Amidst all the keening & rending of garments about Wikileaks, I think we are missing the true motivations of the U.S. Government apparatchiks who are wailing the loudest. These cables will be the political equivalent of Gravity's Rainbow, frequently cited but never read. As embarrassing as the 250,000 State Dept cables might be, it is hardly shocking. American diplomats have a condescending & chauvinistic attitude towards their host countries? Gasp!... Many of the thuggish satraps we've installed as custodial dictators around the Middle East parrot our views about Iran which are total contravention of the sentiments of the people they govern... that is surprising. Hillary Clinton might violate the intent & the letter of the law to further her own agenda? Say it isn't so... As humiliating as these revelations are, or should be for a democracy with some notion of honor or decency, that cow already left the barn & that toothpaste is not getting back in the tube.
Joe Lieberman's machinations to strangle Wikileaks' Paypal Account & access to the Amazon distribution cloud... the Department of Defense Denial of Service attacks against their host servers... the thoughtful cries from the traditional media to take out Julian Assange with a predator drone strike are not intended to undo or ameliorate the damage of those documents already leaked. This is a pre-mptive strike to bottle up distribution channels in anticipation of the document dump that will compromise Bank of America. Lieberman, The Pentagon, The Post & Times don't forget for 1 second for whom they are working.
Kudos to our corporate overlords on installing Barry Obama. Contrary to the heartwarming tales of schoolchildren sending their dimes to Obama for America, one of the most creative PR gambits since Hill & Knowlton had Iraqi soldiers tossing babies out of incubators, it was no secret that far & away his largest financial sugartit was Goldman Sachs. GS has been predictably rewarded by the placement of their well-fed stooges at the helm of the Treasury & Council of Economic Advisors. Business as usual. Whatevs...
I will shamefacedly admit that I was timidly hopeful that, in spite of his provenance, given an overwhelming mandate & two houses of Congress to back him up, Obama might deliver some modicum of the change we were promised. We now see that, regardless of being nominally graced with more intellectual heft, Obama is the most do nothing President since Warren G. Harding. Unfortunately, the necrotic moral compass of the American electorate is incapable of outrage, so no modern day Teapot Dome will bring this government down... although it might get on the next season of Skating with the Stars. But only recently has it occurred to me how masterfully the plutocrats have tweaked us. This four year interregnum will reinforce all their stereotypes of Barrack as the Shiftless Negro. Absurd because Barrack Obama could not be more divorced from the African American experience if he'd shared a bedroom with Wally & The Beave inside a black & white Philco TV set. The risibility of Barry's blackness notwithstanding, The American People will be primed to elect the reanimated corpse of Theodore Bilbo in a landslide come 2012. Well played, gentlemen.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Asylum for the Criminally Inane
The term Fascism is bandied about carelessly in our thoughtless American political discourse, but it is indeed what we have in this country now. The plutocracy has effectively gamed both parties to prevent any Liberal/ Progressive/Leftist policies from succeeding. Clinton & Obama were both stalking horses for the Corporatist agenda. There are a very few honorable men who still serve the interests of their constituents in both parties... but sincere progressives must recognize that the Democratic Party no longer represents them. Democrats collude with Republicans to advance Corporate interests. Democrats will continue to screw their base in the same way that Republicans screwed their base. We will never get DADT repealed... hey will never get an Anti-Abortion amendment. What we will get, regardless of who controls the White House & Congress is more regressive taxes and fewer regulations which might impede the flow of wealth from bottom to top.
Sincere progressives would do well to make common cause with the Teahadists. Glenn Beck is a cat's paw for Rupert Murdoch, the quintessential Corporate thug. Beck is Howard Beal, ranting & spouting nonsense that sells overpriced gold & adult diapers while driving ratings for his boss. His prescriptions to fix what is wrong with this country are categorically wrong & ridiculous. But he is channeling the fear, frustration & anger of people who rightly recognize something is, in fact, wrong. Most Liberal/Progressives are too busy laughing at these people for wearing tri-corn hats & carrying Gadsden flags to realize that their sincere agita is a resource that could fuel meaningful change.
Liberals justifiably decry their antipodes for being racists... and they are... this is a racist nation... we've been soaking in it for five centuries. If Liberals were a little more honest they would they would acknowledge the bigoted timbers in their own eyes. Then recognize that all previous movements that accomplished anything worthwhile were racist at the outset. Amongst the Abolitionists Methodists didn't like the Baptists & everybody hated the Quakers. The Suffragists, which mutated into the Temperance movement, were classist & nativist. The Labor movements of the early 20th Century were frequently segregated. Colored folks were not welcome at the Chautauquas. The Black Panthers were sexist. Progress doesn't happen all at once. Once everyone is jointly engaged toward some greater purpose, tribal differences will pale. This is the lesson we all should have learned on the decorating committee for Junior Prom.
