The problem in the United States
Is that the Government
does not
Fear
the people
Here, for good reason, it’s the other way around
(Cheney, Bush, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld)
Of course the Government talks plenty about what
The “people” want, need, desire
And dream about
But all the talk is eclipsed by the needs and imperatives
Of the Money changers
Who buy access and influence wholesale
“democracy” is never allowed to interfere with
The Business of the ruling class
In paneled rooms with plush carpeting
Where levers are pulled, buttons pushed, nods exchanged
Deals done and documents signed
Money wins and the people lose
Every time
Under the veneer of civility and legality
The smiles and handshakes
it’s grand theft
as blatant as a mugging
The people may get mad but rarely
Do enough of them become angry enough
To march into the streets
Armed with bottles and Molotov cocktails
Rocks and baseball bats
Determined to extract a pound of flesh from
The ruling classes
Intent on demanding their share of the nation’s bounty
The people are easily misled
Pacified
Distracted
Divided
More interested in shopping for stuff they don’t
Need
Hunkering down in front of their HD TV’s
Playing video games
Than in holding the powerful accountable
The people shake their heads with disgust
When they should be shaking their
Fists
With
Rage
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Long Slide into the Pacific
California is about to fall into the sea, sunk by what could be a $20 billion dollar budget shortfall. Our celebrity governor says the people have spoken and it’s time for legislative leaders to buckle down, put partisanship aside, and make difficult choices sure to piss off important constituents.
News flash to the Terminator: It’s long past time for the children who run Sacramento to pull together.
Arnold claims a mandate based on the results of Tuesday’s special election, when five ballot measures crafted during back room negotiations with Democratic and Republican party leaders bit the dust. Arnold says the people are angry, but that’s only part of the tale. As expected, voters stayed away from the polls in droves, driven less by anger and more by confusion about what the propositions were intended to accomplish. When people are unsure or confused, they will not act.
California’s voters are weary of elections, of mind-numbing ballot propositions that promise something for nothing, of endless legislative gridlock, and budgets held hostage while politicians play fiscal roulette and flesh and blood people suffer.
In short, the Great State of California is so fucked up that only a major overhaul can save it. The Federal government is busy handing out money to Wall Street criminals, keeping insolvent banks on life support, propping up General Motors -- and yet the Feds, so eager to make huge bets with taxpayer money, want nothing to do with California’s fiscal woes. If the Feds bail California out, or so the conventional wisdom goes, it could set an unfortunate precedent. Schwarzenegger went to Washington with hand outstretched and came back without the loan guarantees he’d hoped to wheedle from the Obama Administration.
The entire budget fiasco can’t be dropped on Arnold’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, but let’s be honest: Schwarzenegger’s brand of leadership has made a bad situation worse. Schwarzenegger swooped into Sacramento with big promises about blowing up the boxes, trimming waste, rooting out fraud and abuse, and cracking the whip on the backsides of do-nothing legislators. None of it has come to pass. The state is worse off now than it was when Gray Davis held the wheel. Go figure.
I never understood how Schwarzenegger got elected in the first place. Yes, his opponent in the recall election, Cruz Bustamante, was a political hack with all the charisma of a tortoise shot up with horse tranquilizers. But why did the good people of California think Schwarzenegger had solutions to our state’s fundamental problems? Probably for the same reason they expect top-notch schools, roads, bridges, freeways, prisons, police and fire protection, clean parks and safe beaches without having to sacrifice any cash to pay for it. When it comes to public services, the people of this state are infantile: they want the best of everything, but only if it comes on the cheap. It’s the Wal-Mart mentality run amok.
Big cuts in public education and other services are coming. The state can’t borrow its way out of the ditch this time. The budget razor will slice clean to the bone and on to the marrow and the blood will run like a river through the capitol rotunda, down the front steps and all over the lawn.
What to do? First, voters must grow up and shake off the silly notion that taxation is inherently bad. Second, term limits for legislators must go. Third, toss the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or tax increases. Fourth, haul California’s most sacred cow, Prop 13, to the killing floor and slit its throat.
Chances of any of that happening are as likely as Congress passing legislation to create a single-payer health care system. The status quo is as deeply entrenched in Sacramento as it is in Washington D.C.
Let the slide into the Pacific begin.
News flash to the Terminator: It’s long past time for the children who run Sacramento to pull together.
Arnold claims a mandate based on the results of Tuesday’s special election, when five ballot measures crafted during back room negotiations with Democratic and Republican party leaders bit the dust. Arnold says the people are angry, but that’s only part of the tale. As expected, voters stayed away from the polls in droves, driven less by anger and more by confusion about what the propositions were intended to accomplish. When people are unsure or confused, they will not act.
