It’s only a matter of time before House Democrats pass the President’s tax giveaway to the GOP. Nancy Pelosi must be feeling pressure from the White House, the right wing echo chamber, the corporate media and any number of spineless Democrats. When it’s all said and done, signed and delivered, the President will claim victory for bipartisanship, but this claim will be as empty as the one Obama made the other day when he said that most economists think this absurd gift to the GOP will stimulate the economy.
Here’s what’s more likely to happen.
First, the federal deficit is going to get worse – much worse.
The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us will get wider – much wider.
The temporary payroll tax holiday will hurt Social Security in the long run, exacerbating fears that the trust fund will not be able to meet its commitments; this will fuel calls from the GOP to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or, at long last, end Social Security as we know it by privatizing the program.
The “temporary” tax cuts will become permanent because no politician of either party is going to suggest letting them expire in 2012. No matter what’s happening with the economy, the cuts will remain, starving the government of the revenue it needs to function. This is precisely what right-wing Republicans want to happen.
What argument will Obama fall back on when this middling “stimulus” fails to jumpstart the economy? What will he say when the official unemployment rate remains stuck between nine and ten percent and the true rate is up around seventeen?
The Democrats allowed themselves to be boxed in by the GOP and now they are stuck with what will be. This is Obama’s recession now.
The GOP offered one economic policy during the Bush reign, one policy prescription for every situation, one policy rain or shine, fire or flood, earthquake or tsunami: tax cuts. And how did that singular policy work out? The rich reaped the vast majority of the benefits, economic growth was anemic, the federal deficit ballooned, real wages for working people stayed dead flat or declined, and household debt exploded.
That’s the legacy of the GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes. It didn’t work last decade and it won’t work in this one.
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Poem: Headlines & Breadlines
LA Times, October 29, 2010
Front page headline – “GDP grew at weak 2% rate in 3rd quarter.”
Another headline in the same edition proclaims:
“Stocks edge up to close strong October.”
I guess this explains why people are so confused
And angry
Fearful of the future
No matter how much people suffer and struggle
In this broken economy
Stock speculators in the Wall Street casino
Still make money
Hand over fist
In the time it took to write this poem
Some poor soul in these United States
Lost his job
Another lost her house
And someone else received a hospital bill
It will take a lifetime of toil to pay
And the richest 1% became even richer
Front page headline – “GDP grew at weak 2% rate in 3rd quarter.”
Another headline in the same edition proclaims:
“Stocks edge up to close strong October.”
I guess this explains why people are so confused
And angry
Fearful of the future
No matter how much people suffer and struggle
In this broken economy
Stock speculators in the Wall Street casino
Still make money
Hand over fist
In the time it took to write this poem
Some poor soul in these United States
Lost his job
Another lost her house
And someone else received a hospital bill
It will take a lifetime of toil to pay
And the richest 1% became even richer
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
At the Expense of the Many
My family and I watch the fireworks arc over Stearn’s Wharf on the 4th of July. The beach and waterfront are jammed with people and the air is heavy with the smell of a hundred BBQ grills. Traditional American rah-rah music plays from a loudspeaker on West Beach. Most of the people sitting on the sand around us are speaking Spanish. Cameras flash as the sky overhead bursts into bright green, red and gold; I see faces illuminated by the light from cell phones.
Happy birthday, America.
On this holiday night I want to think about what is right with our country, but so many things are out of whack that I can’t focus on the positive – two wars dragging on, the long term implications of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the tanked economy, the largest prison population in the world, and the perils of climate change. This is what I’m thinking about as the fireworks rise up and explode.
How do citizens change a system dominated by two political parties who tap dance to the same corporate drummer? How do we restore a healthy balance of power between capital and labor, government and big business, domestic needs and geopolitical realities? How can we fight against the enormous power wielded by corporate lawyers and lobbyists?
Under the guise of taming the Federal deficit, President Obama’s blue-ribbon deficit commission is mounting a rationale to reduce Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age (again) or both. The campaign is built on fabrications since Social Security is actually a program that pays its own way and does not contribute to the deficit, but don’t bother telling that to the commission members who have concluded (in advance) that reducing Social Security will send the right message to the financial markets. In other words, it’s once again more important to place the perceived needs of the financial sector over those of millions of average citizens.
Are we going to stand for this?
There are far better ways to reduce the Federal deficit than eviscerating Social Security, which, by the way, has been the Holy Grail of GOP conservatives for decades. How about cutting the bloated defense budget, reducing the number of U.S. bases that straddle the globe? How about eliminating subsidies for Big Oil?
Our society is structured for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. For the most part, the people we elect to do our business make a mockery of representative democracy. There are, to be sure, some bright, committed people in Congress, but they are overshadowed and out numbered by mediocre partisans. It took many years to bring this society into being, and it figures to take many years to unravel it in favor of something more just and sustainable.
If you want to know what a nation values, you need only watch where it spends its resources. As the fireworks soar through the summer sky, I ask myself how this country can always find money for war but rarely for peace; I ask myself why taxpayer subsidies for profitable corporations arouse little or no ire, while help for the needy or a dignified retirement for senior citizens drives the political right into a self-righteous frenzy.
The finale has begun. Boom, boom, boom, red, green, gold, star bursts and molten streamers, and the voice of Lee Greenwood singing Proud to be an American echoing on the loudspeaker. I don’t feel that pride. Instead I feel a sense of loss, of wasted opportunities, and I wonder when the people will say, “Enough.”
Happy birthday, America.
On this holiday night I want to think about what is right with our country, but so many things are out of whack that I can’t focus on the positive – two wars dragging on, the long term implications of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the tanked economy, the largest prison population in the world, and the perils of climate change. This is what I’m thinking about as the fireworks rise up and explode.
How do citizens change a system dominated by two political parties who tap dance to the same corporate drummer? How do we restore a healthy balance of power between capital and labor, government and big business, domestic needs and geopolitical realities? How can we fight against the enormous power wielded by corporate lawyers and lobbyists?
Under the guise of taming the Federal deficit, President Obama’s blue-ribbon deficit commission is mounting a rationale to reduce Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age (again) or both. The campaign is built on fabrications since Social Security is actually a program that pays its own way and does not contribute to the deficit, but don’t bother telling that to the commission members who have concluded (in advance) that reducing Social Security will send the right message to the financial markets. In other words, it’s once again more important to place the perceived needs of the financial sector over those of millions of average citizens.
Are we going to stand for this?
There are far better ways to reduce the Federal deficit than eviscerating Social Security, which, by the way, has been the Holy Grail of GOP conservatives for decades. How about cutting the bloated defense budget, reducing the number of U.S. bases that straddle the globe? How about eliminating subsidies for Big Oil?
Our society is structured for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. For the most part, the people we elect to do our business make a mockery of representative democracy. There are, to be sure, some bright, committed people in Congress, but they are overshadowed and out numbered by mediocre partisans. It took many years to bring this society into being, and it figures to take many years to unravel it in favor of something more just and sustainable.
If you want to know what a nation values, you need only watch where it spends its resources. As the fireworks soar through the summer sky, I ask myself how this country can always find money for war but rarely for peace; I ask myself why taxpayer subsidies for profitable corporations arouse little or no ire, while help for the needy or a dignified retirement for senior citizens drives the political right into a self-righteous frenzy.
The finale has begun. Boom, boom, boom, red, green, gold, star bursts and molten streamers, and the voice of Lee Greenwood singing Proud to be an American echoing on the loudspeaker. I don’t feel that pride. Instead I feel a sense of loss, of wasted opportunities, and I wonder when the people will say, “Enough.”
