Wednesday, October 29, 2008

RE: NINE REASONS (TO ELECT OBAMA)

FROM JAKE BERRY RE: JACK RANDOM'S NINE REASONS TO ELECT OBAMA (Imbedded).

Rather than the usual I'm going to respond to this essay piece by piece as this may be the last election. What I mean by that is current technology combined with all the old tricks, and a few new ones, may render elections, especially state, national and large municipal elections, pointless as a means of determining the will of the people.

I'm going to weave my response into your essay to save anyone that reads this the trouble of jumping back and forth.


THE SUMMATION: NINE REASONS TO ELECT OBAMA by Jack Random.

RANDOM: Historically, this nation has had a handful of critically important elections: The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 ensured that we would remain on the path of democracy. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 marked the end of slavery. The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 enabled us to survive the Great Depression and left the indelible legacy of the New Deal.

While the historical verdict must wait, the election of 2000, in which the losing candidate was allowed to take office, may some day rise to that level of importance. No one can doubt that the world would look different under the leadership of Albert Gore.

BERRY: Those are the same ones I would have chosen, including the 2000 election - the first clear indication that a last election might be upon us.

The current period also reminds me of two others. First, the period between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln a string of presidents either did nothing or only made matters worse, especially in regards to slavery. Second, the period beginning with reconstruction when the wealthy could and often did buy government favors or buy office outright. In both cases incompetence and a callous disregard for democratic principles resulted in disasters that very nearly destroyed the nation – the Ciivl War in the former case and a series of wild peaks and depressions culminating in the Great Depression in the latter.

Though we are in the midst of the current financial crises and it is impossible to gauge how deep, broad or enduring it might be, it seems clear that we are on the brink of a depression. This depression might yet be avoided with careful management including the cooperation of the world's governing bodies and the financial corporations whose greed generated the crisis. Obama suggested such a summit months ago. Long before Bush, Paulson or McCain would even acknowledge the crisis.

RANDOM: The election of 2008 holds the same promise. After a campaign that has consumed the better part of two years, everything of substance that can be said has been. To use a legal analogy, all that remains is the summation.

BERRY: You indicate precisely one of the problems. A two year campaign. The primaries should be held in June and July of an election year, the conventions in August, and the campaign for general election in September and October.

RANDOM: With one week remaining before Election Day, here are nine compelling reasons to elect Barack Obama President of the United States:

1. John McCain is more of the same on economic policy.

He can cry all he wants. He can scream it from the mountaintop. He can file a protest with the League of Nations. He can glare into the eyes of the camera and proclaim: I am not George W. Bush. The fact remains that his economic policy is fundamentally indistinguishable from that of the current president. As all long-term residents of Washington must learn, the Senator cannot run away from his record. McCain is a free market fundamentalist. He is anti-labor and he does not believe in government regulation. His singular issue of dissent, his opposition to the Bush tax cuts during a time of war and mounting deficits (2001-2005), was sacrificed when he adopted those same tax cuts as the foundation of his economic platform.

If McCain was still the straight talker he is supposed to have been, he would have no choice but to admit that the Republican economic philosophy has led us to the crisis we now face. He could still blame Democrats for adopting Republican policies but with Senator Phil Gramm as his economic mentor, he cannot escape blame.

It is far too late to wake up now with the discovery that the world is in fact round and everything you have ever believed is wrong. Alan Greenspan was wrong, Phil Gramm was wrong, Thomas Friedman was wrong, Adam Smith was wrong and John McCain is the wrong man to break the mold.

BERRY: You make the case beautifully. The problem with McCain's economic policy is that it is exactly what he is: Republican. I would agree with Adam Smith and other free market thinking much of the time. A free market will rise and fall, but will more or less regulate itself based on the laws of supply and demand. However, one must be pragmatic. When criminals spoil the market by artificially inflating its value in order to make quick, deceptive profit (let's call it what it is: theft) then some governing body must act on behalf of its constituency to reign the excess. There are already laws on the books to accomplish this. There is no point in the legislature making laws if the executive will not enforce them. McCain gives no indication at all that he will do anything more than Bush, Reagan, or Hoover to bring white collar criminals to justice.

RANDOM: 2. John McCain is more of the same on foreign policy.

Lame Duck President George W. Bush has been forced to accept the hard cold realities of his failed policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. From the global economic crisis to the Russian incursion into neighboring Georgia, we are no longer regarded as a dominant power. The government of Iraq, the same government we implanted in power, has resisted signing a status of forces agreement that would extend the legal grounds for a foreign occupation beyond the end of the year. Iraqi leaders have publicly stated they favor a withdrawal timetable corresponding to the exit strategy of Barack Obama. In Afghanistan military and governmental leaders alike have been pushing for a negotiated settlement.

While Obama has taken a hard line in Afghanistan, he has also embraced the policy of diplomacy. McCain has demonstrated nothing short of intransigence – the same sort of stubbornness that the Bush team has employed in achieving an unprecedented decline in America’s standing in the world.

As with the free market fundamentalists, John McCain signed up with the neoconservative brain trust on day one and he has never wavered. The same warmongering brain trust that was considered too extreme for Ronald Reagan was allowed free reign during the second coming of Bush. As with free market fundamentalism, the result is catastrophic: America is overextended, buried in debt and unable to sustain its legitimate interests.

McCain was for the war in Iraq before the Bush administration proposed it. McCain was for the Bush Doctrine of aggressive war and military dominance before it carried that name. That he would carry on those same policies cannot be doubted.

While Obama’s response to the situation in Georgia was measured and steady, McCain’s was bellicose and rash. To McCain, the lesson of Vietnam was not that we should not inherit imperialist wars from fallen empires. It was rather that we should fight on to “victory” at any cost. He feels the same about Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter what the cost, he will double down and double down again. He is as predictable as sunrise.

As a nation we can no longer afford an intransigent leader determined to bend the world to his knees. We cannot afford four more years of the Bush Doctrine under a new name.

BERRY: McCain does give every impression that he would resort to the use of the military even quicker than Bush. His foreign policy statements of the last eight years have been nothing short of belligerent imperialism. It does not seem to concern him that the military is exhausted, that soldiers have done repeated tours in the current wars. Would he send the military into Georgia? Would he expand the current wars into Syria and Pakistan? It seems the only thing that would stop him would be a revolt in the ranks.

Obama on the other hand indicates that his approach would be thoughtful and measured. That is, he would examine each situation as it arose, consult various counsel, then make what seemed to him the most expedient decision. In short, he would act like a president, not an emperor.

RANDOM: 3. America needs a New Deal.

Take it to heart: After eight years of unfettered corporate rule, we are on the precipice of economic collapse. The nature of the current crisis goes well beyond the housing bubble and the answers go well beyond rebuilding government regulatory authority. We are in debt because we could not sustain our standard of living on diminished wages. We are in trouble because we can no longer afford basic health care. We have witnessed a decline of organized labor and the decimation of American industry as our jobs have been transferred to cheap labor overseas.

Corporate America has killed the golden goose. In their thirst for immediate profits, they have destroyed the foundation of a consumer economy: the middle class.

Joe the Plumber is living in a world of delusion. In the age of the corporate elite, the dream of upward mobility is dead. When consumers can no longer support basic needs, small businesses are the first to fail. Capital is consolidated in fewer hands. International corporations grow larger. Labor exploitation is institutionalized. Government becomes an agent of the wealthy.

America needs a New Deal in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt. We need a government that can no longer be bought, that answers to the needs of the people, that provides jobs, that secures the rights of workers, that ends job exportation, that rebuilds roads, bridges and mass transit, that creates new job opportunities and funds education. We need universal health care, not some harebrained privatization scheme. We need to strengthen social security, not to dismantle it one brick at a time.

The New Deal was only possible because Roosevelt had the support of both houses of congress. We are beyond the minor fixes that can be accomplished through bipartisan compromise. The Republican way, the way of the elite international corporation, has failed. It is time for systemic change.

BERRY: One hopes that such a thing is still possible. The America that Roosevelt lived in no longer exists. At that time we were an industrial and agricultural economy that traded with other nations. At present, global institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization make it difficult for any nation to act completely independently. Add to that the fact that our economic stability is dependent on credit from nations like China and Saudi Arabia. These nations will abandon us if we are are unable or unwilling to consume their products at rates that are very profitable to them.

Again, McCain will be business as usual or he will attempt temporary, short term, fixes. Obama seems more likely to convene the powers that be in order to attempt to arrive at a solution that works reasonably well for everyone.

We cannot hope to recover jobs from companies that outsourced then went bankrupt or were absorbed by global corporations. The president could make the case that it makes sense to build products closer to the consumer and thereby avoid shipping, tariffs, and all the other costs and hazards of import/export. If products built for the American market are made in America by Americans it benefits everyone. If we are able then to begin to recover economically and move closer to a balanced budget the government might be able to find the resources to finance job creation and job training programs.

Russia cannot live on oil revenue forever and the Chinese economy cannot continue to expand exponentially. The world will need a steady, reliable economy in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere to prevent depression when those economies slow or crash. The U.S. should act now to be prepared.

RANDOM: 4. The politics of fear and smear should be answered in kind.

For seven years we have been led down the path of our own demise by the politics of fear and smear. The Republican Party has long exploited the religious right’s fear of moral decay – abortion rights and gay marriage. After September 11, 2001, they expanded the politics of fear to terrorism and enemies of the American way of life. As they attacked the Bill of Rights, they accused anyone who stood in the way of terrorist sympathies. As they waged war on innocent nations, nations that were not responsible for the attack on our soil, they accused those who opposed them of appeasing the enemy and betraying our troops.

Now, in the waning days of a desperate campaign, they have attacked Barack Obama with patently false and scurrilous rumors of anti-American sentiments: Obama is a closet Muslim, a secret foreign agent, an associate of terrorists, on and on.

There is no denying that Obama is black and we wonder how much of the attack strategy is founded on that solemn fact.

We will never be able to rub out the politics of fear and smear but we may be able to land a decisive and crushing blow. In this sense, the margin of victory is important. Let Karl Rove be remembered for something beside the theft of two elections.

BERRY: The arrest of two men from Tennessee who apparently planned to kill 100 people and THEN kill Obama is a clear display of the rot that lies at the core of southern conservatism. Based on recent history it seems that neo-conservative strategy succeeds by merging with racial and ethic hatred. It panders to fear of the other in order to extract power from a significant portion of the middle class and poor and use that power toward ends that designed to expand and maintain a global empire of wealthy elite that pay allegiance to no state, no government and no people save themselves. Obama may or may not challenge that system, but you can be sure that McCain will promote it.

RANDOM: 5. Restore balance on the Supreme Court.

