The Gold Country Stage bus service is being extinguished by a systematic, unrelenting infliction of a Thousand Cuts(as in Imperial China's torture regime): by reducing services areas and number of runs; by abolishing entire routes and emasculating others; by changing schedules and eliminating evening and Saturday service; and by increasing fares by fifty percent! As of the May 4, 2009, service cuts, our local bus service is headed toward extinction.
It appears evident that decision makers, our community oracles, who determine the status or fate of bus service in western Nevada County, have difficulty empathizing with people who do not share their emphasis on motor vehicle ownership and are not beholden to its concomitant dependencies and preoccupations. People of whom they know nothing about, except that they are quite different than themselves.
With a smile on my face, I can think that automobile addiction or mindset is a kind of pandemic disease, like Swine Flu(H1 N1)for example, for which there is no known cure. Understanding why anyone would use public transit when they could drive a luxury motor vehicle would be a daunting task.
The May Fourth cuts seem to reflect the disconnect suggested above. Collectively, the cuts impose a death sentence upon our humanitarian-oriented local bus service. I suspect the fear of creeping socialism also is a factor. Anything that promotes the notion of "all for one, and one for all" has to be crushed. The cuts affect real people: workers getting to work and back home; students; grocery shoppers; expectant mothers and seniors who want to get around town, but in a kinder and gentler manner than do automobile owners. Of course, there are many other needs and purposes for having bus service.
Even before the Prince of Privatization, President Reagan, pushed the agenda, anti-government forces were active in shrinking government and eliminating public services. After all, Nevada County has long since replaced Orange County as the bastion of neoconservative ideology and power in California. In this county, populist concepts of commons and covenants between people and their government are highly suspect.
With that said, I am still baffled by deep cuts in our local bus system during an increasingly severe economic depression, when the need for public transit is on the rise, when jobs matter and our local environment and quality of life are so badly degraded by a plague of motorized beasts. In this light, the May Fourth action virtually decapitates bus service and furthers community decline.
To the credit of the Transportation Committee, bus management, that had initially advocated wholesale termination of Routes 2, 6 and 8, was required to salvage some aspects of those routes; however, the skeletal service that remains is a service in name only; for riders, perhaps a majority, will have to find other means of getting about town and beyond. With the changes, my use of Route 2 has come to a virtual dead end. Its very limited schedule does not come close to meeting my needs. My companion will probably have to ride her bicycle to work!
Since May Fourth, patron anger is running deeply. It's lucky for politicians sitting on the Transportation Committee that the May 19 Elections do not include candidates! But, the time will come! Riders are reconsidering purchasing monthly bus passes. Although service has been cut to the bone, price of the pass remains the same! Why pay more for less? I certainly will not! And, I am walking, more out of necessity, because of inadequate service, but as protest, too. If the ship is sinking, why stick around? I'd rather donate some gas money to a friend who offers me a ride, than throw money down a rat hole.
Unfortunately, my disposition had soured when the Committee at the January hearing talked about the bicycle solution. Politicians have a studied spiel on placing responsibility on individuals to find their own means for getting about. They distract attention from where the responsibility truly lies. The chant about bicycles went on and on; and I asked myself, "When did I last see anyone on this committee ride a bicycle around town?" I got out of my seat and left the hearing. Subsequently, I had a dream, or was it a nightmare? There was a bicycle Critical Mass of late term expectant mothers, octogenarians and other former bus patrons descending upon the Transportation Committee members and demanding that they ride bicycles! What's good for the goose....
Monday, May 4, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Madoff: Not Quite A Hero
With the Wall Street debacle in matinee performances and making the media marquee every business day, and weekends too, television soaps have been upstaged--who needs fiction with credit default swaps and Timothy Geithener in leading rolls? Theater of the Absurd is back and it is real!
Bernard Madoff is a fall guy, a cover for the looting of the U.S. Treasury by a politically connected financial sector. Madoff is a petty thief made into an mastermind, arch-criminal, who literally ventured out on his own to pick the pockets of those within his own socio-economic class. He was the fox watching the hen house, in plebeian imagery. He is not quite a Robin Hood. Madoff is no socialist! He wasn't going to transfer monies from those who had questionably acquired it, to those good citizens who unquestionably had it taken from them; but nevertheless, he is a hero of sorts in a Wizard of Oz setting.
A bilker of the rich by one of the same, is an example of the cliche, what goes around, comes around. The karmic consequence of greed. The rich sinking their fortunes into something to make them even richer; and, doing so because they followed the lead of one of their own! There's justice in that, is there not? Madoff's ponzi scheme is the stuff of my childhood fables. Whom among the poor and oppressed will shed a tear for anyone who had his or her pocket picked by Bernie? And he will go to prison, with luxury accommodations, to be sure. With reduced incarceration time, he will probably be out in less than five years! Of course, no one in the Wall Street Mob will suffer jail time. The Mob is too big to be guilty of anything other than having made some mistakes. In fact, the Mob continues to be rewarded by the Obama Administration, following the Geo. W. path.
If Geithener, Summers, Ruben, Paulsen, Greenspan and all the other Wall Street suspects and their Congressional accomplices can extract several trillion dollars from the National Reserve, why should anyone fuss about some fat cats losing fifty billion dollars? The rich usually get to where they are financially by government largesse of one form or another. The real concern is that all the money going to insolvent banks is lost to the public forever. We can forget about rebuilding America.
Bernard Madoff is a fall guy, a cover for the looting of the U.S. Treasury by a politically connected financial sector. Madoff is a petty thief made into an mastermind, arch-criminal, who literally ventured out on his own to pick the pockets of those within his own socio-economic class. He was the fox watching the hen house, in plebeian imagery. He is not quite a Robin Hood. Madoff is no socialist! He wasn't going to transfer monies from those who had questionably acquired it, to those good citizens who unquestionably had it taken from them; but nevertheless, he is a hero of sorts in a Wizard of Oz setting.
A bilker of the rich by one of the same, is an example of the cliche, what goes around, comes around. The karmic consequence of greed. The rich sinking their fortunes into something to make them even richer; and, doing so because they followed the lead of one of their own! There's justice in that, is there not? Madoff's ponzi scheme is the stuff of my childhood fables. Whom among the poor and oppressed will shed a tear for anyone who had his or her pocket picked by Bernie? And he will go to prison, with luxury accommodations, to be sure. With reduced incarceration time, he will probably be out in less than five years! Of course, no one in the Wall Street Mob will suffer jail time. The Mob is too big to be guilty of anything other than having made some mistakes. In fact, the Mob continues to be rewarded by the Obama Administration, following the Geo. W. path.
If Geithener, Summers, Ruben, Paulsen, Greenspan and all the other Wall Street suspects and their Congressional accomplices can extract several trillion dollars from the National Reserve, why should anyone fuss about some fat cats losing fifty billion dollars? The rich usually get to where they are financially by government largesse of one form or another. The real concern is that all the money going to insolvent banks is lost to the public forever. We can forget about rebuilding America.
Sports Over All?
First and foremost athletic competition, call it sports, is social control, for contestants, but especially for spectators, who are representative of us all. Sports are distractions from the many unresolved societal problems that the ruling elite wish to ignore or dismiss. Also, athletic programs, in school physical education and other organized sports, train youth to accept authority without question. An athletic coach is the father figure, par excellence!
