Poem - The Trick

The Trick

Is to cut through the everyday noise & clutter
Spam & junk mail,
Empty solicitations from synthesized voices

The trick is to have the cajones to grab a sharp knife &
Slice through tendon, cartilage & muscle, open the bone
To the light of beauty & longing

The trick is working the jackhammer & the dynamite
For as long as it takes to bring down the walls of illusion & deceit

The trick is to stand naked, alone & unashamed
On the steps of the temple where nobody hides behind money or medals
Or Jesus

Can you do it?

Me neither

Think Less, Live More

If you think too much about the improbability of human life it will drive you crazy. Around the bend. Into a psychotic state and a strait-jacket. Or onto a barstool in the middle of a weekday afternoon, staring at your own image in the mirror above the bottles.

Pondering the physical elements that we try and protect ourselves against is daunting: fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis. Add the crap human beings create like war, anarchy, genocide, pogroms; throw in the emotional storms that buffet every human life sooner or later – loss, jealousy, envy, greed, hatred, remorse, anger -- and it’s a wonder more people don’t go totally apeshit.

In fact, it’s not what happens during the course of a lifetime that’s so amazing, but what doesn’t happen.

We fear the dark and we fear the random act. For instance, you stop at 7-11 on your way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer, a bag of potato chips and a pack of gum, and as you’re checking out a meth-addicted kid with a shaved head and a Nazi swastika tattooed on his cheek bursts into the store with a fully-loaded assault rifle and starts shooting. Before you can react, a bullet slices through your skull, instantly terminating your life. Wrong place, wrong moment, you’re time here is over; you exit as a tragic crime statistic.

We want life to be predictable and safe and easy and meaningful, even though one can argue that it’s unpredictable, dangerous, difficult and meaningless. We’re born into a death sentence, and unless you’re into religious hocus-pocus and believe in everlasting life in an air-conditioned heaven, it’s a bleak deal to contemplate.

The wealthy have innumerable ways to inoculate themselves against natural calamity and random acts of mayhem. During the recent Southern California wildfires, folks in certain high-profile zip codes enjoyed concierge fire protection, courtesy of their insurance company. Gated communities, private schools, boutique medical care, organically grown food all serve to increase the odds and decrease the risks.

Rich, poor or in between, living takes bravery. Open the door, step outside, keep your eyes and ears wide open, but don’t think too much. It’s better that way.

Goodbye, Alex

Leave it to Alex Rodriguez and his agent, Scott Boras, to act like total asswipes and announce that A-Rod is opting out of his deal with New York ten days sooner than was necessary – and during the fourth game of the World Series, when the baseball spotlight rightly belonged to the Boston Red Sox.

But that’s A-Rod’s style and Boras’s MO. Boras later apologized to Major League Baseball, the Red Sox and Rockies, but he already had what he wanted in the first place: attention for his client and himself.

Reader comments on the New York Times on-line tilted heavily against A-Rod and in favor of the Yankees letting him walk. From the beginning, Yankee fans had a love-hate relationship with A-Rod: we loved his talent, his statistics, his swagger, and we hoped he was the piece of the puzzle that would bring another World Series title to the Bronx; we hated the way he swooned in the postseason.

What we discovered about A-Rod during his seasons with New York is the same thing fans in Seattle and Texas discovered: A-Rod is a great player, but he’s not a winner.

There’s a big difference.

A-Rod’s not a winner because he cares more about what happens to A-Rod than to the team he’s playing for. Yes, his regular season statistics are stunning, and there’s little doubt that A-Rod will one day be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but I’d be willing to bet that when he strolls through the doors of the Hall it will be without a championship ring.

Derek Jeter is a winner. Mike Lowell is a winner. David Ortiz is a winner. A-Rod doesn’t really comprehend what those guys bring to the field and the clubhouse every day.

The numbers don’t lie. TheYankees played in five playoff series during the A-Rod era – and lost four of them. In twenty postseason games with New York, A-Rod went 15 for 75, with only three home runs and six runs batted in. His average was just .200 and he struck out twenty-one times.

Contrast these dismal numbers with Boston’s Manny Ramirez, who in fourteen postseason games this October drove in sixteen runs. That’s clutch production.

Where will A-Rod land? The better question might be, what team can both afford to pay him what he believes he’s worth and put up with the sideshow he brings with him?

I know it’s a long shot, but I’m hoping A-Rod signs a blockbuster deal with the Red Sox. The way things are going, adding A-Rod to their line-up may be the only way to knock Boston from the winner’s circle.

Someone Else's Blood

The drums are beating in Washington again
Calling for another senseless war
The strategy of destruction
The calculation of collateral damage
Maps, charts, battle plans
Generals and diplomats
Senators and lawyers
Insist that our way of life
Depends on how many others we can destroy

They never mention the harm we do ourselves
By destroying others

But when you’re far from the battlefield
Removed from the horror
Safe from harm and sacrifice
From death
It’s easy to spill someone else’s blood

Long Ride to Los Algondones

Mexico sends us its poor, downtrodden and desperate. They come across the river, through the desert, under the fence, over the razor wire, to work in our restaurants, our farms, our meatpacking plants, our backyards, our nursing homes. They willingly do hard, unpleasant, and dangerous labor for wages that most Americans scoff at.

Mexico is a nation rich in history, culture, natural resources, and political corruption. In Mexico, the gap between wealthy and poor is startling.

And so, they come across our common border to do the work we are unwilling to do.

Mexico may live in the long wide shadow cast by the United States, but when it comes to medical care, Mexico gets the last laugh. Mexican towns like Los Algondones become destinations, magnets, for American tourists who cannot afford prescription drugs, dental work, eyeglasses or basic medical care on the red, white and blue side of the border.

For $135, you can hop on an air-conditioned Santa Barbara Airbus with your prescription drug or basic medical needs, and the next day spend five solid hours in Los Algondones getting them filled -- in a foreign country that most Americans think of as desperately poor; in a foreign country we blame for our “immigration” problem; in a foreign country that we have historically exploited and treated with contempt.

Take a moment to allow the irony of that to soak in.

By world standards, Americans are wealthy and we meet our basic human needs with relative ease. But when it comes to medical care, Americans are lost in an ideological wilderness, forever arguing about capitalism versus “socialized” medicine, free markets versus government regulation, and forever missing the humane, moral point that access to medical care is an essential human right, not a privilege of birth or wealth.

Poor Mexico exports its human capital -- the aforementioned day-laborers, dishwashers, gardeners, mechanics and home health care workers -- that we cannot do without, and imports gringos who can’t afford prescription drugs or dental work on this side of the border. What’s wrong with this picture?

Even a “backward” nation like Mexico understands that health care for human beings cannot be left to the prejudices and vagaries of the “free” market. In the industrialized world, only the United States clings to the fantasy that the for-profit market can deliver medical care for all.

We are so completely twisted that we allow insurance companies to make medical decisions, to override trained professionals, and to deny care so that they may profit. We are so twisted that we cannot even engage in a rational conversation about medical care without the profiteers springing from the woodwork to scream “socialized medicine!” “waiting lists!” “higher taxes!” We are so twisted, that a conversation that should be about health and sickness, life and death, becomes instead a conversation about dollars and cents.

Consequently, we pay more and get less, and millions of us go without because the cost is too high.

And some of us get on the bus and take the long trip Los Algondones.

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?

Fat Lady Sings, Curtain Fall for Yanks, Torre

Watching Game four of the ALDS was painful, like watching a champion racehorse come up lame in the home stretch and go down in a heap. What else to do but put a gun to the horse’s head and squeeze the trigger?

The Indians simply executed better than the Yankees in every aspect of the game. By the fourth inning, when I switched the game off for good and said so long to the Joe Torre era – because for this collapse he’s sure to be canned, and in fact should be canned – Cleveland was 13 for 26 with Runners in Scoring Position in the series, and batting equally well with two out.