Even before the appointments of Samuel Alito and John Roberts, the Supreme Court that overruled democracy in the 2000 election was tilted dangerously to the right. Much has been said about the danger of a new court overruling a woman’s right to choose abortion but little has been said about the Court’s corporate bias, a bias that undermines both individual rights and the public good.

The Court’s finding that corporate contributions are protected free speech means that no meaningful campaign finance reform will be allowed as long as this court remains intact. The Court’s ruling on public domain sacrificed individual property rights in favor of corporate development. The Court’s ruling on equal pay for equal work in the Lilly Ledbetter case effectively removed enforcement from the law.

While there have been some surprising rulings opposing the president’s egregious violations of due process, the one consistent strand has been a corporate bias.

It is no secret that the next president is likely to appoint at least two new justices to the Supreme Court. An Obama presidency would restore some sense of balance.

BERRY: This is one of the most compelling arguments in favor of the election of Obama. McCain has made it clear by name the kind of judges he would appoint – Alito and Roberts. This would complete the transformation of the court into a tool of Corporatism. Any rights left would only be those that did not interfere with continued corporate control.

This election makes one thing very clear. Barack Obama is not John McCain. His nominees for the court would be of a different order.

RANDOM: 6. Restoration of Civil Liberties.

In two hundred and thirty two years of history, perhaps no president has done more harm to the Bill of Rights than George W. Bush. He has used the War Powers Act and the USA Patriot Act to spy on American citizens without warrant or legal recourse. He has claimed the right to detain citizens and non-citizens indefinitely. He has institutionalized torture.

Under his leadership, the fourth estate was used as a fence for false and deceptive government propaganda. Under the guidance of his political mentor, Karl Rove, he is responsible for the disenfranchisement of more minority citizens than at any time since the days of Jim Crow. He has all but accused those who stood in opposition of treason – in polite society, appeasing the enemy.

Under his reign, the Department of Justice became a political agent, choosing to prosecute cases on the basis of partisan advantage rather than the rule of law and firing those who refused to cooperate.

It is too late to impeach George W. Bush but history will record that grounds for impeachment were strong on the basis of civil liberties alone. Fortunately, it is not too late to undo much of the harm.

BERRY: Here Obama can make significant change in a hurry. So much of the diminishment of our fundamental human rights and dignities are the result of the Bush administration's actions. All Obama would have to do is change the way the executive branch executes its power. He would not need congressional authority. All he need do is devote the energies of his administration to attacking the real enemies of the nation and not the rights of its citizens. I think we can be almost certain that he will make this change and make it almost immediately upon assuming office. If there were no other reason to vote for Obama this would be more than enough.

McCain on the other hand would continue or intensify the Bush doctrine.

RANDOM: 7. Restoration of Democracy: Payback.

If you still believe that George W. Bush legitimately won the White House in 2000 and 2004 you have not done your homework. Bush won in 2000 through a massive disenfranchisement campaign, a campaign that targeted black voters in critical battleground states – most notably in Florida. Bush won in 2004 through a combination of disenfranchisement and electronic vote flipping – most notably in Ohio. Had the corporate media done its job, those betrayals of the fundamental rights of democracy would have been reversed. Instead, the media chose to turn the page. As a consequence, those betrayals have continued and intensified with the advance of technology.

In the aftermath of Florida 2000, we should have been shocked to learn by the decision of the Supreme Court (Bush v. Gore) that voting is not considered a right. According to the law of the land as interpreted by the highest source of justice, the most basic right of citizenship is a privilege – and one that can be stripped away by political operatives.

That needs to be rectified. The right to vote is sacred and must be protected by our elected officials. It cannot happen under Republican leadership. It can only happen with new leadership in the White House.

BERRY: Yes. Here we are at the crux of the moment. We know from the past two elections, and the media's complicity, that if this election is close it can be stolen. Obama needs to win by several percentage points in the popular vote and a convincing majority of the electoral vote. One would hope that if this happens another of his primary objectives would be to guarantee the RIGHT to vote to every citizen and ensure that every vote be counted.

RANDOM: 8. Freedom from Ideological Intransigence.

Barack Obama has spoken at length about the politics of pragmatism. To the Senator from Illinois, it is the key to unity and working across the partisan divide. To many on the left (myself included) his refusal to identify more forcefully with a progressive ideology has been a source of frustration and opposition. However, after eight years of leadership governed by the tenets of an outdated, out of touch ideology, the politics of pragmatism begin to look appealing.

During his tenure in office, George W. Bush never thought twice, never looked back, never adjusted his thinking and never changed course. On the domestic front, his thinking was guided by a free market fundamentalism that disallowed the role of government. When warnings were sounded, he had only one answer: tax cuts and more tax cuts.

In foreign policy, his thinking stopped with the announcement of the Bush Doctrine, in which America would use military force to secure dominance in perpetuity. When Iraq imploded, he had no plan. When the debt mounted and the military was overextended, he was incapable of making an adjustment. When Afghanistan began to unravel, there was no contingency plan.

Ideology is important. It gives a leader a solid foundation. But in the real world, where the dynamics change and new realities emerge, a true leader must be able to adjust.

In the current, John McCain has demonstrated the same sort of ideological intransigence that haunted George W. Bush. He is out of touch and out of time. Obama’s time has come.

BERRY: Ideology is always dangerous. We need ideals, but also recognize that they are our guides. Occasionally we can accomplish a goal driven by ideals – the right of all citizens to vote, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or religion for instance. Jefferson was an idealist to say the least, but upon taking the office of president, and often before, he found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to compromise those ideals in order to maintain peace and support what at least at that time seemed to be the common good. The president must be guided by ideals, even an ideology or religion, but when those ideals conflict with the most reasonable course of action he or she must be guided by reason. No divine authority is going to save us. We must think for ourselves as free individuals. A president who fails to do this fails himself and everyone within his sphere of influence.

Obama seems to be a political pragmatist above all else. Indeed, one wishes he were more a champion of human rights, fair government, and so forth. But his actions suggest he will take the most practical course possible. It helps to remember that Kennedy in the Cuban missile crises was caught between two ideologies and found a practical middle course that spared us nuclear war.

McCain on the other hand appears to have decided after being swindled by Karl Rove in 2000 that the only way to win was to run a campaign just like Karl Rove. And he has continually supported the Bush administration, often voting with them while publicly stating he was opposed. Uncertain at best. And it would seem that he is willing to submit to an ideology rather than assert reason. It raises questions about his personal integrity.

RANDOM: 9. It is time to elect an African-American president.

It cannot be ignored and its importance cannot be understated: Barack Obama would become the first individual of African descent to lead any nation whose population is not predominantly black (the nations of Africa, Haiti, the Dominican Republic).

It is no secret that the world supports Obama. People around the globe are yearning for a real change in Washington. They are tired of the America that George W. Bush has created. They are tired of his go-it-alone arrogance. They are tired of a nation that defies the rule of law, that disgraces the name of democracy, and that violates with impunity the universal rights of human kind.

The road is paved and the time will come when this nation elects a woman president. It is inevitable and it will happen. On this scale, America is behind the curve. Numerous women have been chosen to lead democratic nations: Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain, Indira Gandhi of India, Golda Meir of Israel, Angela Merkel of Germany. In this nation, there are many women on both sides of the political divide that are both qualified and prepared to become president. Sarah Palin is not one of them.

The election of Barack Obama would serve clear notice to the world: A change has come and the dream of freedom, justice and prosperity for all is still alive. Jazz.

BERRY: White as a racial designation has no basis in reality. It is a political assignation designed to prevent anyone who is not "white" from attaining significant political power. It makes the assertion that white is pure and anything, or anyone, that is not white is tainted in some way. This worked well in the service of slavery, the invasion and colonization of Africa and Asia, and in maintaining "white" authority where "white" people are in power or wish to be. It is time to destroy this concept and relegate it to the mistakes of history along with slavery and every other other injustice that it has sustained. The election of Obama would send a clear message to the world that the majority of Americans are ready to face reality and meet the world on realistic terms, as equals. We have been given a grand opportunity and if we neglect to take advantage of it the rest of the world will have no reason to think that we do not feel ourselves superior. It is time at long last to cast off the shame of our history. This election would be an excellent beginning. This one is easy. All we have to do is vote.

Rave on Jack.

Peace,
Jake

JAKE BERRY IS THE AUTHOR OF BRAMBU DREZI, LIMINAL BLUE AND OTHER WORKS OF EXTRAORDINARY INSIGHT.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HIS NOVELLA "NUMBER NINE: ADVENTURES WITH RUBY" AND NOVEL "THE KILLING SPIRIT (CRIES FOR A VISION)" HAVE BEEN POSTED ON BUZZLE.COM.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

NINE REASONS TO ELECT OBAMA (3)

3. America needs a New Deal.

Take it to heart: After eight years of unfettered corporate rule, we are on the precipice of economic collapse. The nature of the current crisis goes well beyond the housing bubble and the answers go well beyond rebuilding government regulatory authority. We are in debt because we could not sustain our standard of living on diminished wages. We are in trouble because we can no longer afford basic health care. We have witnessed a decline of organized labor and the decimation of American industry as our jobs have been transferred to cheap labor overseas.

Corporate America has killed the golden goose. In their thirst for immediate profits, they have destroyed the foundation of a consumer economy: the middle class.

Joe the Plumber is living in a world of delusion. In the age of the corporate elite, the dream of upward mobility is dead. When consumers can no longer support basic needs, small businesses are the first to fail. Capital is consolidated in fewer hands. International corporations grow larger. Labor exploitation is institutionalized. Government becomes an agent of the wealthy.

America needs a New Deal in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt. We need a government that can no longer be bought, that answers to the needs of the people, that provides jobs, that secures the rights of workers, that ends job exportation, that rebuilds roads, bridges and mass transit, that creates new job opportunities and funds education. We need universal health care, not some harebrained privatization scheme. We need to strengthen social security, not to dismantle it one brick at a time.

The New Deal was only possible because Roosevelt had the support of both houses of congress. We are beyond the minor fixes that can be accomplished through bipartisan compromise. The Republican way, the way of the elite international corporation, has failed. It is time for systemic change.

Jazz.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Nine Reasons to Elect Obama (2)

2. John McCain is more of the same on foreign policy.

Lame Duck President George W. Bush has been forced to accept the hard cold realities of his failed policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. From the global economic crisis to the Russian incursion into neighboring Georgia, we are no longer regarded as a dominant power. The government of Iraq, the same government we implanted in power, has resisted signing a status of forces agreement that would extend the legal grounds for a foreign occupation beyond the end of the year. Iraqi leaders have publicly stated they favor a withdrawal timetable corresponding to the exit strategy of Barack Obama. In Afghanistan military and governmental leaders alike have been pushing for a negotiated settlement.

While Obama has taken a hard line in Afghanistan, he has also embraced the policy of diplomacy. McCain has demonstrated nothing short of intransigence – the same sort of stubbornness that the Bush team has employed in achieving an unprecedented decline in America’s standing in the world.