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Goliath vs The Pygmies
Glory to the French and the Greeks. May Americans learn something from our feisty European friends.
When the governments of France or Greece try to screw their people with austerity measures and unravel the social safety net, the people have enough gumption to pour into the streets and make some racket.
By contrast, Americans display all the fire of tree sloths. We’ve been getting screwed for decades, and for the most part have taken our screwing silently and on our knees. Oh, we get exercised about abortion and illegal immigration, make no mistake about that, but when it comes to having our pockets picked clean by corporate greed heads, we can’t be bothered to lift a middle finger in protest.
As the crime goes down we listen to fools like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, swallow the rot they spew about the evil federal government; we watch network news anchors who rarely connect the dots between economic policy and the fate of average Americans; and we routinely vote against our self-interests because we believe the “free” market gibberish peddled from the corporate media.
Our problem isn’t too much government; our problem is too little government. Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into Washington D.C. determined to restore America’s faith in its own myths and fables, corporate power has grown while the countervailing power of government has declined. The results are visible in almost every industry: energy, food, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and finance, health care. Corporations are bigger and more economically and politically potent than at any time since the Gilded Age and the heyday of big trusts. Tea Party faithful constantly evoke the Founding Fathers, but what that rabble conveniently forget is how wary the Founders were of power – particularly power concentrated in too few hands. This is one reason why we have (or had until Bush Jr’s imperial presidency) three co-equal branches of government. Each branch has certain powers along with limits to those powers, all designed to check and balance one another.
Balancing power is the same reason we had anti-trust laws and the Glass-Steagal act.
But the anti-trust laws that helped crack Standard Oil and other trusts have been systematically weakened ever since Reagan set his jellybean jar on the desk in the Oval Office. Regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor have been systematically gutted or neutered, tilting the balance of power in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Size and capital equate to political power, lobbying power and campaign contribution (bribery) power. Corporations are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to regulate and control.
It’s not David vs. Goliath anymore – it’s Goliath vs. an unarmed pygmy.
This revolution of power happened right in front of us and with our silent consent. Trade and monetary policies eliminated our jobs and sent them to Mexico, Thailand and China; tax policies favored capital over labor; labor laws were diluted, overturned or ignored without penalty, and our entire economy became dedicated to the enrichment of corporations, investors, speculators and stockholders. Government services that were designed to help ordinary people live better lives were outsourced to corporations who always place profit first and people second. In the brave new universe of the infallible free market, the inherently fair and just free market, the efficient free market, wage earners no longer mattered, and neither did the public’s interest.
The Greeks and the French take to the streets; Americans retreat to the safety of their living rooms, hunker down in front of plasma TV’s with a bucket of fast food and lose themselves in trivia. The corporations and the wealthy have nothing to fear from us; they know how accustomed we’ve become to living on our knees, pygmies in Goliath’s shadow.
When the governments of France or Greece try to screw their people with austerity measures and unravel the social safety net, the people have enough gumption to pour into the streets and make some racket.
By contrast, Americans display all the fire of tree sloths. We’ve been getting screwed for decades, and for the most part have taken our screwing silently and on our knees. Oh, we get exercised about abortion and illegal immigration, make no mistake about that, but when it comes to having our pockets picked clean by corporate greed heads, we can’t be bothered to lift a middle finger in protest.
As the crime goes down we listen to fools like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, swallow the rot they spew about the evil federal government; we watch network news anchors who rarely connect the dots between economic policy and the fate of average Americans; and we routinely vote against our self-interests because we believe the “free” market gibberish peddled from the corporate media.
Our problem isn’t too much government; our problem is too little government. Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into Washington D.C. determined to restore America’s faith in its own myths and fables, corporate power has grown while the countervailing power of government has declined. The results are visible in almost every industry: energy, food, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and finance, health care. Corporations are bigger and more economically and politically potent than at any time since the Gilded Age and the heyday of big trusts. Tea Party faithful constantly evoke the Founding Fathers, but what that rabble conveniently forget is how wary the Founders were of power – particularly power concentrated in too few hands. This is one reason why we have (or had until Bush Jr’s imperial presidency) three co-equal branches of government. Each branch has certain powers along with limits to those powers, all designed to check and balance one another.
Balancing power is the same reason we had anti-trust laws and the Glass-Steagal act.
But the anti-trust laws that helped crack Standard Oil and other trusts have been systematically weakened ever since Reagan set his jellybean jar on the desk in the Oval Office. Regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor have been systematically gutted or neutered, tilting the balance of power in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Size and capital equate to political power, lobbying power and campaign contribution (bribery) power. Corporations are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to regulate and control.
It’s not David vs. Goliath anymore – it’s Goliath vs. an unarmed pygmy.
This revolution of power happened right in front of us and with our silent consent. Trade and monetary policies eliminated our jobs and sent them to Mexico, Thailand and China; tax policies favored capital over labor; labor laws were diluted, overturned or ignored without penalty, and our entire economy became dedicated to the enrichment of corporations, investors, speculators and stockholders. Government services that were designed to help ordinary people live better lives were outsourced to corporations who always place profit first and people second. In the brave new universe of the infallible free market, the inherently fair and just free market, the efficient free market, wage earners no longer mattered, and neither did the public’s interest.
The Greeks and the French take to the streets; Americans retreat to the safety of their living rooms, hunker down in front of plasma TV’s with a bucket of fast food and lose themselves in trivia. The corporations and the wealthy have nothing to fear from us; they know how accustomed we’ve become to living on our knees, pygmies in Goliath’s shadow.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Boiling Point
If you’re an average American who works for wages you should be madder than hell, and if you’re not, well, maybe you’re deaf, dumb and blind, comatose from habitual drug use or just too damn busy trying to earn a living to pay attention to the heist that has been perpetrated on you for the last thirty years or so.
We’ve been bottle-fed poison Kool-Aid.
I’m talking the Reagan Revolution, supply side economics, union busting, disdain for the environment, and a steady expansion of corporate power at the expense of wage earners, consumers and, in some cases, stock holders. Ronnie rode tall in the saddle and spouted platitudes about the American Dream, hard work, pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps, the glory of capitalism, shining cities on far away hills reserved for the very rich and fair skinned.
Nothing’s been the same since that seismic shift in the political landscape. Democrats panicked and moved rightward, closer to Reagan’s long shadow, and in the process abandoned their historical constituencies. Today, once you sift through the hyperbole and the posturing and the disinformation talking points, it’s impossible to tell a Democrat from a Republican; both take money from Big Business and worship at the crooked temple of crony capitalism.
We’ve been lied to.
Working people should be furious, steaming, bursting with rage, and these feelings should – unlike those light-skinned Tea Party whack jobs who are mainly pissed off at becoming a demographic minority and rail against liberals and phantom socialists because at least doing so gives them a target -- be directed where they belong and where they might make change possible.
We’ve been lulled to sleep by fairy tales and folk tales, myth and fantasy.
Here’s the truth: Goldman Sachs recently reported its first quarter earnings, a tidy sum of $3.5 billion. Not bad for a firm that was on the ropes and might have expired save for Henry Paulson and an infusion of our dollars; not bad for a firm that may soon be under investigation from the SEC, though that possibility is unlikely to keep the politically-connected folks at Goldman awake at night. They’ll take a hand slap for their pals in the financial services industry, if they have to, but then it will be back to business as usual. Goldman knows this, and so does the government. But the charade is useful on the off chance the public wakes up and realizes how thoroughly it has been deceived.
