Is a Sleeping Giant Slowly Awakening?

Before we had this thing called democracy, citizens traditionally made their displeasure known with their local autocracy in the old-fashioned ways - rebellions, insurrections and revolutions. And these ‘popular movements’ usually started with an unauthorized assembly of the lower classes whose members usually had a valid set of complaints - generally something to do with not getting enough to eat. And the target of these complaints was always the same –the well-fed, arrogant and privileged bastards who were running things both ineptly and primarily for their own benefit.

Fall 2011 something similar has sprung up - the Occupy Wall Street / 99er movement, and its target is again the well-fed, arrogant and privileged bastards who were running things both ineptly and primarily for their own benefit by somehow having high-jacked our democracy. Also interestingly its primary complaint overlaps with one of the chief complaints of the other recent (some say manipulated) pack of outraged citizens, the Tea Partiers. Members of both disgruntled groups, while being from opposite ends of the political spectrum, have at least one grievance in common, they both are greatly displeased with the financial establishment and the government’s response to its economy crashing, greed-driven actions, specifically the government bank bailouts and how the bailouts seemed to helped the bankers and no one else.

But the genius of this new Occupy Wall Street / 99er movement is its amorphous and autonomous nature. Even as it is mainly focused on a single fat target: greed, it leaves ample room for other related targets, which are in abundance to say the least. Whereas the Tea Partiers wanted to blame everything on our first non-white president, this new movement leaves this target rich environment wide open – bankers, the ultra rich, the moronic GOP, the pathetically ineffective Democrats - essentially the Establishment in general. Like an old time carnival shooting gallery, all kinds of outrages present themselves as delightful sitting ducks and colorful bulls eyes continually rotating by.

Here are some of some ‘sitting duck’ facts: *

• 46.2 million people Americans living below the poverty line, the highest number in 52 years of record keeping
• Corporations booked profits at a record $1.5 trillion a year, increasingly possessed by the super rich, while real unemployment stood at 16%
• Average income for the top 10% of Americans is $164,600 and $31,200 for the bottom 90% of Americans
• 10% of Americans control 2/3 of all wealth.
• We're 6.6 million jobs short of our pre-recession levels, and new workers enter the work force every day,
• Median full-time male workers make $48,000 a year, the same as 1969,inflation-adjusted.
• 98% of 27 million net new jobs created in America between 1990 and 2008 were in service sectors not easily outsourced, such as health care.
• 27 percent of African-Americans and 26 percent of Hispanics, more than 1 in4, live in poverty.
• Home prices have dropped to 2003 levels.
• The stock market is at 1998 levels and increasingly the domain of Wall Street insiders and computer trading.
• Wages declined more than 6% since 2007 while corporate and CEO income skyrocketed.

Here are some more that bear repeating: **

• The top 1% of the population receives nearly 25% of the all income and holds and astonishing 40% of the all US wealth.

• We are still engaged in two expensive official wars and at least four and maybe more unofficial ones.

• The military budget is at or above Cold War levels. Increasingly Obama, the Commander in Chief, is becoming interchangeable with Bush, in an open-ended, perpetual “War on Terror.”\

• As the planet warms and the weather gets ever weirder, the Denialsphere gets ever more traction as the Obama Administration turns its back on climate science.

• Many economists think we could well be headed for the dreaded ‘double dip’ as the ill-advised Super Committee confronts the politically contrived crisis of the Debt Ceiling and intends to lower government spending at the dead wrong time.
  

• Rising Medical costs reflected as health insurance premium rate hikes continue to reduce personal disposable income.

• Tea Party inspired GOPers in States houses and in Congress continues to overplay their phony mandate and pass every more draconian and reactionary legislation.

• Hoping to capitalize on widespread public discord and distress in the 2012 election, the GOP works day and night to drive the economy into the ground.

It’s not what the Occupy Wall Street people are asking for, its what everybody realizes - something is very wrong. We are in one hell of a jam and real action is called for. Our whole way of life appears to be coming apart at the seams and yet evermore fiddling takes place as the fires rage ever wider.

