a rise in real wages during the entire period. That is why the financial markets have turned into betting parlors that we must bolster every time the bank goes bust. That is why every utility scams its customers and why health insurance is as expensive as monthly rent. Freedom, brought to you by the handmaidens of corporate power, the Republican (and Democrat-Lite) party.

Is this our Three Days of the Condor moment?

Video of interview with flight 253 passenger who tells a different story than what's portrayed in the MSM.

The underpants bomber circumvented security at the Amsterdam airport with the help of a well dressed accomplice. This is according to one of the passengers, a Detroit lawyer. Who might have greased the bomber's way onto the plane? Well, if the bomber had been successful, the right wing would certainly have benefited from the tragedy come November elections. And the accomplice certainly must have either been very persuasive or had a lot of clout to get the bomber on the plane. Who did the well dressed (apparently) Indian man work for? Is life imitating art?

Recall that a certain right wing German political figure during the last century seized absolute power following burning of the Reichstag. It can happen anywhere. It can happen here.

Terror Blame Game

Before 9-11 there was an FBI agent named John O'Neill who pursued Osama bin Laden the way Ahab went after Moby Dick. In October of 2000, he tracked bin Laden to Yemen. But when O'Neil arrived, he ran afoul of Bush's ambassador there, Barbara Bodine. Ultimately, she banned him from Yemen. Frustrated, O'Neill retired shortly thereafter from the FBI and two weeks prior to 9-11 he took a new job. That job was as security chief of the World Trade Towers. He died on 9-11.

The bin Laden family were long time business associates of the Bush family prior to 9-11. Perhaps that might explain why O'Neill ran up against a brick wall in his pursuit of Osama. Later, Bush failed to get Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, apparently by blunder. Subsequently, Bush stated repeatedly, "I'm not really worried about him [Osama] anymore."

So there you have it, The Bush-Cheney administration stymied neutralization of Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11, then failed to execute in capturing or killing him in Afghanistan. Those who criticize President Obama now because of the underpants bomber but said nothing about Bush's bungling are being intellectually dishonest, as usual.

Finally, the al Qaeda who trained the underpants bomber in Yemen may well have been the very same men whom Dick Cheney released from Guantanamo, against the advice of the military. These men were sent to be deprogrammed in Saudi Arabia, but that seems not to have worked so well. So there is plenty of blame to go around. Beside that, shit happens.

big government bad, big business good ?

the republican revolution purported to deliver us from the evil of big government. they delivered in one respect: we no longer have representative government, big or small. government is in fact bigger than ever now, but instead of responding to the will and needs of the majority, it is completely in thrall to big business. corporations pick the candidates via their campaign contributions and astro-turf groups, and then have their lobbyists write legislation for their bought and paid for politicians of both parties to enact into law.

this was an inevitability because a big, complex country with a huge economy requires big government, and removing representative government leaves a vacuum that will always be filled. naturally, the powerful, wealthy elite step in once representative government is disposed of.

now we have a government that has even "privatized" its own functions. half the military in war zones is made up private armies, and even jails are run by corporations. those jails are filling every day with more and more people. we put more of our population behind bars than any other country on earth, and the trend is ever upwards. this makes sense, as the companies running the jails want to increase their volume and so send their lobbiests to instruct representatives to pass longer sentences for more categories of transgression. it's good business. it's the wave of the future.

people at large were sold on the meme of big government being evil on the grounds that government had gone too far. the area in which it had gone to far, spoken in coded phrases, was in enacting civil rights for blacks, and following that, gays. these wedge issues are still being used to align people under the "government's too big" banner. but it should be plain that government will not shrink, and a willful ignorance of that reality will move us more toward complete control by wealthy interests.

unfortunately, there is no indication that we the people have any inkling yet of what's really going on. even those of us on the left are in a snit because obama turned out to be a corporatist. here's a flash: everyone on the dais during the democratic presidential primaries was a corporatist. clinton, biden, obama, they're all corporatists. only kucinich was not, and the corporate media denigrated, ridiculed, and effectively neutralized him by reporting only that he'd seen an unidentified flying object. the msm, run by -and ultimately for the benefit of- large corporations, scrupulously ignored what kucinich had to say. we are on an expressway to corporate tyranny and there are no exits.

this is why healthcare reform was fated to be a windfall for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the very entities that lay at the heart of the present healthcare miasma. a major role of government at this point should be to protect the individaul from corporate power, but instead it contents itself by merely putting a smiley face on corporate totalitarianism.