Physical education at public schools was mandated after many WW I military applicants were disqualified for being physically unfit to fight in wartime! It was determined that sports programs would prepare the Nation's youth for the wars that would surely come.
Athletics is important in keeping youth on ice during an ever-lengthening adolescence, a characteristic of a moribund economic system. Young people have to be kept busy because society offers them so little. The wait to be full participants is long and frustrating. Let the anger out through competitive sports. Youth has to wait, actually, for the ruling generation to retire and die off. Sports act as a preoccupation and to quite youthful discontents.
In the military context, sports serves the purpose of training boys and young men to accept authoritarianism, to do what they are told. The coach is commander-in-chief. Team sports and an Army infantry platoon function under similar rules. State indoctrination comes easier when athletic goals merge with national values. The Greek Olympics serve as sports model; and interestingly, the Greek states were engaged in perpetual wars!
The modern Olympics are deeply political. The 1936 Berlin Olympics might as well been the Battle of the Somme. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics with the demonstration by Tommie Smith and John Carlos was one of the most dramatic examples of free-speech in all of sports history. Sadly, President Carter, who later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize used the 1980 Olympics to further aggravate Cold War tensions by withdrawing U.S. athletes from the Moscow games. Stripping the two gold metals won by Jim Thorpe in the 1912 Stockholm, Sweden Olympics was racially motivated.
Speaking of Color and politics, Avery Brundage was a colleague of Thorpe's on the Pentathlon team in the 1912 games. He went on to dominate the IOC for many years with his brand of politics. He was an admirer of the German leader who officiated over the 1936 Olympics!
Another great moment in the history of Olympic politics was when Muhammad Ali threw his 1960 Rome gold metal for boxing off a bridge in reaction to racism in his own country.
Sports in the United States has been an arena in which the Color Line has had a persistent presence! For all minorities, it has been a battle field. Baseball is a case study. The industry first excluded Blacks; and, they set up their own Negro League in 1860, and professionalized in the 1870s. The talent in the Negro League was to great to ignore when professional baseball resumed after WW II. There were three black candidates considered for entry into Major League baseball. Jackie Robinson was chosen, I believe, for his noted athletic career at UCLA. He had academic credentials, as well. His poor health later in life testifies to the enormous pressures he endured as the first Black in what had been a White bastion. In recent decades the focus on talent has shifted from the U.S. to the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic is by far the main attraction, grooming young ballplayers is an industry with a cash crop in great demand.
There is a fine line between exploitation and slavery, with a materialistic and growth-oriented economic system the two are intertwined. Minorities have few opportunities to obtain status and financial security through regular employment channels. The entertainment field and sports offer a very few recognition and wealth. But, success in these endeavors rely on an individual's innate talents and sheer determination. Luck of the draw is another important element. Goal attainment requires superhuman effort and concentration.
Joe DiMaggio comes to mind for various reasons, ancestry and community included. What I remember most is his mother's admonishment to always look and act as one's best. DiMaggio was exemplar, even in his final days. I remember seeing him in an entirely empty section of a baseball stadium, wanting to be left alone, but harassed by a television cameraman. The pressures he endured as a sports figure and in continuing his hitting record in 1941, was not without consequence: he had, I believe, a stomach ulcer during his playing years; and, as a heavy, but secretive, cigarette smoker, he died of lung cancer. Sports gods are, after all, mortals.
The fact that some athletes have a sad life after their careers should not lead me to conclude that all do or that there is some causal factor within stardom that is a fault. But, as I run down the list of regretful endings, I wonder about balances in a person's life.For many notable sports figures, there are, unfortunately, some with sorrowful endings.
(We have heard about "late bloomers", undistinguished young people who, later in life, become somebody. Personally, I could not write reasonably well until I reached adulthood. I maintain that I simply didn't know enough about issues to write anything remotely original, or express what I did know in a grammatically and stylistically acceptable manner. It wasn't until issues became understandable and meaningful that I could muster up the motivation to learn how to write. Well, this is an example of something quite positive, but considerably off topic.)
Paul Robeson, a multi talented Black American, was put to the test during the McCarthy Era. And his fate was not unlike that of the Rosenberg's, but still a death sentence of sorts. The events of Robeson's life and his many accomplishments are well known. Of the many official acts of violence against him, one of the most blatantly racist was the removal of his likeness from photographs of the All-American football teams of 1918 and 1919. And I believe that he was the only African American while matriculating at Rutgers University. One of his most moving performances that I have heard was that with singers in Wales. Robeson was an outstanding performer in every undertaking. Other great talents have had to endure state oppression in other nations. But, we in the U.S. always expect better in a supposed democracy with a constitution of such clearly delineated individual rights and privileges.
Sports are two contraversial for me. I am uncomfortable with ownership structure, who owns the operations, what they extract from community budgets, the ethnic and racial groups that bring them power and profits. If sports are used for purposes of social control, for perpetuating the economical and political status quo, then I have no time for sports, professional or collegiate. I have other things to do with my time.
Physical education at public schools was mandated after many WW I military applicants were disqualified for being physically unfit to fight in wartime! It was determined that sports programs would prepare the Nation's youth for the wars that would surely come.
Athletics is important in keeping youth on ice during an ever-lengthening adolescence, a characteristic of a moribund economic system. Young people have to be kept busy because society offers them so little. The wait to be full participants is long and frustrating. Let the anger out through competitive sports. Youth has to wait, actually, for the ruling generation to retire and die off. Sports act as a preoccupation and to quite youthful discontents.
In the military context, sports serves the purpose of training boys and young men to accept authoritarianism, to do what they are told. The coach is commander-in-chief. Team sports and an Army infantry platoon function under similar rules. State indoctrination comes easier when athletic goals merge with national values. The Greek Olympics serve as sports model; and interestingly, the Greek states were engaged in perpetual wars!
The modern Olympics are deeply political. The 1936 Berlin Olympics might as well been the Battle of the Somme. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics with the demonstration by Tommie Smith and John Carlos was one of the most dramatic examples of free-speech in all of sports history. Sadly, President Carter, who later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize used the 1980 Olympics to further aggravate Cold War tensions by withdrawing U.S. athletes from the Moscow games. Stripping the two gold metals won by Jim Thorpe in the 1912 Stockholm, Sweden Olympics was racially motivated.
Speaking of Color and politics, Avery Brundage was a colleague of Thorpe's on the Pentathlon team in the 1912 games. He went on to dominate the IOC for many years with his brand of politics. He was an admirer of the German leader who officiated over the 1936 Olympics!
Another great moment in the history of Olympic politics was when Muhammad Ali threw his 1960 Rome gold metal for boxing off a bridge in reaction to racism in his own country.
Sports in the United States has been an arena in which the Color Line has had a persistent presence! For all minorities, it has been a battle field. Baseball is a case study. The industry first excluded Blacks; and, they set up their own Negro League in 1860, and professionalized in the 1870s. The talent in the Negro League was to great to ignore when professional baseball resumed after WW II. There were three black candidates considered for entry into Major League baseball. Jackie Robinson was chosen, I believe, for his noted athletic career at UCLA. He had academic credentials, as well. His poor health later in life testifies to the enormous pressures he endured as the first Black in what had been a White bastion. In recent decades the focus on talent has shifted from the U.S. to the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic is by far the main attraction, grooming young ballplayers is an industry with a cash crop in great demand.
