Those of us who knew a twisted lie was coming when George W. Bush first linked Iraq with 9/11, those of us who marched in the streets to protest the mindless run-up to the Invasion and then the Occupation, and those of us who felt a glimmer of hope last November when the Democrats regained control of Congress are bitterly disappointed today.
The Democrats became spineless wimps again, and instead of standing on principle they adopted convoluted justifications for why many of them voted to authorize more of our tax dollars for Bush’s Iraq misadventure. So much for Democracy. The people spoke loud and clear and our elected representatives blew us off. Again. Business as usual in Washington.
As the days and months of the Bush Reign of Error roll on, the words of old Bob Dylan ring clearer and truer: “People are crazy and times are strange.” How else can a thinking person explain this cursed era?
While Bush and his cronies lay waste to Iraq, sentence more Americans and countless Iraqis to death or injury, add to the considerable hatred that many Muslims feel toward the United States, plunge our Treasury into massive debt, transfer even more wealth to the wealthiest citizens, deny scientific knowledge and ridicule rational inquiry, prize ideological purity and personal loyalty above ethics and competence (Alberto Gonzalez), and ignore the plight of the poor and the struggles of the shrinking middle class, while all this goes on -- and on -- those of us who are awake and grasp the scale of the catastrophe that Bush and his posse have visited on this nation, can only wonder why more people aren’t as pissed off and disgusted as we are.
Is the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans rebuilt and thriving, has all the dirt and debris been removed, are businesses open for business, are flowers blooming in windowsill planters, and have all the displaced people returned to continue their lives as they were before Katrina hit and our country failed them? Must be, because the mainstream media has stopped reporting on the great Gulf Coast rebuilding project. Given the choice between reporting on Katrina’s displaced and Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic life and death, any media exec worth his stock options will choose Anna Nicole every time. Or Paris Hilton. Or Lindsay Lohan. Or Dancing with the Stars. Or American Idol.
Our capacity for political and social policy discourse is so degraded that we can’t even have a rational, fact-based discussion about any serious topic. If it isn’t entertaining we can’t be bothered.
For example, while most Americans struggle to make short ends meet split ends on stagnant wages earned at mindless jobs, the media reports that interest rates are low and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is robust – as if those measures mean a damn thing to the average wage slave American. Interest rates and the migrations of the stock market mean something only to those who own property or stocks. For the beleaguered working class struggling to stay even, it’s just more American myth being shoved down our throats.
Perhaps George W. Bush, reformed party boy and habitual screw-up, really believes that he is a holy warrior for Christ, and that all the misery he has created in this country and the world is part of God’s master plan to bring about a Christian paradise on Earth.
This is a desperate, but not necessarily hopeless, time in the history of this nation. As Dr. Martin Luther King said many years ago, “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them.”
When shall we begin to overcome?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Cheapskate Society
My son’s Thursday folder from school contained the usual announcements as well as the usual request for money; my daughter’s Thursday folder, from a different school, implored parents to buy $25 per person tickets for an upcoming silent auction, the purpose of which is to raise money for the school.
It’s a rare week that passes without a plea for money, pencils, paper, tissue, paper towels or art supplies from our public schools. Along with mastering the state-directed curriculum, standardized testing, Federal, state and local funding requirements and restrictions, the latest pedagogical techniques, school principals must also master Fundraising 101. Average fundraisers get the basics; extraordinary fundraisers get new science wings, computers, digital projectors and other high-tech gadgetry, out-of-town field trips, guest speakers and so on.
The State of California spends in the neighborhood of forty percent of its budget on K-12 education, or roughly $60 billion, and it’s nowhere near enough. You’d think that public schools in posh areas like Santa Barbara would be awash in cash from property taxes, but it’s not the case. Instead, the public schools hold bake sales and rummage sales, jog-a-thons, silent auctions, Bingo nights, on and on endlessly throughout the year.