As with the free market fundamentalists, John McCain signed up with the neoconservative brain trust on day one and he has never wavered. The same warmongering brain trust that was considered too extreme for Ronald Reagan was allowed free reign during the second coming of Bush. As with free market fundamentalism, the result is catastrophic: America is overextended, buried in debt and unable to sustain its legitimate interests.

McCain was for the war in Iraq before the Bush administration proposed it. McCain was for the Bush Doctrine of aggressive war and military dominance before it carried that name. That he would carry on those same policies cannot be doubted.

While Obama’s response to the situation in Georgia was measured and steady, McCain’s was bellicose and rash. To McCain, the lesson of Vietnam was not that we should not inherit imperialist wars from fallen empires. It was rather that we should fight on to “victory” at any cost. He feels the same about Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter what the cost, he will double down and double down again. He is as predictable as sunrise.

As a nation we can no longer afford an intransigent leader determined to bend the world to his knees. We cannot afford four more years of the Bush Doctrine under a new name.

Jazz.

[Tomorrow: Reason 3.]

Sunday, October 26, 2008

NINE DAYS: NINE REASONS TO ELECT OBAMA

Day One, Reason One
By Jack Random


Historically, this nation has had a handful of critically important elections: The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 ensured that we would remain on the path of democracy. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 marked the end of slavery. The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 enabled us to survive the Great Depression and left the indelible legacy of the New Deal.

While the historical verdict must wait, the election of 2000, in which the losing candidate was allowed to take office, may some day rise to that level of importance. No one can doubt that the world would look different under the leadership of Albert Gore.

The election of 2008 holds the same promise. After a campaign that has consumed the better part of two years, everything of substance that can be said has been. To use a legal analogy, all that remains is the summation.

With nine days remaining before the election, I offer nine compelling reasons to elect Barack Obama President of the United States. Here is the first.

1. John McCain is more of the same on economic policy.

He can cry all he wants. He can scream it from the mountaintop. He can file a protest with the League of Nations. He can glare into the eyes of the camera and proclaim: I am not George W. Bush. The fact remains that his economic policy is fundamentally indistinguishable from that of the current president. As all long-term residents of Washington must learn, the Senator cannot run away from his record. McCain is a free market fundamentalist. He is anti-labor and he does not believe in government regulation. His singular issue of dissent, his opposition to the Bush tax cuts during a time of war and mounting deficits (2001-2005), was sacrificed when he adopted those same tax cuts as the foundation of his economic platform.

If McCain was still the straight talker he is supposed to have been, he would have no choice but to admit that the Republican economic philosophy has led us to the crisis we now face. He could still blame Democrats for adopting Republican policies but with Senator Phil Gramm as his economic mentor, he cannot escape blame.

It is far too late to wake up now with the discovery that the world is in fact round and everything you have ever believed is wrong. Alan Greenspan was wrong, Phil Gramm was wrong, Thomas Friedman was wrong, Adam Smith was wrong and John McCain is the wrong man to break the mold.

Jazz.

[Tomorrow: Day 2, Reason 2.]

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Jake's Word Re: William Ayers & Colin Powell

From: Jake Berry (jakebridget@bellsouth.net)
[A response to Jack Random's "In Defense of William Ayers" posted on The National Free Press and reprinted below and "The Redemption of Colin Powell" posted on Buzzle.com.]

William Ayers activity with the Weathermen is merely a footnote in history. It only proves the Republicans are desperate. They can't win on the issues, so they attack with irrelevant, distracting, accusations. Even some in the corporate media say as much.

Colin Powell's endorsement seems clear enough. He's right. It is time for a transition and a transformation, a new generation, and Obama is equal to the task. It would be interesting to be able to compare Powell as Secretary of Defense under Obama as opposed to Secretary of State under Bush. That probably won't happen. There is still an election to win and the matter of whether or not Obama would want Powell as a member of the cabinet or Powell would be willing to serve. Outside of the disinformation campaign that cajoled the country into the invasion of Iraq his foreign policy seems similar enough to Obama's.

As for Rep. Bachmman, one wonders how these kinds of statements are possible a half-century after Joe McCarthy. What is anti-American? Other than an attempt to violently overthrow the government it seems to me impossible to be anti-American. After all, the election cycle theoretically allows us to make dramatic changes in the government every two years. The first amendment guarantees the freedom to dissent and say it out loud. If disagreement makes one anti-American then no one meets the measure. Everyone disagrees with someone about something in American politics at some time or other, even in an age of manufactured consent. If anyone is guilty of anti-American behavior it's Rep. Bachmman, who by her statements seems to want to erase the principles upon which the nation was founded. And replace them with what? Further descent into Corporate Fascism?

Considering the way the campaigns have been run it seems that perhaps that is our choice.

Do we want to close the door on the American experiment in representative government and replace it forever with government bought (and sold) by wealthy collectives? If so, then we have to do nothing at all. We can continue to spend money we do not have, pollute the environment and attempt to dominate the world by force. But if we want to attempt to turn the ship of state around, or at the very least alter course, we have to get up and vote for people who offer that possibility. Then we have to go back to buying only what we can afford, saving money in local, reliable banks, and investing in the local economy by doing what our grandparents did - buying land. Small scale capitalism. It worked for them. They truly believed in America as a free country and fought fascism in the trenches and totalitarian communism by containment. They were not the greatest generation. No generation can make that claim. But they taught us that in America anything was possible. The last 35 years almost seem calculated to destroy everything they believed in.

Ironic isn't it? The man we would have expected to build his campaign on those very principles has aligned himself with the vilest aspect of the electorate while a man whose face and name would seem foreign to our grandparents is promoting the qualities that made the 20th century what some call the American century. All he's asking is that we give someone new a chance. Under the circumstances that is what we must do.

Thanks for everything. Here we go in the rush to election day. And I'm still bringing a torch, just in case.

Peace,
Jake

[Jake Berry is the author of Brambu Drezi, Liminal Blue & Other Works of Originality.]


JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



IN DEFENSE OF WILLIAM AYERS:
Dissent and Freedom of Expression

By Jack Random


Once all the votes are cast and counted, it will be time to call a heart a heart and a spade a spade. When the scurrilous charges of guilt by association and character assassination lose the sting of a coming election, we will be able to assess the nature of this presidential campaign in a more objective light.

Perhaps then we will hear from Professor William Ayers. Until the election is over, however, silence is wisdom. By virtue of his participation in the political process, his associations with prominent Chicago politicians of all parties, he has been so vilified by the Republican right that anything he could say in the current climate would be twisted and distorted to dangerous proportions.

In the final stages of a desperate campaign with no other design than to distract the electorate from the most critical issues in modern history, the Rovian Republican machine has resorted to tactics that recall some of the most shameful chapters in American history.

It recalls the Alien and Sedition Acts signed into law in 1798 by President John Adams, which attempted to criminalize dissent and label his political opponents traitors to the nation. Three of four acts were repealed by succeeding President Thomas Jefferson in a critical re-affirmation of the principles of democratic governance.

It recalls the era of Jim Crow in the post-reconstruction South in which African Americans were systematically denied the right to vote by poll taxes, literacy tests, residency requirements, threats, lynching and every conceivable form of intimidation.

Most of all it recalls the era of Joe McCarthy, the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, and the great Red Scare of the 1950’s in which citizens from every strata and facet of American life were subjected to loyalty oaths and labeled traitors to the nation for having the audacity to express dissenting views, for attending meetings or associating with the wrong crowd. Then the communists and socialists were the bogeyman, now it is the radicals and terrorists. Both then and now, it is the rightwing definition of Anti-American opinions and sentiments.

To those who naïvely thought we had reached something resembling universal condemnation of those disgraceful chapters, think again.

As one who was tempted to believe that America had grown sufficiently as a nation that we need not fear a return to the age of official intolerance and blacklisting on the basis of political or religious beliefs, it was with profound shock and awe that I witnessed an obscure congresswoman from Minnesota (the Honorable Michele Bachmann) call for a media-led investigation into the anti-American sentiments of members of congress.

Could it be that a representative in congress is so unaware of her nation’s history that she could invoke the House Un-American Activities Committee without even knowing it?

In the event that the worst happens, that the politics of fear and smear prevail, and we enter a new age of McCarthyism, let me state clearly: I am not now nor have I ever been a terrorist. Not enough? I am not now nor have I ever been an enemy of the nation. Still not enough?

I cannot in good conscience give you the lies that I believe you would require to certify my loyalty and patriotism though I consider myself both loyal and patriotic.

Does advocacy for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti or Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain cast doubt? Does opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq place me under a cloud of suspicion? If I stood against the USA Patriot Act, will I fail the test of loyalty? Who is to judge?

My political beliefs and ideology were inspired by individuals who were without question dissidents and rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government. Their names were Jefferson, Paine and Franklin.

There have been occasions in my life when I considered the actions of my own government, from the carpet bombing in Vietnam to the killing of student protestors at Jackson and Kent State universities, nothing less than state sanctioned terrorism, yet there were moments (the withdrawal of Lyndon Johnson from the 1968 presidential race and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974) when I may have felt a twinge of empathy.

Even George W. Bush, as his administration unleashed aggressive wars against innocent peoples, unraveled the fabric of the constitution, undermined the electoral process and preached the politics of fear and intolerance without shame, has at times appeared a sympathetic character unable to comprehend the depths of the horrors and betrayals delivered under his authority.

By my own reckoning, should I be held accountable for sympathy with criminals and terrorists and betrayers of the American ideal?

I am an American and I claim the right to adopt any belief or system of beliefs that I choose so long as I do not infringe on the rights of others.

I do not advocate violent protest but there are times in history when violent resistance to unjust authorities was either understandable or necessary or both. Fundamentally, I believe that all Americans retain the right embodied in the second amendment to overthrow an unjust and tyrannical government.

By this account, though it pales by comparison to Jefferson’s, should I be considered a dangerous radical? Should I be censured, censored, my voice stricken from the public forum? Should every individual with whom I have associated be held accountable for my beliefs?

While I respect their sense of duty, their sacrifice and courage, I do not believe that the soldiers currently engaged in Bush’s wars are fighting to defend or uphold my rights. In fact the current wars have been used in a concerted effort to diminish my rights.

Does that make me un-American?

As an American I claim the right to attend any gathering and form any associations that I choose. I believe that anyone who asserts that I should be held accountable for every statement or belief expressed by my associates is attempting to deny my fundamental freedom.

I do not know Professor William Ayers but I do know there is no expression of remorse or rationalization that could alleviate the irrational fervor of his detractors in the current political climate. For myself, given the opportunity, I would not hesitate to attend one of his lectures or engage him in conversation concerning the state of affairs in America today.