In the first inning with the Yanks down 2-0 and Jeter at second and Abreau at first, Alex Rodriguez walked to the plate and dug in against Paul Byrd, and you had the sense that here was A-Rod’s moment to slough off the past, the futility of 2004, 2005, and 2006, to silence a few of his critics and earn the adoration of Yankee fans, but it wasn’t to be – the greatest regular season player in recent history struck out on three pitches.

Leading off the third, A-Rod struck out looking.

When the Indians were batting, the half innings passed with agonizing slowness, as the hitters went deep into every count, 3-1, 3-2, fouling off pitches from Wang and then Mike Mussina, taking close pitches, waiting patiently for a pitch to hit. When the Yankees were at the plate it was just the opposite – the Yankee batters always seemed to be down in the count, 0-1 or 0-2, forced to take defensive swings in their own storied ballpark.

It was ugly, but not unexpected. Yankee pitching was suspect all year, and though the offense was fearsome, too often the entire team went into a collective slump, and when that happened, they had trouble beating the likes of Tampa Bay and Kansas City.

I know that people will argue that it’s not Joe Torre’s fault, since he can’t throw a strike or swing the bat, but other managers have been fired for less. Look at the record and tell me a change on the bench in the Bronx isn’t absolutely necessary: 2002, bounced by the Angels; 2003, crushed by Florida in the World Series; 2004, the historic, record book making collapse against Boston; 2005, victimized again by the Angels; and in 2006, another first round exit, this time against Detroit.

If the Yankees were the type of organization that was content just to win the division crown or get to the play-offs, Torre’s job would be safe, but that’s not the case. For George Steinbrenner, getting close isn’t enough – he wants the hardware and the championship banners, the rings. Torre hasn’t delivered in years.

General Manager Brian Cashman may need to exit as well, since he’s the architect of the team, the man who signed A-Rod, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and on and on. Many of these acquisitions never panned out the way the Yankee brain trust hoped.

As Jackson Brown put it, “All good things must come to an end” and the Torre era in New York is certainly over. I’m sure Joe ducked into the clubhouse between innings and began packing his personal effects into cardboard cartons: Preparation H and Pepcid AC, Extra-Strength Excedrin, Tylenol, Bayer aspirin, Pepto Bismal, a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, chewing gum and breath mints, sunflower seeds, notes from players and fans, a birthday card from George Steinbrenner, from 2000, when the dynasty was intact. He’ll come back tomorrow and take the photographs from the walls and the knick-knacks from the shelves.

And so it goes for the losers. I can’t work up much sympathy for these multi-millionaire, pampered professional athletes, though I do feel bad for Derek Jeter, who for years has been the heart and soul of the Yankees, and the only player who could be counted on to produce when the rest of the boys were choking -- though even Jeter, as great as he has been, didn’t deliver this year.

Heartbeat in the Bronx

For three innings it looked like more of the same – more futility piling up near the Yankee dugout, the priciest players in the game getting stomped by a bunch of talented young guys from Cleveland. Roger Clemens looked every day of forty-five as he limped from the mound after only 2 1/3 innings and his team trailing 0-3. It didn’t look promising when Derek Jeter grounded into double plays in the first and third innings. In fact, the Bronx night wore the aspect of a funeral.

Before the game Yankee owner George Steinbrenner laid down the gauntlet: win this game and this series or Joe Torre is gone. When the clutch Indians scored their twelfth run of the series with two-out, the chances of Torre ever wearing a Yankee uniform again seemed remote.

Prior to the fifth inning, the heart of the Yankee line-up was a collective one for twenty-four at the plate. This potent team that scored 968 regular season runs and smacked more than 200 homers, was locked down, unable to string two consecutive hits together. It was like 2003 when the Yankees offense sputtered against Josh Beckett, Carl Pavano and the Florida Marlins. To make sure the team never found itself shut down in a play-off series again, the Yanks went after and signed Alex Rodriguez in 2004, but the post-season has been cruel to A-Rod, transforming him from September stud to October dud.

Thanks to the baseball Gods for young Phil Hughes, who came on in relief of Clemens and mixed in a sharp curve ball with 90-plus MPH heat. While Hughes kept the Indians at bay, the Yankee offense finally got out of first gear. The ever-steady Hideki Matsui showed the boys how to take the ball to the opposite field, Cano sliced a double into the left-field corner, Melky Cabrera drove a run home, and Johnny Damon hit a pop-fly homer to right to give the Yankees the lead.

Are the big bats coming out of their slumber? Did the Yankees find the mojo hidden at the base of Babe Ruth’s plaque in Monument Park? And who will get the baseball from Torre for tonight’s do-or-die Game 4? Who does Torre turn to to keep the Yankees in the game until the offense can do its thing once more?

The fat lady may not be singing in full throat, but she is warming in the wings.

Doom in Cleveland

Well, that was a typical October Yankee loss, an excruciating extra inning affair where every fan expects the Yanks to finally, finally, break out and hit in the clutch. But no, it wasn’t to be tonight any more than it has been the last six seasons. A-Rod, the great A-Rod, went 0-4 with 3K’s – one of them in a critical situation, with two outs and Bobby Abreu – the potential go ahead run -- standing on second.

Joba Chamberlain was rattled by the crowd, the pressure of a play-off game, and the bugs that swarmed around the mound and home plate. Joba cruised through the 7th and croaked in the 8th, issuing two wild pitches, two walks, and a hit batter. Joba choked, no question. Pitching in October is different than pitching in August.

The powerful Yankee offense, tops in the Major Leagues in runs scored, was completely shut down for the second game in a row. Two games, twenty innings, a pathetic eight hits and four measly runs pushed across the plate in Cleveland.

The longer this game went, the greater the chances were that the Yankees would lose. Once Mariano Rivera left the game – after pitching a strong ninth and a shaky tenth – the odds of a Yankee loss shot up the way the Dow Jones does after the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates. When Joe Torre gave the baseball to Luiz Vizcaino, I knew the goose was cooked. In sixty-plus innings during the regular season, Vizcaino walked forty-plus batters, hardly a sterling recommendation for a set-up man – unless you pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Naturally, Vizcaino threw four straight balls to the first batter he faced. Giving the ball to Luis in a clutch situation is like handing a primed hand grenade to a Sunni in a crowd of Shiites.

Jesus, sweet Jesus, Yogi was right, it’s deja vu all over again. I’m sure Joe Torre was on the phone with his travel agent minutes after the game ended, booking a flight to Honolulu, with a connecting flight to Maui, where he will hole up in a 5-Star hotel for the next eight weeks while the Yankee brass debates his future.

If the Yankees make yet another humiliating first round exit, and it certainly looks like they will, the Torre era is over. It was a fine run. George Steinbrenner may be old and in poor health, but he’s still a proud egomaniac who demands victory, and another dismal playoff performance will make the decision to cut Torre loose easy. The glory years are long ago now, a grainy highlight reel played late at night on ESPN. The magic ended when Luis Gonzalez dumped a hit into left field and drove in the winning run in the 2001 World Series. The Yanks scored fourteen runs in seven games that series, and, expect for the first three games of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankee offense has been a sputtering wreck since.

Yankees fans are again on the Rack of October, being stretched and humiliated.

I switch to the Angels-Red Sox game. The Angels struggle against the Red Sox in a way I have never seen them struggle against the Yankees. The Yankees always look off-balance and out of kilter against the Angels, a half-step slow, dazed, old. That’s how the Angels look in Fenway. The Green Monster looms over them, ominous and intimidating, like the shadow of Darth Vader.

But I’d rather be an Angel in Fenway than a Yankee aboard that quiet charter flight from Cleveland to New York.

It's October, All Over Again

Well, it’s October and the Yankees are losing – and not just losing – getting their clocks cleaned and spit-shined. If you can’t pitch, you can’t win. You give up more than ten runs in a playoff game and you can kiss the dream goodbye. The Yankees are great when they’re on, but mediocre when they’re not. The only way they can win is to hit; if they don’t hit, which they often fail to do when the opposing pitcher is Josh Beckett or Jared Weaver or John Lackey or CC Sabathia, they lose.