Timothy Geithner, Wall Street alum and current Treasury Secretary, was on ABC’s Good Morning America the other day, spinning his tale of financial industry reform. According to TG, legislation now worming its way through Congress will make future bank bailouts unlikely, prevent banks from growing into behemoths (too late, TG! the handful of major banks left are already behemoth-size and get to stay that way), and bring derivatives and other esoteric financial instruments out of the darkness and into the light of day. Oh, and TG also advanced the laughable fiction that the American economy is growing stronger. Yes, TG of Wall Street said that. He could just as well have claimed that white is black, black is white, nicotine isn’t addictive and Oxycontin is good for the soul.
Stronger? Cities, counties and state governments are broke, cutting back essential services that primarily benefit the poor, laying off workers, bitching about pension obligations, demanding wage concessions, firing teachers and shortening the school year. Unemployment is still sky high and the pace of home foreclosures isn’t slowing. Where except on Wall Street and K Street in Washington D.C. are these signs of strength? Get with the program, sucker: Wall Street investors and speculators are feeling optimistic, and what else matters in America but how the investor class feels? Our entire economy is organized to make the investor class happy.
Fuck Main Street.
Yeah, raging mad, short of breath, heart banging in the chest like a piston gone berserk. Every industry is too fucking big to fail: banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy, food. Under the banner of “capitalism” and “free enterprise” the corporate honchos and their lobbying firms wrote the rules that became the laws that allowed them to create profitable monopolies. And guess what? They have no intention of giving up those monopolies. CEO’s talk a good game about competition and how it brings out the best in people and companies and weeds out the weak, timid and slow, but it’s all bullshit. Like Russian mobsters, CEO’s want a rigged game and a reliable revenue stream. Why compete when you can acquire your competition and grow, grow, grow, free from anti-trust hassles?
We’ve been molested, like deaf altar boys.
Reagan’s homilies and Clinton’s betrayal of working people with NAFTA sent American jobs out of this country like roaches running from ultraviolet light; first it was Mexico, and after that Taiwan and Thailand, Vietnam, and then the Promised Land of cheap, exploitable labor: China. China, the corporate CEO’s wet dream. Cheap labor, no unions or pesky EPA regulations to grapple with, no OSHA headaches or wage disputes. China and Wal-Mart gave us low prices for people who make peanut wages – and this was, is, touted as a miraculous thing, that though you toil 40 hours a week for minimum wage at a dead-end job, you can still buy the latest crap at Wal-Mart. Thank you, China and your exploited workers. Then Bush Jr’s complete and total fucking of working people, the environment, and the constitution.
The campaign money, the lobbyists, the buying and selling of politicians, judges, regulators, pollsters and journalists that is now part and parcel of our political system have produced a bumper crop of social injustice.
Aren’t you sick of it?
Might as well get used to it because it’s probably here to stay.
Our rectums are bleeding, swollen, torn from the abuse we’ve taken at the hands of crooked politicians and criminal corporations. Take a good look around with your eyes wide open: note the devastation made possible by our collective passivity.
We’ve been bottle-fed poison Kool-Aid.
I’m talking the Reagan Revolution, supply side economics, union busting, disdain for the environment, and a steady expansion of corporate power at the expense of wage earners, consumers and, in some cases, stock holders. Ronnie rode tall in the saddle and spouted platitudes about the American Dream, hard work, pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps, the glory of capitalism, shining cities on far away hills reserved for the very rich and fair skinned.
Nothing’s been the same since that seismic shift in the political landscape. Democrats panicked and moved rightward, closer to Reagan’s long shadow, and in the process abandoned their historical constituencies. Today, once you sift through the hyperbole and the posturing and the disinformation talking points, it’s impossible to tell a Democrat from a Republican; both take money from Big Business and worship at the crooked temple of crony capitalism.
We’ve been lied to.
Working people should be furious, steaming, bursting with rage, and these feelings should – unlike those light-skinned Tea Party whack jobs who are mainly pissed off at becoming a demographic minority and rail against liberals and phantom socialists because at least doing so gives them a target -- be directed where they belong and where they might make change possible.
We’ve been lulled to sleep by fairy tales and folk tales, myth and fantasy.
Here’s the truth: Goldman Sachs recently reported its first quarter earnings, a tidy sum of $3.5 billion. Not bad for a firm that was on the ropes and might have expired save for Henry Paulson and an infusion of our dollars; not bad for a firm that may soon be under investigation from the SEC, though that possibility is unlikely to keep the politically-connected folks at Goldman awake at night. They’ll take a hand slap for their pals in the financial services industry, if they have to, but then it will be back to business as usual. Goldman knows this, and so does the government. But the charade is useful on the off chance the public wakes up and realizes how thoroughly it has been deceived.
Timothy Geithner, Wall Street alum and current Treasury Secretary, was on ABC’s Good Morning America the other day, spinning his tale of financial industry reform. According to TG, legislation now worming its way through Congress will make future bank bailouts unlikely, prevent banks from growing into behemoths (too late, TG! the handful of major banks left are already behemoth-size and get to stay that way), and bring derivatives and other esoteric financial instruments out of the darkness and into the light of day. Oh, and TG also advanced the laughable fiction that the American economy is growing stronger. Yes, TG of Wall Street said that. He could just as well have claimed that white is black, black is white, nicotine isn’t addictive and Oxycontin is good for the soul.
Stronger? Cities, counties and state governments are broke, cutting back essential services that primarily benefit the poor, laying off workers, bitching about pension obligations, demanding wage concessions, firing teachers and shortening the school year. Unemployment is still sky high and the pace of home foreclosures isn’t slowing. Where except on Wall Street and K Street in Washington D.C. are these signs of strength? Get with the program, sucker: Wall Street investors and speculators are feeling optimistic, and what else matters in America but how the investor class feels? Our entire economy is organized to make the investor class happy.
Fuck Main Street.
Yeah, raging mad, short of breath, heart banging in the chest like a piston gone berserk. Every industry is too fucking big to fail: banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy, food. Under the banner of “capitalism” and “free enterprise” the corporate honchos and their lobbying firms wrote the rules that became the laws that allowed them to create profitable monopolies. And guess what? They have no intention of giving up those monopolies. CEO’s talk a good game about competition and how it brings out the best in people and companies and weeds out the weak, timid and slow, but it’s all bullshit. Like Russian mobsters, CEO’s want a rigged game and a reliable revenue stream. Why compete when you can acquire your competition and grow, grow, grow, free from anti-trust hassles?
We’ve been molested, like deaf altar boys.
Reagan’s homilies and Clinton’s betrayal of working people with NAFTA sent American jobs out of this country like roaches running from ultraviolet light; first it was Mexico, and after that Taiwan and Thailand, Vietnam, and then the Promised Land of cheap, exploitable labor: China. China, the corporate CEO’s wet dream. Cheap labor, no unions or pesky EPA regulations to grapple with, no OSHA headaches or wage disputes. China and Wal-Mart gave us low prices for people who make peanut wages – and this was, is, touted as a miraculous thing, that though you toil 40 hours a week for minimum wage at a dead-end job, you can still buy the latest crap at Wal-Mart. Thank you, China and your exploited workers. Then Bush Jr’s complete and total fucking of working people, the environment, and the constitution.
The campaign money, the lobbyists, the buying and selling of politicians, judges, regulators, pollsters and journalists that is now part and parcel of our political system have produced a bumper crop of social injustice.
