Part I of The Corporation. A great documentary. You can find the other 22 chapters here.
I’m working on a list of the prinicipal organizations that have been involved with PACT that will explain the role of each, at least to the extend that references to them in the documents I am working with allow. I am hoping to finish it up and get it posted tomorrow.
I have more to say about the financial documents I have been looking at for the last few days, too. I am still looking to identify and understand those four types of changes:
- Changes to the law
- Changes to PACT documents
- Chanes to people/firms handling the money
- Changes to the investment strategy.
Filed under: music, Personal, Politics, Progressive, wake up | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie
This one song has as much to do with my politics as any other single thing I can think of. Everyone’s done it, of course. When I was 13 or 14 I saved for months for my first boxed set – Bruce and the E-Street Band Live, 1975-85. It includes a track of this song.
The speech on the album is different than the one here. It begins by noting that this is an angry song and an answer to “God Bless America.” It ends with the line:
“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.”
HUGE impression on my young mind. This track is better, because it includes the all-important last verse. The one that’s so often left out.
Woody Guthrie himself, and one of my favorite images of all time, h/t to Melange, from a nice Guthrie bio:
The music is important.
Filed under: Community, Economy, Media, Mississippi, Politics, Progressive, wake up | Tags: Alabama, Alabama PACT, PACT, Torches and Pitchforks
Countrycat has an eyewitness account and her first video from yesterday’s hearing on the Alabama college saving program. Pure dynamite. She does a beautiful job capturing the fear and loathing that the citizens who are on the receiving end of this fiasco have for their government. And the unmitigated contempt that the few board members who bothered to show up have for the unwashed masses.
The citizens of Alabama really showed their quality yesterday.
They are connecting the dots:
More than once, I heard the meeting referred to as “just for show” or, more entertainingly, “just like a meeting in North Korea.”
They are anxious to attend the board meeting, and they see right through the pseudo-democracy:
So, as we were getting hustled out of the place, parents were shouting questions to the moderator about where the March 24th board meeting would be, what time it would start, etc. etc. He said that hadn’t been decided yet, but it would be posted on the Web site.
Some of the older people protested that they didn’t have Internet access, so how would they find out? Watch TV or read the papers. NOTE: the Huntsville Times announced the event yesterday morning and it was buried in the middle of a page in the Local section.
They agree with my irresponsibly speculative analysis, too:
They don’t trust the board, the Legislature, or the Governor to do anything to fix this mess and many people said openly that they thought this was just a show trial to shut people up long enough for the board to shut down the program.
I cannot do this justice. You must read the whole thing.
We are not done with this.
Cross-posted at The Mighty Corrente Building.
Filed under: Media, Politics, Progressive, wake up | Tags: eliminationism, Hate, haters
If we can’t prosecute executives of companies who knowingly and willfully sell poisoned food to our citizens for murder and put them on death row, WTF good is the death penalty doing us? (h/t MadStat)
Filed under: Depression, Economy, Personal, Politics, Progressive, wake up, world organization
What Driftglass said.
President Obama had better gain control of the agenda and put the Republicans in their place soon. It is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT that he kneecap those Blue Dogs and their fellow-travelers in the Senate. These people have managed to maintain “respectable” Dem voting records while stabbing the American people in the back on key vote after key vote for way too long. They need to be deprived of their position as the swing caucus, and people need to be disabused of the illusion that they are moderates.
The Republican party is as weak as it’s been in my lifetime. Time to force some folks to get off the goddamnedfence. It’s time for people to choose between more and better Democrats, or an morally bankrupt, Taliban-admiring, regional rump party. This needs to get done. The opportunity may not come again.
People are already using Geithner and Summers to argue that there’s no difference between the two parties. I know this is mind-boggling after the nightmare of the last eight years, but I. Am. Hearing. It. And I can’t say I blame people for thinking that. Those two are awful choices. But that’s not the point.
This is the point. If the Dems don’t get ahead of the curve and manage this situation soon, THE SITUATION WILL MANAGE THEM. That’s just where “bipartisanship” and “centrism” lead, folks. It’s the reason Bush was able to win steal the election in 2000 and govern rule the country as though he’d won with 90 percent of the vote . You can’t appease the most extreme wing of the opposition and expect the average citizen to see a difference between the two parties.
So it’s encouraging to see a few modest signs that the President is going on the offensive. He doesn’t need the entire South to get re-elected. Repeat that to yourself. Repeat it to your friends. He doesn’t need the South to get re-elected.
I know, I know. We may have reached the sort of tipping point that renders all this moot. And a LOT of Dems are looking compromised these days. But I don’t think we’re quite to the point where none of this matters. If I did, I’d be moving the wife, kid, and grandkid to the ancestral homestead and plowing up about 40 acres right now. Instead I’m living in a tiny apartment within walking distance of my job and hoping I’m able to stay employed long enough to improve my circumstances. Like millions of others.