Reflecting on things W said:

When W "won" re-election in 2004, he crowed he had "political capital" he was going to spend. What he probably meant was that because a near majority of voters had spoken favorably on his behalf, he no longer felt obliged to defer to his uncle, Dick Cheney. This was a proclamation of independence! When W left office, he committed the ultimate defiant act of not pardoning Cheney's Igor, Scooter Libby.

When W said "I don't worry about Osama bin Laden anymore", that "he [Osama] just wasn't a concern", wasn't W telling us that bin Laden was already dead? W is a simple man, so what else could have prompted him to say this?

It actually makes sense that the death of Osama bin Laden would be kept on the down low. If the American people knew he was defunct, they'd be asking, "So why are we still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?" Much easier if they believe the bugbear is still out there. Benazir Bhutto made the remark, "Everybody knows bin Laden is dead." and a week later she was dead too. Did Dick Cheney call up Musharraf and say "Get her off the TV screen"?

Now the administration has committed 100K troops and who knows how may private contractors to fight people in Afghanistan who supposedly perpetrated 9-11. Saudis made up the overwhelming majority of the hijackers and Saudis financed it. Further, the official story is that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind, and if he's dead, there's little reason to occupy Afghanistan -unless it's because of the ever present allure of a gas pipeline from the Caspian states through Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Come meet the new boss, just like the old boss

Senator Ben Nelson, D-Neb., on or about 12-9-9, offered and amendment to ban abortion in the healthcare reform bill. The amendment's language refers to blocking public funding for abortion (which is legal, and therefore should not be interfered with) but it really seeks to eliminate ALL abortion. This is a bill-killer from one of the guys Obama selected to steer healthcare reform in the Senate.

Sure makes you wonder what the President really intended when he chose this atavistic obstructionist to lead the charge for healthcare reform. Obama is either the poorest bargainer in the world, or at some point early on he secretly abandoned real reform.

What's odd is that when Dems were in the minority, Senate Repubs threatened them with the Nuclear Option if they attempted a filibuster, but now Demoflats won't dare turn that option on the Repubs in order to pass real healthcare reform. This brings up the question of whether the majority of Dems actually want real reform or are instead too addicted to contributions from healthcare corporations to be serious about it.

Finally, The Church lobbied hard to get the abortion ban in the bill. (The Church apparently cares less about the 47M people without healthcare -which includes women denied prenatal care- than it does about this single issue.) The point is that directly or indirectly, The Church is spending money exempt from taxes to pay for this lobbying.

The Senate needs to be made more democratic by making it proportional to population -or else abolished.

Requiem for the Great American Middle Class

The soaring ascent of our parents, who were themselves children of the Great Depression, fighters of the Second World War, and participants in the phenomenal economic post war boom, has flattened. More than flattened.The fortunes of their progeny have reversed. Upward mobility has been pinched off for their grandchildren. We baby boomers were raised in an era of a limitless rise toward affluence. Now, most of us are in hawk up to our ears, our jobs are insecure, and if our kids have an education, they lack the earning potential even to pay off their student loans.

How did this happen? Simple. The United States, at the behest of the monied elite, set the stage for buying more from abroad than it made, substituted easy credit for wages, and then just let the reaction proceed. The rich profited on trade and the rest of us took out equity home loans to pay off credit card bills. The rich got their money by mining our wealth, and we now owe more than our assets are worth. We have achieved serfdom in one generation.

To set the plan in motion it was essential to emasculate unions. The unions had allowed ordinary working people to accrue a degree of wealth unprecedented in history. The traditional wealthy, who had been temporarily chastened by New Deal laws and policies, coveted this new working class wealth. So they quite naturally went after the unions FDR has fostered.

