I’m not sure what to make of the happy talk I hear from the mainstream media about the American economy, but when pundits of every stripe unanimously crow that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, and that the housing market is poised for a dramatic rebound, I get nervous and then suspicious. What are the masters of the status quo up to now?
In the Men’s Lounge of a posh Connecticut country club, a pack of blue-blooded moguls are sipping scotch and laughing their asses off about how easy it was to turn their gambling losses into gold, courtesy of the American taxpayer. “Is this the greatest country in the world or what? When I make a pile of dough I get to keep it, and when I lose a pile I just transfer the losses to the little people and walk away scot-free. Boo-yaa!” Better still in the eyes of the moguls, there was no messy democratic process to go through in order to socialize their losses; the great, fat, lazy and stupid masses had no say in the matter at all; their easily bought and sold elected representatives made sure of that. Nope, John and Jane Q. Public didn’t have an opportunity to cast a vote or make their voice heard regarding the Wall Street bailout; all they get is the bill.
To this day the Treasury department can’t account for much of the dough it lavished on the criminals, incompetents and liars who drove the economy over the cliff. Ten million here, twenty-five million there, fifty million to the fat man standing by the door, but nobody knows what the fat man did with his share of the loot; for all the government knows he stuffed his mattress with the money or had himself a helluva weekend in Antigua.
And now the forces behind the status quo are telling us that everything is looking rosy and that happy days are dead ahead. For proof all we need do is look at the stock market. If you believe CNBC, things are turning so ducky that we should shift our focus from stimulus to good old-fashioned fiscal austerity. Notwithstanding that it was Dick Cheney himself who boasted a few years back that “deficits don’t matter,” Republicans have seized on the debt issue like a barracuda on a flounder and are blaming Obama for plunging the nation into the abyss. Sorry, GW Bush and Cheney managed that all by themselves.
Of wages and working people we hear next to nothing. The same goes for homes lost to foreclosure, people up to their necks in credit card or medical debt or families who cannot afford decent food or clothing. The misery is hidden inside the media euphoria and cheerleading over the recent up-tick in the stock market. As long as the crisis is over for the investor class who gives a shit if the masses are hurting? Who gives a shit if California goes bankrupt? The stock market is showing signs of life, and part-time real estate agents all over the country insist that the housing bust is a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, those of us who work for wages get no relief. The cost of gasoline is rising again; Iraq and Afghanistan are sinkholes for our tax dollars; Congress is corrupt and deaf to the plight of everyone except large campaign donors; a rational proposal for a single-payer health care system was swept off the negotiating table before talks even began.
Same old, same old. The high hopes many of us had on Inauguration Day are long gone, crushed by the guardians of the status quo.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
POEM - The Great Majority
the great majority
will never hit a home run
in a World Series game
discover the cure for cancer
write a symphony
headline a Broadway play
rape somebody
steal from a blind man
kill out of anger
the great majority
will go on year in and year out
doing unspectacular things
like
reading to their children
cooking meals
sweeping floors
planting roses
donating blood
the great majority
will pass away unnoticed
by the great minority
who get all the
attention
will never hit a home run
in a World Series game
discover the cure for cancer
write a symphony
headline a Broadway play
rape somebody
steal from a blind man
kill out of anger
the great majority
will go on year in and year out
doing unspectacular things
like
reading to their children
cooking meals
sweeping floors
planting roses
donating blood
the great majority
will pass away unnoticed
by the great minority
who get all the
attention
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Presidential Version Of Oprah
Where is the change Barrack Obama spoke so eloquently about when he was campaigning for the presidency? When are his actions going to measure up to his soaring rhetoric? Six months into his first term, Obama has shown that he is cool and smooth, articulate as the day is long, attuned to the political vibrations in DC and a compelling photo op when he and Michelle stroll across the White House lawn, but where’s the change, where’s the substance? Obama sneezes and his well-oiled PR machine cranks out an e-mail blast; Obama shoots hoops with inner-city kids and five million text messages are launched; Obama cracks a joke at the pyramids in Egypt and it’s on YouTube in a matter of minutes.