What’s going on here? Is this the logical legacy of Proposition 13, the 1978 voter referendum that slapped a one percent cap on property taxes and effectively cut revenues for local governments and schools? Or is this part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution, which, coming hard on the heels of Prop 13 and Jimmy Carter’s impotent reign, declared government the problem and the marketplace the solution? Reagan believed that no government entity (including public education) could function as efficiently as a private, for-profit one. In Reagan parlance: government robbed and the market liberated.
It was an effective narrative and Reagan was an unparalleled messenger. With a prepared script and a patriotic, American Pie backdrop, Ronald Reagan recited his lines better than any American president before or since. The public bought Reagan’s message and government at every level began to wither. The Conservative assault on the middle-class, and the upward transfer of wealth, had begun. The American Left and the Left leaning wing of the Democratic Party was bereft of ideas and could come up with no narrative to defend its values against the onslaught. Economic justice, civil rights, equal opportunity for all – down the toilet. It was Morning in America. The Dems offered Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and watched them get crushed. It was an age of corporate efficiency, massive downsizing, tax cuts for Big Business, Small Business, and the Wealthy; personal greed was canonized and shared sacrifice was ridiculed. The individual, mythic American, left to his own drive and initiative, unfettered by government interference and regulation, beholden to no one but himself, became King. Government, with its power to equalize and balance, was shoved out of the way, knocked to the turf, trampled. Reagan and his acolytes made it clear that they meant to eradicate every last vestige of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society; they knew it would take time, a few decades at least, but they organized for the long haul.
And make no mistake, the Conservatives organized the game brilliantly, culminating in the reign of Bush II, where for a time the GOP controlled all three branches of government. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the “marketplace” genie that Reagan let out of the bottle, and with a big assist from the corporate-controlled Congress, the GOP’s supporters and allies had taken ownership of the mainstream mass media, which enabled the Conservative side of the GOP to shape and promote its message, stifle inquiry, and ignore inconvenient subjects such as the growing divide between wealthy and poor, the demise of the middle-class, environmental degradation, and the millions of citizens without access to affordable health care.
Connect the dots. Reagan declared government bad and the market good. The surest way to make government institutions inefficient, ineffective and irrelevant is to take away their funding by slashing taxes. And once you get started, why stop? Why not “starve the beast,” as conservative icon Grover Norquist famously remarked, until it croaks? Pour billions into national and homeland (wasn’t the term “homeland” frequently used in Nazi Germany?) security and let the rest ride. And even as tax rates are being cut, continue the media drumbeat for more tax “reform.”
Since Reagan, politicians of every stripe know that the surest way to commit political hari-kari is to call for new or increased taxes. Give the Conservative movement credit for taking that option off the table, making it completely taboo.
But we still have government and citizens (even wealthy ones) who need government services, like fire and police protection, courts, roads, bridges, highways, schools, and so on. How do we pay for our common needs when for nearly thirty years we’ve been conditioned to believe that we have no common needs and that taxation is theft? Sleight of hand accounting gimmicks, state-sanctioned gambling, pension fund raids, user fees – anything without resorting to the most direct and efficient solution -- raising taxes to invest in the programs and services society needs to remain decent and humane.
Perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps it’s beginning to dawn on citizens that we’ve been bamboozled, played for fools by Conservatives and their policies. The wealthy can only isolate themselves from the great unwashed to a degree, but the wealthy must still move through society, drive the roads and highways, drink the water, breathe the air.
Until we come to our senses and rewrite the rules of the dead-end game we’re playing, my children will continue to come home from school with pleas for money, crayons, paper, and almost everything else students need to receive a basic American education.
It’s a rare week that passes without a plea for money, pencils, paper, tissue, paper towels or art supplies from our public schools. Along with mastering the state-directed curriculum, standardized testing, Federal, state and local funding requirements and restrictions, the latest pedagogical techniques, school principals must also master Fundraising 101. Average fundraisers get the basics; extraordinary fundraisers get new science wings, computers, digital projectors and other high-tech gadgetry, out-of-town field trips, guest speakers and so on.
The State of California spends in the neighborhood of forty percent of its budget on K-12 education, or roughly $60 billion, and it’s nowhere near enough. You’d think that public schools in posh areas like Santa Barbara would be awash in cash from property taxes, but it’s not the case. Instead, the public schools hold bake sales and rummage sales, jog-a-thons, silent auctions, Bingo nights, on and on endlessly throughout the year.