Why didn't working people, motivated by self preservation, roar in indignation when the rich went after unions? The answer lies in perversion of the language. The well paid working class began to be called "middle class", which isn't actually true. They were not successful business owners, doctors, or lawyers, but instead well-remuneratd workers. But they let themselves be flattered into believing they were a notch above mere salaried workers. By grace of unions, they were living almost as well as the middle class they were calling themselves, so they bought into the monied elite's crafty deception that they'd "made it" and therefore didn't need unions anymore.

The upshot is the working person has been stripped of any collective bargaining power and is at the mercy of his employer who at any moment might outsource his job. He's a pink slip away from oblivion. But this is still a free country. He can still but a flat screen HDTV on credit, assuming he's not maxed out on his card yet. And his kids? Well, if there are no jobs for them here, they can enlist to be security guards for oil companies in the Mideast. Welcome back to to reality, the operative paradigm that has existed for all of human history with the sole exception of the brief interlude following WWII: serfdom for the masses. And so far our only response has been to go out and trick-or-treat with the teabaggers. We are some dumb mf's.

The Audacity of Dopes

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has been eviscerated. It was meant to strengthen the position of labor by making it easier to form unions. This would have been a good first step toward a more equitable society, the type that existed here after WWII. But that's not the model corporations have chosen, so EFCA is DOA.

Instead of Medicare for All, healthcare reform (HA!) has degenerated into a windfall for insurance companies in which we must all buy private policies at whatever price the companies set, or else face a fine. In addition, the legislation blocks access to women's legal right to abortion. It's clear that here again, corporations have commandeered the process so that they win, working people lose.

We elected a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress, hoping for a change in course from the Repiblican highway to serfdom that we've been on since Reagan started shilling for big business. But what we have revealed is the extent to which government is merely an appendage of corporations.

What are our children to do now? How will they start a family and make their way in life if there are too few jobs and those that there are don't pay a living wage? Well, there is one clear path: join the service and go to whatever war that energy corporations find convenient at the moment to enhance profits.

fool me p.r.n.

when ronald reagan said, "government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem." what was the problem he was referring to? well, ronald reagan's mass appeal was to white working class people who were dissatisfied, and mostly what they were dissatisfied with was the government-backed civil rights movement of the previous decade.

it wasn't just pure racial animosity reagan tapped into, he added a bread and butter dimension to it. he garnished it with the idea that cadillac driving welfare queens were impoverishing working class white people. this was bunkum, of course. the economic downturn being felt at the time stemmed from spiking oil and gas prices, which were driven by the mideast oil cartel. jimmy carter had prescribed alternative energy and conservation to deal with the oil crisis, but that was anathema to big business' aim of increasing profits without consequences.

while reagan's sales pitch was implicitly geared toward the white majority's racism, his real mission was to unfetter corporations, regardless of how he sold it and to whom he had to sell. he was an old hand at shilling for big business. regulation that kept his wealthy benefactors from raking it in with both hands was the actual problem that concerned him, let the rubes think what they might.

so the government stopped doing unnecessary, destructive things like:

1) protecting the environment from corporate polluters

2) upholding labor laws, which undermined unions and caused a stagnation in real wages which has persisted for 30 years

3) overseeing banks, which immediately created the S&L crisis of the 80's and more recently allowed wall street to devolve into a betting parlor, in turn causing the financial crisis that wiped out the value of the working person's main asset, their house

4) regulating credit card lenders, which brings us obscene fees and usury rates of 30 percent

5) enforcing consumer protection laws, with the result that most toys now bought in stores contain lead (same as in the good old days before civil rights!)

7) giving grants to college students, which has left kids with mountainous loans after graduation, and because of the sparsity of well paying jobs, an albatross around their necks for the foreseeable future

8) restricting the number of jobs that can be shipped overseas to low-wage, high-polluting, worker-exploitative areas, which has concomitantly transformed our economy into a non-manufacturing, non-wealth creating bubble machine that will collapse over and over again until the rest of the world just stops lending us money

most of us average people are less well off now than we were when reagan made his quip. worse, our kids have less economic and educational opportunities than we had. oh, the freedom that lack of government interference has brought us! actually, there has been a stupendous increase in freedom in some respects: the unfettered freedom for corporations to fleece us, and freedom for the winners to walk away with the whole pie and not even leave a tip.

yet many middle aged to elderly working people cannot let go of their reagan religion. even though they were duped and their lot is worse now than ever, they still respond to the reagan rhetoric, though it patently works against their own interests. why is that? perhaps they are still responding to the original implicit racist message. certainly, corporate run news media has little incentive to inform them of how they've been made fools of via the wedge issue of race.