Aren’t you sick of it?
Might as well get used to it because it’s probably here to stay.
Our rectums are bleeding, swollen, torn from the abuse we’ve taken at the hands of crooked politicians and criminal corporations. Take a good look around with your eyes wide open: note the devastation made possible by our collective passivity.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Men And Their Balls
The “progressive” community, liberals, people who lean left on the American political spectrum, are deeply concerned about Barrack Obama. OK, that’s an understatement. Ticked off, disappointed, angry, worried, incensed, furious and depressed is more like it.
Obama says the right things with eloquence rarely matched in American politics, but when the last perfect note fades away, he does little if anything to make his soaring rhetoric reality. When faced with opposition from the whack jobs of the dying GOP, the tea baggers, Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter, he folds his tent and slinks into the shadows.
We expected so much more. There was no direction to go but up. George and Dick were finally leaving the stage. Hope was in the air when Obama swore his oath on that chilly January day almost one year ago. The hoopla, the crowds, the music, the excitement, the flags and banners and posters – how remote it all feels now. The economy’s feeble, the titans of Wall Street are laughing as they fuck their mistresses on mattresses stuffed with $100 bills, the insurance lobby is licking its chops over health care “reform,” and we’re upping the ante in Afghanistan. What’s changed?
Not much. Obama the commodity was sold with a slogan, like toothpaste or hemorrhoid ointment. “Change We Can Believe In.” Sure. And Chevron really cares about the environment. And the Easter bunny is real. And there’s a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
We’re knee deep in the politics of fear and failure, knee deep in limp-dicked efforts to turn the ship of state, knee deep in preening and posturing on the White House lawn. Obama the intelligent incrementalist -- two steps up, one back, one to the side, throw in a little Ali shuffle for good measure -- can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man; slippery when wet, like Bill Clinton and his maddening triangulation strategies.
George W. Bush had an undersized brain and oversized balls. Bush was a faux cowboy from Yale who shot first and questioned later. When the overgrown frat boy wasn’t mooning the world or deferring the tough decisions to Uncle Dick, he was playing Christian crusader, bombing the shit out of innocent Muslims.
Barrack Hussein Obama possesses a large, capable brain and a silver tongue, but his balls are no larger than BB’s -- teeny-weeny things swinging in the presidential scrotum sack. The man can think, the man can speak, the man cuts a fine figure but he can’t get shit done for the folks even with a friendly Congress. Obama has surrounded himself with corporate-friendly types and Clinton-era recycles, and he nuances every damn thing until it’s unrecognizable – like Bill Clinton describing what constitutes the sex act to a federal judge.
Like tired whores we hoped for more. We hoped, for once, that the pimp would take his money and forgo the beating. No such luck. Back on our knees, bowing down before the moneyed class, the political elites, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists, the fixers and the cheats, the charlatans and the untouchable criminals. This is America, this is the dream, this is the one nation under God, better than all the others.
After Bush and Cheney, we needed to believe again, but we elected a man with tiny balls. Guess the joke’s on us and our children and their children. This is what betrayal feels like.
Obama says the right things with eloquence rarely matched in American politics, but when the last perfect note fades away, he does little if anything to make his soaring rhetoric reality. When faced with opposition from the whack jobs of the dying GOP, the tea baggers, Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter, he folds his tent and slinks into the shadows.
We expected so much more. There was no direction to go but up. George and Dick were finally leaving the stage. Hope was in the air when Obama swore his oath on that chilly January day almost one year ago. The hoopla, the crowds, the music, the excitement, the flags and banners and posters – how remote it all feels now. The economy’s feeble, the titans of Wall Street are laughing as they fuck their mistresses on mattresses stuffed with $100 bills, the insurance lobby is licking its chops over health care “reform,” and we’re upping the ante in Afghanistan. What’s changed?
Not much. Obama the commodity was sold with a slogan, like toothpaste or hemorrhoid ointment. “Change We Can Believe In.” Sure. And Chevron really cares about the environment. And the Easter bunny is real. And there’s a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
We’re knee deep in the politics of fear and failure, knee deep in limp-dicked efforts to turn the ship of state, knee deep in preening and posturing on the White House lawn. Obama the intelligent incrementalist -- two steps up, one back, one to the side, throw in a little Ali shuffle for good measure -- can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man; slippery when wet, like Bill Clinton and his maddening triangulation strategies.
George W. Bush had an undersized brain and oversized balls. Bush was a faux cowboy from Yale who shot first and questioned later. When the overgrown frat boy wasn’t mooning the world or deferring the tough decisions to Uncle Dick, he was playing Christian crusader, bombing the shit out of innocent Muslims.
Barrack Hussein Obama possesses a large, capable brain and a silver tongue, but his balls are no larger than BB’s -- teeny-weeny things swinging in the presidential scrotum sack. The man can think, the man can speak, the man cuts a fine figure but he can’t get shit done for the folks even with a friendly Congress. Obama has surrounded himself with corporate-friendly types and Clinton-era recycles, and he nuances every damn thing until it’s unrecognizable – like Bill Clinton describing what constitutes the sex act to a federal judge.
Like tired whores we hoped for more. We hoped, for once, that the pimp would take his money and forgo the beating. No such luck. Back on our knees, bowing down before the moneyed class, the political elites, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists, the fixers and the cheats, the charlatans and the untouchable criminals. This is America, this is the dream, this is the one nation under God, better than all the others.
After Bush and Cheney, we needed to believe again, but we elected a man with tiny balls. Guess the joke’s on us and our children and their children. This is what betrayal feels like.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Winds of No Change
The winds are blowing but these winds maintain the status quo rather than change it.
Most Republicans wring their hands and wail about the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, budget deficits, and the burden of high taxes. If you want to see grown men and women frothing at the mouth, get the Republicans (and some Democrats, to be frank) started on the potential costs of “socialized” medicine.
These same Republicans, on the other hand, have no problem at all with corporate socialism, bloated defense budgets or open-ended military campaigns in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Republicans believe, I guess, that spending money on corporate bailouts and wars of choice enhance freedom, while social spending on Medicare or unemployment insurance or regulation enhances the role of the government at the expense of freedom.
The winds blow, but not much changes. President Obama talks a great game, an inspiring game, but appears to lack the staying power to see anything through, not to mention that he has surrounded himself with a posse of recycled champions of the established order.
Lost in the noise of talk radio hyperbole is the need to strike an appropriate balance of power between the government and business, between Capital and Labor, and between the wealthy and the poor. Excessive government interference is no better than excessive corporate socialism. Government can become too large, bloated and stifling, just as unchecked corporate power can, and usually does, lead to the reckless behavior that brought the global financial system to the brink of disaster and made life so difficult and uncertain for so many.
Republicans are suspicious of enlarging the role and power of government while Democrats, generally speaking, view government as a leveling force. But both parties are beholden to moneyed elites and when push comes to shove, big campaign contributors win, average citizens lose.
According to a recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times, job seekers outnumber openings by a tidy 6-1 margin. The stock market shows signs of bounce – prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to declare that the “recession” is over. Sure, maybe on Bernanke’s street. In the real America, where people work for wages, struggle to make the mortgage and decipher the one-sided terms of their credit card accounts, afford college tuition, health insurance, gasoline, heating oil, food, electricity and transportation, the night is still dark, foreboding and full of peril.