Damn depressing. The Yanks scurried off the field in Cleveland like wet rats, every last one of them with his head bowed in shame.

Another quick October exit, another Winter & Spring spent listening to twisted rants and merciless retribution from George Steinbrenner, a couple of stupid off-season signings of players beyond their prime by Brian Cashman, and then another season when the Yankees win ninety-plus games with their offense, only to see it all go south when they find themselves in a short playoff series against a club with solid pitching.

How about the Rockies? That team is on a major roll, but do they have the pitching staff to go much further? Wild Card teams have a good historical record of winning the World Series, however, so who knows? Colorado has the mojo, the Cinderella aura. Sometimes the October crown is won by the team that catches fire at precisely the right moment. When it’s all over and they’ve doused one another with cheap champagne and hoisted the championship trophy you can’t quite understand how they pulled it off against clearly superior clubs.

In baseball, weird stuff happens.

Indeed, and no one knows this better than my Yankees, many of whom remember the horrid collapse of 2004, when they had the Red Sox by the throat and let them get away. The boys can’t be sleeping well tonight. Their dreams will be tortured by crazed Indian fans wielding wicked unhittable sliders, high heat, and nasty, nasty off-speed stuff. A-Rod’s probably pacing the floor – unless he’s out chasing some floozy – and wondering if he will ever redeem himself in October, if Yankee fans will ever truly adopt him into the storied pantheon of Yankee greats, or if he will always and forever be known as a superb “regular” season player. Back and forth, back and forth, while the Cleveland night deepens and the homeless disappear into alleys, and traffic lights blink over deserted streets.

The Boom Not Heard

Mornings are better when we don’t turn the Tube on, but most mornings it’s tuned to KEYT Channel 3, our local news station, so we can get a sense of the weather for the day ahead.

I was walking through the living room the other day when I heard Beth Farnsworth, the morning anchor say, “America’s economy is booming this morning.”

This was the day after the Federal Reserve cut the interest rate it charges member banks, igniting a rally on Wall Street. My first thought was: this is how a lie becomes the truth of the land. I don’t know if Farnsworth writes her own copy or just repeats what she reads on the ABC News website, but to equate a rising stock market with an economic boom is sheer stupidity, the kind of twaddle you’d expect to hear from that fat toad, Karl Rove.

When a journalist says “America’s economy is booming this morning,” it only goes to show how lazy journalists have become.

Booming for whom? Not the wage slaves who are making less today than they were a year ago. Not the poor saps losing their homes to foreclosure or the engineer whose job was outsourced to India and is now earning a quarter of his former salary hawking cell phones at Circuit City. Not the retiree heading back into the job market because her pension won’t come close to covering the monthly nut.

In reality, the Fed rate cut is yet another hand-out for the Investor Class, the Masters of the Universe who own this country, its political process and its lawmakers. Stock market migrations tell us very little about the American economy. The floor of the New York Stock Exchange isn’t much different from the casino at Cesar’s Palace; money is wagered, money is won, money is lost. On the whole, stock market players may be more sophisticated than the average lout who throws money away at Cesar’s, but it’s still a game of chance, where nothing tangible is created.

Morning after morning, night after night, the American news media reports on the stock market, as if every American has a stake in the outcome. When was the last time you heard the news media give more than thirty seconds to the working class? The Titans of Industry get lots of airtime to extol the virtues of free trade and market efficiency, but workers are ignored as if they have no story to tell.

For seven years, George W. Bush, Liar in Chief, has been crowing about the strength of the American Economy. Thanks to generous tax and monetary policy that favors the few at the expense of the many, Bush’s wealthy friends have scored. Under Bush, the affluent became rich, and the rich became super-rich; they hold the high ground, the prime real estate, and their lawns are forever green.

The truth is less rosy. The American Economy is fundamentally flawed – and primed to collapse. It’s not so much a house of cards as it is a house of debt.

And the pesky truth about debts is that they eventually come due.

Surge of the Status Quo

Tonight Bush will give us another serving of his Iraq jive.

More “stay the course” garbage, more lies about Iraq being the central front in his failed “War on Terror,” more gibberish about America’s “vital interests.”

The people’s elected representatives will once again suck it up and choke it down, then wipe their chins and justify their cowardice on Fox News and CNN.

The people won’t buy it, but then, it’s clear that our opinion doesn’t make a bit of difference.

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a platinum fork up his ass, and, in addition to believing that the Almighty speaks to him and him alone, he obviously believes the American people are dolts.

Bush’s ballyhooed troop reduction next summer merely brings us back to the same fork in the road where we stood in February 2007. The United States military will still maintain a gargantuan footprint in Iraq, and will still stand between numerous armed factions fighting for hegemony in a political vacuum.

Americans and Iraqis will still be killed, maimed, wounded, and displaced.

Our chances for success – whatever the hell that means – will be the same then as they are today: slim and none.

Face it, Americans never quit an Occupation voluntarily. Sixty-two years after the end of World War II, America still maintains major military installations in Germany and Japan. More than fifty years after Korea, we’re still hunkered down in the South. And if the government of South Vietnam had been less corrupt, we’d still be there, too. Vital interests, you know?

Bush’s troop reduction shell game buys time for his two primary neocon dreams to come true: the completion of permanent American military facilities in Iraq, and the passage by the Iraqi government of legislation that will give American oil companies access to Iraq’s reserves.

Once those objectives are accomplished, we’ll have to stay in Iraq forever in order to protect our “vital” interests, not to mention the investments of American oil companies.

Poem - Hey Steve

Hey Steve Earle, when does the Revolution start,
who’s leading it?

Not Hillary. She’s got to protect her Wall Street cred.

Not Obama. He looks good and sounds good, but he’ll never upset the status quo.

Edwards can’t get much traction.

Kucinich, maybe, but Kucinich was DOA before he began.

People are thirsty for a message that speaks to them,
about them; they ache for relief from the heartless policies
and misplaced priorities of Cheney/Bush.

How poor do the poor have to be
how sick the sick
before our humanity kicks in?

People are working hard, playing by the rules,
losing ground,
in America,
land of the divided,
the distracted
and the indebted.

The wealthy and well-connected don’t listen to us.
Why should they?
They own the game and the rule makers.

They ignore us with impunity.

They don’t live in places where Main Street is a Mean Street,
solid blocks of boarded windows
a thriving Salvation Army store,
pay-day loans and liquor stores,
smell of soup from a church basement,
seventy souls waiting their turn
for a meal and a cot.

Best of times, worst of times.

In America!

Hey Steve Earle, give me hope, one more time.

Desperation on the Hill

I feel a cluster-fuck coming on.

When General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker go up to Capitol Hill next week for their long awaited report on the situation in Iraq, you can bet they will downplay the major disappointments and accentuate the minor successes – and then claim that what’s needed is more of the same – more money and maybe even more troops.

They will lay the bullshit on thick for the politicos, and even make Democrats feel good about rolling over for President Bush’s wild-eyed and doomed-to-fail shell game.

How many Iraqis have been killed by American forces since the “surge” began?

Is Iraq closer to formulating a central government with enough support from the populace to bring the factions together and stabilize the country?

Are we sure that the people we’re training and arming won’t one day turn their weapons on US forces?

The problem with declining empires is that they make a lot of mistakes out of desperation.

Our political leaders are weak and deceitful, our mass media is lazy as well as stupid, and the majority of our people are too busy trying to hang on to middle class status to give a rat’s ass.

We are screwed.

We are losing.

Highlights at 11:00.

Big Ideas

The last official American economic recession ended about five years ago. It was Post 9/11 but Pre-Iraq Invasion, and George Bush and the Republicans had a lock on the government. The Great Decider and his ideological brethren pushed tax “relief” for the wealthy and outright subsidies for their corporate friends.