* From John McBride/Seattle comments to JoeNocera’s 10/14/11 NY Times column.:

** Courtesy of yours truly

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Reflections 1

I found this in a journal that that I sometimes write in . Apparently I wrote it back in January of this year. I thought I'd share it.

1965-1975

We weren’t wrong and we weren’t right, we were young and the world had not yet gone into reverse.  Yet looking back I feel a certain embarrassment at our levels of blind self-righteousness – or least at mine as a reflection of the generational delusion as a whole.  That said, I’ve found little that I can repudiate of what we once believed or more precisely toyed with as possible.

There was I believe genuine wisdom and well grounded ideas immersed in the tangle of overstatement and delusional idealism.  Sometimes profound new ideas pointing to a real course correction for the human race as whole would bob to the surface.  But then they would sink again amidst the swirling flotsam and jetsam of the day to be lost amidst the cacophony  spewing forth from gifted charlatans, revolutionary romantics and charming blowhards.

In the 1950’s a crude adolescent-oriented, electronically amplified music was born of the mating of southern ‘Rockabilly’ and urban ‘rhythm and blues’ - ‘Rock and Roll.’ It would dominate popular music for the next 50 years. But by the mid 1960’s a new generation of musicians built on and enhanced this foundation by going back to the source – the solid art of guitar blues chords coming out of the Mississippi Delta by way of Chicago. This new improved version of “rock and roll’ began to be respected even by Jazz aficionados. And when spiked by psychedelic drugs it became a force to reckon with especially when leavened with powerful socially conscious poetry-infused lyrics from veterans of the folk music revival of early 60’s.  The “roll” part was dropped and it became simply known as ”Rock.” And as such it would have worldwide impact, and serve as the soundtrack for a brave attempt at crashing the gates of the existing order.

Of course as we know those gates survived that assault and were subsequently stoutly reinforced.  Decades have passed and dreams of overthrow have dissipated into sad nostalgia, a nostalgia that mixes the usual remorse for a wasted youth with something more, a longing for a time when people actually believed the future held hope.   

Jan 18, 2011

Tea Party as Shock Troops

In Naomi Kleins recent book Shock Doctrine she chronicles how economic fundamentalists take advantage of natural and economic disasters to privatize and cannibalize economies around the world. The result being windfall profits for connected multinational corporations while local control is eroded or even destroyed. Here in the US this fake Debt Ceiling crisis is starting shape up to be just such a disaster, this one instigated by these same economic fundamentalists. Their objective: to take over.

The GOP using the so called “Tea Party” as a combination anti-Obama ‘shock troops’ one moment and ‘economic terrorists’ the next, seem to be driving the entire already wobbly US economy off a cliff. First a disastrous stock market 512 point dive last week that followed the very disappointing eleventh hour agreement to avoid the artificially contrived possible US default on money it owes. Then low behold over the weekend a key conspirator in the original financial crisis, the rating agency Standards and Poors (what an appropriate name), dealt the US economy another body blow. By lowering the rating on US Gov bonds a notch, SP drove the stock market into another steep dive while feeding new energy into the politically instigated paranoia about the national debt.

Anyone who has taken even one intro course in college economics should be incensed, demoralized and depressed by this horrendous Kubuki theater by the ruling class we have just witnessed. From any point of view Obama, representing the moderate centrist wing of the ruling class, has been again taken to the cleaners by the far right, which now controls Republican Party. Obama, instead of a frontal assault on the GOP using their contrived Debt Ceiling crisis as a teaching moment for the American public (with lots of colorful graphs and charts), he accepted most if not all of his opponents politically motivated assertions – like Social Security being ‘in trouble.’ One basic fact that Obama could made known to the American public, as mind bending as a number like 14 trillion is, our national debt is being financed at a historically low interest rate. What better time to borrow to rejuvenate a flagging recovery? Yet we are going in the dead opposite direction!

