The Tea Party? The Coffee Party? Wake Up. It’s The Corporate Party
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 21, 2010 by admin in Politics
Sunday, March 21st, 2010The real power in this country lies in the hands of corporate interests in ways most people don’t understand.
 For some unsettling insights into who’s really running things, check out the DVD  or the book “The Corporation”. |
When it comes to politics, I sometimes get the feeling lately that I’m having one of those weird anxiety dreams where all the surroundings are basically familiar, but everything is just a little different somehow, and everyone else knows what’s going on except me. When you have a bunch of mostly working-class people calling themselves “teabaggers” marching against the party that historically has been on their side calling legislators niggers and faggots, and the best response that the liberal intellectuals of the country can muster is a contrarily-named coffee party, you have to pause and ask: what really is going on here? Well, after doing more reading and research on the topic than I’d really care to, I have a bit of an opinion forming. Almost every problem that I see in America right now can be traced to one basic source. Corporatocracy. Whether it’s the corruption that ensues from regulatory capture by way of DC’s revolving doors, or the travesty that is the current health care battle, or the incredibly unsustainable and unhealthy diet and food production process in America, it can all be directly traced to corporate interests. I’ve longed for a third party for some time now, and was too dense to realize it was right here all along. It’s big business. Whether it’s campaign donations, lobby dollars, or the direct infiltration of the government via the aforementioned “agency capture”, Global and national corporations are clearly more powerful than government today. And the sick part of the big joke is that the GOP will probably deflect attention from their profoundly corporatocratic beliefs by using the widely misunderstood term corporatist to call Democrats fascist corporatists (which will be partly true, in an odd way) and both groups of voters will buy into their side’s spin. The irony of course being that both parties will be telling some twisted version of the truth, while benefiting personally as people of wealth and power by keeping the citizenry split down the middle, pointlessly hoping for a democracy-based solution.
Coffee Party Movement Grinds To Halt In Soy vs Lowfat Debate
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Monday, March 15th, 2010When I wrote about Why Democrats Always Lose & Why American Voters Need A Brand a while back, I was hoping for something a little more inspired than a choice loosely based on the title of a now painfully politically incorrect “tell all” book from the “swingin’ sixties”. Yes, the American liberal has once again [...]
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When I wrote about Why Democrats Always Lose & Why American Voters Need A Brand a while back, I was hoping for something a little more inspired than a choice loosely based on the title of a now painfully politically incorrect “tell all” book from the “swingin’ sixties”
False Profits Of The Econopocalypse
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 4, 2010 by admin in Politics
Thursday, March 4th, 2010We’re in the midst of a great opportunity to create real change, and we’re blowing it, because bankers are smarter than we are.
 Maybe these banker guys just have better connections than the rest of us do |
I’ve often said that two of the best jobs in the world to have are Economist or Weatherman. Who else gets paid so much to be wrong so often? I was reminded of this recently while reading Busted: Dean Baker On The Price We’re Still Paying For The Housing Bubble in The Sun Magazine. Granted, The Sun is about is hippy-dippy liberal as publications get, but Baker says some insightful things in the piece, key amongst them being that “Economists think they’re doing their job if they are saying the same thing everyone else is saying“. He points out that economists tend to say what their bosses want to hear, for risk of damaging their careers; a couple of classic examples of this being of course demi-god Alan Greenspan, who finally fessed up about how wrong he was, and Ben Bernanke, who’s been saying there’s no bubble since 2005. Guess who still has the sweet job? Bernanke just began his second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve on February 1. What boggles my mind at this point is that now that we KNOW top-level government and banking experts were so wrong, why do they still have jobs? If you were to make a series of decisions that bankrupted the company you work for, what would you expect to happen? The answer is obvious, so why do we – as a people – tolerate the ongoing abuse of the very banks we bailed out? Why didn’t the taxpayers get profit sharing and bonuses for bailing out the banks, instead of the CEO’s that caused the mess? I’ve been whining about the bailouts since day one, and have remained astounded at how little coverage the Quiet Coup has gotten. That Atlantic article just linked to explores what’s really happening in America right now, pointing out that “…the finance industry has effectively captured our government…” and that “…recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform…”. Which is why I’m glad some doomsayers are still saying that we’re Running On Empty or asking if maybe the government is Hiding How it Bailed Out AIG and Goldman. And finally congress at least seems to be looking at it this all as a problem. If you haven’t quite come to understand or accept the fact that your government has been “hijacked by the oligarchs” read this lengthy but level-headed Bill Moyers interview with Simon Johnson. You might start thinking that healthcare is the least of your worries.