Agree or disagree, Bill Ayers is an American too. Anyone who would denigrate him for his beliefs or impugn the character of his associates is fighting against the tide of democratic freedom.

The first amendment was not adopted to protect popular mainstream opinions. Such expressions require no protection. It was adopted to protect dissent. When dissent is suppressed by cheap political mudslinging campaigns it impoverishes our discourse and weakens our hold on the American democratic ideal.

Of course, even the expression of anti-democratic ideas is protected free speech. I would no more deny the right of a campaign to engage in the politics of smear than I would my own right to object.

The proper response of all loyal and responsible Americans, however, is to turn it on its head.

William Ayers is no more of a legitimate issue in this election than Joe the Plumber.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Jake's Word Re: Consolidation of Wealth (Fascism, Racism & Oligarchy)

[Jake Berry's response to Jack Random's "Consolidation of Wealth" - posted on Pacific Free Press 10/14/08 and reprinted below.]

The past few days I've been turning current events over in my head. I kept to returning to Plato's description of oligarchy in The Republic. Plato's experience was with the city state so his description and analysis is based on that model, but the fundamentals remain. He had seen how Athens had slipped from democracy to tyranny to oligarchy and mixtures of all of these, accompanied by periods of chaos. He was not encouraged by what he witnessed in any of these forms.

Before I could put any of my thoughts down though I received your latest: "Consolidation of Wealth." It covers the territory better than I could have hoped and goes further, it offers solutions. Indeed we have been living under increasing levels of corporate fascism since the end of World War II. The military-industrial complex should have been disassembled after the war, along with many of the foreign entanglements. Instead the government went in the other direction and extended its integration with corporate culture into all levels of society. The situation now has been allowed to fester into a global malignancy. The so-called bailout is really just a matter of the corporate masters demanding a fee from the government they purchased. Unfortunately the middle class that buys from and thus enriches corporations also pays most of the taxes so it amounts to paying the same master twice. This kind of thievery inspired the war that severed the American colonies from England.

Add to that the rise in hatred we are witnessing at political rallies. It's an old hatred. The civil rights legislation of 1965 disenfranchised the bigotry and other forms of hatred that had been an integral part of southern statecraft for 100 years. That hatred found a welcoming embrace in the Republican party which had been up until that time the party of big money – a strange and horrible price to pay for taking a step toward equality for all citizens. Until now however the hatred has remained cloaked in various disguises and given names like social conservatism and Christian fundamentalism when in fact it is neither of these things. In reality nothing has changed. The other is always met with suspicion and ultimately despised merely because it is other. Even if that other is nothing more than skin pigmentation or a name it will not be tolerated.

This is a volatile combination - multi-national corporations and ethnic hatred. It is in fact the manifestation of the very thing many Americans say they fear in the Middle-East. It is always the secretly guilty that demand the harshest punishment for the guilty. Big money plus hatred. We saw what that produced in Germany under the Nazis. And no southerner of European ancestry with a conscience forgets for a second the joy some took in hearing the news of the assassination of MLK, Jr. We live with the stains of segregation, poll taxes, and lynchings. All enforced by a combination of wealthy elite and ethnic hatred.

The question before us now is do we want to continue in a direction in which this kind of morality, by whatever name, becomes the dominant feature of American society?

This election should have been about wars of aggression, economic stagnation and human rights and at least two alternative approaches to the resolution of those problems. Instead it has become a referendum on the power of massive amounts of money, debt, and hatred. It prevents the candidates from addressing the real problems and prevents the media from asking questions regarding those problems. Perhaps that is precisely what was intended by our masters. The same ones that brought us patriotic bankruptcy and self-righteous war.

I hope, deeply and sincerely, that we will have a chance to apply some of the solutions you recommend. I would love to see them in action. Are the American people capable of taking that course or will the descent continue? The results of the election alone will not be the answer, but they will indicate whether or not we are willing to even try.

Thanks so much for continuing to keep our eyes open and focused on the real issues at a time when the appearance of reality has been co-opted as a consumer object. Rave on.


Jake Berry - Author of Brambu Drezi, Liminal Blue and other works of extraordinary lucidity.


JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

CONSOLIDATION OF WEALTH:
LONGTERM SOLUTIONS TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

By Jack Random

There is always opportunity in catastrophic events. To financier J.P. Morgan, the stock market crash of 1907 was an opportunity to consolidate wealth and power, thus undermining the antitrust and monopoly busting policies of Theodore Roosevelt.

The market crash of 1927 leading to the Great Depression paved the way for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a legacy of responsible government regulation, social security, unemployment benefits, public works and labor rights, but it also served as an opportunity for further consolidation of corporate power and wealth.

The cataclysm of World War II exposed the dangers of imperial monarchy (Hirohito’s Japan), corporate fascism (Mussolini’s Italy) and the susceptibility of democracies to the politics of fear at a time of crisis (the rise of the Nazi Party in the German Republic), but it also gave rise to the powerful and corrupting force of the military-industrial complex.

Over the years leading to the current economic crisis we have forgotten altogether too many lessons of the past. We have forgotten that the innovations of the New Deal were not the temporary fixes of an ailing marketplace but systemic reforms designed to prevent the conglomeration of circumstance that inevitably resulted in past cataclysms from engulfing us again.

Instead of building on the foundation of the New Deal we have gradually allowed our corporate behemoths to tear it apart brick by brick until even Social Security and Medicare are openly challenged by politicians pretending to represent their voting constituents.

Meantime, the consolidation of wealth has marched on unabated and its power to dominate the political process has been zealously protected by both major political parties and the most anti-democratic Supreme Court in modern history – a court that has repeatedly struck down meaningful campaign finance reform on the specious constitutional grounds that corporate contributions are protected “free speech.” (This from justices who never tire condemning “legislating from the bench.”)

We would do well to recall that the ongoing federal bailout of private financial institutions began with those deemed “too big to fail”: Bear Stearns and American International Group. How sweet it must be for corporations to reach that lofty status without the stigma of a government sponsored enterprise – the designation that so offends John McCain and his Free Marketeer compadres when discussing mortgage giant Fannie Mae (originally a government agency created in the New Deal) and its cohort Freddie Mac.

Beneath the radar, while we were dazzled by the hundreds of billions floating away in the Treasury’s bailout package, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were also awarded bailout funds for a bargain $25 billion – presumably too big to fail. Now GM is poised to gobble up Chrysler (if they don’t someone else will) and the Big Three will be down to two.

It was the Free Marketeers who cried out loudest against the bailout yet it was their philosophy (embraced by both major parties in an unrivaled if under-publicized era of bipartisan agreement) of corporate free reign and the dismantling of market regulation that led to the breakdown. The Marketeers made a great show of condemning what they like to call corporate socialism (they voted against it before they voted for it) but what is happening today is by no means socialistic (it’s a bailout, not a buyout); it is rather the deadly combination of runaway capitalism and corporate fascism.

What else can you call a system that allows corporate giants to reap unconscionable profits on a foundation of imaginary assets and when the time comes to pay the piper, they reach out their hands to go on the public dole: Too big to fail?

Few would deny that the system is rigged and that the government is controlled by corporate interests: That, ladies and gentlemen, is a textbook definition of Mussolini’s fascist state.

Despite the dramatic surge on Monday’s opening session, most Americans are coming to terms with the fact that we are only at the beginning stage of a great upheaval. The phenomenal rise in the marketplace may signal that the hemorrhaging has been abated but the crisis is not over.

It is a clear indication, however, that governments remain a powerful force in the global economy – even more powerful than the corporate conglomerates they are called upon to rescue. That power is fortified by the ability of nations to achieve international cooperation and coordination at a time of crisis.

It is critical in the days and years ahead that governments retain that power and achieve greater independence from corporate influence.

The crisis in the financial markets required a massive infusion of capital – an infusion so massive it could not be provided by any single nation. But the broader economic crisis goes much deeper than the housing bubble and mismanagement of the financial sector.

What led us to the edge of economic collapse were the policies of free market fundamentalism. It created ever-larger international corporations answerable to no one. It decimated government regulatory authority. It all but destroyed organized labor by allowing corporations to exploit work forces anywhere in the world where labor rights and living wages did not exist. In its zeal for ever-increasing profits, it created financial assets where none in fact existed. It created a pyramid Ponzi scheme where those at the top could escape with obscene profits before the inevitable implosion.

In its short-term, profit oriented vision it neglected to see the obvious: That by stealing wages and benefits from ordinary workers they were destroying the foundation of the real economy. They were destroying the middle class, the working people, the consumers of goods.

In September 2001, after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, our president told us to go shopping and have faith that those in power would do the right thing. We now know how bad that advice was.

While we whipped out our credit cards as if it was an act of patriotism, our president committed us to perpetual war in two nations, neither of which had attacked us (no, Al Qaeda was not an agent of the Afghan government).

Whatever your opinion on the wars, that strategic decision left us weaker both politically and economically. The current crisis in the financial markets, however it is resolved in the short term, will also leave us weaker (by at least a trillion dollars and counting) and therefore less able to deal with the next crisis.

If we do not take the necessary measures to ensure it will not happen again, it inevitably will – and next time it will be much worse.

Rebuilding the government’s regulatory authority is necessary but it is not enough.

Public works (reconstructing bridges, roads, public buildings, dams, mass transit) to put the people to work is essential but it is not enough.

Tax relief and incentives for working people and small businesses, as well as extended unemployment benefits, is important but it is not enough.

Removing corporate control of the electoral process is critical but it too is not enough.

In order to affect the systemic changes that will enable us to avert a future and inevitable collapse, we must address the role of labor in the global economy and the consolidation of wealth that unwisely places too much responsibility in too few hands.

On the one hand, we must take the lead in asserting the fundamental rights of labor on a global scale. This will require the same kind of international agreement that we have seen come together to rescue financial institutions.

Of equal importance, we must re-assert the antitrust policies that characterized the Teddy Roosevelt era. International corporations with no inherent interest in the public good should never be allowed to grow so large that they cannot be allowed to fail. That is not how the free market is intended to function.

As this financial crisis plays out, the consolidation of wealth accelerates: Wells Fargo absorbs Wachovia, Bank of America absorbs Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, JP Morgan absorbs Bear Stearns, GM absorbs Chrysler, on and on.

To appreciate the dangers of this consolidation (and the diminished competition that comes with it), imagine that a school decided to house all its students in a single large room: When one student catches the flu, the school shuts down.

To a large extent, that is what happened in this financial train wreck: They were all drinking from the same well, all breathing the same toxic air, all sharing the same house and they all caught the same disease.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Friday, October 10, 2008

OBAMA VS. MCCAIN, ROUND II: Ali Vs. The Raging Bull

By Jack Random


Against a backdrop of shifting polls favoring Barack Obama, an economic crisis and a sharp increase in personal attacks from the camp of candidate John McCain, the second presidential debate was billed as an opportunity for McCain to fight back hard and dirty.