And there was a very real threat of default. But it was not because the US was unable to afford to borrow. We are not like the PIGS in Europe (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) that due to market-determined high interest rates on their government issued bonds, who are in real trouble. No, it was because the Republicans decided to hold the country (maybe the whole world) ransom unless the Demos agreed to begin wholesale extirpation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This political theater exposed to the world the dysfunctional nature of American politics in which hostage taking is now fair game. It made us look like another near failed state. Confidence in the U.S. as a functional democracy must be falling all over the world.

Any objective person recognizes that our ongoing national debt must be addressed in an organized, thoughtful and rational manner. It should be approached as a practical input-output problem not a political football. Instead the solutions are being driven in the worst way by hard line ideologues and cynical power junkies who benefit whether their economic reasoning is correct or incorrect. In fact it is better if they are ‘wrong’ – and they know it.

Obama's War

The Afghan War has become increasingly unpopular as its grinding cost ($2B a week) receives belated scrutiny. Obama sticking to the promised troop reduction timetable, despite little in the way of tangible results from 'the surge', will make few happy. It will be seen as a trickle not a flow. The Army wants more time at maximum troop strength. And the public is bored shitless with the whole costly affair especially since the US is now perceived to be “broke”, overextended militarily and in headlong decline.

Obama in the heat of the 08 campaign let his hubris get out hand. Along with promising to leave Iraq, he also promised to prevail in Afghanistan and track down Osama Bin Laden - two different and only partially related objectives. To Obama’s credit Osama Bin Laden is now history and his terrorist organization with its holy war ideology seems to have been eclipsed by the "Arab Spring" which is anything but Jihadist.

But promising to succeed in Afghanistan was a big mistake. Apparently Democratic Presidents (and candidates for such) have to appear strong on military matters to avoid being called out as wimps and ‘out hawked’ by Repubs (especially ex war hero John McCain.) Yet by honoring his campaign promise (at least this one) and doubling down in Afghanistan, Obama's commitment has only made things worse not better - the classic tar baby effect (as Lyndon Johnson learned in another war in another time.)

Furthermore, the US military officers corps (who are mostly Republican-leaning and don't much trust Democratic Presidents) do not want to be a part of another war that 'was lost.' That's not exactly career building. Besides not offending the military establishment, Obama did not want to oppose the popular Gen. David Petraeus, whose 'surge' in Iraq allowed that war to be perceived as a sort of victory or at least not an abject defeat, as big a disaster as it was and still is. Also to make matters worse, Afghanistan and Pakistan are totally interlocked geopolitically (remember the Pakistan ISI originally established the Afghan Taliban.) This regional relationship wouldn't matter except Pakistan has deliverable nuclear warheads (and has been known to proliferate said technology.) Furthermore the ‘incubated virus’ of the Afghan Taliban has now come back and infected Pakistan further destabilizing an already dysfunctional country.

The original sin here was that after our war of vengeance against the Taliban for not coughing up Al Queda after the 9/11 attack actually succeeded, Bush and Co., idiots that they were, turned away and started a second even bigger war. This as we know allowed the Taliban to regroup, regain territory and support, and define the US presence as an evil occupation army not as benevolent 'nation builders' as we liket to see ourselves.

Obama should have run as a total anti-war candidate and offered to redirect all or part of the money being spent there on military operations instead on making Afghanistan a showcase example of what can be done with a failed Muslim state. And if it was too late for that, then cut our losses and get the hell out– after all it was Bush’s war, not Obama's yet. He still would have beat McCain. Remember in those days the Repubs were still being blamed for the economy then in a full nosedive.

Now he’s stuck. If he pulls out too fast and Afghanistan and/or Pakistan plunges into chaos and/or the Taliban take over again after ten years heavy fighting, many lives lost and something approaching half a trillion dollars pissed away, it will certainly be a post-mortal victory for Osama Bin Laden. Yet with all attention now fixed on “the Deficit” and how to reduce it, how can he afford to stay? Plus the original reason for invading them has been 'deep sixed' and the remnants of his organization run out of the country. The Graveyard of Empires indeed…

Is there any consequence to always being wrong?

