Politicians Making Us Sweat

Today was a very hot day in New York City, and I had the day off from work; much needed emotionally though it was a non-paid furlough day: those modern-economy treats dispensed to freelancers during slow hot summers and slow holiday periods. Which is more than frustrating. I certainly never thought in my younger days that paid time off would be as obsolete as subway tokens.

Which makes it all the more frustrating to listen to all the liars lying on the teevee or radio on such an insufferably hot and humid day about this manufactured economic crisis. I'm not that good a psychic: how come nobody else sees that every word out of John Boehner's quivering tear-streaked mouth is a lie? And what is with Obama? His hair sure is gray. I guess all that stuff about defending certain basic principles was filed away in the same drawer with his opposition to wars.

I think what ultimately frustrates me is that it's so clearly a minority of people going through these horrible motions. Even if you buy the questionably democratic logic of the American electoral system, the Republican landslide of 2010 doesn't actually mean that a majority of Americans actually support their absurd positions. Why are they allowed to dictate the narrative on what's wrong with the economy and how to solve it?

If you page through the years of this blog, you'll see some gushingly enthusiastic posts for Obama. To my credit, always with a warning grain of salt, but to my embarrassment, I should have known better than what proved to be all my naive optimism about the capacity of the political system to right its wrongs. At the same time, I guess I'm personally encouraged that as much as what's going on is hard to watch, somewhat demoralizing and actually quite worrisome, I think my re-radicalization is absolutely, even if paradoxically, the fruit of the Obama era.

This last spring saw a wave of revolution sweep a huge swath through the Middle East; most of those revolutions remain unresolved and conflicted by internal and international contradictions. But it seems unlikely that eventually the momentum of resistance will not return to these shores, and maybe all of us who are reduced to the role of impotent spectators watching our future being sold to corporate America and its patrons will remember all the things that a few very smart people once knew. And next time, maybe we'll win.

(Vintage 1960s/70s Black Panther Party poster from the great Emory Douglas, the brilliant house graphic artist of the BPP.)

Deficit Reduction Nonsense: The Plot to Steal Your Money

The sinister "debt reduction" plan recommended by a panel set up by President Obama is slowly advancing through Congress. Written by two right-wingers hand-picked by Obama, a Republican former Senator, Alan Simpson, and a Democratic advisor to President Clinton, Erskine Bowles, this dangerous bipartisan proposal is an outright grab at the wallets and bank accounts of regular people. It's the one thing the various factions in government can apparently unite about: the need to wring every possible dollar out of people at the economic bottom of society to pay for the excess, privilege, and mistakes, and betrayals of people at the top. Among the scandalous provisions of this plan are proposals to move the retirement age to 69 (for people now being born) and austerity measures including the removal of tax deductions for home ownership, which is fundamental to the ability of middle-class working people to anchor themselves in the face of economic crisis. The proposal rips into social safety nets like medicare. In attempting to split the difference of the toxic meme that Democrats favor increasing taxes and Republicans favor cutting back spending, this proposal manages to take the worst from both and present them as "creative" thinking to solve the country's deficit problem. While this outrageous proposal does face opposition in government, it's not clear that it won't eventually succeed.

It is absolutely disgusting that the Republican politicians, and some number of Democrats, are grandstanding over trying to keep the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires in place, crying copious crocodile tears over the potential danger to the economy the lapse of such tax cuts might cause, while at the same time they are making devious schemes to keep more money for themselves. While Obama has said he opposes keeping these tax breaks for the ultra-rich, it's not clear that he's actually made a principle of the matter and who knows what he will actually negotiate away. That Obama -- the sponsor of the panel who have made such outrageous recommendations -- continues to be accused of being a socialist by the teabaggers and the far right racist Republican establishment just shows how bad things are. That the richest people in society and their mouthpieces are insisting that poor and working people must be the ones to sacrifice to restore the economy to health is unbelievably brazen.

Taxes are part of the cost of living in a free society: I have no absolute problem with them. What I have a problem with is unjust and regressive taxes and increases which burden regular people while letting the top layer of society off the hook. It's simple math, and here's a completely hypothetical example: one person has $50,000. Take away half, that $25,000 would be a challenge to live off of. Another has $1,000,000. Take away half and that person still has $500,000, still a fabulous fortune and twenty times what the other has. And usually the loopholes and shelters wind up with the richer person paying far less a percentage than the poorer one.

Just as it is a lie that the so-called tea party have no conservative social agenda, it is also a lie that the right-wingers care about deficits or how much money the government has on hand. What they care about is how much money--and power--they have. They want a society unburdened by "entitlements," unburdened by a costly social security net, or by safety regulations, or by people organized defensive organizations like labor unions. Each giveback and takeback is attached to the next, just wait and see. Don't believe the jazzed up hype about debt and deficits. The debt is the fruit of right-wing policies.

Apparently untouchable are the billions upon billions of dollars spent on the war machine fighting stupid and pointless wars killing and wounding untold thousands of innocent people for absolutely nothing at all. And that's because in the end, when this debt reduction plan fails to save the economy, as it surely will, it will be up to the military machine to end the economic crisis in the only tried and true method capitalism knows: repression and world war.

Meanwhile, watch your wallets.

The Bankruptcy of...Bankruptcy

So a wild ride on the stock maket this week. Down 500, up 100. Down 400. Up 700. Down for the week, slightly. I care about these numbers not because I'm a wheeler dealer on the market but because my freelance income doesn't cover my expenses and my mortgage, so my pre-freelance 401K supplements my expenses and THAT paltry sum of money seems to care about the market deeply.

I have a few questions.

How come there is no money for universal health care, for our decaying infrastructure, for our filthy malfunctioning subways, for affordable education, but now there are BILLIONS to bailout a bunch of greedy companies and beyond-rich corporations and their executives?

How come the greedy investment companies and mortgage companies get to have their debts paid off while those of us whose incomes have been declining in the face of increasing expenses do not?

How come executives will walk away from this disaster with millions in their pockets while the rest of will scrounge around to try and meet higher subway fares, higher real estate taxes, higher expenses for food, higher expenses for anything made of or transported by oil?

How come people believe Reaganite/Bushite trickle-down economics when the money always seems to trickle back up to the rich before it ever gets to the rest of us?

This is a moral issue I think. The government exists to make life better for the people, not to make big business richer. What's going on is frightening but it's also disgusting.

My modest proposal: Fuck the corporations. Bailout the PEOPLE. Call all mortgages held by individuals paid in full. Set a maximum interest rate allowable for mortgages AND for credit cards. Eliminate corporate tax shelters. Eliminate profit in the insurance business: insurance should be for protection not for profit. Fund healthcare and education before the military.

The system is completely bankrupt. WAKE UP!

Let's hear it for Class War!

It's about time. Nice ad from Obama.