Inevitably, the stock market rode high, individual wealth for a tiny segment of the population increased dramatically, and corporate profits jumped. Bush claimed that his policies – his ideology – were responsible for the economic recovery, and every chance he got he crowed about the strength of the economy.

Bush’s myopia is such that he never saw, and wouldn’t fathom if he did, that the “recovery” which looked so impressive on Fox News and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, was a mirage for the majority of Americans who depend on wages for their survival.

In an editorial on August 29, the New York Times noted the obvious: the economic “growth” of the last five years has had a negligible impact for most of the population. According to the Times, the median household income was $1000 less in 2006 than it was in 2000. The Times went on to say that, “Indeed, earnings of men and women working full time actually fell more than 1 percent last year.”

This may be news to the Times, but it’s obvious for anyone who depends on wages for a living. Working-class Americans know a recovery when they’re in one – and for us the so-called recovery of the past five years has been nothing except a long march through a barren land. We’ve watched our productivity soar and the spoils accrue to CEO’s, hedge fund operators and Chinese bankers.

When the Times says, “This stilted distribution of rewards underscores how economic growth alone has been insufficient to provide better living standards for most American families,” we nod in agreement. Our invitation to the party never got sent because we were never meant to be invited.

Which brings us to fundamental questions about public policy and the ideas that drive that policy – questions which are generally ignored by the mainstream media and politicians of every creed. Oh, sure, Dennis Kucinich raises these questions, but Kucinich is a voice in the fog of Hillary and Barack; John Edwards has discovered that a populist message resonates with large audiences, but the media has largely written him into a corner.

While it’s clear that the Republican philosophy of giving more to those who already have the most is a total failure, the Democrats haven’t exactly excelled in the Big Idea department. All Democrats have done since the mid-90’s is ape Republicans to the point where Democrats don’t know who they are and what bedrock ideas they stand for. Barack Obama is a gifted orator, but his experience is paper thin and it’s not like he’s out there pushing the political envelope; Hillary Clinton has yet to meet a corporate cause she can’t support.

The 2008 Presidential election should be about Big Ideas, about the kind of society we want to create, and about our priorities as a nation, but it will probably be the same irrelevant claptrap voters have endured the past two election cycles. We’ll probably argue about some social sideshow like gay rights when a twisted economic policy that places the interests of the few above the needs of the many is the stake being driven through our hearts. Democrats can’t simply harken back to the New Deal because the political, military, social, and technological landscape we find ourselves in today is radically different than it was in 1932. But this doesn’t mean we can’t fashion some New Deal principles for this century.

The real question is – can we adopt such principles before it’s too late?

Welcome to Brazil

For the second time this week, the Yankees lost a game in 10 innings, this time to the Tigers in soggy Detroit. Meanwhile, Boston swept a double header and Seattle beat Texas, so New York is 6.5 games behind the Red Sox and 3 behind Seattle for the Wild Card.

Home foreclosures are running at a record pace, but here on the Platinum Coast, real estate prices remain high. Not too far from where we live there’s a “charming” 2BD/1BA cottage listing for a mere $879,000. According to the ad, the price was recently “reduced.”

Who can afford an $879,000 home? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief…drug dealer? The question baffles. I notice a number of homes above the million dollar mark – older tract homes that have been renovated, one such with “filtered” views of the ocean. I guess if you can see a tiny sliver of ocean through a stand of eucalyptus trees that qualifies as “filtered.” I wonder how much that sliver adds to the price. $50 grand? $100 grand?

I love the language real estate hucksters use to describe these listings: “Amazingly charming,” “elegant,” “incredible views,” and “breathtaking privacy.” I suppose that “breathtaking privacy” means you can run around the backyard naked or take a long, satisfying piss off the deck without fear that your neighbors will call the cops.

I hate to sound like a warped CD, but this country has lost its moorings. I read a report on wealth in America the other day that noted that in 1985 there were 13 billionaires in the country; today there are more than 1,000. The Bush Administration takes that news as a sign of a robust economy. The reality is different, and slowly, grudgingly, even the corporate-controlled media is beginning to notice.

For a generation now, official government tax and monetary policy has sought to shift wealth from the middle to the top. The ideological underpinning for this policy asserted that society’s investors and risk-takers deserved the spoils. This ideology also asserted that everyone would benefit from unfettered capitalism because some wealth would “trickle” down to the working masses.

Well, if you’re an average working person and feel like you’ve been taking a long golden shower, you’re not alone. Welcome to the new Gilded Age. The rich are richer than ever, the yacht building business is strong, corporate profits are high – and the rest of us are scrounging under the sofa cushions for loose change, shopping at Wal-Mart, and eating off the dollar menu at Taco Bell.

We are Brazil. Through inattention, ignorance, and gullibility, we have driven a stake through the heart of the American Dream. We swallowed the fables, lies, and bullshit fed us by the money changers. They told us that we too could sit at their bountiful table, and all the while they were conspiring to keep us out of the dining room.

I miss the American Dream. To me it never promised riches; instead it promised that my hard work would net me and my family a comfortable, decent life. There might not be plenty, but there would be enough.

There & Back Again

Through the Looking Glass, down the Rabbit Hole, and deep into the Belly of the Beast.

Or some such.

Around here, this will be remembered as the Summer of Ash, as the Zaca Fire continues to burn – 100,000 acres and counting. Total containment still weeks away. Smoke and ash turn the sun red, the light pink, and make the air hazardous to breathe. It’s a glimpse of what the end of the world might look like.

Do or Die time for my Yankees. They took three of four from the slumping Tigers over the weekend, at home, but now pack their bags and head west, for three games with Anaheim, a team that has always given them fits; then it’s on to Detroit for four; then home for a series with the hated Red Sox. Against sub-.500 teams with mediocre pitching the Yanks gorge; against elite teams with strong pitching staffs, they nibble. They’re up against the elite of the American League now. The Yanks win a lot of blow-out games and lose many close games for a simple reason: they don’t have the pitching to hold other teams down. Quality starts by Mussina and Wang and Pettitte are undone by the likes of Luis Vizcaino and Kyle Farnsworth, big, hard-throwing guys who frequently lose the strike zone.

Looks like real people are beginning to worry about the mortgage industry meltdown, the lead edge of what might become a widespread freak-out. Countrywide’s stock is in the toilet and the company had to borrow billions to make sure it can meet its obligations. The Asian stock market is still jittery. In the US, the Federal Reserve lowered the discount rate and effectively pumped money into the system, quelling fears, at least temporarily, that the mortgage collapse might spread to the greater economy.

Let’s see if we can sort this mess out, even in the most rudimentary way. Real estate took off but the wages for most workers remained flat. As home prices soared upwards, seemingly without end in some parts of the country, qualified applicants for traditional mortgages with large down payment requirements and fixed interest rates became too scarce to keep the boom rocking and rolling. Finance industry wizards put on their thinking caps and came up with sub-prime mortgages -- no money down, no income verification, interest-only teasers, adjustable rates…It was mortgage nirvana, profitable as all get out. Suddenly, millions of folks who were priced out of the boom had a way to get in on the fun.

The lust for gain makes people do weird things. Otherwise intelligent people honestly believed that real estate would continue to appreciate every year by double-digit rates, particularly in desirable areas like Santa Barbara. While this community may not be affected nearly as much as some California cities and counties, I have to believe there will be some fall-out. At the height of the price run-up, when owners and real estate agents were delirious and cocky, I never understood how people could afford million dollar tract houses. Where did the dough come from, what kind of jobs did these lucky folks hold, how did they crack the nut month after month? It was alien to me, another universe into which my annual salary allowed not even a glimpse.

The next President of the United States, whoever he or she may be, from either party, is going to inherit a helluva mess – the Iraq entanglement, an economy with serious structural flaws, a health care system that excludes millions, a crushing dependency on foreign oil. The outlook is so dismal that it’s a wonder any sane person wants the damn job. That a number of people do is testament to the power of political ambition. The United States is an empire in decline, holding, for the time being, its position among nations due to the strength of its military, rather than any ethical, economic, humanitarian or moral hegemony.