California’s voters are weary of elections, of mind-numbing ballot propositions that promise something for nothing, of endless legislative gridlock, and budgets held hostage while politicians play fiscal roulette and flesh and blood people suffer.
In short, the Great State of California is so fucked up that only a major overhaul can save it. The Federal government is busy handing out money to Wall Street criminals, keeping insolvent banks on life support, propping up General Motors -- and yet the Feds, so eager to make huge bets with taxpayer money, want nothing to do with California’s fiscal woes. If the Feds bail California out, or so the conventional wisdom goes, it could set an unfortunate precedent. Schwarzenegger went to Washington with hand outstretched and came back without the loan guarantees he’d hoped to wheedle from the Obama Administration.
The entire budget fiasco can’t be dropped on Arnold’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, but let’s be honest: Schwarzenegger’s brand of leadership has made a bad situation worse. Schwarzenegger swooped into Sacramento with big promises about blowing up the boxes, trimming waste, rooting out fraud and abuse, and cracking the whip on the backsides of do-nothing legislators. None of it has come to pass. The state is worse off now than it was when Gray Davis held the wheel. Go figure.
I never understood how Schwarzenegger got elected in the first place. Yes, his opponent in the recall election, Cruz Bustamante, was a political hack with all the charisma of a tortoise shot up with horse tranquilizers. But why did the good people of California think Schwarzenegger had solutions to our state’s fundamental problems? Probably for the same reason they expect top-notch schools, roads, bridges, freeways, prisons, police and fire protection, clean parks and safe beaches without having to sacrifice any cash to pay for it. When it comes to public services, the people of this state are infantile: they want the best of everything, but only if it comes on the cheap. It’s the Wal-Mart mentality run amok.
Big cuts in public education and other services are coming. The state can’t borrow its way out of the ditch this time. The budget razor will slice clean to the bone and on to the marrow and the blood will run like a river through the capitol rotunda, down the front steps and all over the lawn.
What to do? First, voters must grow up and shake off the silly notion that taxation is inherently bad. Second, term limits for legislators must go. Third, toss the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or tax increases. Fourth, haul California’s most sacred cow, Prop 13, to the killing floor and slit its throat.
Chances of any of that happening are as likely as Congress passing legislation to create a single-payer health care system. The status quo is as deeply entrenched in Sacramento as it is in Washington D.C.
Let the slide into the Pacific begin.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
POEM - Inferno
An unseasonably hot day in May
Errant spark from a power tool
Wind from the devil’s forge
Another fire in the tinderbox hills
Above Santa Barbara
Where the brush is dry
the humidity low
We’ve been here before
But every fire’s different
Like women and snowflakes
Every fire brings its own will to bear
Fire in the mansion
Fire in the barn
Fire in the oak grove
Fire in the eucalyptus
Fire in the neighborhood of million
dollar homes
Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces
Evacuation warnings
News bulletins
Helicopters in the sky
Firefighters on the lines
When the reverse 911 call comes
Play it safe
Pack the cars
With photo albums and children’s drawings
Jewelry and a box of love letters
Things that cannot be replaced
Leave the rest behind
Close the windows
Lock the doors
Shut the gas off
Flee through the smoke-filled night
This isn’t Lebanon or Gaza City
It just feels like war
Like the end of the world is waiting around the corner
Errant spark from a power tool
Wind from the devil’s forge
Another fire in the tinderbox hills
Above Santa Barbara
Where the brush is dry
the humidity low
We’ve been here before
But every fire’s different
Like women and snowflakes
Every fire brings its own will to bear
Fire in the mansion
Fire in the barn
Fire in the oak grove
Fire in the eucalyptus
Fire in the neighborhood of million
dollar homes
Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces
Evacuation warnings
News bulletins
Helicopters in the sky
Firefighters on the lines
When the reverse 911 call comes
Play it safe
Pack the cars
With photo albums and children’s drawings
Jewelry and a box of love letters
Things that cannot be replaced
Leave the rest behind
Close the windows
Lock the doors
Shut the gas off
Flee through the smoke-filled night
This isn’t Lebanon or Gaza City
It just feels like war
Like the end of the world is waiting around the corner
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Dick Cheney Meets the Press
Dick Cheney scares the daylights out of most people, particularly the flunkies who ride herd on guests for NBC’s Meet the Press. The staff is used to dealing with ego-maniacal opinion makers, notorious skirt chasers like Bill Clinton, liars of all stripes, and John McCain, whose mercurial outbursts are legend, but when it comes to inspiring naked Fear, no man in America can compete with Dick Cheney.