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the upheaval caused by abdication of government responsibility has not been confined to things economic, however. perhaps the worst outcome is structural. government functions have been largely privatized, justified by the outlandish premiss that corporations can do things more efficiently than government can, even while building in a profit for those services. in and of itself that has merely an economic effect, but there have been serious social consequences resulting from privatization.

eisenhower warned against the military-idustrial complex, but could he have foreseen the prison-industrial complex that lobbies for longer sentences to increase profit, that gives judges kickbacks to send juveniles away for disproportionately long sentences to their for-profit facilities?

how about the privatization of war? more than half the forces in iraq and afghanistan are private contractors. so what? well, companies like Xe (nee blackwater) are private armies possessing both military might and corporate lobbying power. has any corporation ever tried to put themselves out of business? do they not have an incentive at the very least to protract and expand armed conflict?

blackwater is merely in the business of profiting from war. the oil companies are in a position to demand new ones. they have demanded them, and their demand has been met by our post-reagen, business friendly government.

prior to george w. bush taking office, a committee headed by bush consigliere jim baker declared the necessity of deposing iraq's saddam hussain. the members of that committee were energy companies, and they insisted saddam be ousted because he alternately withheld or dumped his country's crude oil, destabilizing the market (or so they claimed).

this demand came before 9-11, but within hours of the attack, donald rumsfeld was suggesting the us invade iraq, despite the complete absence of evidence at that time of any involvement by iraq. (some bogus evidence would be invented much later.) what a good corporate soldier rumsfeld was! and how well our government has learned to stay out of the way of business!

what will happen once the reaganites have faded away? how will the younger generation, which has far less racial animosity, be manipulated by mass media propaganda and PR to serve the corporate cause? well, what's needed is a new wedge issue. how about rousing the ire of underpaid, underemployed young workers over the burden of caring for all those old farts, yesterday's reaganites? that's a good one. just substitute "social security pirates" for "welfare queens" and strike up the band!

baby boomers better stock up on aricept and viagra now, because there's rough sailing ahead. me, i'm hoarding guinness.

people observed on a fall afternoon (what'll ya have today, the neurosis, the equanimity, or the psychosis?)

i ventured out today, turned the ignition key and drove down the boulevard to the bank, then stopped for coffee and finally at the grocery for pipe tobacco and dog food. on my outing i encountered three women that made an impression. one was harried but ostensibly sane, one was surprisingly engaged, and the third was in the throes of a full blown psychotic episode.

while i was sitting drinking my coffee and reading "c++ for linux" (why?) under an umbrella at starbucks, a short, stocky woman passed behind me on her way in from the parking lot. i felt she passed too close. i wasn't bothered, but i thought it was curious. she milled around a bit a few feet away, they surprisingly, retreated back to her car. was she trying to get my attention? trying to pick me up? (Ha, what a vain jerk i am!)

as she went back toward her car i saw that she was in her twenties, neatly dressed in a narrow pinstriped business jacket. she had medium blond, short hair. i guessed she was taking a break in between appointments. i studied my book a little more, then packed up to go.

as i backed my car out of the space i caught a view of her standing between cars, talking on her cellphone and smoking a cigarette. that explained her movements a few minutes earlier. she wanted to sit down outside and have a cigarette and a cup while she made her calls. unfortunately for her, i was already sitting on the patio. either out of consideration for me or fear of ostracism, she didn't want to bathe me in her smoke. she passed close by me with the probable intention of asking if it was alright if she smoked, but i was (or appeared to be) too engrossed in what i was reading, so she failed to ask. i now wished i had looked up, allowing her to do so.