There is a fine line between exploitation and slavery, with a materialistic and growth-oriented economic system the two are intertwined. Minorities have few opportunities to obtain status and financial security through regular employment channels. The entertainment field and sports offer a very few recognition and wealth. But, success in these endeavors rely on an individual's innate talents and sheer determination. Luck of the draw is another important element. Goal attainment requires superhuman effort and concentration.
Joe DiMaggio comes to mind for various reasons, ancestry and community included. What I remember most is his mother's admonishment to always look and act as one's best. DiMaggio was exemplar, even in his final days. I remember seeing him in an entirely empty section of a baseball stadium, wanting to be left alone, but harassed by a television cameraman. The pressures he endured as a sports figure and in continuing his hitting record in 1941, was not without consequence: he had, I believe, a stomach ulcer during his playing years; and, as a heavy, but secretive, cigarette smoker, he died of lung cancer. Sports gods are, after all, mortals.
The fact that some athletes have a sad life after their careers should not lead me to conclude that all do or that there is some causal factor within stardom that is a fault. But, as I run down the list of regretful endings, I wonder about balances in a person's life.For many notable sports figures, there are, unfortunately, some with sorrowful endings.
(We have heard about "late bloomers", undistinguished young people who, later in life, become somebody. Personally, I could not write reasonably well until I reached adulthood. I maintain that I simply didn't know enough about issues to write anything remotely original, or express what I did know in a grammatically and stylistically acceptable manner. It wasn't until issues became understandable and meaningful that I could muster up the motivation to learn how to write. Well, this is an example of something quite positive, but considerably off topic.)
Paul Robeson, a multi talented Black American, was put to the test during the McCarthy Era. And his fate was not unlike that of the Rosenberg's, but still a death sentence of sorts. The events of Robeson's life and his many accomplishments are well known. Of the many official acts of violence against him, one of the most blatantly racist was the removal of his likeness from photographs of the All-American football teams of 1918 and 1919. And I believe that he was the only African American while matriculating at Rutgers University. One of his most moving performances that I have heard was that with singers in Wales. Robeson was an outstanding performer in every undertaking. Other great talents have had to endure state oppression in other nations. But, we in the U.S. always expect better in a supposed democracy with a constitution of such clearly delineated individual rights and privileges.
Sports are two contraversial for me. I am uncomfortable with ownership structure, who owns the operations, what they extract from community budgets, the ethnic and racial groups that bring them power and profits. If sports are used for purposes of social control, for perpetuating the economical and political status quo, then I have no time for sports, professional or collegiate. I have other things to do with my time.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Home Owning Revisited
In a consumer society, the Big Ticket purchase items are homes and motor vehicles. Owning both means perpetual debt! Renting a domicile and using public transit make more sense to this simplicity-oriented chap. Not only is renting no more expensive, in the long term, than home ownership, it is ideal for people who wish not to be a slave to debt and financial institutions, who want to be free to live a full life.
The vast majority of home buyers really can not afford to buy; for them a home mortgage loan is a life-sentence of indentured servitude. It could be called slavery for all the burdens it brings. The slave masters would be the finance industry that guards the reservoirs of accumulated capital.
The American Dream, owning one's home, is hyped by many industries simply to promote sales. In this context, buying a home is a rite of passage to middle class status and the respectability it supposedly fosters.
As a side commentary, having an automobile is another sign of first class status, and a rather costly one, at that! I would estimate that over three or four decades, the costs associated with automobile ownership(not counting the time spent attending to an auto)would exceed the median price of a home in California!(But, that's another issue, for another essay.)
The sub prime loans preyed on the most vulnerable people; those who bought the "Dream", but could ill-afford its consequences. The high risk mortgage loans have led to a financial industry meltdown and tens of thousands of home foreclosures, and probably continuing for the foreseeable future. The loan scandal was a direct result of deregulation and the unfettered greed it unleashed.
The financial industry's "credit default swap" instruments make a Ponzi scheme, even that of Bernard Madoff, look like a sophomore prank.(But, this too, is a subject for another essay.)
The imagined dream home is most likely a single family, subdivision dwelling on a parcel large enough for a swimming pool and barbecue patio. The tract is usually far removed from a town center or any commons. These divisions are typically economic- and often age-based, whites only ghettos.The high-end divisions are usually gated and have golf courses as design determinants. John D. Rockerfeller took the golf course option to the extreme, having a private one that flanked his great mansion outside of New York City.)
For the typical home buyer, ownership is elusive and illusory, certainly a long way off--thirty years. For the restless person who sells with only partial equity before the loan is paid off, actual ownership could never come to pass. The lender is the de facto owner until the debt is fully serviced. Whether the loan goes full term is any body's guess; and its that bet that provides easy money for speculators. Divorce,unemployment, illness, periodic collapse in the financial industry and the subsequent economic depression, make home purchasing a risky undertaking for most people.
The ongoing foreclosure crisis forces a reexamination of the American Dream. Mortgage debt is a serious matter; and home ownership is not for everyone--despite the lure of the financial industry. It would seem that renting would be less stressful in all aspects of having a roof over one's head.
As with the automobile, the price of a house is just the first of many, on-going expenses involved with ownership--which spawns a mammoth industrial and services complex beyond that of real estate and finance. And this is reason enough to advertise the Dream. Purchase a home, and you will be buying stuff, paying for various services, property taxes and insurance premiums forever after!
Social control is an aspect of mortgage debt that has not escaped the ruling elite's attention. You can't protest wars and the rollback of the New Deal or strike for better benefits and working conditions, if it would interfere with your ability to make monthly mortgage payments. It's difficult to service debt from behind bars and while unemployed. With average personal debt as burdensome as it is , there will be no revolution! And the ruling class wants to keep it that way.
Mortgage debt acts to keep wages low and job benefits few. The employer can force rollbacks by threatening to relocate offshore. In desperation, workers will make concessions to save their jobs--or so they hope. When collective bargaining becomes passe, anything can happen.
For ordinary people, mortgage debt eliminates discretionary spending and the possibility to accumulate savings. There is simply little or no money available to purchase consumer goods and services. A significantly disproportionate amount of family income goes to the financial industry. And this has a huge impact on the manufacturing and retail sectors, which then takes a toll on employment.
A case could be made that a consumer society would favor the singles lifestyle, where everyone has sole ownership and use of most everything. Anathema to market capitalism is the old credo: "Two can live as cheaply as one". In order for capitalism to continue its dominance, unit costs must continually decrease. This is accomplished by increasing production and demand. Marriage and multi-generation households can frustrate these objectives.
There is class bias and prejudice associated with home ownership, induced by interest groups, that owners are more responsible and more worthy as a class than renters. Supposedly, owners establish better neighborhoods, support civic affairs and public education. They are a political special interest group with lobby power.
Overlooked in this judgement is the resentments people harbor who are unfairly pigeonholed because they can not afford to buy, yet have to pay exorbitant rent. Today, most renters spend a large percentage of income on rent. Therefore, animosity toward landlords runs deeply! The hostility toward the system is often acted out against physical property itself. Interestingly, homeowners had reason to maintain their homes while values continued to accelerate at a breath-taking rate. Will they continue this practice as values plummet?