HERE COMES THE BAILOUT

The Stray Cats and the Pretenders are playing the County Bowl tonight, and right now, as the baby boomer crowd streams in, a band I’ve never heard of is warming up the folks, getting them primed for the main acts.

The American economy is primed as well – for an ugly fall that might finally expose the foot-wide cracks in its foundations. The stock market plummeted yesterday amidst worries about the meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market. The news reverberated from Asia to Europe. President Bush wrote the sharp decline off to feckless borrowers – rather than the predatory, not to mention shoddy, business practices of lenders. When a lender grants a huge mortgage without verifying that the borrower has the capacity to pay it back, should we condemn the lender or the borrower? In our ass-backwards nation, where Capital is provided every advantage and given the benefit of the doubt at every turn, we naturally blame the borrower.

The real estate boom of the last ten years drove housing prices higher than the majority of buyers could afford. Traditional mortgages got chucked out the window and mortgage “creativity” was born. And why not? This is America, Inc., the “free” market is our true religion, and money is our God, so why shouldn’t buyers with less-than-sterling credit get in on the boom? Fuck FICO scores, income verification and all that logical shit – just get in the game by any means necessary and grab your share of booty.

When the sub-prime scheme was diagrammed on a white board in a big corner office of a tall office building it made perfect sense. Real estate was red hot, money was cheap, and average folks were panting for homes. It was beautiful. Home ownership for everyone – even if they can’t afford it. Here was American Capitalism at its finest, the great entrepreneurial spirit that Conservatives are always crowing about in action, creating and dispersing the spoils to our best and brightest and most highly deserving citizens.

The regulatory agencies that should have been monitoring these shenanigans were taking a forced siesta, their budgets gutted, their powers retarded. Conservatives assure us that Business can police itself and that the titans of industry can be relied upon to keep one another honest. And it goes without saying that the titans and moguls and Wall Street princes keep the public good uppermost in mind…

Sure, and four-hundred pound sows will sprout wings any day now and fly like falcons. If something looks, feels, sounds or smells too good to be true, it probably is.

Sooner rather than later, Wall Street and the big mortgage lenders will run, sobbing and moaning, to the Government for “temporary” assistance and relief from all those feckless borrowers. Yes, the titans and moguls who preach self-reliance at every turn, who preach the fairness and efficiency of the Market, who preach the evils of Big Government, will run to Government with their hands out -- and the Government -- devoted servant of the special interests who own it, will put on a public relations blitz about protecting the American economy from recession, blah, blah, blah. The talking heads on Fox and Conservative radio will echo the message and ignore the hypocrisy, and even little Katie Couric will repeat the party line word for word…

Yeah, I can see it coming because I’ve seen it before. The way this country is wired, we can always afford wars and taxpayer-funded bailouts for wayward financial institutions.

Dog Days

These are the dog days of Summer on the Balcony. Outrages continue on the political front, but the warm weather and long days induce a laziness that makes dealing with all that impossible. The mailman comes around, and the mad dog on the porch barely opens one sleepy eye. Next time, we’ll get him next time. The mail will come again as surely as the Bush Administration will flout the law and defy logic.

Meanwhile, there is baseball. A week ago I was at Dodger Stadium in LA, sitting in the bright sunshine, drinking a $12 beer and munching a $5.50 Dodger dog. How the average working-class fan can afford the ticket price, parking, and the rip-off at the concession stands is beyond me. Perhaps the answer to that riddle rests with the smiling people handing out “pre-approved” applications for LA Dodger Mastercards as you enter the stadium.

My New York Yankees are eight games behind the hated Red Sox in the American League East and five games out of the Wild Card, largely because they were beset by injuries in April and May and dug themselves a monumental hole in the standings. Lately, the Yanks have beaten up the likes of Tampa Bay and Kansas City, improving their record, but until New York can beat the cream of the American League on a consistent basis, it appears they may miss the post-season for the first time in a decade.

Barry Bonds is limping his way toward the history books, poised to eclipse Henry Aaron’s all-time home run record. A lot of sporting people are outraged because of allegations that Bonds used illegal steroids on his way to the record, and even the Commissioner of Baseball can’t summon much enthusiasm to celebrate Bonds’s achievement.

Bonds had his most productive seasons after the age of thirty-five, a time when most players experience an erosion of their skills; he also defied the typical male aging process and packed on nearly forty pounds of solid muscle. Such unnatural growth is suspicious, but there’s no evidence to suggest that steroids can help a human being hit a baseball. Illegal steroids may have made Bonds bigger and stronger than a man his age had a right to be, but his ability to hit a round baseball with a round bat was present long before he allegedly began experimenting with the Cream and the Clear.

Hank Aaron was all class and consistency, even in the face of racial slurs and death threats from southern crackers and white supremacists. By contrast, Bonds is surly with the media and aloof from the public and his teammates. Bonds has as much class as Donald Trump.

Baseball is caught between a cheer and a sneer. The home run record is hallowed and sanctified as long as Henry Aaron holds it; Bonds brings his prickly personality and the suspicion of chemical enhancement to the throne, and when Baseball anoints him as home run king it may find that the crown won’t fit his super-sized cranium.

ARE YOU "SICKO" YET?

It was only a matter of time before the health insurance industry, using its surrogates in the media, went after Michael Moore and his new film, “Sicko.” After all, if the idea of universal health care ever takes root in this land, the insurance industry stands to lose, big time.

The profits in the health insurance industry are staggering, so it’s no surprise that Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana and the rest are ginning up the PR machine for battle.

Enter CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Larry King and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network’s chief medical correspondent. Michael Moore was present, too, as angry as I have ever seen him for what he called a “piece of crap” segment about his movie.

Fairly or not, Blitzer comes off as an apologist for CNN and the entire mainstream media; Sanjay Gupta was well-spoken but condescending; and Larry King -- well, let’s just say that Larry should stick to celebrity interviews and the Paris Hilton beat.

What annoyed me as a viewer of the initial piece on Blitzer’s Situation Room, and the follow-up on Larry King, was how mired Moore and Dr. Gupta became in minor details. Does the United States spend $6,000 or more like $7,000 per capita per year on health care? Do Canadians wait weeks for medical care? Is our health care better than Cuba’s?

Folks, that the United States ranks in the same vicinity with Cuba in the World Health Organization’s hierarchy is the real tragedy. Cuba, let’s not forget, is a small island nation with limited resources, ruled by an ailing dictator, with an economy stuck in a time warp. That Cuba manages to rank 39th on the WHO list is a remarkable achievement for which Cubans should be proud, and conversely, that the US ranks 37th is a national scandal for which we should hang our heads.

Dr. Gupta took Moore to task over the concept of “free” medical care in France and Britain and Canada. Gupta insisted that the French, British, and Canadians do pay in the form of taxes. This is true. Personal tax rates in those countries are higher than ours, primarily because they have not made “tax relief” and “no new taxes, ever!” the cornerstone of their domestic economic policies; nor have they transferred a trillion dollars to their wealthiest citizens as we’ve done here on the fruited plain.

Moore gets it right when he points out that French citizens receive medical care without stressing over how much that care will cost; every citizen pays into the system, every citizen is covered, end of story. Only the US boasts an estimated 47 million people uninsured, millions more under-insured, and who knows how many soon to be priced out of the health insurance market altogether. If that isn’t enough shame, don’t forget that millions of American children lack health insurance coverage and access to primary care.

Just to stay on the money point a bit longer…Dr. Gupta seemed mighty self-satisfied when he pointed out that France has a multi-billion dollar (franc?) budget deficit. Gee, Doc, when was the last time you looked at the US budget deficit, our trade deficit, our negative savings rate, and the statistics on personal debt, bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures?