There is seems to be no consequence to being dead wrong if you’re a Republican. The Bush II years were an unmitigated disaster any way you look at it: two brutally expensive still unpaid for and still both ongoing wars; failing to ‘apprehend’ Osama Bin Laden); running the federal debt through roof (in which the Debt Ceiling was routinely raised with no comment); the rerun of an already discredited idea -“supply side” economics (lowering tax rates does not lead to more aggregate tax revenues from increased investment); a deregulatory landscape free-for-all especially in the financial sector resulting in a world wide financial credit paralysis which in turn triggered a deep recession nearly as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s (which we are still wallowing in.)

Yet somehow through a mix of right wing radio and Fox media blitzes, a gullible and easily distracted public, and a fat passel of lies and world class dissembling by seasoned Repub pols, all this has allowed the Republican Party to somehow miraculously survive to fight another day.

Blown out big time in the 2008 election at all levels, the Repubs regrouped especially in the Senate, and cornered they bared their long knives. They misused and abused the old boy Senate rules especially the veritable old filibuster rule to paralyze legislation and political appointments. Result: legislation that did survive was so watered down and gutless that many Obama supporters lost faith. One important example was the critical stimulus package intended to pump some air back into the deflated economy which was nearly a flat tire by early 2009. Tried and proven Keynesian counter-cyclical policy had worked for decades. Consequently most mainstream economists urged a robust and targeted stimulus package but all we got was a diffuse and poorly aimed one badly undermined by Republicanesque tax cuts.

Obama is no FDR. At that pivotal point he did not sense the need to rally the nation. Instead he tried to deal with the devil, the devil being the Repubs collectively. The stimulus package of 2009 after lots of fanfare did not have the bite nor the scale it needed (and it did escape notice that far more was done to save the broken banks which through their own greed and irresponsibility had reluctantly and humiliatingly required a bailout.) In any case we are now all paying for that the inadequate first stimulus package. We still have nearly 9% official unemployment a year and half later, and the American people are totally demoralized. The aftermath of the real estate bubble, which drove the entire economy for most of 2000s, is a ravaged landscape of foreclosure-riddled ghost towns, lost dreams and personal bankruptcies. Yet in DC all attention is now suddenly turned from the continuing effects of the biggest downturn since the 1930s to the perennial problem of the national deficit.

But what is forgotten in all the posturing over the ‘unsustainability of the entitlements’ and the 'over extension of the welfare state' is that the recession itself causes the deficit it to increase ever faster. Out of work people pay less taxes, buy less and thus feed negative energy into the recessionary cycle. Repubs lied about the effectiveness of the first stimulus insisting it was flop. It was a flop in terms of theater but not in terms of actually producing a reversal in the downturn and mild positive numbers in the economic indicators. But most Americans saw little tangible evidence in their daily lives as the economy only very slowly came back to life.

And into that breach wades the hypocritical, intellectually dishonest, demagogic (while using the word on the Demos), opportunistic bastards known as the GOP especially their young guns such as House member Paul Ryan. Now with hotheads and airheads of the so-called Tea Party faction behind them, the GOP is threatening to blow up the entire global economy by refusing to legally raise the debt ceiling on money already legally allocated if they don't get their way. These fuckers are incredible! These teabagging assholes think that the worse case is simply some Ayn Randian/Grover Norquest wet dream: a shrinking and then drowning of what’s left of the US's rather limited "welfare state" in the proverbial bathtub.

The problems is, like the gangsters that they are, the Repubs have discovered extortion works! Having gotten away with it twice before, they believe the third time's in the bag. First, in late 2008 they refused to vote for retaining the middle class tax rate (which if eliminated would have kicked the already weak recovery into reverse) unless they kept their Bush II engineered budget busting lowered tax rate for the very rich (which Obama eventually caved in on.) Then they held up the badly overdue 2011 budget until lots of painful (and recession exacerbating) cuts in the 12% slice of discretionary spending was reduced (which did zilch to fix the overall deficit problem.) Now they want to use that same perverse leverage on the routine (and unpleasant) raising of the debt ceiling.