It was supposed to be McCain’s Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta against Obama’s “Sugar” Ray Robinson.

Obama not only lived up to his part but transcended, conjuring the image of The Greatest, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee, but McCain came out stumbling, plenty of rage but without direction, flailing like an overmatched club fighter, holding in the clinch and hitting nothing but air.

The only surprise of the evening came early when McCain asserted that as president he would order the Treasury to purchase and renegotiate troubled mortgages, an authority embodied in the recent bailout and an idea recently floated by Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank and Obama himself.

The proposal sounded altogether too New Deal for McCain’s Free Market ideology (indeed it was the founding concept of Franklin Roosevelt’s Home Owner’s Loan Corporation) but his base supporters need not have feared. The devil is in the details: Homeowners would qualify if the could prove they were creditworthy at the time of the original loan. If they were worthy of the loans in the first place, the market would not have exploded like an over inflated balloon. Moreover, McCain’s deal is tilted to the lenders, paying full value for worthless mortgages.

It is another reminder that we cannot trust a card carrying, lifetime Free Market fundamentalist to deliver a fair deal. You wouldn’t buy a second used car from the man who already sold you a lemon.

Upon further review, McCain’s proposal was ill conceived, poorly thought out and wrought with problems – not the least of which is that it runs contrary with his philosophy of government. That McCain would even float the idea is a measure of how desperate he has become in the waning days of this campaign.

While Obama discussed his own efforts to alert the Treasury and the Federal Reserve concerning the looming crisis in unsecured mortgages, McCain moved on to his villains of choice: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation). He ushered us back to 2005 and the curious case of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act sponsored by Senators Chuck Hagel, John Sununu and Elizabeth Dole. The bill was not a serious legislative effort as it contained a poison pill: provisions that eliminated numerous governmental regulatory functions and replaced them with a regulatory corporation (the fox guarding the henhouse).

It died in committee as intended and John McCain signed onto it months later as political cover for the crisis to come.

It is worth noting that Fannie Mae was originally a government institution founded by the New Deal. Had it remained so, lacking an incentive to inflate profits by nefarious means, Fannie Mae would have stood as a firewall against the crisis in the mortgage markets. Instead, it yielded to the pressures of unregulated greed.

We would do well to return Fannie Mae to its original form and purpose.

Choosing not to linger on his legislative foresight, McCain sprinted on to familiar ground: His rant against legislative earmarks, curiously omitting the usual reference to the DNA of grizzlies. (It turns out he voted for that legislation.) Obama replied that while he agreed with earmark reform, it would have no impact on the current economic crisis.

Obama laid out his priorities: Energy first, Health Care second and Education third. McCain said he could do it all. Incredibly, he was willing to freeze all spending and cut Social Security but the one thing he would never cut was military expenditures.

Obama described a vision of a green economy and public works to rebuild our infrastructure, creating millions of good jobs, while McCain extolled the virtues of small business and nuclear energy.

On the theory that if you repeat an assertion loud and long enough people will eventually believe it, McCain charged that Obama would raise taxes (like Herbert Hoover!) and Obama made it clear that he would lower taxes for all but the very richest of Americans.

Obama advocated health care as a right of each and every citizen while McCain, who appeared never to have given it a thought, declared it was a responsibility. Obama noted that de-regulation would do for health care what it did for the financial markets.

On foreign policy, Obama advanced a doctrine of diplomacy, alliance building and moral responsibility while McCain invoked Teddy Roosevelt and seemed to suggest that “victory” on any terms, at any cost, was the only objective worthy of an imperial nation.

One should note that Teddy Roosevelt, in addition to his military heroics, was a trustbuster and an advocate of strong government regulation at a time of runaway greed.

On every front, on every issue of importance to the American people, only one man on the stage at Belmont University showed the breadth and depth of knowledge, the even temperament and precise thinking required to be President of the United States in the troubling times ahead.

When McCain conjured the memory of Herbert Hoover, the antithesis of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, it was not Obama we pictured; it was McCain.

When the final bell sounded and the contest came to a close, the Raging Bull quickly retreated to the privacy of his dressing room (presumably to treat his wounds). His opponent lingered, sharing the moment with the people who witnessed it, enjoying a sense of common cause.

He had gone the distance and he was still dancing. It was a performance worthy of The Greatest of All Time: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

None but the most hardened loyalist was surprised with the verdict.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

NOTE: DISSEMINATE FREELY.

NOTE: I have noticed some strange happenings on the Web. Formerly open posting sites have become proprietary. Links are taken down. Restrictions are enacted. Others have noted such things as well. Have you? Has censorship come to the free media?

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Mansel: Poetry Corner

Limed In Restraints


from the beginning it was a prayer through
clenched hands
a beaten mouth so foreign to the words
as to wild the myrrh
for so blinds a man thus comes the vision
of a sense once used for locating the light

blood and rage, only standing still, eroding
only what was a part of the greater good

that a downturned eye could last in a room
of allegiance is to set fire to a ravine where
the many have gathered to follow the few

I put my hands to the window and began to
tremble, the passage of Purgatory to the
burden of the families of a criminal,

government becoming the intercourse upon
which we joust on the way down to the
rocks below



- Chris Mansel

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Jake's Word: Brand America

As America continues to become a brand name citizens disappear, their
only value deriving from how much they are able to consume.
Mindlessness, Empty stimulation from a billion screens assaulting all
senses at all times everywhere. There is only noise where humans used
to be. Vacuity. Vanity of vanities. Every mouth is open. Every head is
empty. No one left alive can hear the scraping wind. Outside is gone
all to satellite waves and wires. No body but static.

Mansel: Poetry Corner

On An Island (for Jake Berry)


Robinson Jeffers on a loading dock,
blinded in pain takes questions from
reporters but answers in verse

"my predisposition is not to elect
but to persuade, to rise and like
the editor's note befall a certain
uncertainty, the common ailment
of life against the cliff, politics..."

his shoulders shrink and haggard
he returns to the steps from whence
he came and in a moment of clarity
the press is genuinely moved..

if not a community.


- Chris Mansel

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Jake's Word Re: A New Deal for the 21st Century

[Jake Berry's response to A Jazzman Chronicle, reprinted below.]

We were talking about clarity in explanation a few days ago. Your latest makes the issues as clear as they could possibly be. The situation is grim, the solution is a bitter pill and finally, we need some reason to hope that circumstances will improve.

FDR's great gift was the gift of hope. The New Deal did not end the depression, but it gave people hope. It gave people jobs who had given up on finding work. It gave the nation focus and determination to survive. My grandfather was in the Navy when word came of FDR's death. He said the whole base fell silent and everyone wept. Can you imagine that kind of response to the death of a politician now?

Indeed, Hoover has been on our mind's lately. A man as qualified for the presidency as any that ever held the office. Yet when he needed to apply his ample intelligence to governing he stood on the premise of the absence of governing while the economy and the hopes of a vibrant nation crumbled around him, fell into shanty towns, Hoovervilles.

The failures of the Bush administration are so numerous and near absolute that they inspire hopelessness on every level. However, we can point to two major mistakes that may become the Bush legacy. First, when the sympathy of the entire planet was with us, when virtually every nation supported our need to heal and recover, the Bush administration, openly and repeatedly lied in order to instigate a war of aggression. The failure here was one of bad government. Second, while the economy slid from stagnation to recession the administration did nothing. When it became obvious that even his corporate base was in trouble, again he did nothing. This was a failure of no government at all.

It's a matter of sound judgment. When to act and when to show restraint. George W. Bush has failed as miserably as president as he has failed at everything else he has attempted to do with the exception of drunken revelry. And John McCain has voted to support him 90% of the time. What does that say about McCain's judgment? And just to make sure we understood how lousy his judgment was he nominated a vice-presidential candidate that appears to be even less capable of grasping the complexities of the office than Bush.

Obama by comparison rose to national recognition because he was a great organizer. We certainly need a bit of that right now. Since the President's oath of office demands that he uphold the Constitution, who would know better how to do that than someone who taught constitutional law for more than a decade?

Democrats and Republicans alike hesitate before the urgent demands of Bush's Treasury Secretary. Who can blame them? Their constituents pay the price for listening to Bush's lies with the loss of their jobs, their homes and their very lives.

What we need now is hope. At one time it might have been audacious to suggest that hope was the medicine. Now it seems abundantly clear. It was clear to Barack Obama years ago. If this nation has any hope, we will have to pin it on him. Not to cure our problems, but to inspire us and offer pragmatic, reasoned leadership.

The electorate needs to exercise a bit of sound judgment.

Thanks for keeping the flame alive.

Best,
Jake

[Jake Berry, Poet and author of Brambu Drezi, Liminal Blue and other works...]



JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



A NEW DEAL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:
HERBERT HOOVER VERSUS FDR

By Jack Random


The economy is in meltdown. Most of us have begun to recognize how serious the crisis is. Inaction – the dominant policy of the Bush administration – is no longer viable. The institutions of finance are one or two steps from wholesale implosion. Even the corporate cheerleading squad sometimes known as the mainstream media is using the D word: Depression.

We know how we got here: Runaway capitalism, dismantled government regulation, unbridled greed. Twenty years of conservative economic theory applied to the American economy. Twenty years ignoring the lessons of the Savings and Loan Crisis, the Enron scandal, the west coast energy crisis, the technology bust, on and on.

We know that the government is largely to blame. We know therefore that the government is unlikely to accept what must be done to right the balance and set our economy back on firm ground. They would prefer to write a check from the American taxpayers and pass the buck to future generations but the threat of systemic collapse will not go away so easily.

The Bush administration shamelessly pimped the concept of home ownership to every working man and woman in America at a time when real wages were down and debt was rising. They enabled the markets to finance home mortgages through accounting tricks – apparently never thinking that the bills would come due on their watch. They replaced an economy that once produced real value with an Enron Ponzi Scheme.

The question becomes: Where do we go from here?

On the short term, an infusion of capital is required. We can all agree that the heart of the current collapse is the housing market. We can agree that millions of Americans were given loans that they could not afford and that should never have been given.

The short-term solution is to make those loans good by restructuring them and giving them the backing of the United States Treasury.

We have heard the same conservative ideologues who preached deregulation from every pulpit decry with rare venom the very thought of helping the foreclosed. Like Herbert Hoover in his direst hour, they plead with us never to forgive the individual who dared to believe that she or he could own a home.

There was a time in this country when you could trust the bank or the mortgage company to give you a fair deal. Why would any responsible institution offer a loan that could not be repaid? The answer is they would not; only a crook would conspire to steal your limited savings and leave you without a prayer.

If you are fortunate enough to have bought a home on a workingman’s wages, you know that you are dependent on the broker representing you. At the escrow signing, hundreds of papers in the foreign language of legalese are paraded before your dazzled eyes. You are asked to sign here, initial there and when it is over, you can only hope that the papers say what you think they say.