I would assume that there is no significant financial advantage in owning a home over renting one. That costs are approximately a draw is entirely likely. And this is why rents are so high today--maintaining profit parity with the home sales industry. Why do so many people succumb to the ownership myth? Advertising plays on vanity!
Just as socialism lends itself to a universal state-operated home rental system, market capitalism fosters privatization of and maximal profiteering from real property. Sadly, something rather strange seems to happen to people who acquire property from which they collect rent. The mindset hearkens back, surely, to feudalism and the superiority and arrogance of the landed gentry and those who fenced the commons.
Few ordinary people would freely subject themselves to the tortures of mortgage debt and home maintenance, if they had the option of renting at a fair and reasonable rate. In socialism, government would be the landlord and would rent at a very modest rate. During the Mao era Chinese Revolutionary and until recently, a family had rental leases for ninety-nine years. That has changed under pressures from globalization and restrictions imposed by the WTO. The Chinese government is now in the business of selling property.
Housing is a human rights issue and a responsibility of the state. Paying for a place to live should not constitute a financial burden! For this sojourner, renting liberates and allows a person to devote time and energies to other aspects of his or her existence, which lies beyond the toil of meeting mortgage payment deadlines.
The vast majority of home buyers really can not afford to buy; for them a home mortgage loan is a life-sentence of indentured servitude. It could be called slavery for all the burdens it brings. The slave masters would be the finance industry that guards the reservoirs of accumulated capital.
The American Dream, owning one's home, is hyped by many industries simply to promote sales. In this context, buying a home is a rite of passage to middle class status and the respectability it supposedly fosters.
As a side commentary, having an automobile is another sign of first class status, and a rather costly one, at that! I would estimate that over three or four decades, the costs associated with automobile ownership(not counting the time spent attending to an auto)would exceed the median price of a home in California!(But, that's another issue, for another essay.)
The sub prime loans preyed on the most vulnerable people; those who bought the "Dream", but could ill-afford its consequences. The high risk mortgage loans have led to a financial industry meltdown and tens of thousands of home foreclosures, and probably continuing for the foreseeable future. The loan scandal was a direct result of deregulation and the unfettered greed it unleashed.
The financial industry's "credit default swap" instruments make a Ponzi scheme, even that of Bernard Madoff, look like a sophomore prank.(But, this too, is a subject for another essay.)
The imagined dream home is most likely a single family, subdivision dwelling on a parcel large enough for a swimming pool and barbecue patio. The tract is usually far removed from a town center or any commons. These divisions are typically economic- and often age-based, whites only ghettos.The high-end divisions are usually gated and have golf courses as design determinants. John D. Rockerfeller took the golf course option to the extreme, having a private one that flanked his great mansion outside of New York City.)
For the typical home buyer, ownership is elusive and illusory, certainly a long way off--thirty years. For the restless person who sells with only partial equity before the loan is paid off, actual ownership could never come to pass. The lender is the de facto owner until the debt is fully serviced. Whether the loan goes full term is any body's guess; and its that bet that provides easy money for speculators. Divorce,unemployment, illness, periodic collapse in the financial industry and the subsequent economic depression, make home purchasing a risky undertaking for most people.
The ongoing foreclosure crisis forces a reexamination of the American Dream. Mortgage debt is a serious matter; and home ownership is not for everyone--despite the lure of the financial industry. It would seem that renting would be less stressful in all aspects of having a roof over one's head.
As with the automobile, the price of a house is just the first of many, on-going expenses involved with ownership--which spawns a mammoth industrial and services complex beyond that of real estate and finance. And this is reason enough to advertise the Dream. Purchase a home, and you will be buying stuff, paying for various services, property taxes and insurance premiums forever after!
Social control is an aspect of mortgage debt that has not escaped the ruling elite's attention. You can't protest wars and the rollback of the New Deal or strike for better benefits and working conditions, if it would interfere with your ability to make monthly mortgage payments. It's difficult to service debt from behind bars and while unemployed. With average personal debt as burdensome as it is , there will be no revolution! And the ruling class wants to keep it that way.
Mortgage debt acts to keep wages low and job benefits few. The employer can force rollbacks by threatening to relocate offshore. In desperation, workers will make concessions to save their jobs--or so they hope. When collective bargaining becomes passe, anything can happen.
For ordinary people, mortgage debt eliminates discretionary spending and the possibility to accumulate savings. There is simply little or no money available to purchase consumer goods and services. A significantly disproportionate amount of family income goes to the financial industry. And this has a huge impact on the manufacturing and retail sectors, which then takes a toll on employment.
A case could be made that a consumer society would favor the singles lifestyle, where everyone has sole ownership and use of most everything. Anathema to market capitalism is the old credo: "Two can live as cheaply as one". In order for capitalism to continue its dominance, unit costs must continually decrease. This is accomplished by increasing production and demand. Marriage and multi-generation households can frustrate these objectives.
There is class bias and prejudice associated with home ownership, induced by interest groups, that owners are more responsible and more worthy as a class than renters. Supposedly, owners establish better neighborhoods, support civic affairs and public education. They are a political special interest group with lobby power.
Overlooked in this judgement is the resentments people harbor who are unfairly pigeonholed because they can not afford to buy, yet have to pay exorbitant rent. Today, most renters spend a large percentage of income on rent. Therefore, animosity toward landlords runs deeply! The hostility toward the system is often acted out against physical property itself. Interestingly, homeowners had reason to maintain their homes while values continued to accelerate at a breath-taking rate. Will they continue this practice as values plummet?
I would assume that there is no significant financial advantage in owning a home over renting one. That costs are approximately a draw is entirely likely. And this is why rents are so high today--maintaining profit parity with the home sales industry. Why do so many people succumb to the ownership myth? Advertising plays on vanity!
Just as socialism lends itself to a universal state-operated home rental system, market capitalism fosters privatization of and maximal profiteering from real property. Sadly, something rather strange seems to happen to people who acquire property from which they collect rent. The mindset hearkens back, surely, to feudalism and the superiority and arrogance of the landed gentry and those who fenced the commons.
Few ordinary people would freely subject themselves to the tortures of mortgage debt and home maintenance, if they had the option of renting at a fair and reasonable rate. In socialism, government would be the landlord and would rent at a very modest rate. During the Mao era Chinese Revolutionary and until recently, a family had rental leases for ninety-nine years. That has changed under pressures from globalization and restrictions imposed by the WTO. The Chinese government is now in the business of selling property.
Housing is a human rights issue and a responsibility of the state. Paying for a place to live should not constitute a financial burden! For this sojourner, renting liberates and allows a person to devote time and energies to other aspects of his or her existence, which lies beyond the toil of meeting mortgage payment deadlines.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Posse Comitatus and Migrants
Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the self-appointed national immigration czar, largely because Congress is unwilling and unable to fashion a humane immigration policy. One could say that it was up to people like Sheriff Arpaio to fill the vacuum. Unfortunately, he is the wrong person! Finally, the U.S. Justice Dept. is considering a civil rights probe of Mr. Arpaio's official conduct, especially as it affects undocumented Mexican nationals crossing the Arizona portion of the Mexican-U.S. boarder.
Any discussion on U.S. immigration policy must include its impact upon the category of people it intends to oversee and whether they are afforded fairness and respect. The United States has a sorry history of racial exclusion, what has often constituted "cruel and unusual treatment" of people seeking entry. By the way, I have never met an "illegal" human being! The same is true for "alien". Labels such as "immigrant" and "immigration", have become tainted. I prefer to use "migrant" and "migration" in hopes of establishing a neutral framework for discussion.