Everyone including the dimmest Repub House backbencher knows that all hell will break loose if the US defaults (or seems like might default) on its long running debt. For starters the interest on Federal Treasury bonds will rise and counter productively increase the national debt itself, not to mention the dislocation and chaos if checks to pensioners, contractors and government workers stopped flowing. And of course the stock and bond market could weird out big time as well as the already unstable commodity markets. And if the US sneezes the hold world economy catches a cold or worse. Of course it’s a game of chicken and no one (except the Pee Party nuts) wants to actually drive the car off the cliff or be blamed for said car landing on said rocks.

Remember the one thing about the Repubs that always appeals to the average overextended American is the Repubs (irresponsible and demagogic) anti-tax policy. It is their ace-in-the-hole, their tactic for all seasons, their ever-popular standby carrot ‘n stick. But will this continue to work forever? The old bait 'n switch - offer to lower everyone's taxes but then mainly reduce taxes on the already shamelessly financially porcine.

But they unlike the Demos the Repubs also do service their base, a base that consists of hodgepodge of disparate subcultures. You have the anti-abortion zealots, the 2^nd Amendment gun rights fanatics and now the stronger than ever Ayn Ryan worshiping teabagger/Libertarian ideologues. Plus there is their real base: the Fortune 500 corporations with their army of lobbyists and of course those of the very rich, the sociopathic crime families who are completely free of any debilitating social or environmental conscience.

But the Repub base is not enough to carry them over the line electorally in many important areas of the country. They must appeal to the called “independents” - the perpetually undecided, the distracted, the apolitical, the apathetic (who often hide behind a facade of cool cynicism.) The tired old refrain “taxes are too high” and “the Democratic Party led government wastes your money and will raise taxes”, "tax and spend liberals' are the real problem, etc, These have become tried and proven means to get these sometime voters and right leaning 'independents' off their asses and voting for Repubs. But will it work forever?

The Democrats must hold the line in this latest effort of budgetary extortion. Reasonable plans do exist, “centrist” in any reasonable political spectrum. But again Obama seems to be conceding too much in his opening position. He should be starting from as far “left” as possible in terms of our crazy right-shifted spectrum and work toward a moderate, real centrist position. And such a position already exists in the (unfortunately named) Peoples Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It contains reasonable adjustment of tax policy so as to reinstate what worked in the past along with a healthy trimming of the bloated budget military, and it would balance the budget by 2021. And it accomplice all this without butchering the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s Medicare/Medicaid programs.

The only antidote for Republican poison is a robust counter proposal that solves real problems and takes on the crushing corporatist state institutions that are bleeding us dry and dragging us into the Third World, ‘banana republic’ status. Here's hoping we will see a new more combative Obama. The American people, that is those who are not already lost to tin-hatted delusion, would respond to forceful leadership at this crucial junction in US history.

Connecting the Dots

We seem to be watching some kind of horrific three-ring circus in which all the acts are interconnected but not acknowledged to be so…

Ring 1: Geological/Nuclear Disaster in Japan

On March 11^th a slippage of continental plates off the coast of Japan slammed that country with a massive 9.0 earthquake and a huge tsunami. As routine as quakes are in Japan and well prepared as the Japanese were for such, the scale of this one has totally overwhelmed them. The scenes of devastation and the total leveling that resulted from the a 30 foot wall water that washed in from the Pacific Ocean ironically reminds one of the 1945 photos of Hiroshima after being hit by an atom bomb. Twisted broken rubble stretches almost to the horizon with only a few stubborn hollowed-out concrete structures left standing, with dazed survivors wandering heartbroken hopelessly searching for lost relatives and friends. Cars upside down and crumpled share space with fishing boats washed into houses. The scale of loss and tragedy is immeasurable. And to add insult to injury the latest photos show a dusting of cold unwelcome snow hiding the rusty nails and laceration producing knife-sharp metallic edges under endless piles of once life sustaining property. All that remains are horizons of hideous trash still containing the remains of loved ones. Many thousands are unaccounted in for a country that leads the world in utilizing state-of-the-art electronics with almost a German-esque reputation for keeping track of things. But as dreadful as all this is, this is only the least of it. No, something potentially worse also has weighed in - a nuclear disaster.