Working Americans should be mad as hell and dead set on kicking the shit out of the first fat cat they run across. But try to disrupt the status quo and stand prepared to be attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, as protestors at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh were recently. Americans have the Constitutional right to assemble for the purpose of airing our grievances with the powers that be, but permits are hard to come by in some cities and the authorities prefer to disperse first and answer questions from the ACLU later.
The winds blow, but nothing changes.
Most Republicans wring their hands and wail about the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, budget deficits, and the burden of high taxes. If you want to see grown men and women frothing at the mouth, get the Republicans (and some Democrats, to be frank) started on the potential costs of “socialized” medicine.
These same Republicans, on the other hand, have no problem at all with corporate socialism, bloated defense budgets or open-ended military campaigns in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Republicans believe, I guess, that spending money on corporate bailouts and wars of choice enhance freedom, while social spending on Medicare or unemployment insurance or regulation enhances the role of the government at the expense of freedom.
The winds blow, but not much changes. President Obama talks a great game, an inspiring game, but appears to lack the staying power to see anything through, not to mention that he has surrounded himself with a posse of recycled champions of the established order.
Lost in the noise of talk radio hyperbole is the need to strike an appropriate balance of power between the government and business, between Capital and Labor, and between the wealthy and the poor. Excessive government interference is no better than excessive corporate socialism. Government can become too large, bloated and stifling, just as unchecked corporate power can, and usually does, lead to the reckless behavior that brought the global financial system to the brink of disaster and made life so difficult and uncertain for so many.
Republicans are suspicious of enlarging the role and power of government while Democrats, generally speaking, view government as a leveling force. But both parties are beholden to moneyed elites and when push comes to shove, big campaign contributors win, average citizens lose.
According to a recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times, job seekers outnumber openings by a tidy 6-1 margin. The stock market shows signs of bounce – prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to declare that the “recession” is over. Sure, maybe on Bernanke’s street. In the real America, where people work for wages, struggle to make the mortgage and decipher the one-sided terms of their credit card accounts, afford college tuition, health insurance, gasoline, heating oil, food, electricity and transportation, the night is still dark, foreboding and full of peril.
Working Americans should be mad as hell and dead set on kicking the shit out of the first fat cat they run across. But try to disrupt the status quo and stand prepared to be attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, as protestors at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh were recently. Americans have the Constitutional right to assemble for the purpose of airing our grievances with the powers that be, but permits are hard to come by in some cities and the authorities prefer to disperse first and answer questions from the ACLU later.
The winds blow, but nothing changes.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Under the Microscope
Weird times, and no end in sight. I know it’s a bitch to fill twenty-four hours of airtime every single day, but from time-to-time the angle CNN takes on stories perplexes me. There’s the Lou Dobbs “Birther” charade, an absolute waste of time. Memo to Lou: Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. He’s been vetted. Get over it. Go back to scaring people about illegal immigrants. There’s Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Jon and Kate, fires and floods, bombings, drought, and corporate-sponsored protests about health insurance.
Yep, there’s no end to the weirdness, the trivia, the hyperbole and the BS. We’re a nation of idiots, spoon-fed misinformation day and night.
A day or two ago I happened to see this headline on CNN: Obama under the microscope. Three talking heads were speculating on Obama’s first eight months in office, and whether or not these months can be termed successful. One of the heads said, “It appears that President Obama has discovered that it’s one thing to win an election and another to govern the country.” Wow, bright people on CNN. I don’t remember the illegitimate Bush presidency being slipped under the CNN microscope eight months in, when all Bush had accomplished was passage of a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. Whooppee.
Remember that it was in August 2001 when Bush essentially ignored intelligence warnings that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking within the United States. Bush was too busy cutting brush on his Texas ranch to spend much time worrying about a stateless Muslim fanatic with an axe to grind against the Great Satan. The rest is, of course, history. Bin Laden struck and the nation freaked out, allowing Bush and Cheney to trash the Constitution in the name of “security.” Remember how twisted things became in the aftermath of 9/11? In order to protect our freedom and liberty, we consented to give up our freedom and liberty. Insane and misguided. We started detaining people all over the globe, some of them innocent, though we tortured many of them anyway, just to be sure they didn’t carry Bin Laden’s satellite phone number. Insane and cruel. Then we invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Insane and stupid.
Obama entered the White House on a tide of hope and optimism, but trapped beneath one of the biggest Eight Ball’s in American history, a cluster-fuck of epic proportion caused by eight years of misrule; the economic system was on the brink of collapse, workers were losing jobs at a precipitous pace, retirement savings had vanished overnight due to massive fraud and manipulation, nothing worthwhile had been done on the environmental front for eight years, and we were (still are) bogged down in two failed wars. CNN has already forgotten the shitty hand Obama was dealt on Day One.
Given his near-total capitulation to Wall Street heavies however, I think some criticism of Obama’s presidency is warranted, but we must be fair and remember what the man had to work with when he assumed office.
For the good of the country in the long term, a perspective rarely taken in American politics, we need the Obama Administration to propose, and Congress to pass, real regulatory reform of the economic system, laws with enough teeth to keep the Titans of Finance on the straight, narrow and honest path, and reduce the iron-grip corporations have on the nation’s politics. Will this happen? No, we’ll get a Band-Aid instead. We also need a reorientation back toward the real economy of productive work and wages, but Obama seems deaf to the plight of working Americans – the economic system is still tilted in favor of investors and speculators and those “too big to fail.” We desperately need a complete overhaul of our health insurance system to make it more accessible, logical and humane, but the Kansas City Royals will win 110 regular season games and the World Series before that happens. We’ll get some tinkering on the margins, but nothing substantial or meaningful; millions will still be uninsured, under-insured, subject to the whims of insurance companies focused on profits rather than care.
I never thought the Obama Administration could reverse eight years of abject failure in eight months. Seems the talking heads on CNN have mistaken Obama for a magician rather than a politician.
Yep, there’s no end to the weirdness, the trivia, the hyperbole and the BS. We’re a nation of idiots, spoon-fed misinformation day and night.
A day or two ago I happened to see this headline on CNN: Obama under the microscope. Three talking heads were speculating on Obama’s first eight months in office, and whether or not these months can be termed successful. One of the heads said, “It appears that President Obama has discovered that it’s one thing to win an election and another to govern the country.” Wow, bright people on CNN. I don’t remember the illegitimate Bush presidency being slipped under the CNN microscope eight months in, when all Bush had accomplished was passage of a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. Whooppee.
Remember that it was in August 2001 when Bush essentially ignored intelligence warnings that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking within the United States. Bush was too busy cutting brush on his Texas ranch to spend much time worrying about a stateless Muslim fanatic with an axe to grind against the Great Satan. The rest is, of course, history. Bin Laden struck and the nation freaked out, allowing Bush and Cheney to trash the Constitution in the name of “security.” Remember how twisted things became in the aftermath of 9/11? In order to protect our freedom and liberty, we consented to give up our freedom and liberty. Insane and misguided. We started detaining people all over the globe, some of them innocent, though we tortured many of them anyway, just to be sure they didn’t carry Bin Laden’s satellite phone number. Insane and cruel. Then we invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Insane and stupid.
Obama entered the White House on a tide of hope and optimism, but trapped beneath one of the biggest Eight Ball’s in American history, a cluster-fuck of epic proportion caused by eight years of misrule; the economic system was on the brink of collapse, workers were losing jobs at a precipitous pace, retirement savings had vanished overnight due to massive fraud and manipulation, nothing worthwhile had been done on the environmental front for eight years, and we were (still are) bogged down in two failed wars. CNN has already forgotten the shitty hand Obama was dealt on Day One.