Humans have populated the planet through migration. It comes with being bipedal. Around the world today, millions are migrants of one form or another. And all the legal prohibitions and walls can not discourage them. Walls as border demarcations, in fact all walls, reveals man's inability to coexist with other human beings. And walls always fail. Consider the Great Wall of China; the Mongols simply skirted it. The Maginot Line of W.W.II was a colossal construction and a complete absurdity ; German troops went around it on their way to Paris. The Berlin Wall was ineffective. The Israeli Wall in the Palestinian West Bank will destroy any possibility for peaceful coexistence. It symbolizes the brutality of Israeli occupation and its crimes against humanity. The Bantus tan boundaries in South Africa failed. The Mexico-U.S. wall belies the founding principles of the American state; and it too will fail in eliminating or reducing migration. Even "electronic walls" and the Internet volunteer posse comitatus, the couch-potato vigilantes, can not prevent or even slow down migration. One would have hoped that U.S. administrations, with their Ivy League educated elites, would have learned from history.
The nemesis of migration is the concept of nation states framed by arbitrary and irrational boundaries. The Mexican-U.S. boarder is one of the World's most problematic barriers, although there are many more.
What is now western continental United States was largely, formerly the possession of Mexico. Mexico had won independence from Spain in 1821 in a revolutionary war. Texas broke off from Mexico in 1836, and became the "Lone Star Republic". The expansionist president James Polk played a major roll in acquiring Mexican territory. U.S. troops marched on Mexico City. Many in Congress wanted to incorporate all of Mexico, but settled on half and paid Mexico $15 million, for reasons, most likely, to deflect international criticism.
Racism raised its head and provided a means whereby Mexicans could be treated as subhumans. Howard Zinn in A Peoples History of the United StatesA(1980), quotes an influential Unitarian minister in the Transcendental era, Theodore Parker, "a wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, and character". He believed that the Mexicans must give way as the indigenous U.S. population had!
History has come full circle in regards to employment opportunities for Mexican migrants,a kind of Reparations, and a repossession of territory of sorts, a Reconquista!
The United States has systematically destroyed the Mexican economy and its politics. The Partio Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) could not have dominated Mexican politics for most of the twentieth century without American oversight and direct interventions of one sort or another. As a rhetorical question to support these allegations-- to which country did former Mexican president Salazar flee to avoid prosecution after the PRI lost power?
Heavily subsidized U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market which drove peasant corn farmers off the land because they could not compete with the artificially cheap U.S. corn. They became migrants! They and many others look to the United States in hopes of bettering economic futures.
The demand for young, strong, entrepreneurial undocumented "essential" workers lures migrants to the U.S. workforce. For reasons of insufficient numbers of U.S.-born workers and their unwillingness to engage in various occupations, Mexicans play a vital roll in the American economy. It could be argued that the so-called immigration problem is largely a "blowback" consequence of Manifest Destiny and itS applications.
Some facts and considerations:
1) About eleven million undocumented Mexican hold out in the States. California has the highest percentage, with Texas and Florida following.
2) Overall, many undocumented residents are not Mexican, but visa overstays from various countries.
3) Undocumented Mexican nationals do not cost more in government services than they contribute to the economy. They contribute significant monies to Social Security without the likelihood of ever drawing benefits.
4) Major causes of the immigration dilemma are impracticable quota and labor certification requirements. And these matters are probably rooted in predispositions toward a particular group.
Enter Sheriff Arpaio, with his tablets of commandments. He does not need a mountain upon which to pronounce his divine mandate. Mass media and neon signs will suffice. What is important about Arpaio is that he is the best case for open borders, or, at a minimum, humane immigration reform.
Joe Arpaio (b 1932)became Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff in 1992, and has easily won reelections. He has enlarged the posse comitatus both in scoop and numbers. His is an all volunteer posse which performs many tasks that deputized officers do and much they have never done. His modus operandi could qualify as theatrical and ideological. He publishes mugshots of booked inmates; he signs autographs; he believes in harsh punishment of inmates; he feeds them "surplus", outdated food; he provides only two meals a day; he has reduced the per-unit meal cost from 90-cents to 30; He has banned coffee, salt and pepper and all weightlifting equipment. Since 2005, he has mandatory, two-week English classes for non-English-speaking inmates; the in-house radio station plays opera, classical music and Frank Sinatra. More egregiously, soon after assuming office, Arpaio reinstituted chain gangs and expanded the practice to include women and children. To prevent the stealing of white jail underware, he fashioned pink underwear for inmates. Subsequently, the garments were matched with pink handcuffs.
Perhaps his most infamous innovation was the establishment of a "Tent City" jail. Supposedly, it came into being because of an overcrowded county jail. But, in reality, Arpaio does not believe overcrowding inmates in any way violates their human rights. Tents are cheap to install and maintain. With desert all around, his tent cities are forever expandable. For his encampment, he constructed a neon sign that reads, "vacancy". The sight experiences summer temperatures above 110F. Sheriff Arpaio has his own TV show, "Smile! You're Under Arrest!" There is more--the deaths of inmates, the continuing and increasing litigation, charges of racial profiling and, interestingly, Arpaio, because of his concentration on hunting down undocumented Mexicans, has a mammoth back file of unresolved non-immigration criminal cases.
To further highlight the border crisis, consider the appointment of Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security. ("homeland security"was a slogan in Nazi Germany, by the way.)She was former Arizona governor and state attorney general. Like, Apraio, she is of Italian heritage. She appears to have condoned some of Arpaio's anti-immigration conduct while she was governor; but, has distanced herself from him since national media and Washington has focused attention on the Sheriff.
Why would President Obama, an advocate of change, appoint someone from Arizona, with its deplorable record on immigration, to head an agency that oversees such issues? I would prefer Gore Vidal to head the agency. As a compromise, I could go with Chalmers Johnson.
My solution to the manufactured, self-inflicted Mexican-U.S. border crisis is to simply eliminate the boundary as a means of excluding people and adopt an Open Border policy!
My outraged conservative friends(former now!)upon hearing of this suggestion, claim that the U.S. would be flooded with Mexican nationals(they use other labels). I reply that with the U.S. economic depression at hand, many undocumented migrants are considering repatriation. Even before the economic collapse, Mexican migration had leveled off, became static.
As I write, President Obama is considering deploying National Guard troops along the border in response to an escalating Mexican drug war. The Pentagon is ready to "help" Mexico with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance along the border! How the militarization will impact migrant border crossings is unpredictable; but, surely it could increase suffering and death.
One thing is known: it's time for Arpaio and his posse comitatus to ride off into the Arizona sunset.
Any discussion on U.S. immigration policy must include its impact upon the category of people it intends to oversee and whether they are afforded fairness and respect. The United States has a sorry history of racial exclusion, what has often constituted "cruel and unusual treatment" of people seeking entry. By the way, I have never met an "illegal" human being! The same is true for "alien". Labels such as "immigrant" and "immigration", have become tainted. I prefer to use "migrant" and "migration" in hopes of establishing a neutral framework for discussion.