What’s going on here? Is this the logical legacy of Proposition 13, the 1978 voter referendum that slapped a one percent cap on property taxes and effectively cut revenues for local governments and schools? Or is this part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution, which, coming hard on the heels of Prop 13 and Jimmy Carter’s impotent reign, declared government the problem and the marketplace the solution? Reagan believed that no government entity (including public education) could function as efficiently as a private, for-profit one. In Reagan parlance: government robbed and the market liberated.
It was an effective narrative and Reagan was an unparalleled messenger. With a prepared script and a patriotic, American Pie backdrop, Ronald Reagan recited his lines better than any American president before or since. The public bought Reagan’s message and government at every level began to wither. The Conservative assault on the middle-class, and the upward transfer of wealth, had begun. The American Left and the Left leaning wing of the Democratic Party was bereft of ideas and could come up with no narrative to defend its values against the onslaught. Economic justice, civil rights, equal opportunity for all – down the toilet. It was Morning in America. The Dems offered Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and watched them get crushed. It was an age of corporate efficiency, massive downsizing, tax cuts for Big Business, Small Business, and the Wealthy; personal greed was canonized and shared sacrifice was ridiculed. The individual, mythic American, left to his own drive and initiative, unfettered by government interference and regulation, beholden to no one but himself, became King. Government, with its power to equalize and balance, was shoved out of the way, knocked to the turf, trampled. Reagan and his acolytes made it clear that they meant to eradicate every last vestige of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society; they knew it would take time, a few decades at least, but they organized for the long haul.
And make no mistake, the Conservatives organized the game brilliantly, culminating in the reign of Bush II, where for a time the GOP controlled all three branches of government. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the “marketplace” genie that Reagan let out of the bottle, and with a big assist from the corporate-controlled Congress, the GOP’s supporters and allies had taken ownership of the mainstream mass media, which enabled the Conservative side of the GOP to shape and promote its message, stifle inquiry, and ignore inconvenient subjects such as the growing divide between wealthy and poor, the demise of the middle-class, environmental degradation, and the millions of citizens without access to affordable health care.
Connect the dots. Reagan declared government bad and the market good. The surest way to make government institutions inefficient, ineffective and irrelevant is to take away their funding by slashing taxes. And once you get started, why stop? Why not “starve the beast,” as conservative icon Grover Norquist famously remarked, until it croaks? Pour billions into national and homeland (wasn’t the term “homeland” frequently used in Nazi Germany?) security and let the rest ride. And even as tax rates are being cut, continue the media drumbeat for more tax “reform.”
Since Reagan, politicians of every stripe know that the surest way to commit political hari-kari is to call for new or increased taxes. Give the Conservative movement credit for taking that option off the table, making it completely taboo.
But we still have government and citizens (even wealthy ones) who need government services, like fire and police protection, courts, roads, bridges, highways, schools, and so on. How do we pay for our common needs when for nearly thirty years we’ve been conditioned to believe that we have no common needs and that taxation is theft? Sleight of hand accounting gimmicks, state-sanctioned gambling, pension fund raids, user fees – anything without resorting to the most direct and efficient solution -- raising taxes to invest in the programs and services society needs to remain decent and humane.
Perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps it’s beginning to dawn on citizens that we’ve been bamboozled, played for fools by Conservatives and their policies. The wealthy can only isolate themselves from the great unwashed to a degree, but the wealthy must still move through society, drive the roads and highways, drink the water, breathe the air.
Until we come to our senses and rewrite the rules of the dead-end game we’re playing, my children will continue to come home from school with pleas for money, crayons, paper, and almost everything else students need to receive a basic American education.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
POEM - Sub-Prime
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card to run to the max;
Cancel my health insurance, dissolve my pension, slash my hourly
wage; ship my job to Bangalore;
The more we owe the more the banks are willing to give,
it’s good business – for them;
We chase middle-class illusions and leave
the tab for our children;
Anyone with eyes can see the big hurt coming,
the bills coming due,
the millions who bought the fantasy of spend without end
will feel the pain first;
but no one is immune –
how can we sustain a consumer economy if consumers
can’t afford to consume?