she appeared mildly stressed but under control. i supposed this was her usual condition, out hustling on her job, going through the motions to earn the rent money. she was young. perhaps there was a child or two in daycare, perhaps not. i silently wished her luck and hoped she found serenity at some point in her day. hoped the excess weight and the cigarettes didn't take their toll too soon on her.

i u-turned on the boulevard back toward home and stopped a the supermarket. there was a lanky woman in her early thirties sitting on the bench outside the entrance, seemingly talking to herself. a middle aged man stood by a few feet away, looking at her with mild alarm. she appeared to be talking to herself, but with hands-free phones, you can't tell the psychotics from the business hustlers and the communication addicts.

even though sitting, she appeared very tall. she looked well kempt. she had on a new red stocking hat with a pompom on top. her hair was straight, medium length and clean. her running shoes were new, and i noticed she had bright white, low topped socks on. if she was nuts, she had enough mental capacity to take care of herself physically. wrongly, i decided that the coherent sounding conversation she was having by herself on the bench was a two way telephone conversation, and ducked into the store.

in the store i spotted a woman with a petite child riding in the shopping cart. the little girl reminded me of my older daughter when she was a toddler. she even had a little red bow in her light brown hair, same as my wife had always put in my girl's. this one was an actual cloth ribbon though, whereas my daughter's had been moulded into the red plastic barrette. when i viewed the toddler from a full-face vantage point, i saw that she had blue eyes rather than deep brown, but the similarity was still strong, and evoked fond feelings.

i picked up dog food and went to the checkout. a somewhat elderly lady ahead of me in line had only a few items and, once she noticed me, offered to let me go ahead with my sack of dog food. i thanked her but declined. i was warmed and reassured that someone, an elderly woman in this case, who might be consumed by her own concerns -justifiably- was in the game enough to consider others, even those of a younger generation. some people just handle it (existence) well. they have enough capacity even when they are old to see the whole picture, to see the other players on the field.

contrast that with people who at every stage of life have tunnel vision, who cannot transcend their narrow, self-concerned perspective. they live in a trench. this elderly woman made me think of my mother. is the difference between the inclusive mind and the cloistered consciousness one of acquired philosophy, or are engaged people just lucky enough to have the capacity to see to the horizon?

the quiet, petite toddler and her mother rolled up behind me at the checkout. the doll-like little girl affected everyone. the cashier's expression changed from tight, veiled hostility to a mona lisa smile. the bagger was affected too. i got my tobacco, paid, and headed out.

the tall lady had left the bench and meandered under the covered walkway to a point midway down the building where there were no doors or windows and no one was passing. there was no question now, even to the most obtuse like myself, that she was in the throes of unsparing psychosis. she was screaming at the bricks in the blank wall. i caught something like, "this is not great britain!" i supposed her rant had something to do with the current public debate about healthcare. her words were fluid and comprehensible. she was highly intelligent, obviously. her intellect was shuffled but keen.

i hoped she would desist before someone freaked out and called the cops, which would only exacerbate her agitation. just let it pass, i thought. and thankfully, it quickly did. people in general do not handle psychosis well. this seems odd to me because the mechanics of psychotic thinking are observable and easily understood. normal thoughts are interspersed with and turned by random thoughts. these are stitched together on the fly by an afflicted mind working with mighty effort. there's nothing mysterious about it. do people freak just because they don't want to deal with it? does this go back to the narrow minded point of view verses a broader perspective?

i imagined going up to the woman and just saying "hello", making no demands on her other than just to put myself there as an alternative to the uncaring bricks. would that have helped? if the rant had continued, would i have stuck around to defend her from the mob? probably not, although now that i've considered it, i have less of an excuse not to next time.

how ironic that this young, highly intelligent woman who was so vulnerable in her condition should be arguing her point to the blank wall that healthcare reform was a socialistic evil. a world in which the hobbled and broaken are compelled to argue for rugged individualism is nuttier that she is.

and while she, a psychotic, screams at the wall, i, a schizoid, merely write on it.

Control Freaks

There are those who attempt to manipulate people for selfish ends. Then there are those who have a deep need always to have the upper hand. The first's motives are rational, if sociopathic. The second type is driven by pathology alone. They have no ultimate goal other than to satisfy their desire to dominate others. They cannot tolerate interaction with an equal. In other words, they are incapable of friendship.