Japan, like most of the industrialized world, fell for the siren song of the “Peaceful Nuke” even as they suffered horrendously as the only country to ever have had nuclear weapons used against them. Now the Japanese are experiencing the downside of a reliance on peaceful nuclear energy as their Fukashima Dassii nuclear power threatens to totally meltdown. Already there has a partial meltdown of at least two reactors, and even worse the exposure of 125 tons of fuel rods from a holding pond that is reported to now be totally dry.

The hubris of the nuclear power industry and the energy industry in general in assuming that they could design out all probable dire geologic events brings to mind our own tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But it also brings to mind the 'boys of Wall Street' who believed they had designed out all probable dire financial events with their fancy oblique tranched mortgage bonds, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps resulting in a global credit meltdown and a nasty deep recession that we have still not recovered from.

Ring 2: Middle East in Turmoil

This geological news from Japan rightly has pushed the geopolitical news from the Middle East rudely aside. The Middle East is experiencing an earthquake of another kind. Suddenly starting in the backwater North African country of Tunisia and spreading like a string of Chinese firecrackers, rebellion and potential revolution has erupted in one despot-ridden Arab nation after another. The Egyptians inspired by Tunisia have successfully jettisoned their dictator through a brave, relentless and essentially peaceful struggle. Their success has emboldened people all across the region to join resistance movements and wage protests.

Brutal repression and now a full civil war has erupted in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’ 's private fiefdom, Libya. The US and its European allies have now militarily intervened on the side of the rebels essentially declaring war on the Libyan government in what may become another expensive, protracted quagmire. 'The Qaddafi approach' already has triggered similar harsh and desperate reactions from what goes governments in Yemen, Bahrain and now Syria. Where does intervention end? Most of these “republics” were considered stable “friendly” dictatorships and were not exactly on the US State Department's shit list with the exception of the dried up hellhole (and Al Qaeda stronghold) known as Yemen. Where and how this will all end is anybody's guess. One of thing is clear the Uncle Sam needs to be stuck in another war like he needs another hole in his head.

Ring 3: Demos and Repubs Locking Horns

With Japan on the ropes with an unimaginably bad triple whammy set of disasters and the oil rich Middle East unraveling in unprecedented ways, the US also finds itself in another kind of crisis, one of a classic political nature. The US recovering from a deep recession is also saddles with a record national debt. Yet care needs to be taken not to suffocate the baby of economic recovery in its proverbial crib. Continued if not increased government deficit spending seems counter-intuitive in the midst of a period of deep red ink. But that is is exactly what is prescribed by most economists. Yet suddenly the Dreaded Deficit is front and center (which must be remembered was run up by mainly the Reagan and Bush II administrations.) The right is using The Deficit and their control of the purse strings to 'go postal.' An unholy alliance of shady billionaires, crazed libertarian anti-tax hardliners, reactionary poorly educated evangelical Christians, left wing conspiracy believing gun freaks and bought-and-paid-for Republican Party hacks are lined up against a young inexperience president (prone to preemptive surrender on key negotiating points) supported by a divided Democratic Party that has long since lost its moorings with its real base – the middle, working and under classes.

With the US oil addiction as the linchpin for supporting unpopular, despotic and kleptocratic regimes in the Middle East coupled with the oil industry's untoward influence on US energy policy, it's possible to see the connections between these three events as interlocking. The ultra energy industry-friendly Republican Party is tactically and strategically angling for a re-accession to power through whatever means necessary. So oil dependency and nuclear industry rehabilitation (despite Japan's plight) will continue irrespective of the consequences if the Repubs have their way. The nuclear industry, long since a basket case without government support, is also solidly supported by laissez-faire Republicans. Oil as a major CO2 producing and climate damaging fossil fuel, and nuclear energy both are associated with long-term deleterious effects to the environment (with Japan now getting a first hand experience.) The most obstreperous and deluded defenders or oil and nuclear power can be found in the Republican Party. And these very same deniers of the deleterious long term harm of oil and nukes are the very ones threatening to paralyze the entire US government (and economy?) if they don't get their way on a whole host of stupid, ill advised budget cuts/social agenda initiatives that will have zip effect on the looming deficit (that they have suddenly rediscovered.)