Dr. Gupta also spoke proudly of how technologically advanced the US is when it comes to procedures like knee and hip replacements and cataracts. Yes, we do the exotic things quite well, but again, that’s because specialists in those areas make boucoup money for their expertise. Our problem is access to care, not technology. Forget knee replacements! Let’s see what we can do about obesity, diabetes, gout, and heart disease.

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore has made a movie that finally raises the inhumanity of our profit-based health care system to wider consciousness. Even Dr. Gupta admitted that it’s damn annoying for a certified MD to call a clerk in Omaha to get approval for a medical procedure that the MD deems necessary for his patient’s health. The problem with our system is that the clerk in Omaha has the power and authority to say NO.

GOT MANIFESTO?

“Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders.”

So wrote Lewis F. Powell to the Chairman of the United States Chamber of Commerce Education Committee in August, 1971, when Powell was still a corporate attorney.

A bright colleague of mine who is well-versed in American history, and particularly the history of the American Labor Movement, mentioned the Powell Memo during a conversation, and while I knew Lewis F. Powell as a Supreme Court Justice, I was not familiar with the Powell Memo or its role as an ideological linchpin of the “Conservative” revolution.

Revolution is a charged word, but when you consider the corporate dominance of our nation in 2007, the word fits better than any other.

Thirty-six years ago, Lewis Powell, along with many others in the American “establishment,” believed the United States was in imminent danger of being taken over by Leftist, Communist, or Marxist revolutionaries. The country was mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the young questioned institutions and values, banks burned and the Weathermen plotted. To people like Lewis Powell, it seemed that armed revolutionaries would soon fill the streets of Washington D.C. Powell also believed that the government, media, and universities were bursting with people hell bent on the destruction of the American free enterprise system and every principle that Powell and people like him held sacred. If you weren’t alive then, or old enough to clearly remember the social turmoil of the mid-to-late sixties, the “Law & Order” rhetoric used by Richard Nixon, the very idea that the American “system” was in any jeopardy at all seems ludicrous.

Here’s another quote that seems risible now: “One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the ‘forgotten man.’”

Today, it is average, working-class American citizens who are forgotten. Corporate lobbyists purchase the services of politicians of both major political parties and craft much of the legislation that eventually becomes law of the land; corporations own all the significant American media and corporate viewpoints dominate the airwaves (for instance, almost every news broadcast includes a report on the stock market, even though the information is totally irrelevant to the majority of Americans. By reporting stock market migrations, the media legitimizes the stock market as an important indicator of our national economic health); through relentless advertising and PR flim-flam, corporate influence penetrates every nook and cranny of our lives; the steady drumbeat is so effective that empirical evidence is ignored. For example, we accept as unassailable fact the myth that the private sector always delivers services better than the public sector, and that the “free market” is the only answer to every major problem we face.

How did this total reversal of fortunes happen? If Lewis Powell were alive today, what might he think of the revolution he is given credit for helping shape? Would he look at Wal-Mart and pronounce its business practices good? What would he say about the deliberate fraud that triggered the Enron and Worldcom scandals? Would he applaud or condemn the regulatory laxity, legislative chicanery, and judicial ideology that has squeezed the middle-class into near extinction and widened the gulf between the wealthy and everybody else? Would he be pleased to see states turn to legalized gambling for needed revenue rather than increase taxes? And finally, would Powell approve of the corporate chieftains who have outsourced America’s manufacturing base to China -- along with thousands of jobs -- in return for record profits and staggering increases in CEO compensation?

I wonder. Lewis Powell was intelligent enough to peer into a darkening sky and recognize a gathering storm. America stands at the crossroads where great powers become has-beens; the days of American dominance are coming to a close, and how we deal with that grim reality is a critical question for the future. We are adept at moving money around the globe, swapping credit, trading debt instruments, but when it comes to producing tangible products the world’s consumers might want to buy, we are a shell of our former selves. As Kevin Phillips notes in his sobering book, American Theocracy, nations that forego manufacturing in favor of “financialization” soon find themselves on the down slope of prosperity, influence and power. If you don’t agree that our decline as a manufacturing power has serious long-term consequences, look at wages and our unsustainable trade imbalance. America is drowning in debt, overextended militarily in Iraq, and dangerously dependent on Asian creditors. If you sense unease in the land, you’re in good company. Economic anxiety weighs heavy as we cope -- mainly by plunging deeper into debt -- with stagnant or falling wages and the rising costs of housing, college tuition, health insurance, fuel, and food.

I don’t think Powell was advocating for these excesses or for the complete abdication of public responsibility on the part of American corporations; nor do I think Powell was arguing for a society that champions greed as its dominant value; nor do I think he would consider the wholesale buying of political favors healthy for our democracy.

In fact, I can easily imagine Lewis Powell standing before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the lavish ballroom of a beautiful hotel, and saying, “Gentlemen, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind in 1971. You’ve gone overboard.”

Powell believed that free enterprise and personal freedom were joined at the hip. Near the end of his memo he wrote: “But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private property, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.”

Had Powell been bent on total corporate hegemony, labor unions and collective bargaining would not have made his list of essential freedoms. Ronald Reagan and the conservative think tanks that advised the GOP obviously skipped over that part of the manifesto. Since 1971, American corporations, aided and abetted by money-grubbing politicians and impotent regulatory agencies, have engaged in rabid union busting. Wal-Mart stands as the most notable example, but there are hundreds more companies who squash organizing drives by violating the legal rights of workers. And the companies get away with it. Every year, thousands of American workers are intimidated, harassed, or fired for union organizing activities. As a result of this imbalance of power between Capital and Labor, workers are consigned to the last row of seats on the bus – the seats with torn fabric and exposed coil springs.

If he were alive today, Lewis Powell might very well worry that capitalism’s excesses pose a greater threat to the enterprise system than a million campus socialists. Clearly, those excesses pervert and undermine the values Powell held sacred. Why should Americans believe in free enterprise when that system renders their lives difficult, demeaning, and debt-ridden? For three decades the national conversation has been dominated by the notion that corporations must be free to do whatever they feel necessary to compete and profit. The flip side of the conversation, the need of citizens to be free from economic insecurity and material want, is rarely given voice.

We need a new manifesto, one that restores balance between corporate privilege and public responsibility, between Capital and Labor, and between the glory of individual wealth and the perils of social poverty. But we had better hurry because our long neglect of domestic industries and human capital allow us only the slimmest margin for error.

Don't Be Surprised

Once again, President Bush has vetoed Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, even though polling data shows that an overwhelming percentage of Americans support such research and its potential for life-saving cures.

The public shouldn’t be surprised by Bush’s action – he has never represented the values or aspirations of the American majority. No, Bush and his cronies serve the religious right and corporate clients, and they do it exceedingly well.

Upon vetoing the stem cell research bill, Bush was quoted as saying, “Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical.” This is an interesting statement from a man who frequently sent death row inmates to the lethal injection chamber when he was Governor of Texas, and is directly responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. Then again, hypocrisy and unethical behavior is the Bush Gang’s stock-in-trade.

In his new book, American Theocracy, author Kevin Phillips provides a sobering account of the negative effects of, among other things, “militant” Christianity on our country. When people who believe in Biblical inerrancy assume power and impose their beliefs and values on the rest of us, atrocious things happen, such as imperial military actions cloaked in crusading religious garb, disregard for scientific inquiry and rational argument, and wholesale attacks on an already tattered social safety net.

Who needs science when the secrets of life are contained in the Bible?

Who needs a social safety net when Jesus is standing by, ready to provide material sustenance?

These are sad times, here at the busy intersection where religious fundamentalism meets unfettered corporate power. We cross the intersection at great risk to ourselves and the people we love, particularly if we believe that the Bible is a work of mythology, that scientific inquiry is essential to our survival as a species, or that dissent is patriotic.

Hail Albania!

ABC News interrupted its coverage of Paris Hilton’s comings and goings long enough to report that President Bush received a “hero’s” welcome in Albania, and fresh from that happy experience, felt emboldened to visit Capitol Hill to stump for the federal Immigration bill.