Obama is a wonderful show after the desolation, corruption and stupidity of the Bush-Cheney junta, but the status quo in America is still alive and thriving. Not that any but the most naive observers expected Obama to honestly challenge the status quo or deliver on his many campaign promises, for politicians rarely keep the promises they make in the heat of a campaign. And let’s not forget that the Obama Administration was behind the eight ball from Day One. Still, it’s hard to reconcile how Obama could campaign so boldly and govern so timidly; how with majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous popularity he can be cowed by the warp and wail of Rush Limbaugh and the nitwits from Fox News.
Six months into the Obama Administration, the Whacky Right, aided and abetted by a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, still control the national agenda. We can’t have a sensible discussion about creating an economic system that best meets the needs of the majority of Americans; health care reform is doomed to fail; ditto any meaningful action on the environment or energy policy; average Americans are suffering economic hardship and all the mainstream media can talk about is the stock market; nobody speaks with any intelligence about jobs and wages.
It’s depressing. A great opportunity is slipping away.
When the GOP controlled both houses of Congress they rammed their pet policies into law, stomping Democrats in the process. Tom DeLay lived to fuck Democrats in the ass, and his GOP comrades swaggered through the corridors of power like SS storm troopers. Put Democrats in the power position and they act bewildered.
Obama is the presidential version of Oprah. He makes us feel good, from time to time he makes us think, but in the end little changes. Powerful, vested interests still rule, call the shots and dictate the terms by which the majority of citizens must abide.
Yes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are light years better than Bush and Cheney, but if that’s the standard by which we measure Obama’s success, we’re really in deep trouble.
Obama is a wonderful show after the desolation, corruption and stupidity of the Bush-Cheney junta, but the status quo in America is still alive and thriving. Not that any but the most naive observers expected Obama to honestly challenge the status quo or deliver on his many campaign promises, for politicians rarely keep the promises they make in the heat of a campaign. And let’s not forget that the Obama Administration was behind the eight ball from Day One. Still, it’s hard to reconcile how Obama could campaign so boldly and govern so timidly; how with majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous popularity he can be cowed by the warp and wail of Rush Limbaugh and the nitwits from Fox News.
Six months into the Obama Administration, the Whacky Right, aided and abetted by a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, still control the national agenda. We can’t have a sensible discussion about creating an economic system that best meets the needs of the majority of Americans; health care reform is doomed to fail; ditto any meaningful action on the environment or energy policy; average Americans are suffering economic hardship and all the mainstream media can talk about is the stock market; nobody speaks with any intelligence about jobs and wages.
It’s depressing. A great opportunity is slipping away.
When the GOP controlled both houses of Congress they rammed their pet policies into law, stomping Democrats in the process. Tom DeLay lived to fuck Democrats in the ass, and his GOP comrades swaggered through the corridors of power like SS storm troopers. Put Democrats in the power position and they act bewildered.
Obama is the presidential version of Oprah. He makes us feel good, from time to time he makes us think, but in the end little changes. Powerful, vested interests still rule, call the shots and dictate the terms by which the majority of citizens must abide.
Yes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are light years better than Bush and Cheney, but if that’s the standard by which we measure Obama’s success, we’re really in deep trouble.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
A Giant Falls
The tires are flat at GM. The transmission is croaked and the radiator is full of holes. The behemoth American corporation that once stood astride the global automobile market is in the death throes, stumbling into bankruptcy, a ward of the federal government. This is like the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, or the day the Berlin Wall came down in chunks -- a day we won’t forget, a milestone, a marker in American history. The symbol of our faded industrial prowess is broken down on the side of a one-way road.
Although this day has been coming for years, it’s hard to accept that the United States has thrown in the towel and quit the manufacturing game in disgrace.
Because that’s really what this means, Mr. Jones.
The reasons for GM’s demise are too numerous to list here. Like every other American corporation that once made money building stuff, GM’s top brass became more enthralled with finance than on building quality products that domestic and foreign consumers wanted to plunk money down for. As the world around it changed and Honda and Toyota elbowed their way into the US market, GM clung stubbornly to the formula that had once made it great. In the end it was simply too many vehicle models with too much similarity between them, too much marketing hype and too little quality. One of the reasons it’s such a sad tale is that it didn’t have to happen.
No, thousands of workers didn’t need to be sacrificed to the gods of downsizing and globalization, ruthlessly discarded so the corporate bottom line might look rosier for Wall Street investors. As GM’s fortunes declined year after year, entire communities in the Midwest watched helplessly as their lifeblood drained away. For at least two generations of working stiffs, GM was the Golden Goose, a place where a worker with a high school education could earn wages and benefits sufficient to support a family, put kids through college, vacation in Mexico, and score all the rest of that American Dream stuff.