Given his near-total capitulation to Wall Street heavies however, I think some criticism of Obama’s presidency is warranted, but we must be fair and remember what the man had to work with when he assumed office.
For the good of the country in the long term, a perspective rarely taken in American politics, we need the Obama Administration to propose, and Congress to pass, real regulatory reform of the economic system, laws with enough teeth to keep the Titans of Finance on the straight, narrow and honest path, and reduce the iron-grip corporations have on the nation’s politics. Will this happen? No, we’ll get a Band-Aid instead. We also need a reorientation back toward the real economy of productive work and wages, but Obama seems deaf to the plight of working Americans – the economic system is still tilted in favor of investors and speculators and those “too big to fail.” We desperately need a complete overhaul of our health insurance system to make it more accessible, logical and humane, but the Kansas City Royals will win 110 regular season games and the World Series before that happens. We’ll get some tinkering on the margins, but nothing substantial or meaningful; millions will still be uninsured, under-insured, subject to the whims of insurance companies focused on profits rather than care.
I never thought the Obama Administration could reverse eight years of abject failure in eight months. Seems the talking heads on CNN have mistaken Obama for a magician rather than a politician.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Get Your Tea Bag On
If any more proof was needed that the Republican Party has drifted so far to the right that it has completely lost its moorings, the recent Tea Bag protests put the case to rest.
It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.
The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.
I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.
Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.
The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.
The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.
It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.
The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.
I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.
Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.
The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.
The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Absolution of the Titans
I admire the Titans of American Finance and you should too. In the Great American Casino, otherwise known as our Economy, they’re the winners and the rest of us are the losers. Our best and brightest leave the finest universities in the land, flock to Wall Street in search of wealth and power; these are clever, cunning, driven men and women who go after what they want with the same single-minded obsession with which Hannibal Lecter sought human flesh. The Titans buy low and sell high, own beach front homes in the Hamptons and luxurious apartments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, travel first class, own season tickets for the Yankees and the Giants, and pay for it all with platinum credit cards. Even low on the totem pole Titans make as much in a year as the average American wage slave makes in a decade.
Ah, the mystical world of high finance, stocks, bonds, derivatives, numbers and symbols sliding across tickers from New York to Hong Kong, unintelligible to the untrained eye, full of portent and opportunity for those with a penchant for risk and a wad of other people’s money to monkey with. These are Gordon Gecko’s heirs, knights of Capitalism, who ride alone along the great black river; they ask no quarter and of course give none, particularly to lazy welfare queens or unemployed lesbians. They see the world in black & white, good & evil, Mutt & Jeff, Ozzie & Harriet, Astaire & Rogers.
Like Gecko the Titans are suave, smooth, savvy and savage. Gecko may have gone down in the end, but he went out shouting, “Greed is still good.” We loved Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for much more than we ever loved Horatio Alger and his tedious tale of hard work, honesty and right living.
Right. Hell, yes. We’re Americans and we want what we want when we want it. Delayed gratification is for suckers and tight-assed kill joys. Life is short and death will not be denied, so grab the gusto and let the bulldog roll.
The Titans are master alchemists who turn coal into diamonds, single family homes into ATM machines, bogus mortgages made in Cleveland into Collateralized Debt Obligations sold in Mumbai.
Can you pull off a trick like that? Of course not, which is why the Federal government isn’t rushing to your rescue. Or mine. We’re the grunts of the American Casino, the water carriers, the serfs and sharecroppers, the tenement dwellers. Our purpose is to toil for meager wages, to save none of what we earn, and to rack up as much debt as possible. Sure, we’re free to bitch about the unfairness of it all, throw stones and beer bottles at the mansion on the hill, pin our hopes on political candidates who promise to level the battle field and repair the tattered American Dream, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the Titans are still more important than we will ever be.
Thus, the sins and crimes of the Titans are absolved. Instead of punishment, they are given coins snatched from our pockets and the pockets of our children, the pockets of their children, and the pockets of children yet unborn. The great Casino is too important to fail; the slot machines must clang and jingle just as the roulette wheel must spin and the loaded dice tumble.
Too big to fail, too cool for the catwalk. It may be good to be King, but being a Titan of Finance is many times better; kings are occasionally beheaded or contract syphilis and go insane, Titans are untouchable.
Ah, the mystical world of high finance, stocks, bonds, derivatives, numbers and symbols sliding across tickers from New York to Hong Kong, unintelligible to the untrained eye, full of portent and opportunity for those with a penchant for risk and a wad of other people’s money to monkey with. These are Gordon Gecko’s heirs, knights of Capitalism, who ride alone along the great black river; they ask no quarter and of course give none, particularly to lazy welfare queens or unemployed lesbians. They see the world in black & white, good & evil, Mutt & Jeff, Ozzie & Harriet, Astaire & Rogers.
Like Gecko the Titans are suave, smooth, savvy and savage. Gecko may have gone down in the end, but he went out shouting, “Greed is still good.” We loved Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for much more than we ever loved Horatio Alger and his tedious tale of hard work, honesty and right living.
Right. Hell, yes. We’re Americans and we want what we want when we want it. Delayed gratification is for suckers and tight-assed kill joys. Life is short and death will not be denied, so grab the gusto and let the bulldog roll.
The Titans are master alchemists who turn coal into diamonds, single family homes into ATM machines, bogus mortgages made in Cleveland into Collateralized Debt Obligations sold in Mumbai.
Can you pull off a trick like that? Of course not, which is why the Federal government isn’t rushing to your rescue. Or mine. We’re the grunts of the American Casino, the water carriers, the serfs and sharecroppers, the tenement dwellers. Our purpose is to toil for meager wages, to save none of what we earn, and to rack up as much debt as possible. Sure, we’re free to bitch about the unfairness of it all, throw stones and beer bottles at the mansion on the hill, pin our hopes on political candidates who promise to level the battle field and repair the tattered American Dream, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the Titans are still more important than we will ever be.
Thus, the sins and crimes of the Titans are absolved. Instead of punishment, they are given coins snatched from our pockets and the pockets of our children, the pockets of their children, and the pockets of children yet unborn. The great Casino is too important to fail; the slot machines must clang and jingle just as the roulette wheel must spin and the loaded dice tumble.
Too big to fail, too cool for the catwalk. It may be good to be King, but being a Titan of Finance is many times better; kings are occasionally beheaded or contract syphilis and go insane, Titans are untouchable.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
The Big Disconnect
The New York Times is considered our “paper of record,” an authoritative source for news, information and opinion on life in these United States at this point in history. A few days ago in its on-line edition the Times ran this headline: WALL ST. STARTS TO SEE SIGNS OF A TURNAROUND.
With thousands of citizens in danger of losing their homes, individuals and small business owners suffering from sky-high fuel costs, health care a luxury millions of Americans cannot afford, our paper of record leads with a story about how Wall Street is faring, as if what happens on Wall Street is in any way connected to the reality of hard times in Portland, Oregon, Durango, Colorado or Chicago, Illinois.
Below the headline was this tidbit: “For ExxonMobil, $10.9 billion profit disappoints.” While average Americans struggle to make ends meet with rising costs and flat wages, ExxonMobil is unhappy about its $10.9 billion profit.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton argue about which of them has shadier friends or who is more patriotic; not to be outdone, John McCain is trying to sell Americans the idea that a tax break to buy a health insurance policy is the same thing as health care. John McCain’s blind faith in the “free market” is a subject for another day, though if McCain’s faith doesn’t sound eerily familiar and absolutely chilling, you haven’t been paying attention.