The annual US budget negotiation process is always ugly. This is where the Democrats Party and the Republican Party perennially wrangle over their supposed ideological differences. A lot of it is show. Most of the budget is locked in, and only a small sliver (12%) is ever in play. Neither side can really touch the big chunks without major legislation – commitments to the elderly and incapacitated (Medicare and Social Security entitlements) and the sacrosanct military side. And increasing taxes even in good times is always off the table thanks to 30 years of relentless right wing propaganda. This time it is really bad. Due to nearly a decade of breathtakingly irresponsible policy from a Republican president (off-budget wars, taxes cuts and refusal to reform Medicare) and now a kings hell of a recession (which wipes out revenues,) the deficit is indeed looming large in both absolute and relative terms.

To make matters worse the Repubs have interpreted their victory in the mid term election as carte blance to take declare war on all fronts: environmental regulation, public sector unions, teachers, abortion rights, publicly supported media, you name it all in the name balancing the budget. At both the state and federal level they are on the move with draconian agenda that would even make their saint, the late Ronald Reagan, queasy. The American population is just waking up to the true dimensions of their agenda. These madmen have no real idea of the implications of their actions. But if they stall the recovery and make the joblessness worse ( the number one concern in polls), all the better. It can be blamed on the Obama presidency. The GOP just wants to crush the opposition and enact their half-baked ideas and the fully-baked bidding of their corporate overlords. This has all happened because the American voters are easily bamboozled and often vote for tin-hatted charlatans, or else are they become easily discouraged and don't vote at all. So a veritable fleet of of ships of fools have commandeered the US House Representatives and many statehouses and governorships. This is a serious state of affairs to say the least. Let's just hope people wake up pretty fucking soon!

A Perverse Symmetry

I wrote this last week. It appears the tide has turned and just maybe the reactionary right has over played its hand. See the recent NY Times poll.

Anyone following the standoff in Wisconsin will see a certain perverse symmetry. A Republican dominated Supreme Court first radically alters campaigning financing rules with the Citizens United decision to allow corporations and their primary adversaries, trade unions, to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections under the rubric of “free speech” Of course the good justices knew full well this is like pitting a the NFL against some high school football league in terms of available cash to spend on elections. In the US union membership has been steadily falling from over a 1/3 of the workforce in 1945 to only 7.9% by 2004. Private-sector union membership has shrunk the most, to a mere 6.9% of the private sector workforce as of 2010, while public-sector union membership is still running at over 36% . So is there any mystery as to what is going on in Wisconsin? It is plain and simple. The Republicans Party and the oligarchy (read: a cabal of the ultra rich) that it represents is using the recession and the concurrent problems with state budgets to destroy the last surviving remnant of the union movement - public-sector unions.

So with private-sector unions on the rocks due to union busting and race-to-the-bottom global economics, Republicans and their minions in the media have of late been concentrating on undermining the support with the American public for the surviving public-sector unions. And this super recession is a perfect opportunity. The five Supreme Court (presumably opposed to “judicial activism”) who voted in favor of giving First Amendment rights to corporations and unions were obviously aware that private-sector unions in the US are in serious decline. So it was easy to allow money equals free speech for corporations and for their polar opposites, unions. Private sector unions are becoming a paper tiger, especially with the US economy seemingly permanently unable to create enough jobs. Yet public sector unions are still strong. So prior to the upcoming watershed of an election in 2012, Republicans have their long knives out for the last bastion of American organized labor - public sector unions.