Humans have populated the planet through migration. It comes with being bipedal. Around the world today, millions are migrants of one form or another. And all the legal prohibitions and walls can not discourage them. Walls as border demarcations, in fact all walls, reveals man's inability to coexist with other human beings. And walls always fail. Consider the Great Wall of China; the Mongols simply skirted it. The Maginot Line of W.W.II was a colossal construction and a complete absurdity ; German troops went around it on their way to Paris. The Berlin Wall was ineffective. The Israeli Wall in the Palestinian West Bank will destroy any possibility for peaceful coexistence. It symbolizes the brutality of Israeli occupation and its crimes against humanity. The Bantus tan boundaries in South Africa failed. The Mexico-U.S. wall belies the founding principles of the American state; and it too will fail in eliminating or reducing migration. Even "electronic walls" and the Internet volunteer posse comitatus, the couch-potato vigilantes, can not prevent or even slow down migration. One would have hoped that U.S. administrations, with their Ivy League educated elites, would have learned from history.
The nemesis of migration is the concept of nation states framed by arbitrary and irrational boundaries. The Mexican-U.S. boarder is one of the World's most problematic barriers, although there are many more.
What is now western continental United States was largely, formerly the possession of Mexico. Mexico had won independence from Spain in 1821 in a revolutionary war. Texas broke off from Mexico in 1836, and became the "Lone Star Republic". The expansionist president James Polk played a major roll in acquiring Mexican territory. U.S. troops marched on Mexico City. Many in Congress wanted to incorporate all of Mexico, but settled on half and paid Mexico $15 million, for reasons, most likely, to deflect international criticism.
Racism raised its head and provided a means whereby Mexicans could be treated as subhumans. Howard Zinn in A Peoples History of the United StatesA(1980), quotes an influential Unitarian minister in the Transcendental era, Theodore Parker, "a wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, and character". He believed that the Mexicans must give way as the indigenous U.S. population had!
History has come full circle in regards to employment opportunities for Mexican migrants,a kind of Reparations, and a repossession of territory of sorts, a Reconquista!
The United States has systematically destroyed the Mexican economy and its politics. The Partio Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) could not have dominated Mexican politics for most of the twentieth century without American oversight and direct interventions of one sort or another. As a rhetorical question to support these allegations-- to which country did former Mexican president Salazar flee to avoid prosecution after the PRI lost power?
Heavily subsidized U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market which drove peasant corn farmers off the land because they could not compete with the artificially cheap U.S. corn. They became migrants! They and many others look to the United States in hopes of bettering economic futures.
The demand for young, strong, entrepreneurial undocumented "essential" workers lures migrants to the U.S. workforce. For reasons of insufficient numbers of U.S.-born workers and their unwillingness to engage in various occupations, Mexicans play a vital roll in the American economy. It could be argued that the so-called immigration problem is largely a "blowback" consequence of Manifest Destiny and itS applications.
Some facts and considerations:
1) About eleven million undocumented Mexican hold out in the States. California has the highest percentage, with Texas and Florida following.
2) Overall, many undocumented residents are not Mexican, but visa overstays from various countries.
3) Undocumented Mexican nationals do not cost more in government services than they contribute to the economy. They contribute significant monies to Social Security without the likelihood of ever drawing benefits.
4) Major causes of the immigration dilemma are impracticable quota and labor certification requirements. And these matters are probably rooted in predispositions toward a particular group.
Enter Sheriff Arpaio, with his tablets of commandments. He does not need a mountain upon which to pronounce his divine mandate. Mass media and neon signs will suffice. What is important about Arpaio is that he is the best case for open borders, or, at a minimum, humane immigration reform.
Joe Arpaio (b 1932)became Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff in 1992, and has easily won reelections. He has enlarged the posse comitatus both in scoop and numbers. His is an all volunteer posse which performs many tasks that deputized officers do and much they have never done. His modus operandi could qualify as theatrical and ideological. He publishes mugshots of booked inmates; he signs autographs; he believes in harsh punishment of inmates; he feeds them "surplus", outdated food; he provides only two meals a day; he has reduced the per-unit meal cost from 90-cents to 30; He has banned coffee, salt and pepper and all weightlifting equipment. Since 2005, he has mandatory, two-week English classes for non-English-speaking inmates; the in-house radio station plays opera, classical music and Frank Sinatra. More egregiously, soon after assuming office, Arpaio reinstituted chain gangs and expanded the practice to include women and children. To prevent the stealing of white jail underware, he fashioned pink underwear for inmates. Subsequently, the garments were matched with pink handcuffs.
Perhaps his most infamous innovation was the establishment of a "Tent City" jail. Supposedly, it came into being because of an overcrowded county jail. But, in reality, Arpaio does not believe overcrowding inmates in any way violates their human rights. Tents are cheap to install and maintain. With desert all around, his tent cities are forever expandable. For his encampment, he constructed a neon sign that reads, "vacancy". The sight experiences summer temperatures above 110F. Sheriff Arpaio has his own TV show, "Smile! You're Under Arrest!" There is more--the deaths of inmates, the continuing and increasing litigation, charges of racial profiling and, interestingly, Arpaio, because of his concentration on hunting down undocumented Mexicans, has a mammoth back file of unresolved non-immigration criminal cases.
To further highlight the border crisis, consider the appointment of Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security. ("homeland security"was a slogan in Nazi Germany, by the way.)She was former Arizona governor and state attorney general. Like, Apraio, she is of Italian heritage. She appears to have condoned some of Arpaio's anti-immigration conduct while she was governor; but, has distanced herself from him since national media and Washington has focused attention on the Sheriff.
Why would President Obama, an advocate of change, appoint someone from Arizona, with its deplorable record on immigration, to head an agency that oversees such issues? I would prefer Gore Vidal to head the agency. As a compromise, I could go with Chalmers Johnson.
My solution to the manufactured, self-inflicted Mexican-U.S. border crisis is to simply eliminate the boundary as a means of excluding people and adopt an Open Border policy!
My outraged conservative friends(former now!)upon hearing of this suggestion, claim that the U.S. would be flooded with Mexican nationals(they use other labels). I reply that with the U.S. economic depression at hand, many undocumented migrants are considering repatriation. Even before the economic collapse, Mexican migration had leveled off, became static.
As I write, President Obama is considering deploying National Guard troops along the border in response to an escalating Mexican drug war. The Pentagon is ready to "help" Mexico with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance along the border! How the militarization will impact migrant border crossings is unpredictable; but, surely it could increase suffering and death.
One thing is known: it's time for Arpaio and his posse comitatus to ride off into the Arizona sunset.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Obama's Healthcare Change?
Incredulously, President Obama now advocates for an imperfect health care reform within the existing for-profit, private insurance model, although as an Illinois State Senator he supported a universal, single-payer system! Perhaps, as a state senator who did not receive industry campaign contributions, he was free to follow what is an obvious truth--that like all other wealthy nations, the United States must finally adopt a national health care program
That health care in the United States is a business-for-profit venture in unconscionable and is actually degrading to people seeking coverage. That private insurance corporations decide who does and does not get coverage and treatment, reminds me of Mafia protection schemes. It also reminds me of the pre-revolution system in China where a merchandise shipment traveling through various sectors had to pay a passage gratuity. The health insurance industry has positioned itself as middleman and claims about a thirty-percent commission for its bureaucratic inefficiency and lavish executive compensation. It is yet another example of an economic system that exploits basic human needs for the accumulation of wealth and power.