Cheney is Count Dracula, Darth Vader, the creature from Alien and Freddy Kruger rolled into one imposing package. When Cheney enters the Green Room all conversation stops, the coffee pot flickers on and off, the bagels turn ice cold and the cream cheese melts. The only person who dares look Cheney in the eye is Paul, the Dominican guy who runs the pantry. Paul eats raw garlic for breakfast and wears a necklace of rooster talons, blessed by the most powerful witch in the entire Dominican. Paul thinks that Cheney looks like every old, uptight and constipated white guy he’s ever seen.
The Interview with David Gregory
DG: With us today on Meet the Press is former Vice President Dick Cheney. May I call you Dick?
DC: Call me Mr. Cheney or Mr. Vice President. If you call me Dick I’ll sever your scrotum sack from your body and wrap it around your neck.
DG: Fair enough. Mr. Cheney, you’ve been a vocal critic of the Obama Administration when it comes to national security and what are now called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, such as the type used on Al Qaeda members.
DC: (Snarling) Obama’s a pansy. The United States is in danger from extremist elements. I see no sense in coddling these blood-thirsty people. If we have to keep some rabid rag-head awake for three weeks so he’ll tell us what we need to know, so what? The security of the American people supersedes all other considerations. Our support of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques saved hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives, and in my book, American lives are the only lives that matter.
DG: What do you base that figure on?
DC: (Staring coldly) I base it on the fact that I know things that you don’t.
DG: President Obama says that compromising our values and respect for the rule of law makes us less safe in the long run.
DC: I disagree.
DG: Would you care to expand on that?
DC: Do I look like I do?
DG: Is water-boarding torture?
DC: No. Anybody who says the opposite is a spineless wimp. I’d dunk the Pope to prevent another 9/11.
DG: You’d water-board the Pope?
DC: Without a moment’s hesitation. I’d strip him naked, throw him in a cage with starving rats, and if that failed, give him the H2O.
DG: Let me ask you a hypothetical question: if Rush Limbaugh were suspected of being a terrorist, would you water-board him?
DC: No. Limbaugh’s a patriot and a great American. He would never do anything to harm the United States of America. I wish I could say the same about President Obama. Maybe we should subject the President to water-boarding, eh? He could use some toughening up. The man doesn’t understand the realities of this hard, brutal world. No matter what the United States does, it’s always justified and always morally and ethically proper. Anybody who claims otherwise should move to Cuba.
DG: On a lighter note, have you spoken with President Bush lately?
DC: Why would I? I rarely spoke to him when I was running the country.
Cheney is Count Dracula, Darth Vader, the creature from Alien and Freddy Kruger rolled into one imposing package. When Cheney enters the Green Room all conversation stops, the coffee pot flickers on and off, the bagels turn ice cold and the cream cheese melts. The only person who dares look Cheney in the eye is Paul, the Dominican guy who runs the pantry. Paul eats raw garlic for breakfast and wears a necklace of rooster talons, blessed by the most powerful witch in the entire Dominican. Paul thinks that Cheney looks like every old, uptight and constipated white guy he’s ever seen.
The Interview with David Gregory
DG: With us today on Meet the Press is former Vice President Dick Cheney. May I call you Dick?
DC: Call me Mr. Cheney or Mr. Vice President. If you call me Dick I’ll sever your scrotum sack from your body and wrap it around your neck.
DG: Fair enough. Mr. Cheney, you’ve been a vocal critic of the Obama Administration when it comes to national security and what are now called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, such as the type used on Al Qaeda members.
DC: (Snarling) Obama’s a pansy. The United States is in danger from extremist elements. I see no sense in coddling these blood-thirsty people. If we have to keep some rabid rag-head awake for three weeks so he’ll tell us what we need to know, so what? The security of the American people supersedes all other considerations. Our support of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques saved hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives, and in my book, American lives are the only lives that matter.
DG: What do you base that figure on?
DC: (Staring coldly) I base it on the fact that I know things that you don’t.
DG: President Obama says that compromising our values and respect for the rule of law makes us less safe in the long run.
DC: I disagree.
DG: Would you care to expand on that?
DC: Do I look like I do?
DG: Is water-boarding torture?
DC: No. Anybody who says the opposite is a spineless wimp. I’d dunk the Pope to prevent another 9/11.
DG: You’d water-board the Pope?
DC: Without a moment’s hesitation. I’d strip him naked, throw him in a cage with starving rats, and if that failed, give him the H2O.
DG: Let me ask you a hypothetical question: if Rush Limbaugh were suspected of being a terrorist, would you water-board him?
DC: No. Limbaugh’s a patriot and a great American. He would never do anything to harm the United States of America. I wish I could say the same about President Obama. Maybe we should subject the President to water-boarding, eh? He could use some toughening up. The man doesn’t understand the realities of this hard, brutal world. No matter what the United States does, it’s always justified and always morally and ethically proper. Anybody who claims otherwise should move to Cuba.
DG: On a lighter note, have you spoken with President Bush lately?