People who predict doom and gloom tend to be early. They tend to overshoot on the negative side. They tend to discount unforeseen possibilities. Back in March, I, myself, was convinced that, by September, the situation would be much more dire than it actually is today.
It’s true that we’re probably entering a period of historic transition. The postwar world order is fucked at this point. More and more frequently, I ask myself “Are we still as superpower? Or, are we just a great power with nuclear weapons?”
It is entirely possible that we could simply slip into this depression and limp along with just enough economic activity for the status quo in the U.S. to hold for years, while the world slips back into something that looks a lot more like the post-Napoleonic balance of power system than a globalized “New World Order.” In which case, this stuff matters a whole lot. If the possibilty of this happening doesn’t appeal to you, and you want to see a change in the status quo, all I can say is that you need to WAKE THE FUCK UP AND GET EVERYONE YOU KNOW INTO THE GODDAMNED STREETS.
Big changes coming. But they’re the sort of changes that might just take decades to occur. History moves at its own pace. The trick is to accelerate positive changes (like renewable energy on a massive scale and SUPERTRAINS) and minimize the negative (like the immoral payment structure of our health care system and ponzi finance).
It’s hard to accept the possibility that we have nothing to look forward to but low wages and robber barons for a generation. But we need to accept it as a distinct possibility. That’s exactly where we’re going unless we find a way to radically alter the paradigm in a hurry. Sadly, I am afraid that such a shift will requires an event of epochal significance. I just hope that event doesn’t turn out to be:
- a huge war,
- a full-blown police state, or
- 10 years of double-digit unemployment and rampant violence.
We certainly seem to be headed for one of those three, or maybe all of them at the same time. It’s goddamned sad that things are so bad a lot of people are viewing a Greater Depression as the least bad alternative.
Take a look at the changes in the distribution of income over the last 15 years in the U.S. and around the world. Look at the work most people are doing to survive. Compare the median income to the median home price. It should only take you a few minutes of digging to conclude that the absurdly wealthy corporatists are going to have to make some concessions to the rest of us one of these days. They’re not going to do that until they get the message that their survival depends on it. Because their own survival is the only thing they care about. Until they start to feel threatened, they will continue to prey on us.
I’m not sure how much longer I can continue to blog about what the Democratic party ought to do. I am beginning think that our country requires more radical solutions than they are capable of comprehending, and that’s a real shame.
BigMedia: You suck!
No Justice = No Peace
Filed under: collapse, Depression, Economy, music, Politics, Progressive, Suggested Reading, wake up
Doing some research and working on a post that builds on these two at Monkeyfister’s. Also, see this conversation on the bond collapse at Correntewire. There are several comments there worth checking out if you’re as puzzled as I am by where the global economic clusterfuck is going to take us.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this youtube, because you can never have too much Leonard Cohen.
Filed under: collapse, Depression, Economy, Politics, Progressive, Suggested Reading, U.S. Treasury Bonds, wake up, world organization
Posted a question about the economy for Monkeyfister a while ago, thinking we might compare notes. Boy, did I get a response!
He spent three hours putting it together. If you go read it now, you will be glad you did.
I owe losta folks an apology for just dropping out the way I did. Apologies, folks. At the very least, it was rude of me to do that.
Life = complicated. Sometimes helpless little people who didn’t ask to be here come into our lives and it takes all the free time and all the emotion we have to do right by them. Sometimes we get exhausted from swimming against the current and lose the all-important critical faculties required to edit our own work so we don’t make an ass of ourselves every time we post. Sometimes we go out for a stroll, and it turns into a walkabout. These aren’t excuses for my rudeness, of course. But they do provide a partial explanation for my disappearance.
But hey, life goes on, no? Republicans lost. And at least we did a little something to help that along.
All the activism stuff is gone. I don’t have time to deal with email, or think about organizing anything, or try to motivate anyone, or cross-post to networking sites. This is where I come to write when I can. The rest of my time is spent trying to keep head above water, hedging against the worst-case-scenario, and tracking the progress of what appears to be a world-wide credit default.
Things look pretty depressing, eh? I will have plenty to say about Depression, and soon.
I’m not going to be saying much about political participation or the religious contradictions our society. Time’s too short for all of that, I think. I will be using the word “fuck” now and again (thanks, Thers!).
Thoughts for now:
- I believe some smart analytical types will be using the word “deglobalization” soon.
- The window of opportunity for policy solutions to the general crisis in banking and finance (very much an international crisis whether we like it or not) is closing rapidly.
- Millions of us are going to have to learn to deal with a lower standard of living for years to come. If you think mean people suck now, just wait a while. Mean people suck even worse when they’re experiencing real hunger for the first time in their lives.
These are the most upbeat thoughts I have to offer. If I am proven wrong, I’ll eat my hat, but I think it will take at least a couple of years to know whether I am wrong or not. Until then, I’ll take prudence over optimism every day of the week.
Gonna take me a while to deal with comments and get around to visiting everyone.