Wall Street may see golden light at the end of the tunnel, but directly below the headline in the Times was another: “Consumer Spending Stagnates as Prices Rise.” Consumers are in the deep end, up to their ears in debt, unable to buy stuff, which is a problem since our economy is based on ever-rising consumption of goods and services. But here’s the conundrum the cheerleaders for current economic arrangements seldom mention: how are consumers supposed to continue consuming if their wages remain flat?
Hard times coming. Hard times already here. If you work for wages, you don’t need to be reminded that it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet.
What does it say about America’s economy when the Investor Class sees daylight and working people see darkness? Do you get the feeling that there’s a Big Disconnect in our society, a decoupling of public and corporate interest, of individual freedom and social responsibility, of individual good and common good?
Turn off your TV, put your computer to sleep, take off the iPod, power down your phone, and listen. Do you hear the sound of paper being torn, ripped, shredded? That’s the last page or two of the social contract being destroyed. The brainchild of FDR, who believed that no American should struggle for the necessities of bare survival, the social contract came into being after World War II. The contract was Business and Labor agreeing that when workers produced they should share in the profits; the contract implied that there was dignity in work and that working people deserved a fair shot at dignity; the contract was a shared belief that the next generation would do better and have even more opportunity than the current generation.
Gone. That in the midst of these worrisome economic times the New York Times chooses to report on Wall Street illustrates how difficult it is to have a real conversation about our economy – not only who it works for, but who it doesn’t, and why. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, the wages of working Americans have been flat for thirty years, but when was the last time you saw a news story about that? American families are working full tilt – not to get ahead, but just to hold their place. Seen any stories in the major media about that? The political buying power of corporations and their lobbyists is so pervasive that they have driven wages down, exported manufacturing jobs to countries where workers are more easily exploited, eliminated health insurance, dumped pension obligations and gutted regulatory bodies, all of which is great for investors, price per share, and lavish executive compensation, but a death sentence for workers.
Think about it. Big Business controls the media and therefore has the power to shape, frame, spotlight and filter the information we see and hear. In the middle of presidential primaries in a watershed election year, we get endless takes on the words and deeds of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; not that America doesn’t need to hold a national conversation about race relations, we do, desperately, but that’s not what’s happening in news coverage of Reverend Wright. Big Media sets the story line, and no deviation from the script is allowed.
I don’t know if Americans can ever return to a shared social contract that takes into account the idea that human beings have needs other than economic needs. The conservative, free-market, ownership society, you’re-on-your-own ideology that has prevailed for the past three decades has turned us into anxious economic animals, constantly running to hold our place, working two jobs to earn the wage that one job once provided; constantly worried about whether we can afford health care or if we can afford to educate our kids or retire with enough financial wherewithal to live with dignity and give something back to our families and communities. The power arrayed against that happening is daunting.
But for the millions of us who believe that human life is about more than chasing a dollar or a euro, we have an obligation to stand against the prevailing power structure – to question it, to demand answers from it, to use moral persuasion to make it listen to our legitimate concerns. That’s Democracy. Dissent is a patriotic, creative act. As Dr. King said, “There is never a time in our American democracy that we must ever think we’re wrong when we protest. We reserve that right.”
It’s past time for America to reconnect with its basic values, just as it’s past time for working Americans to say, loud and often, enough is enough.
With thousands of citizens in danger of losing their homes, individuals and small business owners suffering from sky-high fuel costs, health care a luxury millions of Americans cannot afford, our paper of record leads with a story about how Wall Street is faring, as if what happens on Wall Street is in any way connected to the reality of hard times in Portland, Oregon, Durango, Colorado or Chicago, Illinois.
Below the headline was this tidbit: “For ExxonMobil, $10.9 billion profit disappoints.” While average Americans struggle to make ends meet with rising costs and flat wages, ExxonMobil is unhappy about its $10.9 billion profit.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton argue about which of them has shadier friends or who is more patriotic; not to be outdone, John McCain is trying to sell Americans the idea that a tax break to buy a health insurance policy is the same thing as health care. John McCain’s blind faith in the “free market” is a subject for another day, though if McCain’s faith doesn’t sound eerily familiar and absolutely chilling, you haven’t been paying attention.
Wall Street may see golden light at the end of the tunnel, but directly below the headline in the Times was another: “Consumer Spending Stagnates as Prices Rise.” Consumers are in the deep end, up to their ears in debt, unable to buy stuff, which is a problem since our economy is based on ever-rising consumption of goods and services. But here’s the conundrum the cheerleaders for current economic arrangements seldom mention: how are consumers supposed to continue consuming if their wages remain flat?
Hard times coming. Hard times already here. If you work for wages, you don’t need to be reminded that it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet.
What does it say about America’s economy when the Investor Class sees daylight and working people see darkness? Do you get the feeling that there’s a Big Disconnect in our society, a decoupling of public and corporate interest, of individual freedom and social responsibility, of individual good and common good?
Turn off your TV, put your computer to sleep, take off the iPod, power down your phone, and listen. Do you hear the sound of paper being torn, ripped, shredded? That’s the last page or two of the social contract being destroyed. The brainchild of FDR, who believed that no American should struggle for the necessities of bare survival, the social contract came into being after World War II. The contract was Business and Labor agreeing that when workers produced they should share in the profits; the contract implied that there was dignity in work and that working people deserved a fair shot at dignity; the contract was a shared belief that the next generation would do better and have even more opportunity than the current generation.
Gone. That in the midst of these worrisome economic times the New York Times chooses to report on Wall Street illustrates how difficult it is to have a real conversation about our economy – not only who it works for, but who it doesn’t, and why. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, the wages of working Americans have been flat for thirty years, but when was the last time you saw a news story about that? American families are working full tilt – not to get ahead, but just to hold their place. Seen any stories in the major media about that? The political buying power of corporations and their lobbyists is so pervasive that they have driven wages down, exported manufacturing jobs to countries where workers are more easily exploited, eliminated health insurance, dumped pension obligations and gutted regulatory bodies, all of which is great for investors, price per share, and lavish executive compensation, but a death sentence for workers.
Think about it. Big Business controls the media and therefore has the power to shape, frame, spotlight and filter the information we see and hear. In the middle of presidential primaries in a watershed election year, we get endless takes on the words and deeds of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; not that America doesn’t need to hold a national conversation about race relations, we do, desperately, but that’s not what’s happening in news coverage of Reverend Wright. Big Media sets the story line, and no deviation from the script is allowed.
I don’t know if Americans can ever return to a shared social contract that takes into account the idea that human beings have needs other than economic needs. The conservative, free-market, ownership society, you’re-on-your-own ideology that has prevailed for the past three decades has turned us into anxious economic animals, constantly running to hold our place, working two jobs to earn the wage that one job once provided; constantly worried about whether we can afford health care or if we can afford to educate our kids or retire with enough financial wherewithal to live with dignity and give something back to our families and communities. The power arrayed against that happening is daunting.
But for the millions of us who believe that human life is about more than chasing a dollar or a euro, we have an obligation to stand against the prevailing power structure – to question it, to demand answers from it, to use moral persuasion to make it listen to our legitimate concerns. That’s Democracy. Dissent is a patriotic, creative act. As Dr. King said, “There is never a time in our American democracy that we must ever think we’re wrong when we protest. We reserve that right.”