Every person in the United States is entitled to health care. The only way to handle the responsibility is through a single-payer program by either a federal agency, government corporation or utility, financed through tax revenues. Why does it not exist?
I believe the issue of a national health care program surfaced during the Progressive Era? It was suggested in the Truman Administration, but obviously went nowhere! If it is up to President Obama a national program will not materialize in his administration. So much for the Obama chant of "Yes! We can!" The flip-flopper is flopping once again! His "reform" is already a failure--that of nerve and faithfulness to what he earlier declared to be a self-evident truth. Until the insurance industry is excised from medical services, health care will remain unaffordable and millions of people will not have health coverage.
The failure to have a single-payer system rests not entirely on Obama. Congress is a co-conspirator! Until a public campaign contribution system is established, there will be no national health care program. Also, if the "winner-take-all" electoral system continues, any chance of a national system is unlikely. The problem is that Washington can be purchased for what is to corporations, lunch money! Add to these considerations, enduring Cold War ideology against any program that even hints at socialism, and one recognizes the blockages that prevent the enactment of a national health care program. The neo-cons have been hammering away on this theme since the Reagan Administration, with the acquiescence of a supine Democratic Party.
Without adequate media coverage, the public is confused over the meaning of single-payer national health care--what is it? The first point to clarify is that it is a financing arrangement, not a care delivery system. It would be like Medicare, but for everyone. So, it is a public or quasi-public agency that uses tax revenues to pay all necessary medical services: doctor, hospital, long-term care, dental, vision, mental health, prescription drug and medical supply costs--for everyone.
A single-payer program would actually provide free choice of doctors and hospitals, which is not available under the existing private insurance system. Delivery of medical care itself would remain largely private. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
A single-payer program would eliminate private insurers and recapture their annual $400 billion administrative waste, on useless paperwork--not to mention the time and frustrations involved with it. There would be a small increase in taxes, but relative to existing premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business, it is inconsequential! Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.
Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or non-profit HMO/group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Regional health planning boards would manage health facilities and expensive equipment purchases. (From: Physicians for a National Health Program.)
"Everyone", to this writer, ideally, includes U.S. citizens and green card and work visa holders, anyone with a Social Security Number, anyone filing a federal tax return. Be that as it may, the moment is right for a mass movement to force Obama and the Congress to enact a single-payer program. With unemployment rising dramatically and the loss of health insurance that follows, with the total failure of the existing private health insurance system, the stage is set for action! Some commentators believe that if the change is not made now, it never will be. In this regard, Obama's position and the lies that used to justify it, will cloud his legacy. He is at the height of his popularity. Congress is under Democratic control, at least theoretically. If single-payer does not come to pass now, it will be for reason of Obama's failure of nerve and will put the lie to "Yes! We can".
That health care in the United States is a business-for-profit venture in unconscionable and is actually degrading to people seeking coverage. That private insurance corporations decide who does and does not get coverage and treatment, reminds me of Mafia protection schemes. It also reminds me of the pre-revolution system in China where a merchandise shipment traveling through various sectors had to pay a passage gratuity. The health insurance industry has positioned itself as middleman and claims about a thirty-percent commission for its bureaucratic inefficiency and lavish executive compensation. It is yet another example of an economic system that exploits basic human needs for the accumulation of wealth and power.
Every person in the United States is entitled to health care. The only way to handle the responsibility is through a single-payer program by either a federal agency, government corporation or utility, financed through tax revenues. Why does it not exist?
I believe the issue of a national health care program surfaced during the Progressive Era? It was suggested in the Truman Administration, but obviously went nowhere! If it is up to President Obama a national program will not materialize in his administration. So much for the Obama chant of "Yes! We can!" The flip-flopper is flopping once again! His "reform" is already a failure--that of nerve and faithfulness to what he earlier declared to be a self-evident truth. Until the insurance industry is excised from medical services, health care will remain unaffordable and millions of people will not have health coverage.
The failure to have a single-payer system rests not entirely on Obama. Congress is a co-conspirator! Until a public campaign contribution system is established, there will be no national health care program. Also, if the "winner-take-all" electoral system continues, any chance of a national system is unlikely. The problem is that Washington can be purchased for what is to corporations, lunch money! Add to these considerations, enduring Cold War ideology against any program that even hints at socialism, and one recognizes the blockages that prevent the enactment of a national health care program. The neo-cons have been hammering away on this theme since the Reagan Administration, with the acquiescence of a supine Democratic Party.
Without adequate media coverage, the public is confused over the meaning of single-payer national health care--what is it? The first point to clarify is that it is a financing arrangement, not a care delivery system. It would be like Medicare, but for everyone. So, it is a public or quasi-public agency that uses tax revenues to pay all necessary medical services: doctor, hospital, long-term care, dental, vision, mental health, prescription drug and medical supply costs--for everyone.
A single-payer program would actually provide free choice of doctors and hospitals, which is not available under the existing private insurance system. Delivery of medical care itself would remain largely private. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
A single-payer program would eliminate private insurers and recapture their annual $400 billion administrative waste, on useless paperwork--not to mention the time and frustrations involved with it. There would be a small increase in taxes, but relative to existing premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business, it is inconsequential! Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.
Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or non-profit HMO/group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Regional health planning boards would manage health facilities and expensive equipment purchases. (From: Physicians for a National Health Program.)
"Everyone", to this writer, ideally, includes U.S. citizens and green card and work visa holders, anyone with a Social Security Number, anyone filing a federal tax return. Be that as it may, the moment is right for a mass movement to force Obama and the Congress to enact a single-payer program. With unemployment rising dramatically and the loss of health insurance that follows, with the total failure of the existing private health insurance system, the stage is set for action! Some commentators believe that if the change is not made now, it never will be. In this regard, Obama's position and the lies that used to justify it, will cloud his legacy. He is at the height of his popularity. Congress is under Democratic control, at least theoretically. If single-payer does not come to pass now, it will be for reason of Obama's failure of nerve and will put the lie to "Yes! We can".
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The American Debacle and Kakushin
Candidate Barack Obama's campaign slogan most remembered, "Yes! We can!", was used to reinforce his claim that an Obama presidency would bring about major changes and, thereby, secure the American dream for all. To achieve the goal would be a very demanding and difficult task for a long-suffering nation, crippled by generational military adventures and their carte blanche budgets, racism, nearly thirty years of deregulation and privatization of governmental services, the neo-conservative wrecking crew's funding strategy of minimalism (shrink government), the massive decades-long transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the already rich upper-class, the deliberate accumulation of debt by Boy George and neo-cons, the collapsing infrastructure, the sapless branch of government: congress; the sacking of financial institutions for short-term gains, rogue corporations and the exploitations of runaway globalization, unwinding unionization and consequential wage, benefits and working conditions deterioration--ad infinitum and ad nauseam! "One nation doth a man make?" Barack Obama is an instrument of kakushin, revolutionary change? Modest innovation would be a beginning, the best that I could expect of any president who pledges "change"; but, to continually speak of "bipartisanship" with the very political party(with considerable assistance from Democrats, mind you)that created the debacle in the first place, is disconcerting!