Long gone.
UAW members have been on a concession binge for decades, steadily ceding ground in the hope that givebacks would halt GM’s slide. Workers gave and GM executives issued self-congratulatory pronouncements, but it never altered the downward trajectory. With great fanfare, GM reorganized, redesigned, re-engineered, but market share continued to erode. Plants closed, workers got the sack. The management class was immunized from the pain of failure by stock options and golden parachutes.
Nothing new or surprising about that. Protecting executives, stockholders and Wall Street investors at the expense of workers is the American way of doing business. The United Auto Workers union usually played a convenient scapegoat role for GM’s staggering inability to compete with Toyota and Honda, as if earning a decent wage with decent benefits and a decent pension was a crime against the natural order.
An American giant has fallen. Remember the names: Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Pontiac. Remember the glory years of Motown, for we won’t be seeing them again.
Although this day has been coming for years, it’s hard to accept that the United States has thrown in the towel and quit the manufacturing game in disgrace.
Because that’s really what this means, Mr. Jones.
The reasons for GM’s demise are too numerous to list here. Like every other American corporation that once made money building stuff, GM’s top brass became more enthralled with finance than on building quality products that domestic and foreign consumers wanted to plunk money down for. As the world around it changed and Honda and Toyota elbowed their way into the US market, GM clung stubbornly to the formula that had once made it great. In the end it was simply too many vehicle models with too much similarity between them, too much marketing hype and too little quality. One of the reasons it’s such a sad tale is that it didn’t have to happen.
No, thousands of workers didn’t need to be sacrificed to the gods of downsizing and globalization, ruthlessly discarded so the corporate bottom line might look rosier for Wall Street investors. As GM’s fortunes declined year after year, entire communities in the Midwest watched helplessly as their lifeblood drained away. For at least two generations of working stiffs, GM was the Golden Goose, a place where a worker with a high school education could earn wages and benefits sufficient to support a family, put kids through college, vacation in Mexico, and score all the rest of that American Dream stuff.
Long gone.
UAW members have been on a concession binge for decades, steadily ceding ground in the hope that givebacks would halt GM’s slide. Workers gave and GM executives issued self-congratulatory pronouncements, but it never altered the downward trajectory. With great fanfare, GM reorganized, redesigned, re-engineered, but market share continued to erode. Plants closed, workers got the sack. The management class was immunized from the pain of failure by stock options and golden parachutes.
Nothing new or surprising about that. Protecting executives, stockholders and Wall Street investors at the expense of workers is the American way of doing business. The United Auto Workers union usually played a convenient scapegoat role for GM’s staggering inability to compete with Toyota and Honda, as if earning a decent wage with decent benefits and a decent pension was a crime against the natural order.
An American giant has fallen. Remember the names: Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Pontiac. Remember the glory years of Motown, for we won’t be seeing them again.
Monday, May 25, 2009
POEM - No Fear
The problem in the United States
Is that the Government
does not
Fear
the people
Here, for good reason, it’s the other way around
(Cheney, Bush, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld)
Of course the Government talks plenty about what
The “people” want, need, desire
And dream about
But all the talk is eclipsed by the needs and imperatives
Of the Money changers
Who buy access and influence wholesale
“democracy” is never allowed to interfere with
The Business of the ruling class
In paneled rooms with plush carpeting
Where levers are pulled, buttons pushed, nods exchanged
Deals done and documents signed
Money wins and the people lose
Every time
Under the veneer of civility and legality
The smiles and handshakes
it’s grand theft
as blatant as a mugging
The people may get mad but rarely
Do enough of them become angry enough
To march into the streets
Armed with bottles and Molotov cocktails
Rocks and baseball bats
Determined to extract a pound of flesh from
The ruling classes
Intent on demanding their share of the nation’s bounty
The people are easily misled
Pacified
Distracted
Divided
More interested in shopping for stuff they don’t
Need
Hunkering down in front of their HD TV’s
Playing video games
Than in holding the powerful accountable
The people shake their heads with disgust
When they should be shaking their
Fists
With
Rage
Is that the Government
does not
Fear
the people
Here, for good reason, it’s the other way around
(Cheney, Bush, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld)
Of course the Government talks plenty about what
The “people” want, need, desire
And dream about
But all the talk is eclipsed by the needs and imperatives
Of the Money changers
Who buy access and influence wholesale
“democracy” is never allowed to interfere with
The Business of the ruling class
In paneled rooms with plush carpeting
Where levers are pulled, buttons pushed, nods exchanged
Deals done and documents signed
Money wins and the people lose
Every time
Under the veneer of civility and legality
The smiles and handshakes
it’s grand theft
as blatant as a mugging
The people may get mad but rarely
Do enough of them become angry enough
To march into the streets
Armed with bottles and Molotov cocktails
Rocks and baseball bats
Determined to extract a pound of flesh from
The ruling classes
Intent on demanding their share of the nation’s bounty
The people are easily misled
Pacified
Distracted
Divided
More interested in shopping for stuff they don’t
Need
Hunkering down in front of their HD TV’s
Playing video games
Than in holding the powerful accountable
The people shake their heads with disgust
When they should be shaking their
Fists
With
Rage
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Long Slide into the Pacific
California is about to fall into the sea, sunk by what could be a $20 billion dollar budget shortfall. Our celebrity governor says the people have spoken and it’s time for legislative leaders to buckle down, put partisanship aside, and make difficult choices sure to piss off important constituents.