Like paranoid personalities, these inveterate controllers believe they are under siege at all times, but unlike paranoids, they don't suffer emotionally from this belief. Instead, they act preemptively to preclude anyone's ever being in a position to do them harm.

They tend to be authoritarians, allying themselves with the power structure at hand in order to channel that power to their own use. They become the "kiss-up-kick_down" apparatchiks who bring the force of the party or corporation down on their underlings. They dream of someday climbing high enough on the heap to make them unassailable. In all but the rarest circumstances though, their own bosses laugh at them behind their backs, and they don't advance. They spend their careers being willing tools of the first sort of controlling people, the more rational manipulators.

Sometimes, however, they beat the odds. If they prove to have a latent talent for self-serving manipulation in addition to their need to dominate, they can destroy the world. Normally though, these hollow men end up merely screwing things up for the rest of us.

The Cattle Drive

we burn up a lot of gas here in the US, far more on a per capita basis than in any other place. why is that? following WWII, gas was cheap, cars were affordable, and there was a federal program to crisscross the country with inter-states. we were put on wheels via plentiful resources and public policy. so we abandoned our old neighborhoods in the cities and left for the ever expanding suburbs being built over farmland.

people whose front yard in the city, if they had one, may have been a narrow strip between sidewalk and front window now had front lawns bigger than their entire lots before.

because the population density in the suburbs went way down in comparison to cities, neighborhood corner stores there were economically unfeasible. there wasn't enough business to support them. they would have been forbidden anyway because they were not in keeping with the pastoral theme of endless lawns. the days of sending your kid on his bike to get a loaf of bread are long gone. you need to get in the car and drive somewhere to get anything at all.

similarly, you need to drive to deliver your child to baseball practice, because there aren't nearby neighborhood parks in the burbs. instead there are distant, huge sports complexes (if you're lucky). also, unlike the city's small neighborhood school that children walked to, modern elementary schools are enormous, and children must be brought to and from those imposing places by an armada of diesel burning busses.

the same low density that precludes small neighborhood schools, corner stores, and local parks also reduces the possibility for viable public transportation. there are too few potential riders in a given area for it to be practical or economically feasible.

so cars win. it's almost as though cars had a secret plan all along to make themselves indispensable and make any way of living other than having to drive, drive, and drive some more, impossible. the way we live has been shaped by cars, and it seems irreversible.

what can be done about this, assuming we want to do anything? the overriding reaction to the (speculator-driven) gas price spikes of last year seems to be to increase mpg rather than decrease the miles driven. this is the simplest approach, since it involves no change to infrastructure, just tweaking car parts. getting better gas milage would be great, but there are potential gains in quality of life to be realized by making simple changes that would make the car less indispensable. these changes would reduce miles driven, favor public transportation, and increase pedestrian mobility.

for one thing, companies could open satellite offices in empty store space, which would be chosen to decrease the distance their employees have to drive to reach work. this would be practical wherever high bandwidth internet is available, linking the satellite office to a main facility. as a byproduct, this would fill up some of the excess commercial retail space. i actually saw mc donnell douglas do this in st. louis thirty years ago, although for reasons other than reducing traffic.

in order to make public transportation viable in the burbs, subdivisions could allow pedestrian rights of way between them. as it is, most developments restrict their access to one or two entrances to exclude cross traffic. this limits cars to only those headed for a destination within the subdivision. fine, but why not open foot paths interconnecting these cull de sacs to allow pedestrians and bicycles to pass between? that way people could have a short cut to a centralized bus stop. heck, their kids could even ride their bikes to visit friends after school, rather than waiting to be driven the long way around!

these are a couple of simple suggestions. so far though, we act as if we actually enjoy sitting in our cars for two hours a day, and are committed to holding on to the privilege.

Military Blackmail

The leaking of Gen. McChrystal's assessment on Afghanistan has been timed precisely for the maximum effet. It attempts to force Obama to rubber stamp the military's request for escalation or else risk loosing momentum on healthcare reform (such as it is). The timing catches Obama at his most vulnerable point. Good military strategy.