I’m glad there’s a country in this world that Bush can visit and feel the love because he sure as hell doesn’t get that in America, but then, unlike Albanians, Americans have never taken to totalitarian leaders. Even though the “rule of law” is frequently perverted beyond recognition in this country, the “principle” that the Law means something in the land is as ingrained in our minds as the Pledge of Allegiance.

That Bush consistently “disses” the Constitution doesn’t trouble the average Albanian. Perhaps in Bush Albanians see a kindred, a link to the Roman, Ottoman, or Communists who once ruled the land.

But how pathetic is an American President who feels emboldened by a state visit to Albania? Not the UK or Germany or Japan or Australia, places where American heads of state usually receive a friendly welcome, but Albania.

The irony of this was lost on the talking mannequins at ABC. America has slipped so low in the eyes of the world, the Bush record is so dismal, full of error, hubris, and failure, that an inconsequential visit to a marginal nation is given the same gravity as a visit to a country with some juice on the world stage.

We will be rid of Bush in less than 600 hundred days, but his twisted legacy will live for decades. The sad but incontrovertible fact is that the damage Bush has wrought is largely irreversible.

Paris Hilton is in the slammer, crying for her mommy; the New York Yankees have won nine of their last ten game to climb above the .500 mark; and the major contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are contorting themselves to prove their religious “faith,” a clear recognition that none of them can win unless they pull in a decent percentage of “religious” voters. Hillary Clinton: “When my husband was getting serviced in the Oval Office by that woman, Miss Lewinsky, my daughter and my faith were the only things I had. Without deep and abiding faith we would not have survived those dark, troubling days. What Bill and that woman, Miss Lewinsky, did was wrong, but my faith made it all turn out right.”

Sweet Jesus! Bush, Paris, Hillary – the inmates are definitely in control of the asylum. The rest of us own the ticket and have no choice but to take the ride.

Holier Than

Holier than you, Infidel;

Holier than you, Muslim;

Holier than you, Buddhist;

Holier than you, Roman Catholic;

Holier than you, homosexual;

Holier than you, secular humanist;

The Jesus of love-thy-neighbor has become the Jesus
of persecution;

The Jesus of turn-the-other-cheek is now the Jesus
of vengeance;

The Jesus of tolerance is now the Jesus
of intolerance;

The Jesus who chased the money changers from the Temple is now the Jesus
of greed;

Remember these names – Falwell, Robertson, Dobson – mortal men who high-jacked
the Bible;

Beware anyone who claims to speak for God;

Follow the power that flows from the money raised in God’s name;

And when someone claims to be holier-than-you,

Run

A Mother's Courage

Mothers pay a high price in wartime. Mothers send their sons and husbands, and nowadays, daughters, to foreign lands and wait and worry and hope and pray that they come home alive and intact.

War is hell. A man said it, but mothers know what the hell of war feels like, down deep where it hurts all the time.

She was an ordinary woman from California, with a son in the military, subject to the orders of a president hell bent on imperial overreach under the guise of revenge for September 11th. The President said the invasion was necessary for the security of the United States, he said it was about “regime change,” and finding weapons of mass destruction, and bringing freedom to the long suffering people of Iraq. The President denied the most plausible explanation for the adventure: to secure reliable access to some of the largest proven oil reserves on the planet for American oil companies.

The President claimed the mission was accomplished, but the woman from California breathed no easier. Wars are sometimes waged in stages and on shifting battlefields. The “victory” of Shock & Awe – televised and trumpeted like a Super Bowl game – deteriorated into a stalemate, then defeat, but by then, the woman had already received the call and the news.

Her son was dead and her life would never be the same. She had to find meaning in her boy’s death, answer the searing questions, why and for what and for whom? In past wars, answers to those questions might have come easier, but in this new brand of war, a war of choice, pre-emptive and open-ended, based on shifting rationales, all of which unraveled as events on the ground unfolded, meaning came hard, if it came at all. The dead returned home in flag-draped coffins under cover of darkness and secrecy, as if the sponsors of the war were ashamed.

The only constant was Oil. How else to explain why the United States is building permanent military installations in areas with proven oil reserves, or why it is constructing a massive embassy complex on 104 acres in the Green Zone, or why the “Hydrocarbon Law,” drafted to force privatization of Iraq’s oil resources and give foreign oil companies long-term access to Iraq’s oil, was reviewed by the oil companies long before it was seen by Iraq’s parliament?

Imagine the dissonance in her brain, the uneasiness in her soul, forced every day to confront the emptiness and the questions, the constant reminders of her dead son. She was living in the hell of war.

Some women might have retreated inward, suffered in silence or self-imposed exile, but this mother felt the need to act, to communicate her grief and outrage, to challenge the rationale for continuing the military occupation that had claimed her boy. She tried the most direct route, to the Commander-in-Chief himself, and spent the better part of a month camped outside his ranch, hoping for an audience. Media arrived, curious then insatiable, she became renowned, the face of the anti-war movement. Soon she was marching, and speaking, telling her story on prime time media. It’s unlikely that she ever imagined herself in the role she was now playing, but life comes at us hard sometimes, wrenches us from comfortable patterns.

After a time, when her criticisms became too pointed and her face and name over-exposed, the media machine that had thrust her into the spotlight turned on her. The Talk Titans from the Right questioned her patriotism and her motives, called her an “attention whore,” and soon it was all about her and not her dead son and the misbegotten war that took his life.

But mothers like this one don’t give up easily. She stayed in the fire, kept speaking out, marching for peace, and in November 2006 the country came around, voted Democrats into power with an explicit charge to do something about the mess in Iraq.

That they didn’t reflects our sad, dysfunctional political reality, cowardice, and calculation. Too many Democrats lacked Cindy Sheehan’s heart and courage. They should be ashamed. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, mother and patriot, has no reason to feel shame.

Overcoming the Reign of Error

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?

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.

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

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.

Speeding Downhill on a Dark Night

Hold on, folks, because this one will veer all over the place, like an 18-year-old kid high on Wild Turkey behind the wheel of a Hummer H2 on an icy downhill road in the black of night.

Yeah, this week felt that perilous. The shootings at Virginia Tech were horrifying enough when the story first broke, and as more details emerge the picture gets worse. Despite laws, good intentions, security procedures and evacuation plans, one armed and determined crazy willing to lose his own life can’t be stopped. That’s no solace for the families of the dead or the kids and faculty who survived, but it’s essentially true. I heard some radio talk about the shooter’s Korean ethnicity, and how discrimination – real or perceived – might have played a role in pushing the young man over the edge, but I’m not sure ethnicity had much to do with it; mental illness crosses freely between and among ethnicities, and this young Korean-American man was certainly ill.

Another eerie aspect of the VT shootings is the way digital technology – cell phones and laptops -- allowed the rest of the country, and the world, to witness the events almost as they happened, and to record those events from a variety of angles and perspectives. The number of sources and the sheer volume of information make the whole effect more chilling, though even with the benefit of all this information, we will never know with total certainty what made the young man go off. Was it a particular event, a look from a classmate, a rejection from a girl, or just the steady accumulation of perceived slights and injustices that snapped the camel’s back?

Rush Limbaugh blamed American Liberals for the massacre, though I’m hard-pressed to understand how that is possible in a society where Conservative ideology has been ascendant for nearly thirty years. Limbaugh is a pill-popping hypocrite who should join Don Imus in retirement.

The New York Times reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said, “I can’t recall,” fifty times during five hours of sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It always amazes me how men and women trained in the law, graduates of our finest universities, torture the truth once they are sworn in and placed on the hot seat. Gonzalez is clearly a lying little weasel trying to save his ass. In the same breath he accepts full responsibility and denies ever doing anything improper, and asserts that he’s in charge and completely unaware of what his subordinates are up to. "Senator, I don't have a recollection of not having a recollection about that specific meeting or any other meeting about which I have no recollection." I wonder if he can remember what he ate for breakfast yesterday morning or the last time he had sex with his wife. Does Gonzalez suffer from amnesia all the time or is his affliction merely situational?