We share the blame -- you, me, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, even old John Doe --
complicit in our own indentured servitude,
MIA and ignorant of history, battles and blood spilled;
what became of our willingness to take to the streets and stand for
justice?
have we forgotten how to say NO or that to receive
a fair share of the harvest we must demand it?;
Shame on us for allowing them to silence our collective voice,
revoke our citizenship, marginalize our American concerns;
We’ve been weaned on snake oil, played for fools, sold out for
campaign contributions, luxury hotel suites, first-class passage to St. Andrews,
by lawyers and legislators beholden to nothing more than the corporate
bottom line;
We mixed the toxic Koolaid that is poisoning the American Dream;
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card with a low introductory rate,
I can’t lose;
Can’t win either
another Visa card to run to the max;
Cancel my health insurance, dissolve my pension, slash my hourly
wage; ship my job to Bangalore;
The more we owe the more the banks are willing to give,
it’s good business – for them;
We chase middle-class illusions and leave
the tab for our children;
Anyone with eyes can see the big hurt coming,
the bills coming due,
the millions who bought the fantasy of spend without end
will feel the pain first;
but no one is immune –
how can we sustain a consumer economy if consumers
can’t afford to consume?
We share the blame -- you, me, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, even old John Doe --
complicit in our own indentured servitude,
MIA and ignorant of history, battles and blood spilled;
what became of our willingness to take to the streets and stand for
justice?
have we forgotten how to say NO or that to receive
a fair share of the harvest we must demand it?;
Shame on us for allowing them to silence our collective voice,
revoke our citizenship, marginalize our American concerns;
We’ve been weaned on snake oil, played for fools, sold out for
campaign contributions, luxury hotel suites, first-class passage to St. Andrews,
by lawyers and legislators beholden to nothing more than the corporate
bottom line;
We mixed the toxic Koolaid that is poisoning the American Dream;
Give me a payday loan and a sub-prime mortgage,
another Visa card with a low introductory rate,
I can’t lose;
Can’t win either
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Dirty Balcony
The Balcony is dusty, cluttered, unkept, a mess. It’s a few weeks since I climbed these stairs and the place has an unfamiliar look. There’s an empty Coors can that I can’t remember drinking, newspapers, a half-finished crossword puzzle, a solicitation from the Republican National Committee, an appeal for money from the ACLU, a tattered copy of the Nation; the War on Terror is endless and unwinnable, we’re killing the planet but it’s not politically or economically feasible to do anything to mitigate the damage, houses cost too much, schools teach too little, too many Mexicans stream across the border, professional athletes are overpaid, TV reinforces our collective stupidity, I don’t get why Paris Hilton is a celebrity or why anyone gives a fuck about Britney Spears, all the good poets are dead and not even rock & roll can save us; somewhere in America a child is born in poverty, somewhere else an elderly person is dying alone, the ghost of John Steinbeck is playing poker with the ghost of Tom Joad, while in central Baghdad another car bomb explodes and more innocent humans die, the wind rips at the trees, the side of the 101 freeway near King City is littered with discarded shoes, baby bottles, queen-sized orthopedic mattresses, beer bottles, pipe fittings, oil filters, pots, pans, and a bird feeder; what does it all mean? We are what we dispose of? Where is our Martin, our Malcom, our Gandhi? We are spoon-fed the Myth of Ronald Reagan, treated like children, denied the cold hard truth that might set us free, told that our only duty as citizens is to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND! Has the world always been this nuts? When was the Golden Age? Or is that another myth, like the one about the Immaculate Conception and the Easter resurrection? Don’t know, these questions are beyond me, I’m a simple man in a complicated age, an age where lies become truth and petty people hold positions of power, an age where five men can rule over how women use their own bodies; let the fuckers get pregnant, carry full term – then they can talk about reproductive freedom and the sanctity of the unborn. It’s Sunday. A church bell tolls in the distance. My children are drinking chocolate milk.
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