Obama should respond to McChrystal's stated determination to quit if he doesn't get his way by firing him immediately, regardless of how he, Obama, intends ultimately to respond to the request for escalation. That's how Truman dealt with McArthur.

High Noon at the Foxx Assination Network

Stationing gunslingers outside Obama events resembles the fork maneuver in chess: a piece is positioned such that the opponent will loose one of two chessmen on the next move regardless of what he does. In this case, if the authorities grab the gunmen the right wing will respond by screaming their second amendment rights have been violated, and claim that it proves Obama is out to take away their guns.

On the other hand, allowing gun toters to mill outside an event threatens the life of the President. The gunmen are like a group of circling sharks. They are not coming in for the kill yet, but threatening. As their numbers increase, they further divide and dilute the resources of the President's security team, which has no way of knowing which meat puppet might actually step up and pull the trigger. Perhaps none of them will. Perhaps they merely serve as decoys who will create enough of a distraction to allow an undetected assassin to penetrate and execute.

At this time an assassination would likely benefit the right wing. The resulting chaos, shock, and fear would provide an ideal climate for authoritarianism. Just as 9-11 enabled the right wing to follow through on their long desired plan to invade Iraq, the assassination of President Obama would afford them the opportunity to clinch control domestically. This would be especially true if there were widespread civil disorder, i.e. rioting, in the wake of an assassination.

Beck and Limbaugh are busy stoking the flames in advance to prepare for a resurgence of authoritarian control. They are working at goading and motivating would be assassins. There are dozens of death threats directed at Obama every day, but right wing provocateurs are permitted to carry out their dastardly work on the Foxx Assassination Network. What are we supposed to conclude from that?

"first do no harm" should be observed in education

it is widely reported that several states, california for one, use the number of children not reading at their grade level in the lower grades to project the number of jail cells that will be needed in coming decades. startling, but evidently it's proved to be a reliable empirical index for projecting prison population.

does this imply that the inability to master the mechanics of reading is correlated with an innate propensity toward criminal behavior? certainly not. then does poor reading ability in and of itself render someone at such a disadvantage that they later become prone to crime? not reading well is a disadvantage, surely, but there are jobs that don't expressly require a lot of reading. further, these jobs exist in rough proportion to the number of marginally literate readers, so there's no lack of opportunity to live productively, if not highly successfully. what then is the impetus for criminal behavior?

i think that what actually happens to a child struggling unsuccessfully with learning to read is that the child feels shame and ostracism, comes to think of him or herself as stupid, feels overwhelming frustration, eventually (and naturally) responds with anger, then finally becomes aggressively defensive and alienated. the profound damage to the child from years of this is the genesis of what can become a life of lashing out, the life of an angry outsider.

it is a profound tragedy that any small child could be made to feel so badly, that the hurting would be allowed to continue year after year, eventually causing him or her to give up, withdraw, and ultimately become an angry and perhaps even violent adult. when as an adult this child commits an offense and society punishes him or her, it merely perpetuates the pattern begun in third grade.

i'm not offering a solution for the problem of poor reading ability in grade school, just pointing out that presently the cure is worse than the disease. rather than crucifying a child unable to master reading mechanics it would be better to either pour educational resources into overcoming that child's difficulty or just give the child some slack and at least afford them their dignity. i realize the latter harks back to the now discredited idea that a child's self esteem is an important consideration; however, the hardline, hard-assed approach hasn't produced the desired results. the mainstay of that sadistic philosophy, ending social promotion, has never produced anything other than an increase in the dropout rate.

also, we as a country could fund scientific research into discovering the underlying causes of problems in mastering the mechanics of reading so that more effective teaching methods might be developed and applied. as it stands, the NCLB Act insists that the only educational method used to teach a child to read be phonics. this one-size-fits-all approach puts children in a potentially fatal sink or swim situation.

we spend vast sums incarcerating an alarming proportion of our citizenry, a higher percentage than any other country in the world. if the empirical evidence shows that this incarceration rate is related to the inability to master reading in the lower grades, it makes economic sense to remedy the problem there. but of course, the real issue is the damage done to innocent children, the money be damned. although i can't prove it, i strongly suspect that for the price of a discretionary war or two the tragedy of shattered children and wasted lives could be avoided.