News flash to the Terminator: It’s long past time for the children who run Sacramento to pull together.
Arnold claims a mandate based on the results of Tuesday’s special election, when five ballot measures crafted during back room negotiations with Democratic and Republican party leaders bit the dust. Arnold says the people are angry, but that’s only part of the tale. As expected, voters stayed away from the polls in droves, driven less by anger and more by confusion about what the propositions were intended to accomplish. When people are unsure or confused, they will not act.
California’s voters are weary of elections, of mind-numbing ballot propositions that promise something for nothing, of endless legislative gridlock, and budgets held hostage while politicians play fiscal roulette and flesh and blood people suffer.
In short, the Great State of California is so fucked up that only a major overhaul can save it. The Federal government is busy handing out money to Wall Street criminals, keeping insolvent banks on life support, propping up General Motors -- and yet the Feds, so eager to make huge bets with taxpayer money, want nothing to do with California’s fiscal woes. If the Feds bail California out, or so the conventional wisdom goes, it could set an unfortunate precedent. Schwarzenegger went to Washington with hand outstretched and came back without the loan guarantees he’d hoped to wheedle from the Obama Administration.
The entire budget fiasco can’t be dropped on Arnold’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, but let’s be honest: Schwarzenegger’s brand of leadership has made a bad situation worse. Schwarzenegger swooped into Sacramento with big promises about blowing up the boxes, trimming waste, rooting out fraud and abuse, and cracking the whip on the backsides of do-nothing legislators. None of it has come to pass. The state is worse off now than it was when Gray Davis held the wheel. Go figure.
I never understood how Schwarzenegger got elected in the first place. Yes, his opponent in the recall election, Cruz Bustamante, was a political hack with all the charisma of a tortoise shot up with horse tranquilizers. But why did the good people of California think Schwarzenegger had solutions to our state’s fundamental problems? Probably for the same reason they expect top-notch schools, roads, bridges, freeways, prisons, police and fire protection, clean parks and safe beaches without having to sacrifice any cash to pay for it. When it comes to public services, the people of this state are infantile: they want the best of everything, but only if it comes on the cheap. It’s the Wal-Mart mentality run amok.
Big cuts in public education and other services are coming. The state can’t borrow its way out of the ditch this time. The budget razor will slice clean to the bone and on to the marrow and the blood will run like a river through the capitol rotunda, down the front steps and all over the lawn.
What to do? First, voters must grow up and shake off the silly notion that taxation is inherently bad. Second, term limits for legislators must go. Third, toss the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or tax increases. Fourth, haul California’s most sacred cow, Prop 13, to the killing floor and slit its throat.
Chances of any of that happening are as likely as Congress passing legislation to create a single-payer health care system. The status quo is as deeply entrenched in Sacramento as it is in Washington D.C.
Let the slide into the Pacific begin.
News flash to the Terminator: It’s long past time for the children who run Sacramento to pull together.