If anyone deserves to be forgiven it is the hapless individuals who reached for the dream the president the held out to them at every opportunity. Let them stay in their homes if they have not been foreclosed. If they have already lost their homes, let them find a new beginning with a roof over their heads and hope in their hearts.

In the parlance of those now promoting the great bailout, by helping them we are helping ourselves. We are even helping the unscrupulous lenders who almost broke the system but that is an unfortunate necessity.

Of course, what we do in the short term will make little difference if we do not restore balance in the system. The price of unfettered greed is rigorous regulation. We do not need a new bureaucracy to achieve this goal; we need a president dedicated to the cause.

Despite an apparent eleventh hour conversion, John McCain is not the man for the job. He has spent his entire career equating government regulation with socialism – a concept he holds beneath contempt. He is gambling that this is a temporary crisis. He will revert to his roots the moment he takes office.

Regulation is necessary but it is not sufficient. It will not restore balance for the working class will remain bridled by debt and unable to sustain a consumer-based economy.

We need new jobs. We need a green economy. We need a massive workforce to rebuild our aging infrastructure and, more importantly, to create a twenty first century infrastructure. In the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, we need public works. We need them more than ever because they provide jobs that cannot be outsourced and they are long overdue.

Beyond public works, we confront a monumental problem that FDR could never have imagined: the outsourcing of American jobs in a globalized economy. The obvious answer is fair trade. American workers can compete and win on a fair playing field but no one can compete with slave labor. The masterminds behind this new economy have built corporate profits by exploiting the cheapest possible labor overseas and simultaneously undermining labor in our own country.

That is why Americans are buried in debt. That is why we cannot sustain our standard of living. Only when labor standards and fair wages are built into the trade formula will this impoverishment of the working class end.

In 1932 the American people faced a clear choice: Herbert Hoover stood firm for individual responsibility. Translation: He would not lift a finger to help the people at the bottom of the chain, the people who had lost their homes, their jobs and their life savings. In recognition of the grave economic reality of the Great Depression, he was willing to help the banks but the people were on their own. It was a 20th century version of: Let them eat cake.

Franklin Roosevelt had a different approach: Lift up the people with public works, relief and social security. He understood that the only way to lift the nation out of its deep hole was to rebuild its foundation from the bottom up.

In this fundamental sense, the choice we now face is equally clear: McCain is Hoover and Obama is FDR.

In light of the economic crisis before us, I would like to see Barack Obama rename his cause for the final weeks of this campaign: A New Deal for the 21st Century.

That would make it clear who he is standing with, what he is fighting for, and the principles that will guide his actions as we move forward in these dark and troubled times.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HE IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Jake's Word re: The Blame Game, Part Two

(A response to Jack Random's The Blame Game - Part Two, The Trillion Dollar Gambit: Corporate Socialism. Reprinted below.)

If only one - one - a number that even George W. Bush can count in his sleep - if only one of the so-called pundits, experts and economists spoke or wrote with the clarity and precision that you employ the people of this nation might actually wake from their media induced stupor and take action.

The problem is that I don't think any of the experts can see the situation as clearly as you do. Or perhaps they are being paid too well to see beyond the veil of phony finances that have been the pillar of fat that has supported this fictional economy since it was sold lock, stock and barrel during the first oil crisis.

There are some of us that remember it all too well because just as we were learning to drive and getting our first cars we found ourselves in long lines waiting to pay double or triple what we would have paid only a few months before. Nixon, for his crimes, was trying to dodge the law by manipulating the justice system. He was pulling remedies for the economy out of his back pocket that only Stalin or Castro would have dreamed of before him. Price freezes. A free-market, anti-communist was making executive decisions in all directions like a dictator. Congress was reeling. This man after all had just been re-elected by a huge margin. Not until the evidence was so obvious that it had become common currency did they act. Too little and too late.

By the time he left office Nixon had cut a deal with Chairman Mao that opened the door to economic prosperity - for China. About that same time the standard of living in terms of real dollars and wages, genuine wealth, peaked for the middle class. The rich continued to get richer and the poor could continue to make do with the scraps, but for the majority the grand promise of post-war prosperity hit a wall. It has never recovered.

There was the boom of the 80s in which the national debt sky rocketed to pay the price of rockets and bombs for a cold war that could only become hot at the expense of the end of the world.

The taxpayers had to pony up for that one during the first Bush administration. Bush himself paid with the loss of the election. The neocons never forgot that lesson. They determined to invent a new set of lies for the New World Order.

Enter The Project for a New American Century where the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz laid plans for the invasion of Iraq, the domination of the Middle East by force and the extension of Pax Americana (the term is used in one of the articles at their website).

Meanwhile the Clinton administration witnessed the longest economic expansion in the nation's history. Never mind that it was financed by an explosion of cheap, and often worthless, imports and the wildest level of speculation that Wall Street had ever seen. Suddenly it seemed the budget was balanced and everybody wanted to take credit.

Credit is the key word because that was how the whole thing was financed. Internet companies were making billions of dollars based on what their profits would be in the future. Every new retirement plan added a 401(k) option. We'd become a nation of gamblers. When the Treasury Department informed the President that many of the CEOs salaries were based on this kind of speculation and that it was in fact illegal, Clinton chose not to enforce the law. Why rain on his own parade? Especially at a time when he was being impeached by a Republican congress for things that had nothing to do with government, the economy or anything else that would have effected the future of any family in the U.S. outside his own.

By the time the towers fell and revealed the staggering amount of corruption that fueled companies like Enron and MCI, the dim-witted son of the former president had seized the oval office on the backs of a cabal of his father's friends including those Pax America fellows.

Eight years on and we hear an ironically familiar song from that administration. This time they are warning us of a complete economic meltdown. Suddenly, the crisis is obvious. Even the opposition party is scrambling to get in line to vote in favor of the solution. No one wants to be left to blame when the world comes to an end - whether it be an immediate and inevitable assault by terrorists or the collapse of every financial institution in the country. Such is the price of deceit. The first time around we were told a lie and we, and the future generations, will pay at least a trillion dollars for it. Now they come from another direction asking for another trillion.

Should we believe them? Indeed as you make so clear, what happens if the Chinese government, the EU and the others who are financing this debt decide to collect the debt sooner than we are able to repay it?

A few years ago Gore Vidal said that one day the debt collectors would come for their money and the American Empire would be over.

Death always comes too soon. No matter what age, you'll always ask for another day. Not today, perhaps next month or next year, any time but now.

The corporate elite and the government they bought with our money are telling us today is the day unless we pay up. Why should we believe them? Simple. Just as before the question hangs over us - what if they are right? We won't know until the money has been committed, the election is over, and everyone at the top of the heap is once again raking in profits at historic levels. Whether those profits are here, in China, India, Europe or all over the world makes no difference to them.

Thanks again for yet another in a long, powerful string of essays that keep us on our toes with eyes wide open.

Peace,

Jake Berry

(Author of Brambu Drezi, Liminal Blue and other works of extraordinary insight.)



JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



The Blame Game – Part Two
THE TRILLION-DOLLAR GAMBIT:
CORPORATE SOCIALISM

By Jack Random


On September 19, 2008 the government announced what amounts to a trillion dollar bailout of the corporate empire. It was denounced in some quarters as corporate socialism.

Corporate socialism is an oxymoron. What kind of socialism nationalizes the debt of private enterprise without nationalizing the profits? What kind of socialism assumes liability without assuming assets?

Whatever this is it is not corporate socialism.

Overnight the national debt grew by a trillion dollars – from 9.6 to 10.6 trillion.

What happened?

The ultimate dream of the Adam Smith Free Marketeers, an unconstrained and deregulated marketplace, ran us straight over a cliff. Rather than sit and watch tragedy unfold as their philosophy mandates, they have chosen to enact the largest government intervention since Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

This time, instead of infusing the economy with capital from the ground up, they are robbing the victims (all of us) to save the Robber Barons.

All the economists agree it is necessary and there is no alternative. I would feel more secure if all the economists saw this crisis approaching.

What happens next?

Having transferred a trillion dollars of debt from private corporations to the government, it is the government that is now at risk. The implications are profound.

Our exploding debt is being financed by foreign nations including China, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia and the European Union.

For the first time in our history we have handed the fate of the nation to another country and we all know who it is: China. The same China that steals our jobs, depresses our wages and displays such a disturbing lack of government regulation that Chinese industries have sought to increase profits by adding a toxic chemical to baby formula and lead to the paint on toys for tots.

We cannot trust China to do what we have failed to do (regulate our industries) but we have no choice. They own us. It is unlikely for now that China will bite the hand that feeds them but if the debt continues to mount, they will have no choice. Nothing in China’s history suggests that they would hold on to a drowning man.

The markets soared on the news of the great government bailout – as well they should. We have removed risk from the marketplace. It is a phenomenon that violates the essential core of a free market economy. Suspending the practice of selling short (betting on a stock to go down) is also against the tenets of a free market. Installing brakes on sell orders during a fall (after a 1987 crash) is also antithesis to the free market ideal.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (enacted after the Bush infected Enron scandal) sought to bring transparency and accountability to corporate accounting. Applied to the current crisis, it actually might have helped but it was also against the free market mandate, which is why it was never enforced by the Bush regime.

So it seems the free market is not so sacrosanct after all. Wall Street likes a fixed market: Heads we win, tails you lose. We are all regulators now. Government intervention will be employed with reckless abandon whenever the corporate giants come calling.

It is an outrage that the American people must pay a second time for this trillion-dollar train wreck. We paid once with our homes, our home values, our defaults and our debt. (Is this what the president meant when he asked us to go shopping after 9-11? Remember the president’s Ownership Society?) Now we will pay again and the bills keep coming.

It was a failed strategy of the corporate elite that caused this crisis and it was never intended to benefit anyone but their own. This is the nastiest part of this nightmare scenario: The guilty party has been richly rewarded for grossly irresponsible behavior.

It seems the only guilty party we can hold responsible is the “free-trade-free-market” politicians. They too have profited from this disaster. Contributions came with the package.

This means you: John McCain.

If you have ever witnessed your local politicians swooning over “deregulation” or trumpeting the virtues of “free trade,” it is time to give them what we can only dream: early retirement.

We don’t know where it ends but we do know who got us here.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). HE IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Mind of Mansel: Could it be?

**

"What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement."

- Kierkegaard

Could it be that the choice of Joe Biden for VP, could turn out to be as bad a choice as Eagleton in 1972 for McGovern? Could it be that the polls running neck and neck could have been demolished for good by a different choice, and not Hillary Clinton? Could the Democratic party finally move to the left? Do the footsteps of gravediggers really fill convention halls after the chairs have been put up?