DC: Why would I? I rarely spoke to him when I was running the country.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Wimps and Pansies
Looking more like a weathered toad than ever, Newt Gingrich keeps popping up on the Tube to speak for the Republican Party. Why Newt is the networks’ go-to Conservative is beyond me. Newt had his chance to fashion the GOP in his own bloated image and bombed. To be fair to old Newt however, I don’t understand why James Carville turns up regularly on Good Morning America, since Carville hasn’t been associated with a winning political campaign in years. I guess when it comes to filling Tube time, name recognition and availability count more than recent accomplishments.
The Republican Party is sucking the tailpipe of political failure. Senator Arlen Specter saw the writing on the levy wall and leapt to the other side, and ever since his former colleagues have cried “foul” and “danger” and “socialism is here.” The Republicans are writhing about like a headless gopher snake, fresh out of ideas, reduced to whining about “one-party” rule and the “expansion” of government. Unable to grasp the grim reality wrought by their own excesses, the Republicans sing their discredited hymn about small government and low taxes to a dwindling audience of true believers.
It wasn’t that long ago that Karl Rove was hailed as a genius, and why not? Back in 2000, the Conservative wing of the Republican Party had eclipsed every moderate influence in the GOP and controlled the White House, Congress, and key positions in the Judiciary. Dick Cheney ridiculed Democrats as pansies and appeasers; Tom DeLay ate Democrats for breakfast; even a weenie like Dennis Hastert gave Democrats the bum’s rush. As frightening as the possibility was, Rove’s vision of a permanent Republican majority appeared plausible.
The funny thing is that I don’t remember many Republicans warning about the dangers of one-party rule when their solitary hand held the tiller. And there’s the rub. Now that the leather loafer is on the other foot, the Republicans are beside themselves with worry about the future of our dear Republic. The fact that the Democrats might have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate to go with their majority in the House has Rush Limbaugh jonesing for Oxycontin, Sean Hannity dreaming of the Apocalypse, and Glenn Beck pissing down his own leg.
All the Big Three of the Wacky Right can do is make wild claims about the imminent socialist takeover led by President Obama (reality: Obama is no socialist); the imminent loss of the sacred right to bear automatic weapons; and the imminent collapse of America as a Christian nation (reality: We’re not all that Christian). According to the fear mongers from Fox News, Obama is going to do all that, and much more.
The Republicans talk about strength and power and self-reliance and the sanctity of individual liberty, but when it comes right down to it most Republicans are wimps. The GOP is out of intellectual and moral fuel and Republicans know it. All the GOP can do is hope the Democrats OD on hubris-flavored KoolAid and screw up as monumentally as the Republicans did when they had a monopoly on political power.
The Republican Party is sucking the tailpipe of political failure. Senator Arlen Specter saw the writing on the levy wall and leapt to the other side, and ever since his former colleagues have cried “foul” and “danger” and “socialism is here.” The Republicans are writhing about like a headless gopher snake, fresh out of ideas, reduced to whining about “one-party” rule and the “expansion” of government. Unable to grasp the grim reality wrought by their own excesses, the Republicans sing their discredited hymn about small government and low taxes to a dwindling audience of true believers.
It wasn’t that long ago that Karl Rove was hailed as a genius, and why not? Back in 2000, the Conservative wing of the Republican Party had eclipsed every moderate influence in the GOP and controlled the White House, Congress, and key positions in the Judiciary. Dick Cheney ridiculed Democrats as pansies and appeasers; Tom DeLay ate Democrats for breakfast; even a weenie like Dennis Hastert gave Democrats the bum’s rush. As frightening as the possibility was, Rove’s vision of a permanent Republican majority appeared plausible.
The funny thing is that I don’t remember many Republicans warning about the dangers of one-party rule when their solitary hand held the tiller. And there’s the rub. Now that the leather loafer is on the other foot, the Republicans are beside themselves with worry about the future of our dear Republic. The fact that the Democrats might have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate to go with their majority in the House has Rush Limbaugh jonesing for Oxycontin, Sean Hannity dreaming of the Apocalypse, and Glenn Beck pissing down his own leg.
All the Big Three of the Wacky Right can do is make wild claims about the imminent socialist takeover led by President Obama (reality: Obama is no socialist); the imminent loss of the sacred right to bear automatic weapons; and the imminent collapse of America as a Christian nation (reality: We’re not all that Christian). According to the fear mongers from Fox News, Obama is going to do all that, and much more.
The Republicans talk about strength and power and self-reliance and the sanctity of individual liberty, but when it comes right down to it most Republicans are wimps. The GOP is out of intellectual and moral fuel and Republicans know it. All the GOP can do is hope the Democrats OD on hubris-flavored KoolAid and screw up as monumentally as the Republicans did when they had a monopoly on political power.
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