And feeding into this is the perpetual dissatisfaction of Americans with our education system. This dissatisfaction is being used to undermine faith in a unionized part of the public-sector union movement - the American schoolteacher. School teaching always been an underpaid and under-appreciated profession. Teachers are constantly being pilloried and blamed in the media for all the myriad ills of the American education system. Bad teachers that can't be fired ' because of their unions' and 'their awful tenure system' is a constant refrain by the right. The underfunding and neglect of the very school districts that need support the most, those that serve the inner city poor is conveniently ignored, as is the the societal feedback loop of social decay and despair in the underclass families that serves up students with horrendous disadvantages. Instead it is all blamed on the hapless teachers who work in these drug and gang infested war zones. Perennial underfunding of education at the state level was caused by the so-called taxpayers revolt mania which started in California in the 1980s with Jarvis Gann and which spread like wildfire across the country. And, of course, there it is always easy to generate animosity and jealousy against 'government workers' by creating the perception that people with cushy 'government jobs' have it made and that the state budget crisis is the fault of their greedy, obstreperous unions.

When this stubborn kings hell of a recession hit, many states suddenly found themselves seriously in the red, and it was time to find a scapegoat. So it was easy to blame it on the defined benefit pensions and solid health plans that state, county and city workers have been able to achieve usually by trading off cost-of-living wage increases. The perpetual underfunding of governments at all levels due to tax cut madness especially for upper tiers of income is conveniently ignored. But with Wisconsin, it was only different. Compared with other states their budget deficit was only shallow hole. But one which the Republican libertarian ideologue of a governor made deeper with irresponsible tax cuts. Make no mistake this is a test case. If a manufactured budget crisis can be used to destroy public-sector unions in Wisconsin, all of the states with real budget problems will be pushovers for attacking the concept of public-sector unions and collective bargaining in general. Make no mistake this is class warfare!

Strange Days

It is strange time we live in. In what is supposed to be a democracy, a coalition of rich greedy cold-hearted bastards (i.e. the Koch brothers) aligned with an interlocking network of bureaucratic money machines known as corporations have now commandeered the legislative and executive branches of many States and a 1/2 of the Federal legislative branch. And, of course, have significant influence on the judicial branch at both the State and Federal levels.

In short Americans through a mix of ignorance, fear, cynicism and apathy have allowed a batch of charlatans and fools to be elected all across the country, most recently to the US House of Representatives. These are craven pols who have not a clue as to how to get the engine of US capitalism fired back up again - if it is indeed possible. These are people who believe only what is convenient to believe. This is well beyond mere intellectual chicanery, which implies one knows the truth but is using one’s wits to refashion it, such as the legal machinations of a mob lawyer or the verbal maneuvers of a clever college rhetorician. This not just a convenient tweaking of the truth being injected into an argument, but whole new realities being conjured up and fervently believed in. For instance now the GOP appears to believe the modest under whelming but necessary health care reforms enacted by the Democrats last year will actually increase unemployment.

Remember this mauling of reality has been going on for awhile now, having been pioneered and refined during the George W. Bush presidency. In the Bush years claims that were overwhelming proved to be false, and somehow retained legitimacy in the minds of the ultra-right. These ‘zombie facts’ supported the horribly unnecessary, budget-busting invasion of Iraq. Some of these include:

• Sadam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction but were just never found.
• Sadam Hussien was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist act against the US.
• The US invasion of Iraq actually benefited the people of Iraq.
• Waterboarding is not torture.

This is the realm of what once called the Big Lie and was once associated with totalitarian governments likes those of the Nazis and the Stalinists. Repeat something that is false, a big fat lie, with enough volume and frequency (read: right wing radio and Fox “news”) and it becomes believable at least to some (and unfortunately enough to swing elections.)

Difference of opinion is usually based on difference of interpretation of the same data. But what if each side uses it's own data? What if the established arbiter of the legitimacy of the data is accused of being in league with one of the sides? Then you have no touchstone of fact-based objective reality. That is what we have come to. The party now taking control of one half of one the three branches of government has arbitrarily decided to eliminate the referee, the independent bi-partisan body, the Congressional Budget Office, from involvement in projecting results of proposed budgetary bills. Apparently they make up their own numbers and any CBOs analysis will be castigated as simply biased in support of their opponents. This is very wrong and will create another fictitious reality, another boldfaced pack of lies in the guise of objective truth. It’s sick. It’s duplicity. It’s the GOP in action!