- Chris Mansel

Mind of Mansel: Insubordination

**

leaving the way, returning to the burning
found in nature, cited here as turning
what you gonna do when your dialectic
has gone the death of animals, a waste
of strength

when you envisage a region scattered
of revolt, the only obstinacy crumpled pages
mercy on the projection of terrifying innocence
my wounds run deeper, they animate an
antisocial expenditure not separated by loss

degradation is the common convulsion shredding
in three colors: red, white, and blue.


- Chris Mansel

Mind of Mansel: Right Down To Hell

(for Jack Random)


they were carving up the meat the other day
trying to get the bread to look the other way
they divested the spreads to fit the knives
but appetites could never keep up with their eyes
and just now before you go and condemn the tray
the salads and forks will get involved or so they say

dancing men grow impaled
split right down to hell
on the eye of the needle
right down to hell

I can't find humanity though I looked in the mirror today
It was a brick wall against where I used to pray
there was gnashing of teeth as they led me by flashlight
stepping over the bodies that had washed up overnight
laughing dying eyes always implies I'm going insane
I'm looking for the obscuriity of Zarathustra in
a presidential campaign

dancing men grow impaled
split right down to hell
on the eye of the needle
right down to hell


- Chris Mansel

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Jake's Word: No Country!

The following lines are from the narration of the opening scenes of No Country For Old Men I think they speak powerfully as a metaphor for the current state of the union:

The crime you see now, it's hard to even
take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid
of it.

I always knew you had to be willing to
die to even do this job - not to be
glorious. But I don't want to push my
chips forward and go out and meet some-
thing I don't understand.


You can say it's my job to fight it but
I don't know what it is anymore.


...More than that, I don't want to know. A
man would have to put his soul at hazard.


... He would have to say, okay, I'll be
part of this world.


The question before us is, do we want to be a part of this world? A world where enormous sums are squandered, tossed around like plastic chips, cast to the wind, along with the savings, homes and hopes of hard working, honest people. A world where violence, manipulation and double-dealing are the means most often used to get the country the resources it needs to continue at it's present rate of consumption.

I don't want to be a part of a world like that. Not because I'm a righteous man, but because I'm as evil as any other man and as susceptible to greed and selfishness. At some point you have to say, "Enough. I won't be a part of this. This is not my country and these are not my people."

I will live here because I was born here, but I will not participate in a spectacle that is a bald-faced lie, a bold charade the opposite of what it is supposed to be. This is the last election. Democracy's last chance in these states for as far as the eye can see. Should the people shirk democracy I do not want to bear witness to the consequences. I have seen enough already. There must be more to do with my time, my mind, my soul than engage this malevolence day in and day out. I'll make it my business to attend to my business and may God damn the poor m*therf*cker that stands in my way. That is the American way, right?

Election Day. See you there. Bring a torch.


Jake Berry (author of Brambu Drezi and Liminal Blue)

Jake's Word: How much does it take?

Today two more banks crash and burn. How much does it take?

Obama is no savior, you don't get saviors out of elections. I'm not sure you get them at all. But his election at the very least would signify to the world that the voters in the U.S. have not gone completely insane. Polls outside the U.S. show a vast majority worldwide in favor of Obama, in favor of anything but a continuation of the last eight years, or worse. McCain's election would be yet another message to the rest of the world that the majority of registered voters in the U.S. are unconcerned about them. Not a good message to send when so few are consuming so much of the world's resources while many starve or die from disease or war that are a direct result of this nation's selfishness. How's that for family values?

I'm truly concerned that the only alternative come next year may be the outright rejection of all political institutions. The result may be a global revolt against all governments. The big problem with that is that revolutions are invariably followed by a reign of terror, tyrants, dictators and political homicide in the thousands or millions.

It's either that or a new dark age. One authority over all.

It's sad to think that a handful of people who normally pay little or no attention to politics will make a decision that seems casual to them, but will have such far reaching consequences.

In Alabama and California the race is over. It's like waiting to see the end. Or as Wayne says in his song "Old Pompey," "which day does Judgement Day fall on this year."

Jake Berry (author of Brambu Drezi and Liminal Blue)

Monday, September 15, 2008

Jake's Word re: McCain 4 Change!

(Response to a Jazzman Chronicle: Notes from The Inner Circle - reprinted below.)

There is an old maxim among conservatives - kill the beast. The idea being, as Reagan said in his first inaugural address, that government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. Most Americans did, and still do, agree with that. But the statement does not go nearly far enough. It is in fact a ruse. Most of those that heard Reagan utter those words believed him to be saying that he would lower taxes and remove the government's meddling in their lives - which were two of the campaign promises he had made. But that is only part of the story and therein lies the ruse. If you deprive the government of its powers and excesses you must also delete the other powers in the land. Namely, large corporations and other large concentrations of wealth. If you fail to do this then the people are left with no recourse at all, no means by which to express the redress of grievances that the Constitution guarantees. That is the open secret. Dismantle government, but leave the other powers in tact to act without restraint – the neoconservative doctrine.

Indeed, they are "closer now than ever to realizing [their] agenda." Even the military is being sold. As much as half of the foreign military presence in Iraq is in the hands of private companies. From the meals soldiers are being served to "security" forces like Blackwater, it's paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, but responsible to private companies and stockholders.

On the other hand when the banks that hold almost two-thirds of the mortgages in the country squander their resources through unscrupulous business practices and very nearly collapse, who saves them? Why, the government of course. This means that anyone who holds a mortgage with Fanny Mae or Freddy Mac faces the prospect of losing their home to the government should they have to default on loans that were tricky to navigate from the start and only became more so as interest rates rose and the economy continued to falter. Does a government with a lien on two-thirds of the mortgages in the U.S. sound like less government? Well, it's hard to say at a time when there is so little distinction between government and private corporations. Who owns what and who owes what to who and what happens if the payments can't be made?

The plot thickens. Take a look at the 401k you've been depositing money in since the heady 1990s. Your returns haven't been returns at all over the past seven years, they've been liabilities. You keep sending a portion of your hard earned dollars to a broad range of corporations that are taking your money and giving you less than nothing in return. Less than nothing. Take a look at the companies guilty of unscrupulous business and then take a look at the companies you are financing. You'll see many of the same names in both places. Let me make this as clear as mud. You send your money to companies who then steal the homes of their customers through subprime loans (to use the most reported issue as an an example). When the customers, and you may be one of them, are unable to pay, the companies grab the properties. But when enough homes go into foreclosure the company collapses and the government using taxpayers dollars picks up the tab. Do you see what is happening? We are paying thieves to rob us blind. Money keeps going out of your pocket into the pockets of people who are far richer than you. And this happens precisely because those people are unethical, even criminal.

Is there a solution? Can the tide be turned? What happens if you drop your 401k and therefore stop sending your hard earned dollars to these large corporations? The stocks will slip, the economy will continue to slide. What happens if you stop buying gasoline? The oil companies lose profit and begin to crumble. Will they adapt and offer a form of sustainable fuel? They say they would be unable to do that in the short term (meaning between now and 2020).

Did you believe in the American dream, the one they taught us about in school? Work hard, apply yourself and you will succeed. Make honesty, loyalty and fidelity your creed and you will be rewarded. How has that worked out for us? Look around. Look at the for sale signs in front of homes. Look at how much you are paying for health insurance compared to the service you are receiving. The money keeps flowing up, up, up.

Welcome to America. A brand name for a global corporation whose substance is as thin as the phony money and sub rosa contracts it is printed on. This is the world we all invested in. We paid to create these very conditions and we are still paying. Every time we buy anything, pay our mortgage, fill up our tanks we are investing in a con game that is raping the world, devouring resources faster than they can be produced, and making a small handful of people so powerful that not even they know the limits of that power.

Welcome to America. Welcome to twilight. It's difficult to discern one thing from another. Something is happening here, but we don't know what it is.

Is it too late already? I don't know. But two months into next year we'll be living with a new executive in charge of brand America and we'll find out if this is the twilight before dawn or descent into a long cold night.

Perhaps 2000 was the last election – the point at which representative government slipped away from us forever. Perhaps 2008 is the last election. One day soon we will know. I for one would like to be able to look back and say that at least I cried out against the night.


Jake Berry (Author of Brambu Drezi and Liminal Blue.)



JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



NOTES FROM THE INNER CIRCLE:
McCAIN-PALIN 2008!

By Jack Random


On the occasion of a successful Republican National Convention, it is an appropriate time to take stock of our progress as Americans dedicated to real and systemic change.

It is with cautious optimism that I declare: We are closer now than we ever have been to realizing the objectives for which we have worked so hard over the course of the last fifteen years.

When we set out on this venture, few could have imagined success would come so soon and with so little resistance. Indeed, we could not have anticipated the ease with which we have moved our hidden agenda along on its path to fruition.

After the utterly predictable failure of President Bill Clinton’s first one hundred days (universal health care and gays in the military – who were they kidding?), we sent in Dick Morris to turn the liberal Democrat around. To our astonishment, we found a chief executive not only willing but eager to sell out. Clinton’s sudden embrace of all things conservative was so convincing we did not have to worry about a second term. We made him a millionaire overnight and the president cherished his new role as a darling of the corporate elite.

Clinton became the perfect setup man on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts but we still needed a break to prevent Al Gore with his progressive economic and environmental agenda from delivering a setback (how great we will never know) in 2000. Monica Gate, lame politics (don’t campaign in Tennessee and don’t send Bill to Arkansas), Joe Lieberman (the fox in the hen house), a butterfly ballot, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and Warren Christopher in Florida sealed the deal.

The United States Supreme Court handed us our greatest victory. We knew we could count on George to steer the ship of state straight into the rocks: Corporate deregulation, unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, runaway Free Trade, pimping the principle of home ownership, dismantling federal agencies: What could go wrong?

We knew our president would never change course no matter how disastrous his policies would prove. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

We had the vaunted Neocons in place (a brain trust so radical and out of touch that even Reagan would have nothing to do with them) and a compliant corporate media to paint them as the Knights of the Last Order – wise and infallible beyond reason.

Still, we needed a trigger – a catastrophic event that would ignite a chain of endless war to swallow our resources and bury us in insurmountable debt. Along came September 11, 2001.

Let the world know we were not the moving force behind that tragedy nor do we know who was yet it cannot be denied that it was the accelerator that pushed our mission into hyper drive. Thanks to the 9-11 Commission that like the Warren Commission in another time and space, we may never be able to determine the full extent of the crime or those complicit in its perpetration. What we know we can only surmise from a cost-benefit analysis: Like the old gumshoe detective said: Follow the money. It is however neither in our interest nor in the interest of our government to uncover the sordid truth.

It is ironic that our detractors so often accuse us of being godless and without faith. If there is a divinity overseeing human events, it is clearly on our side.