Sincere progressives would do well to make common cause with the Teahadists. Glenn Beck is a cat's paw for Rupert Murdoch, the quintessential Corporate thug. Beck is Howard Beal, ranting & spouting nonsense that sells overpriced gold & adult diapers while driving ratings for his boss. His prescriptions to fix what is wrong with this country are categorically wrong & ridiculous. But he is channeling the fear, frustration & anger of people who rightly recognize something is, in fact, wrong. Most Liberal/Progressives are too busy laughing at these people for wearing tri-corn hats & carrying Gadsden flags to realize that their sincere agita is a resource that could fuel meaningful change.
Liberals justifiably decry their antipodes for being racists... and they are... this is a racist nation... we've been soaking in it for five centuries. If Liberals were a little more honest they would they would acknowledge the bigoted timbers in their own eyes. Then recognize that all previous movements that accomplished anything worthwhile were racist at the outset. Amongst the Abolitionists Methodists didn't like the Baptists & everybody hated the Quakers. The Suffragists, which mutated into the Temperance movement, were classist & nativist. The Labor movements of the early 20th Century were frequently segregated. Colored folks were not welcome at the Chautauquas. The Black Panthers were sexist. Progress doesn't happen all at once. Once everyone is jointly engaged toward some greater purpose, tribal differences will pale. This is the lesson we all should have learned on the decorating committee for Junior Prom.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
God shed his grace on thee
Every American should be able to live in a million dollar home regardless of income or credit history
Friday, February 6, 2009
Earth Island : Easter Island
The economy of the "World's Last Superpower™" swirls down the toilet bowl of history, trailing Free Trade and Globalism like so much sodden tissue. It's time we grasped the concept of catastrophe.
The American auto industry collapsed. No one could have foreseen... except they could have... industry sages fought like rabid weasels against the slightest whiff of innovation. Any increase in fuel efficiency or safety was unimaginable. Having improved nothing in 40 years except cupholders and stereos, they are now shocked to discover they are no longer competitive. American consumers wrapped in their fuzzy exceptionalism did not squawk. As we paved over the vast spaces formerly known as nature to build 6000 SF mansionettes, we needed ever more opulent rolling stock to take us there. An American industry that once ruled the world will now disappear.
Our economy evolved from the tedious production of goods and services to a FIRE-based economy that can borrow and lend it's way to prosperity. This required the creation of a new species of financial institution. While nominally they are banks, they possess the less glamorous attributes of clip joints, carnival midways and rigged casinos. These financial Allosauruses were so successful that they grew and grew until they were too big to fail... until they failed.
There are practical reasons that humans are reluctant to recognize impending disaster. Preoccupation with potential negatives is neurotic. Civilization and its contents were built by a sort of Asperger's syndrome, immune to concern for consequence. The American Dream is an amoral drive to the next frontier that pauses not for aboriginals slaughtered, slaves exploited, rivers poisoned, forests felled or species lost. Sufficient resources dedicated to any agenda will succeed. Success is ours, now we are accountable for the consequences.
I don't lament all this. We had a pretty good run: The Gold Rush; World's Fair; Rock Music; Moon Landing; The Irwin Allen Oeuvre; the Trans Am, and the 64 oz. bucket of Mountain Dew. It is unfortunate what we did to the Native Americans, Africans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Phillipinos, Cubans, Guatemalans, Iranians, Vietnamese and Iraqis along the way. But the Israelites did it to the Canaanites, the Romans to the Gauls, the Crusaders to the Infidels and so on. Like Nick Cave says, "People ain't no good."
The myriad accomplishments of The Industrial Revolution, and all the subsequent revolutions, are no longer sustainable. It is only possible with sufficient inputs of energy. It is the most basic axioms of physics. Work is mass moving over time. Energy is the ability to do work. Without the energy, work stops.
The current economic collapse is but a feint. There is no credit crisis, this is not a failure of liquidity. We are insolvent. Real wealth are those commodities that permit us to feed ourselves, build shelter, heat our homes, clothe, heal, educate and entertain ourselves. The resources (primarily fossil fuels, but other commodities as well) that keep the whole circus afloat are finite and diminishing rapidly. Further, global warming, environmental and species destruction are eliminating resources that might help us to survive the inevitable.
The American Dream, like capitalism itself, is all about excess. While outwardly we wouldn't deny wealth to anyone else, we insist on getting more of it than the next guy. There is a small mathematical obstacle to everyone having more than everybody else. Like the beginning of the baseball game when everyone grabs the next higher spot on the grip of the bat. We have reached the end of the bat. There is no more bat to grab.
Jared Diamond's Collapse lays out a very plausible scenario of how the culture living on Easter Island (and others) exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment and were reduced to the most primitive subsistence, with just a bunch of megalith statues to remind them of their former opulence. As the anthroposphere has grown to occupy the entire globe it is not too difficult to imagine be left scratching the surface of our Earth Island with no more inputs to exploit and no way off the island.
Perhaps it is time to wake up from the American Dream. This is not a unique or even particularly useful insight. We are a slack-jawed audience for such artificial dramas as athletes consuming drugs or a Congressional cage match to prove which hack more faithfully serves his corporate paymasters. Perhaps we should start contemplating a real catastrophe.