Moving to more local issues…this will not be a restful weekend for members of the Santa Barbara School Board, faced as they are with slashing millions from the District budget next Tuesday night. The Board bought the ticket when it struck a multi-year salary agreement with the Santa Barbara Teachers Association, and now it must take the ride; the only problem is that most of the reductions on the big board suck and are sure to piss off one interest group or another. The Board’s standard fall back position – defer and delay, hire consultants and study – isn’t an option this time around, unless the Board wants to repudiate the agreement with the teachers that they approved on April 10. If you’re interested in watching a five-ring circus, check out the Board meeting at 7:00 P.M. on the 24th.

Bob's Big Night

The folks backing school board member Bob Noel’s brainchild, the American Charter High School (ACHS), came out in force Tuesday night, among them former board member Ray Franco, dapper Das Williams from the City Council, Frank Schipper of the eponymous construction firm, a UCSB professor whose name I didn’t catch who also happens to be a Nobel laureate in Physics, and a horde of lesser luminaries. All in all, it was a very impressive and organized bunch, all united in their desire to break the iron grip of educational bureaucracy and create a school that will keep kids interested in learning. Noel’s band arrived on the heels of Op-Ed pieces in the News-Press that claimed that the Board and Superintendent Brian Sarvis stood in opposition, even outright hostility, to the ACHS proposal – a position that none of the other Board members or Dr. Sarvis was willing to own. Twice Sarvis denied ever calling charter schools “economic parasites.”

As one of, if not the prime mover behind the ACHS idea, Bob Noel was expected to be in rare form, and old Bob didn’t disappoint. As a member of Noel’s posse noted, what else is a 77-year-old PhD going to do with his ample free time if not dream up solutions to the many dilemmas facing public education in Santa Barbara? Noel was geared up for combat from the start, jousting with Assistant Superintendent Jan Zettel over various aspects of vocational education, debating fine points of charter law with the District’s legal counsel, and ardently stressing that he, Bob Noel, had no financial interest or official capacity in the ACHS hierarchy, and therefore no conflict of interest as a sitting board member poised to cast a vote. That position appeared to be a helluva stretch, but when it comes to questions of basic ethics, Bob’s a triple-jointed kind of guy.

Like most Board meetings in the wacky world of the Santa Barbara School Districts, this one offered moments of delicious weirdness. I sat up and paid attention when my all-time favorite wing-nut, Kenneth Locke, inter-disciplinary guru of the emerging avant-garde, took the microphone for another installment in his long-running series of three-minute lectures. Somewhere in this great land of ours, the padded cell where Locke once resided stands empty; the walls of that cell are no doubt covered with squiggles, arrows, triangles, rectangles, mathematical formulas, grocery lists, koans and runes. Following Locke as he darts and skips from Aristotle to Jackson Pollock to Arthur Ashe is always a mental trick: “The abstract of the 20th century is that yoga is related to painting and painting is related to tennis, and between painting and tennis is pumpkin pie. Without a paradigm shift, young people will never understand what this means! The only way they can find themselves is through this paradigm shift! What I’m referring to is recycling, like when you take a milk carton and turn it into art, glorious art! In other words, the non-object object, the process by which something becomes nothing and nothing becomes everything!”

Watching the audience watching Locke is half the fun. Mouths fall open, eyes bug out, heads are scratched, earlobes are yanked, some folks cough nervously, some laugh, many whisper “What is that guy saying?” to the person next to them.

Yes, strange weirdness abounds in the Santa Barbara School District. Issues that pass unnoticed in other school districts are subjects of intense scrutiny and debate in SB, along with much hand-wringing and tears. Take Laura Baker for example. Ms. Baker teaches at La Cumbre Junior High and is waging a one-woman crusade to save La Cumbre from an invasion of elementary students from the Santa Barbara Community Academy, who may soon be housed on the La Cumbre campus. Ms. Baker has made dire predictions, sounded warnings, voiced numerous complaints, and advanced visions of mayhem during public comment at something like eighteen consecutive Board meetings. Tuesday night she asserted that the “Eastside” Academy kids would stir up resentment among “Westside” gang-affiliated kids, and who knows what terrible consequences might result from such an ill-conceived co-mingling of students. Ms. Baker would have the Eastside kids move to Cleveland – where they will be among their own kith and kin, safe from the predations of the Westsiders. Rumor has it that Ms. Baker’s true intention is far more personal and pragmatic: she stands to lose her private bathroom if the Academy kids move to La Cumbre.

The ACHS gang trooped to the microphone, one after the other, to express their unqualified support for the new charter school, asserting that it would provide a place for kids who fall through cracks in the pedagogical floorboards, for potential gang-bangers, for misfits with hidden potential, for English learners, for 8th graders reading at 3rd grade level, and for nascent mechanical geniuses under-served by the traditional curriculum. Not only that, the ACHS would flood the local labor pool with highly-skilled, employment-ready kids prepared to earn big wages framing buildings, policing the streets, and extinguishing fires.

After the Nobel Laureate whose name I didn’t catch spoke and was enthusiastically applauded, it was clear that the ACHS was the greatest thing since sliced bread, the plastic ice tray, and Botox and Viagara combined. Former Board member Ray Franco clinched the deal in a ten-minute rant that began in Spanish and concluded in English, describing his own immigrant success story and quoting Thomas Jefferson for good measure. Seven times Franco said, “Finally,” and then took off on another tangent. I looked at Bob Noel as Mr. Franco was speaking and finally understood what people mean when they say, “grinning like a Cheshire cat.” I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Bob had a hard-on, perhaps the biggest stiffie he's had since he became eligible for Social Security; he was basking in the light of his own brilliance, his soaring intellect, his organizational ability, and his “juice” in the community. To his fellow Board members and Superintendent Sarvis, Bob’s countenance seemed to say, “You can’t stop me, you can’t touch me, I am King of the World! My brainchild will be born and it will thrive!”

An Echo Forty Years Old

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King made a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City that was heralded as historic by some and something of a crime by others, but either way, much of what Dr. King said that day sounds eerily familiar in light of the economic, military and political morass the United States finds itself in today.

One parallel between the observations Dr. King made forty years ago and today is how little we understood or even considered what the Vietnam War meant for the millions of Vietnamese in the North and South who were just trying to live their lives. America’s focus was on our troops, our strategic interests and on propping up the US-installed government in Saigon.

Fast forward forty years to the American Occupation of Iraq. The plight of ordinary Iraqis is almost completely ignored by the American news media, as is any comprehensive coverage or explanation of Iraqi society, culture and history; most Americans couldn’t explain the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite if their home and hearth depended on it. It’s next to impossible for Americans to understand what it must feel like to live in an occupied country, to see foreign soldiers on street corners, to hear fighter jets and helicopters thundering overhead day and night, and to be reminded, every day, that your destiny rests in foreign hands rather than your own.

Forty years ago Dr. King quoted a Buddhist leader who wrote: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instincts. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.”

Same in Iraq today. The folly of our invasion and occupation has created enmity in the hearts of Iraqis that will last at least a generation if not longer. We could “surge” forty or sixty thousand troops into Iraq and not come close to eradicating the hatred Iraqis feel for America and Americans. Dr. King feared for American troops in Vietnam, feared that we had placed them in a situation that was not only brutal but cynical: “…for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”

I wonder how Dr. King would feel if he could see how many steps backwards America has taken in the forty years since he spoke at the Riverside Church. The militarism he feared is still alive and well; the economic and social injustice he spoke and marched against is as strong as ever; the racial intolerance he dedicated his life to fighting is alive and well. The words Dr. King spoke echo down the years, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ruined streets of the 9th Ward in New Orleans, through small-town churches and big-city synagogues, through the halls of government and the plush offices of corporate titans; the words echo and fall on ears gone deaf.