President Barack Obama has inherited a huge quantity of wreckage from the worst presidency in U.S. history! Substantial clean up is required just to get the Nation back to where it was in January 2001. Yet, after eight years of a failed Bush presidency, and with the John McCain candidacy, Obama and congressional Democrats could not win the November election decisively, when a landslide should have been a given. The two-party(one-party?)political system is in shambles.
The Senate is a hopelessly flawed institution. One hundred of the Nation"s most powerful and richest individuals will make certain that there is no kakushin during the Obama presidency! Therefore, the president must transcend the senatorial quagmire by appealing directly to the electorate. He has to become a circuit-riding lecturer, explaining how the nation got where it is and suggesting ways to turn it around. One topic he should have focused upon concerns the territory where he resides and presides, Washington, D.C.
In 1982, D.C. residents voted for statehood! Nearly thirty years later, the "landlord" or is it the "plantation master"?, the U.S. Senate, is going to give the District a vote in the House of Representatives, with a sack filled with dirty rags, conditions and limitations that will maintain the status quo for generations to come. The Senate Bill abolishes District gun control laws and gives an additional House district to Utah for reasons not entirely clear.
George W. Bush exited Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq, Barack Obama will exit Iraq to concentrate on Afghanistan! It is his war of choice and consummates his presidency. Every President worth his metal has to authorize a war somewhere. I guess the shift of attention to Afghanistan represents "change" in the Obama lexicon. In approving unmanned predator drone attacks against sites and innocent people in Pakistan he has blood on his hands and is in the same league with Geo. W. and Bill Clinton, and after less than a month as Commander-in Chief.
Obama's D.C. rollover is additional indication that he is a race-neutral black politician. He just happens to be "Black", as the word is defined in the United States. His ancestry is not directly tied to this nation"s history of slavery, as is that of his wife's, Michelle Robinson-Obama. Also in this context, Obama talks about the need to assist the suffering middle class, but is virtually silent about the nation's hardcore poor, many of them people of color!
Finding a respectable Secretary of Commerce has been difficult and has raised questions about Obama desires for a bipartisan administration. He also assured the Nation that his vetting system would be fail-safe. The allegations against Bill Richardson and his withdrawal from nomination was an example of either a flawed vetting procedure or an arrogant selection policy. But the subsequent nomination of the Republican Senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg and his voluntary withdrawal, noting irreconcilable differences with the Obama administration, in general, and the economic stimulus package, in particular! One can only conclude that Obama's bipartisanship governance approach reflects naivete and does not bode well when the opposition pledges to bring about the demise of the Obama administration! Senator Gregg has taken every opportunity to blast Obama's stimulus package! The Gary Locke nomination (the former govenor of Washington), is good for reasons of diversity, but qualifications seem to be difficult to quantify?
The nomination of Leon Panetta for CIA Director is another stumper. One might have thought that he would bring citizen oversight to the Agency; but that was dashed when Panetta announced the continuation of extraordinary rendition and confirming Obama's intentions to approve harsh interrogation techniques as he sees fit. I seem to recall Obama saying something to the affect that the United States does not engage in torture. However, Boy George said the same thing, at least until the truth came out.
Lastly, Obama speaks of universal corporate health care insurance for every American, but is silent on or dismissive of single-payer universal health care! Tom Daschle's withdrawal of the Health Secretary nomination exposed to public view his serious conflict of interest. It was not a voluntary action, a scandal over monies he had received from the health insurance industry forced it! The Daschle nomination was a major credibility disaster for Obama in matters related to reforming a dysfunctional health care industry.
As I write, I recall a very appealing and entertaining move, "Start the Revolution Without Me", narrated at beginning and end by cinema's revolutionary, Orson Welles. To watch it again now is as close as I am going to get to kakushin in the next four or eight years!
President Barack Obama has inherited a huge quantity of wreckage from the worst presidency in U.S. history! Substantial clean up is required just to get the Nation back to where it was in January 2001. Yet, after eight years of a failed Bush presidency, and with the John McCain candidacy, Obama and congressional Democrats could not win the November election decisively, when a landslide should have been a given. The two-party(one-party?)political system is in shambles.
The Senate is a hopelessly flawed institution. One hundred of the Nation"s most powerful and richest individuals will make certain that there is no kakushin during the Obama presidency! Therefore, the president must transcend the senatorial quagmire by appealing directly to the electorate. He has to become a circuit-riding lecturer, explaining how the nation got where it is and suggesting ways to turn it around. One topic he should have focused upon concerns the territory where he resides and presides, Washington, D.C.
In 1982, D.C. residents voted for statehood! Nearly thirty years later, the "landlord" or is it the "plantation master"?, the U.S. Senate, is going to give the District a vote in the House of Representatives, with a sack filled with dirty rags, conditions and limitations that will maintain the status quo for generations to come. The Senate Bill abolishes District gun control laws and gives an additional House district to Utah for reasons not entirely clear.
George W. Bush exited Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq, Barack Obama will exit Iraq to concentrate on Afghanistan! It is his war of choice and consummates his presidency. Every President worth his metal has to authorize a war somewhere. I guess the shift of attention to Afghanistan represents "change" in the Obama lexicon. In approving unmanned predator drone attacks against sites and innocent people in Pakistan he has blood on his hands and is in the same league with Geo. W. and Bill Clinton, and after less than a month as Commander-in Chief.
Obama's D.C. rollover is additional indication that he is a race-neutral black politician. He just happens to be "Black", as the word is defined in the United States. His ancestry is not directly tied to this nation"s history of slavery, as is that of his wife's, Michelle Robinson-Obama. Also in this context, Obama talks about the need to assist the suffering middle class, but is virtually silent about the nation's hardcore poor, many of them people of color!
Finding a respectable Secretary of Commerce has been difficult and has raised questions about Obama desires for a bipartisan administration. He also assured the Nation that his vetting system would be fail-safe. The allegations against Bill Richardson and his withdrawal from nomination was an example of either a flawed vetting procedure or an arrogant selection policy. But the subsequent nomination of the Republican Senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg and his voluntary withdrawal, noting irreconcilable differences with the Obama administration, in general, and the economic stimulus package, in particular! One can only conclude that Obama's bipartisanship governance approach reflects naivete and does not bode well when the opposition pledges to bring about the demise of the Obama administration! Senator Gregg has taken every opportunity to blast Obama's stimulus package! The Gary Locke nomination (the former govenor of Washington), is good for reasons of diversity, but qualifications seem to be difficult to quantify?
The nomination of Leon Panetta for CIA Director is another stumper. One might have thought that he would bring citizen oversight to the Agency; but that was dashed when Panetta announced the continuation of extraordinary rendition and confirming Obama's intentions to approve harsh interrogation techniques as he sees fit. I seem to recall Obama saying something to the affect that the United States does not engage in torture. However, Boy George said the same thing, at least until the truth came out.
Lastly, Obama speaks of universal corporate health care insurance for every American, but is silent on or dismissive of single-payer universal health care! Tom Daschle's withdrawal of the Health Secretary nomination exposed to public view his serious conflict of interest. It was not a voluntary action, a scandal over monies he had received from the health insurance industry forced it! The Daschle nomination was a major credibility disaster for Obama in matters related to reforming a dysfunctional health care industry.
As I write, I recall a very appealing and entertaining move, "Start the Revolution Without Me", narrated at beginning and end by cinema's revolutionary, Orson Welles. To watch it again now is as close as I am going to get to kakushin in the next four or eight years!
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