The Great American Yard Sale (Nationalize the Banks Today or Mail Them the Keys Tomorrow)

The TBTFs (Too Big To Fail) have received a lot of money from the Treasury, our money. Or at least money that we will be borrowing in the long haul and paying for, with interest, through taxes. This is undeniably painful, but the pain we're perceiving now might be only the sensation of a scalpel's initial cut. The final result may be a cavernous wound through which common and private assets will be extracted with excruciating force by the very TBTFs to which we're presently giving massive sums. Soon we may be going from the catastrophe of a failed financial system to a complete cataclysm in which the wealth of America changes hands overnight.

The logic is simple. The size of the bailout relative to the economy is enormous. Throw in the cost of wars and general military spending, and there isn't enough GDP to pay for the bailout itself, let alone trivialities like infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. So naturally, we will have to borrow money through the TBTFs to compensate for all we've had to fork over to save them.

But at some point the banks and the Federal Reserve will look at the balance sheet of the US and say to government, "You're doing an awful lot of borrowing and you're in over your head. You'll have to exercise some fiscal restraint in order to continue to borrow." And that's where the fun begins.

To see what "exercising fiscal restraint" means, just look at the kind of conditions the IMF and WMF have previously placed on countries throughout South America as a prerequisite to lending them money to keep going. First, government spending for welfare programs were ordered slashed. In our case, deep cuts in Medicare will be insisted on. Medicaid? Forget about it. Then cuts in education. Infrastructure maintenance and repair will be scrubbed for lack of funding.

You get the picture. All programs will be reduced drastically per order of the TBTFs so that we can make payment on our loans. Reduction on spending for public welfare is just one side of the banks' equation of fiscal responsibility, however. The other is selling off assets, and that's where the Great American Yard Sale comes into play.

Government won't have the money to fill potholes on the roads that were built with public money, so the TBTFs will make the point that selling them to private interests (that is, the TBTFs and their closest friends) is a win-win. Highways and bridges will be sold at bargain prices so that government can come up with the loan payments on the bailout. (This will probably happen in California very soon, if it's not already begun.) What other assets can be transferred from the commonwealth to private hands? Well, public water systems can be sold to private interests. This isn't suppositional, it's all been done over and over again in South America.

The already partially privatized prison industry will be fully privatized. You can bet that sentences will be longer then, that trivial of offenses will be dealt with harshly so that incarceration can become an even bigger growth industry in a country which already puts more people into prisons than any other country in the world. And just think of the new potential revenue stream from jailing any and all who object too strenuously to the financial rape of the commonwealth by TBTFs!

Basically, whatever is owned in the public realm will be sold off. The formers owners, the American people, will be forced to pay to use facilities they originally built and paid for. They will pay whatever rate the new private owners set for the water they drink or to ride on the road to work. Colonialism will have come home to roost.

I realize that the above sounds like Valhalla to people who's ideological bent is toward unfettered free market capitalism, even though they won't be recipients of the windfall personally. To them it's the fulfillment of a neoclassical economic dream. However, the enormity of this predatory takeover will be such that at some point even they will wake up to the reality they've been reduced to serfs. Nothing will stand any longer between the TBTFs and their grandmother's heirloom silverware.

Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" has a closing chorus which has been pointedly left out of school songbooks: "In the squares of the city / In the shadow of the steeple / Near the relief office -I see my people / And some are grumblin' / and some are wonderin' / If this land's still made for you and me." Nope, not anymore. If it ever was.

On local TV news I saw a counter demonstrator taunting those who had come to support universal healthcare at the statehouse: a belligerent woman shouted "Get a job!" and "I pay for MY medical insurance, you can pay for yours!" Most people without health insurance are working poor who do not qualify for Medicaid, and I wondered if that harpy really did pay her own premiums, or was her spouse just lucky enough that his employer paid for their family medical. No matter. Fear, greed, hate, and ignorance will block reform again, as it has for the past sixty years in the US.