Health Care For Us, Or Wealth Care For Them?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 26, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, February 26th, 2010I’d feel a lot better about buying insurance if I didn’t feel like I was supporting Wall Street’s gambling addiction.
I must confess to being a bit of a simpleton in some ways, so could someone please explain to me what the health care summit and the health care reform act have to do with reforming health care? And since when does someone “win” a summit meeting? I had to check the definition of the phrase to make sure I’m not crazy for asking that question. Personally, I’m a little stuck on a few ideas, one being that “fixing the health care problem” means that, well, someone will be fixing the health care problem, not just making sure that we all have an equal opportunity to take part in it. And by “it” I mean “the problem”. I feel odd finding myself aligning with a lot of Republicans (although I have pretty liberal social attitudes, I think I’ve formed my own little political party in my head) on an issue like the individual mandate. If I’ve already opted to not give my money to an industry that generates 20% of its revenue from my boss wanting me dead, why would I start now? Oh yeah. Because I’d get a tax penalty if I didn’t. This is starting to feel a little creepy. After being told that my tax dollars would be used to bail out the gambling-addicted banking and insurance industries, now I’m being told that if I don’t give them business, I’ll pay more taxes? Why do I feel like I’m trapped in some weird revolving door? Oh. It just might be the combination of the Goldman Sachs Government (they were negotiating a deal to acquire the treasury department last year, you know) and the influence peddling of the the Media Lobbying Complex. I’m glad I read a lot. It keeps me alertly apolitical. Everyone seems to have an informed opinion on health care, but if you really want to know what’s wrong with health care, ask a nurse.
Terrorists & Teabaggers
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 21, 2010 by admin in Politics
Sunday, February 21st, 2010The greatest threat to American security right now is probably a white fella from the heartland.
 Is this what you picture when you hear the word “terrorist”? |
Just when I was starting to find this whole teabagging thing entertaining, some mentally unstable individual in Texas has to go and wreck everything for me. You’ve almost certainly heard about Joe Stack burning his house down and crashing his plane into the IRS office in Austin, TX. But did you read his final note at embeddedart.com? If not, I’ve saved an original copy here. I saw it the morning before his hosting company decided to take it down for bandwidth reasons, so unlike the nutjobs posting in the forum the hosting company courteously provided visitors, I’m confident that there’s no FBI coverup conspiracy behind the takedown. I’m not surprised that both liberal and conservative sources are trying to link or unlink his action with the teabagger movement though; that’s just par for the course in politics these days. But to me it’s clear that he was just a fairly intelligent person who became consumed by his own pathological thinking. Reading Stack’s last words made me especially uncomfortable, partly because – like many of us – I can find myself agreeing with a lot of what he said. It revived unpleasant memories of reading Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s ramblings; there were portions of his lumbering manifesto that any modern person might agree with, but the overall tone and the author’s real-world actions rendered any points one might agree with irrelevant. For me, this was especially true in Kaczynski’s case; a personal friend of mine was one of the victims of his deranged actions. But back to the teabagger link. Is there a connection? How can a reasonably informed person deny that regardless of whether Stack considered himself a teabagger, he ABSOLUTELY had common ground with them? It’s ironic that a recent Fox News piece expressed concern with the headline Radical Anti-tax Groups Growing Threat, when it’s the opportunistic sentiment-baiting that Fox News and Bitchzilla from Wasilla (yeah, I can say that, there’s no editor around here) engage in that fuels the kind of rage that sparks violent protests and makes crazy men fly planes into buildings or bulldoze their houses. I imagine we’ll see a few more tragic events over the next few years as a result of people’s frustration with money & taxes. This Newsweek blog post points out that there have been 75 domestic incidents since the Oklahoma bombings, with 6 of them specifically targeting the IRS. I find it more than a little ironic that a government that was born of tax rebellion and presently sees terrorism as a threat from Islam is going through a two-decade struggle with domestic terrorists. If you’re not familiar with the recent history of violence and the American radical right, the Read the rest of this entry »