It’s past time for America to reconnect with its basic values, just as it’s past time for working Americans to say, loud and often, enough is enough.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Hypocrite In Chief
I’ve been scanning the headlines of the Wall Street Journal ever since my neighbor in Unit A moved out; it’s his subscription that keeps giving me access to the Bible of the corporate-set.
Anyway, for a union activist, this is kind of like reading the playbook of the Capitalist class – or at least learning some of their lingo and getting a strong sense of what excites them.
A couple of days ago, in an article about the UAW and Honda, the Journal seemed right pleased with itself when it reported that, “The moves now are helping the foreign-owned plants to lower wage scales.”
Take that in and digest it. For the Capitalist class, keeping unions out and wages for workers down – which is why Honda chose to locate a plant in Greenburg, Indiana, and get Indiana officials to give it generous tax subsidies, and than allow the company to restrict hiring to a small sliver of the state population and geographic territory – is a noble thing. Executives reap big rewards for it. That’s called rigging the game in your favor, and the Capitalist class is skilled in the practice.
Anyway, I pick up the Journal from the driveway this morning, and there’s a piece about President Bush and trade. Here’s Bush, whose tax and trade policies have shifted billions of dollars in wealth from less well-to-do Americans to the wealthiest, whose policies have created a vast gulf between haves and have-nots, chiding corporate boards for giving Top Execs lavish salaries and stock options; Bush talking about how Americans want fairness, when his Administration has been anything but.
Does Bush believe that anyone buys his shit? He’s not a lame duck, he’s a moron, a complete, fucking moron. He had no trouble denying fairness to Katrina victims or Iraq vets discharged from the Army and denied disability benefits on the basis of bogus personality disorder claims or vetoing a decent bill that gave children a shot at decent medical care.
No trouble at all. He just smacked his titanium heart with his fist and claimed that the American economy is strong, robust, cooking, full of opportunity for all.
No wonder Bush smirks so much, there’s just no way to spew that crap with a straight or serious face. You either have to smirk or grimace or burst out laughing. Bush went to Yale on his family dime, studied occasionally, partied a lot, learned little, and still, still, the motherfucker thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.
Here’s this dingbat airhead, saying that America has lost confidence in its ability to compete in the global economy. Memo to GW: we don’t build things in this country anymore! Instead of building products the rest of the world might want to buy, we play with paper, make deals out of thin air, produce nada. And your pals in High Finance make millions, and pay to keep guys like you in the saddle, and it’s because of you, and them, that average people have finally figured out that there’s no way for them to win at this game; they realize too that they will not do as well as their parents did.
This cold knowledge is at long last beginning to sink into the nation’s TV-muddled brain, the veil of distraction is lifting as the general misery deepens: housing, health insurance, food, gas, it ain’t getting any cheaper folks, and with these jackasses in full control, there’s damn little we can do about it.
Except bitch, rant, scream and swallow anti-depressants. A few souls will see that it may take a lot more than that for us to be noticed. We can’t interest people in the ballot box, and even when we do, the powerful can steal the fucking election out from under us, stick one of their own in the White House or the Congress or the statehouse or City Hall.
Rigged games go one way. It baffles me that it took so long for the majority to catch on. I mean, did we really believe that supply-side, trickle down bullshit? Yeah, just let the rich get as rich as they possibly can, justify their belief in the creed of Ayn Rand, talk about morality and self-reliance and the sanctity of the individual, and then close their purses and forget they ever heard the term trickle down.
They turned the full power of their PR industry on us, their think tanks, encouraged, cajoled, and seduced us to buy slob SUV’s, shop for cheap goods at Wal-Mart, hate unions, and worry more about gays in our classrooms than about the organized, coordinated, and legal theft occurring right before our eyes. These fuckers are genius, genius and money, Midas on crystal meth.
They don’t even piss on us, anymore; they can’t be bothered.
Hey, it says so in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and who am I to doubt that venerable journalistic institution?
Anyway, for a union activist, this is kind of like reading the playbook of the Capitalist class – or at least learning some of their lingo and getting a strong sense of what excites them.
A couple of days ago, in an article about the UAW and Honda, the Journal seemed right pleased with itself when it reported that, “The moves now are helping the foreign-owned plants to lower wage scales.”
Take that in and digest it. For the Capitalist class, keeping unions out and wages for workers down – which is why Honda chose to locate a plant in Greenburg, Indiana, and get Indiana officials to give it generous tax subsidies, and than allow the company to restrict hiring to a small sliver of the state population and geographic territory – is a noble thing. Executives reap big rewards for it. That’s called rigging the game in your favor, and the Capitalist class is skilled in the practice.
Anyway, I pick up the Journal from the driveway this morning, and there’s a piece about President Bush and trade. Here’s Bush, whose tax and trade policies have shifted billions of dollars in wealth from less well-to-do Americans to the wealthiest, whose policies have created a vast gulf between haves and have-nots, chiding corporate boards for giving Top Execs lavish salaries and stock options; Bush talking about how Americans want fairness, when his Administration has been anything but.
Does Bush believe that anyone buys his shit? He’s not a lame duck, he’s a moron, a complete, fucking moron. He had no trouble denying fairness to Katrina victims or Iraq vets discharged from the Army and denied disability benefits on the basis of bogus personality disorder claims or vetoing a decent bill that gave children a shot at decent medical care.
No trouble at all. He just smacked his titanium heart with his fist and claimed that the American economy is strong, robust, cooking, full of opportunity for all.
No wonder Bush smirks so much, there’s just no way to spew that crap with a straight or serious face. You either have to smirk or grimace or burst out laughing. Bush went to Yale on his family dime, studied occasionally, partied a lot, learned little, and still, still, the motherfucker thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.
Here’s this dingbat airhead, saying that America has lost confidence in its ability to compete in the global economy. Memo to GW: we don’t build things in this country anymore! Instead of building products the rest of the world might want to buy, we play with paper, make deals out of thin air, produce nada. And your pals in High Finance make millions, and pay to keep guys like you in the saddle, and it’s because of you, and them, that average people have finally figured out that there’s no way for them to win at this game; they realize too that they will not do as well as their parents did.
This cold knowledge is at long last beginning to sink into the nation’s TV-muddled brain, the veil of distraction is lifting as the general misery deepens: housing, health insurance, food, gas, it ain’t getting any cheaper folks, and with these jackasses in full control, there’s damn little we can do about it.
Except bitch, rant, scream and swallow anti-depressants. A few souls will see that it may take a lot more than that for us to be noticed. We can’t interest people in the ballot box, and even when we do, the powerful can steal the fucking election out from under us, stick one of their own in the White House or the Congress or the statehouse or City Hall.
Rigged games go one way. It baffles me that it took so long for the majority to catch on. I mean, did we really believe that supply-side, trickle down bullshit? Yeah, just let the rich get as rich as they possibly can, justify their belief in the creed of Ayn Rand, talk about morality and self-reliance and the sanctity of the individual, and then close their purses and forget they ever heard the term trickle down.
They turned the full power of their PR industry on us, their think tanks, encouraged, cajoled, and seduced us to buy slob SUV’s, shop for cheap goods at Wal-Mart, hate unions, and worry more about gays in our classrooms than about the organized, coordinated, and legal theft occurring right before our eyes. These fuckers are genius, genius and money, Midas on crystal meth.
They don’t even piss on us, anymore; they can’t be bothered.
Hey, it says so in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and who am I to doubt that venerable journalistic institution?
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