The feckless John Kerry was never truly a threat in 2004. With the Rove-Bush voter fraud and disenfranchisement machine fully operational, only a landslide would have put the result in question. The Massachusetts senator did everything he could to throw the election to his opponent. Was he working for us? We’ll never tell!

Of course, not everything has gone as we planned. We did not intend for the Democrats to gain control of Congress in the midterm elections. With a strong mandate to end the war and redirect our economic policies, we faced a potential threat. However, once Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was off the table we realized that the Democrats would fall into line. They would settle for symbolic opposition and make an appeal for an even larger majority in the next election.

As long as we can keep forty-one members of the United States Senate in Republican hands (with Lieberman as a buffer), Congress will remain stymied and will ultimately go along with whatever the White House wants.

Everything now depends on the presidential race.

Six months ago none would have speculated that a Republican would stand the slightest chance of gaining four more years of the same policies that have brought the new American empire to the very brink of economic and military collapse.

But here we are: Less than two months before election day, the old warrior (whom rumor has it once displayed alarming bouts of independence) has pulled out every card in the Karl Rove deck and stands one tantalizing step away from realizing the ultimate ambition. Even better, if the old warrior should fall midterm, the young lady from Alaska (who knows less about economics and foreign policy than her mentor has forgotten) would rise to the highest power in all the land.

Either way, we can rest assured that all current trends will continue unabated. There will be wars and more wars. Military expenditures will double and quadruple even as the national infrastructure continues to crumble. Jobs will be exported at an accelerated rate, wages will continue to decline, prices will rise and home foreclosures will reach epidemic proportions.

As bank after bank fails and people line up on the streets for shelter and food, panic will take hold. Common working people with families to feed and care for will be living in public parks and police will bang heads. Soldiers will abandon their posts and angry mobs will surround the institutions of government.

Congress will finally act but it will be too late: A worldwide depression, global economic collapse, institutional failure and mass chaos.

The ultimate and final victory, that eternal blank slate that allows the world to begin again:

One hundred years of anarchy.

Dream it and make it so!

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

RE: McCain: Where's the Beef?

[Jake Berry's response to "The Search for Policy in McCain's Appeal" by Jack Random. Reprinted Below.]

Essay after essay you keep nailing it! The neo-cons are completely transparent in their quest for permanent rule. If they can slip McCain in and he can last for a few years, maybe a full term or more then electing the vapid beauty queen will be easy. The are working for an additional 12-16 years in control of the executive and therefore judicial branches. If they can manage that and keep the people divided among themselves enough to keep the legislative in check or completely submissive they will be able to complete their agenda: the dismantling of the government in favor of a figurehead government that enacts the will of the ruling class. Welcome to the new dark ages.

Regardless of Obama's politics, he is not McCain. This means he is not the chosen vehicle of the powers that be. The skinny kid with the funny name is all that stands between the U.S. and the ascent of a new type of American fascism. There has been a tendency toward this kind of oligarchy since the beginning (the anti-sedition laws under Adams and Wilson, for example). We are perilously close to the end of daylight. The only thing that would awaken the populace in large enough numbers should this election go to McCain would be a great depression.

Only a few thousand people in two or three states will likely make that decision for us. How can anyone remain undecided at this point? It makes you wonder whether or not the majority really wants representative government. Perhaps they prefer a strong central authority accompanied by HDTV and all the amusements they can consume.

I hope that this is cynicism. I fear that it is realism.

Jake Berry (jakebridget@bellsouth.net)



JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



THE SEARCH FOR POLICY IN McCAIN’S APPEAL:
NOT A PENNY’S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE

By Jack Random


Stand up for the wealthy and the ruling elite!

Stand up and fight for lower corporate tax rates!

Stand up for the policies that have placed the nation at the precipice of disaster!

Stand up and fight for oil and coal!

Stand up for labor exploitation!

Stand and fight for the right to work at lower wages!

Stand up for nuclear waste!

Stand up for privatization of Medicare and Social Security!

Stand up and fight to put my finger on the trigger of nuclear extinction!

Listening to John McCain at the Republican National Convention, you would have thought he was opposing eight years of catastrophic Democratic rule. His call to arms should be answered in kind:

Where is the beef?

John McCain says he is his own man. He says he marches to his own beat. He says he stands up to corporate interests. He says he is a different kind of Republican.

He says a lot of things that the Bush-Rove-McCain team believes will win him votes but if we look at his policies, there’s not a dime, not a nickel, not a thin copper penny’s worth of difference between John McCain and George W. Bush.

Those who have been searching McCain’s slogans for real policy reform have consistently come up empty. After his much ballyhooed speech, the search goes on.

TAX POLICY: RENEW BUSH CUTS, CUT CORPORATE TAX RATE.

McCain’s advocacy of making the most inequitable tax reform in history permanent – the Bush tax cuts that have contributed so much to our current economic crisis – is at once hypocritical (he opposed them as recently as three years ago) and an obvious pander to the corporate elite. His proposal to cut the corporate tax rate by ten percent seems reasonable enough until you look under the hood.

As McCain so often pontificates, America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. What he does not say is that our internationally based corporations rarely if ever pay them.

“You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world…so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied. Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%.”

(Igor Greenwald, “The Invisible Hand: High Corporate Tax Rate Is Misleading.” Smart Money, January 25, 2008.)

So the reform in McCain’s tax cut policy is nothing more than a slight of hand – the same old Bush-Rove tactic of “Let’s not and say we did.” Corporations are not clamoring for lower tax rates because they don’t pay them. Still, it’s nice for them to know McCain cares.

ENERGY POLICY: OIL DRILLING, NUKES, COAL.

As an afterthought to McCain’s energy policies, he promises to increase spending on solar and wind power. This is one of the Bush-Rove favored tactics. It is the nature of a growing nation combined with the inflationary trend of currency that if we do nothing at all spending will grow. This is why Bush can claim to have spent more money on [fill in the blank] than any president in history.

The truth is: Like Bush, McCain will give tax incentives for renewable energy research to oil companies who will spend a large chunk of it on television commercials.

The cry of “Drill Now!” at the RNC is nothing more than a propaganda campaign. Unless we have found a way to economically steal Canadian and Russian oil reserves from the North Slope of Alaska (we have not) there is not an expert in the world who will claim that drilling will have any significant impact on energy dependence or the cost of gas.

The idea of safe nuclear energy is a myth that has tragically been embraced by both major parties and they ought to know better. Watch the unfolding events in France as they struggle with dying rivers, toxic land and poisoned drinking water. The million-year problem of nuclear waste will not go away. How long will it be acceptable to bury our poisons in other people’s back yards before we accept that nuclear energy is not the answer?

The same holds for the myth of “clean” coal. To the extent that sequestration is possible, it would be so expensive that hamsters generating power on a spinning wheel would be more viable.

The Bush-McCain-Rove people know these realities but they do not care. When push comes to shove, they will scrap the adjective and give us all the dirty coal our lungs can suffer.

Pollution? Climate change? Let’s not and say we did.

EDUCATION REFORM: CHOICE = PRIVATIZATION.

Of all the lies the Bush-Rove-McCain team promotes, this may be the most insidious. Under the draconian measures of No Child Left Behind, public schools are beginning to resemble assembly lines. Test scores are up but inspiration, creativity and adaptability are lost.

It is a losing game. The idea is and always has been to transfer public funds to private schools where the righteous can teach young minds the virtues of Republican values. Why is it no one ever asks why private schools are not subjected to the same rigorous testing standards as the public schools? Private schools bolster their results the same way Bush did in Texas: By removing students who hurt the bottom line.

As for the idea that education is the answer to our economic troubles, that is a down and dirty lie. Tell us what jobs we can prepare for that will not be subject to the exportation of labor under the mandates of global free trade?

TRADE POLICY: FREE TRADE.

Recently, Dell Computers announced they were closing down their manufacturing centers, laying off thousands of workers, with the intent of contracting out their manufacturing operation. Translation: They will export those jobs to other countries where workers have little or no rights and are paid slave wages. The stock went up on a down day.

That is free trade in a nutshell: It ought to be called a corporate free ride. The global economy has been used to institutionalize labor exploitation in underdeveloped nations. The cost is born by workers in developed nations in the form of lower wages, loss of labor standards and cutting unions out of the process.

Where does John McCain stand on trade and labor rights? Somewhere to the right of J.P. Morgan. He has never voted against a Free Trade agreement.

“I'm the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see.” (Republican Presidential Debate, December 12, 2007.)

McCain has vehemently embraced “right to work” laws that are nothing but a scheme to outlaw union organization in the workplace. Even in the hard times we are now facing, he voted against raising minimum wage and against extending unemployment benefits.

HEALTH CARE: PRIVATIZATION.

When you peel back the rhetoric and strip away the phony compassion, the Bush-McCain-Rove policies always come down to privatization. If they had their way, they would privatize Social Security, education and Medicare. McCain supported Bush’s failed initiative to begin a privatization plan for Social Security. He voted to cut Medicare funding and opposed reauthorization and funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

His proposal for health care reform would reclassify health care premiums as taxable income. Is that really the kind of reform America wants? Reminiscent of the gas tax holiday, he would hand out tokens in the form of tax breaks while giving a free hand to private insurance companies.

Anyone who believes that the party of rugged individualism, the party that is fundamentally opposed to social services, the party that still believes the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a communist conspiracy, will reform Medicare to the benefit of the people is delusional.

If it were in their power, they would scrap all domestic programs and let the chips fall.

BALANCING THE BUDGET: EARMARKS.

Another of the tricks exploited by the McCain-Bush-Rove machine is that they will speak of small matters in a manner that makes them seem important. McCain has claimed that he could save $100 billion overnight by eliminating the add-on expenditures known as “earmarks.” When pressed, the McCain campaign had to admit they invented the figure.

(Michael Dobbs, The Fact Checker: “McCain’s Fantasy War on Earmarks,” Washington Post, 5/23/08).

If McCain is serious about eliminating this congressional tradition – one that is often used in legislative negotiations – then he is dreaming. If not, he is posturing.

When you examine McCain’s reputation as a Maverick, it is 90% fluff. He postures a lot but when it comes down to action, he generally goes along for the ride.

The most moving part of McCain’s convention speech was the telling of his experience as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. It was moving to hear a proud man admit that the enemy pushed him until he broke. It is sadder still when you realize that the party he represents in this race for the White House has done the same: They pushed him until he broke. No longer will he speak out for compromise on immigration policy or tolerance for gays and lesbians. No longer will he oppose a tax cut policy favoring the elite at a time of war. No longer will he stand strong against torture and for the Geneva Conventions. The new John McCain knows his limitations and plays his part.

What McCain sacrificed to become his party’s nominee for president was whatever remained of his integrity and individuality.

The Maverick, if he ever truly existed, is long dead. What remains is the typical Bush-Rove politician.

Why mess with a winning formula?

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE DAILY SCARE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.