The American auto industry collapsed. No one could have foreseen... except they could have... industry sages fought like rabid weasels against the slightest whiff of innovation. Any increase in fuel efficiency or safety was unimaginable. Having improved nothing in 40 years except cupholders and stereos, they are now shocked to discover they are no longer competitive. American consumers wrapped in their fuzzy exceptionalism did not squawk. As we paved over the vast spaces formerly known as nature to build 6000 SF mansionettes, we needed ever more opulent rolling stock to take us there. An American industry that once ruled the world will now disappear.
Our economy evolved from the tedious production of goods and services to a FIRE-based economy that can borrow and lend it's way to prosperity. This required the creation of a new species of financial institution. While nominally they are banks, they possess the less glamorous attributes of clip joints, carnival midways and rigged casinos. These financial Allosauruses were so successful that they grew and grew until they were too big to fail... until they failed.
There are practical reasons that humans are reluctant to recognize impending disaster. Preoccupation with potential negatives is neurotic. Civilization and its contents were built by a sort of Asperger's syndrome, immune to concern for consequence. The American Dream is an amoral drive to the next frontier that pauses not for aboriginals slaughtered, slaves exploited, rivers poisoned, forests felled or species lost. Sufficient resources dedicated to any agenda will succeed. Success is ours, now we are accountable for the consequences.
I don't lament all this. We had a pretty good run: The Gold Rush; World's Fair; Rock Music; Moon Landing; The Irwin Allen Oeuvre; the Trans Am, and the 64 oz. bucket of Mountain Dew. It is unfortunate what we did to the Native Americans, Africans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Phillipinos, Cubans, Guatemalans, Iranians, Vietnamese and Iraqis along the way. But the Israelites did it to the Canaanites, the Romans to the Gauls, the Crusaders to the Infidels and so on. Like Nick Cave says, "People ain't no good."
The myriad accomplishments of The Industrial Revolution, and all the subsequent revolutions, are no longer sustainable. It is only possible with sufficient inputs of energy. It is the most basic axioms of physics. Work is mass moving over time. Energy is the ability to do work. Without the energy, work stops.
The current economic collapse is but a feint. There is no credit crisis, this is not a failure of liquidity. We are insolvent. Real wealth are those commodities that permit us to feed ourselves, build shelter, heat our homes, clothe, heal, educate and entertain ourselves. The resources (primarily fossil fuels, but other commodities as well) that keep the whole circus afloat are finite and diminishing rapidly. Further, global warming, environmental and species destruction are eliminating resources that might help us to survive the inevitable.
The American Dream, like capitalism itself, is all about excess. While outwardly we wouldn't deny wealth to anyone else, we insist on getting more of it than the next guy. There is a small mathematical obstacle to everyone having more than everybody else. Like the beginning of the baseball game when everyone grabs the next higher spot on the grip of the bat. We have reached the end of the bat. There is no more bat to grab.
Jared Diamond's Collapse lays out a very plausible scenario of how the culture living on Easter Island (and others) exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment and were reduced to the most primitive subsistence, with just a bunch of megalith statues to remind them of their former opulence. As the anthroposphere has grown to occupy the entire globe it is not too difficult to imagine be left scratching the surface of our Earth Island with no more inputs to exploit and no way off the island.
Perhaps it is time to wake up from the American Dream. This is not a unique or even particularly useful insight. We are a slack-jawed audience for such artificial dramas as athletes consuming drugs or a Congressional cage match to prove which hack more faithfully serves his corporate paymasters. Perhaps we should start contemplating a real catastrophe.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
What did we get for our money?
During the Go-Go 80s, Tech Stock 90s and Housing Boom aught's, we were periodically treated to crowing in some corner of the media industrial complex how this golden age had created so many millionaires or billionaires, God bless us every one. These newly minted Croesuses (Croesi?) were harbingers of the success that awaited us all in our new, never gonna be a recession, powerball economy. If we believed fervently enough, we too would be rich beyond compare by day-trading, taking our retail startup online or flipping houses.
Well maybe next time.
We may not get to live out this wealth fantasy, but we get to pay for it. The elect who did in fact amass such spectacular fortunes went on M&A sprees across the economy, buying viable if “underperforming” companies with debt, looting the pension funds, sending the productive facilities overseas, repackaging the the remains and walking away with the excess. They then created a wondrous casino on Wall Street to gamble their new found blessings on CDO's backstopped with CDS's that were never meant to be used. All good fun until somebody loses... everything. Now we are left with a bill for this mischief pegged at $2.5 trillion maybe up to 7 or 8. If the dollar loses reserve currency status, and we had to pony up with real money, the final bill could be incalculably higher.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Grand Opening
After reading many political blogs, primarily left wing, mostly about American politics and the economy. I feel compelled to chip in. I suffer the unsubstantiated belief that I have something important to add. Perhaps only because I have a back injury that precludes walking. No place to go, no one to see.
more to come...
more to come...
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