Arnold claims a mandate based on the results of Tuesday’s special election, when five ballot measures crafted during back room negotiations with Democratic and Republican party leaders bit the dust. Arnold says the people are angry, but that’s only part of the tale. As expected, voters stayed away from the polls in droves, driven less by anger and more by confusion about what the propositions were intended to accomplish. When people are unsure or confused, they will not act.
California’s voters are weary of elections, of mind-numbing ballot propositions that promise something for nothing, of endless legislative gridlock, and budgets held hostage while politicians play fiscal roulette and flesh and blood people suffer.
In short, the Great State of California is so fucked up that only a major overhaul can save it. The Federal government is busy handing out money to Wall Street criminals, keeping insolvent banks on life support, propping up General Motors -- and yet the Feds, so eager to make huge bets with taxpayer money, want nothing to do with California’s fiscal woes. If the Feds bail California out, or so the conventional wisdom goes, it could set an unfortunate precedent. Schwarzenegger went to Washington with hand outstretched and came back without the loan guarantees he’d hoped to wheedle from the Obama Administration.
The entire budget fiasco can’t be dropped on Arnold’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, but let’s be honest: Schwarzenegger’s brand of leadership has made a bad situation worse. Schwarzenegger swooped into Sacramento with big promises about blowing up the boxes, trimming waste, rooting out fraud and abuse, and cracking the whip on the backsides of do-nothing legislators. None of it has come to pass. The state is worse off now than it was when Gray Davis held the wheel. Go figure.
I never understood how Schwarzenegger got elected in the first place. Yes, his opponent in the recall election, Cruz Bustamante, was a political hack with all the charisma of a tortoise shot up with horse tranquilizers. But why did the good people of California think Schwarzenegger had solutions to our state’s fundamental problems? Probably for the same reason they expect top-notch schools, roads, bridges, freeways, prisons, police and fire protection, clean parks and safe beaches without having to sacrifice any cash to pay for it. When it comes to public services, the people of this state are infantile: they want the best of everything, but only if it comes on the cheap. It’s the Wal-Mart mentality run amok.
Big cuts in public education and other services are coming. The state can’t borrow its way out of the ditch this time. The budget razor will slice clean to the bone and on to the marrow and the blood will run like a river through the capitol rotunda, down the front steps and all over the lawn.
What to do? First, voters must grow up and shake off the silly notion that taxation is inherently bad. Second, term limits for legislators must go. Third, toss the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or tax increases. Fourth, haul California’s most sacred cow, Prop 13, to the killing floor and slit its throat.
Chances of any of that happening are as likely as Congress passing legislation to create a single-payer health care system. The status quo is as deeply entrenched in Sacramento as it is in Washington D.C.
Let the slide into the Pacific begin.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
POEM - Inferno
An unseasonably hot day in May
Errant spark from a power tool
Wind from the devil’s forge
Another fire in the tinderbox hills
Above Santa Barbara
Where the brush is dry
the humidity low
We’ve been here before
But every fire’s different
Like women and snowflakes
Every fire brings its own will to bear
Fire in the mansion
Fire in the barn
Fire in the oak grove
Fire in the eucalyptus
Fire in the neighborhood of million
dollar homes
Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces
Evacuation warnings
News bulletins
Helicopters in the sky
Firefighters on the lines
When the reverse 911 call comes
Play it safe
Pack the cars
With photo albums and children’s drawings
Jewelry and a box of love letters
Things that cannot be replaced
Leave the rest behind
Close the windows
Lock the doors
Shut the gas off
Flee through the smoke-filled night
This isn’t Lebanon or Gaza City
It just feels like war
Like the end of the world is waiting around the corner
Errant spark from a power tool
Wind from the devil’s forge
Another fire in the tinderbox hills
Above Santa Barbara
Where the brush is dry
the humidity low
We’ve been here before
But every fire’s different
Like women and snowflakes
Every fire brings its own will to bear
Fire in the mansion
Fire in the barn
Fire in the oak grove
Fire in the eucalyptus
Fire in the neighborhood of million
dollar homes
Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces
Evacuation warnings
News bulletins
Helicopters in the sky
Firefighters on the lines
When the reverse 911 call comes
Play it safe
Pack the cars
With photo albums and children’s drawings
Jewelry and a box of love letters
Things that cannot be replaced
Leave the rest behind
Close the windows
Lock the doors
Shut the gas off
Flee through the smoke-filled night
This isn’t Lebanon or Gaza City
It just feels like war
Like the end of the world is waiting around the corner
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