There will be blood (or more apathy)

Posted on February 19, 2013 by oddmanout215

Wild in the streets

Wild in the streets

There’s nothing new about eras in which the rich grow richer as the majority slips into the ditch. Or about gilded ages being followed by periods in which worker incomes rise. In between are those interesting chapters in which the disgruntled proles throttle the filthy rich, or at least scare the shit out of them.

Peter Turchin, a scientist who studies the dynamics of historical change, examined cycles of inequality in a recent article that zoomed from ancient Rome to the French Revolution to modern America. Read it for yourself, especially the parts that describe what happened after Russia went Communist and income inequality in America sparked full-scale battles between workers and cops, and workers and soldiers.

And I liked this, about the collapse of Communism:

…The fall of the Soviet Union was interpreted as a vindication of free markets, period. The triumphalist, heady atmosphere of the 1990s was highly conducive to the spread of Ayn Randism and other individualist ideologies. The unwritten social contract that had emerged during the New Deal and braved the challenges of the Second World War had faded from memory…

Right. The New Deal is ancient history to the one percent and most people in the other 99 percent, and the corporate-owned media isn’t interested in bringing the public up to speed on the subject.

Turchin’s point is that class war — real class war — could happen all over again. But this time there might not be enough smart, gutsy statesmen (FDR, for one) around to muzzle the pigs and make inequality in America less glaring for a while. And are there really enough people left in this country who would rather fight for their rights than, say, use their electronic gadgets to watch other people do the fighting?

Don’t bet your foreclosed-upon house on it.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Depression, history, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s jobs plan… Is that all there is?

Posted on February 13, 2013 by oddmanout215

OK, here it is, the one substantive suggestion regarding job creation in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, dutifully reported by The Hill:

“Tonight, I propose a ‘Fix-It-First’ program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country,” Obama said in his address Tuesday night.

“Fix It First” sounds snappy, like something Mad Men‘s Peggy Olson would come up with on deadline if Don Draper was breathing down her neck. But $50 billion is a small percentage of the amount needed to fix the country’s infrastructure and put back to work the millions who’ve lost jobs since the so-called Great Recession began. And most of Obama’s other proposed initiatives — better schools and job training, a minimum wage hike, a renewed focus on manufacturing, an end to tax subsidies that encourage outsourcing of jobs – made good sound bites but aren’t likely to happen, as Obama well knows.

So is that all there is? Is Obama’s call for investment in job creation consistent with his commitment to $1.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade? Is he a good guy, or does he merely seem like one compared to the bizarre coalition of crackers and corporate sharks at the base of the Republican Party?

One thing’s for sure — Obama can’t possibly think significant job creation can happen in the wake of big budget cuts. Robert Kuttner got to the heart of the matter in a recent column:

The White House shares with the Republican right and the corporate center-right the assumption that we achieve a full economic recovery by targeting a lower debt ratio by 2023, and that we reduce the debt ratio by cutting the deficit.

As recent events have shown (in case there was any doubt) this sequence is backwards. The debt ratio comes down when the economy recovers. Fiscal contraction slows the recovery, and the loss of public investment denies the government the very tools it needs to use education and infrastructure to help rebuild the middle class.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Will Obama get real about jobs?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by oddmanout215

[Hard to tell why the woman in the video is working herself up to jump off a bridge. Maybe it’s Jolson’s voice.]

I’m posting this right before the State of the Union address, in the hope that my remarks will seem old and unfair after Barack Obama speaks — i.e., after he makes a stirring, substantive, FDR-style speech that reveals he hasn’t connived from the start with the corporate cutthroats whose notion of a healthy economy entails drastic, permanent downsizing of the American workforce.

Even Arianna Huffington, who wouldn’t even pay the freelancers who helped her make a fortune at Huffington Post, couldn’t help noting a few days ago that Obama has been the anti-FDR when it comes to job creation:

“The great thing right now is that he has the public on his side,” Arianna said, in a response to a question about Obama’s newfound confidence.

But she went on to say that “jobs and growth are not on his agenda,” which is “absolutely stunning” considering that his campaign rhetoric depended heavily on “the American dream — saving it for the middle class.” Since being elected, she concluded, his drive on the issue is “nowhere to be found.”

Stunning is the word, especially in light of the expectations of most of the people who helped elect Obama twice. But wait — it’s almost time for Obama to prove us cynics have been wrong all along, he’s not really in office to preside over the transformation of America into a land where low wages and no benefits are the norm. He’s not really a Dem In Name Only.

Whatever he says, I’m sure it will sound very pretty.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, mainstream media, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

William Faulkner does Super Bowl XLVII

Posted on February 4, 2013 by oddmanout215

super-bowl-lights-out-0203

[The Sound and the Fury and the outage:]

Through the drapes, between the Jell-O football trays, I could see them hitting. They were up on the picture wall, coming to where the ball was and I was looking in the window at them. Luster was hunting in the street next to the phone pole. They picked the ball up and they were hitting. Then they put the ball down and they lined up on the striped grass and the red football men hit and the black-and-white football men hit. Luster came along from the phone pole and I looked through the window while Luster hunted on the sidewalk.

The black-and-white football men hit and ran to where the striped grass ended. Quentin ate a Jell-O football and I could hear him through the window yelling at Father over the noise from the picture wall. He said, “That puts the Ravens up by 22. Your wager was ill-considered, Father.”

I looked through the window at the picture wall. The football men took a rest. A colored girl in black leather underwear sang and danced and stroked her big thighs. I could almost taste the Jell-O footballs.

“Listen at you now,” Luster said to me. “Ain’t you something, 33 years old, moaning like that. No wonder your daddy won’t let you inside. No wonder he don’t give you no Jell-O footballs.”

Then the lights went out on the picture wall and the noise stopped. Someone said “power outage at the stadium.” Mother came into the picture-wall room and asked Father to let me in from the cold and Father said, “The cold won’t hurt Benjy” and Mother sat in the chair where my sister Caddy used to sit and said “He’s a judgment on me.” Father fixed her a toddy in the dark.

“I done looked in there, Benjy,” Luster said. “Get down here in the gutter and help me find my shit before them neighbors find it.”

He was looking for his little bag of white powder. The football men were standing in the dark and looking at the sky. I listened through the window. Father said, “The past is never past, Quentin. No battle is ever won. Victory is an illusion of fools and philosophers.” Quentin said, “I hope you’re not trying to weasel out of your wager, Father.”

The light came back on in the picture wall and the red football men hit. Quentin ate a Jell-O football and jumped out of his chair and said, “Go Ravens.” But he looked sad, like he was thinking of Caddy, who ran away last year with a football man from out West.

The black-and-white football men hit. The red football men fell down. A mob rushed on to the striped grass and millions of tiny papers fell from the sky. Quentin said, “Pay up, Father, for once in your life. Quit being such a deadbeat.”

Luster rolled in the gutter. Inside, Mother sat in her armchair and cried. Father cried, too. He said to Quentin, “How about we go double or nothing on the Flyers game?”

Footnote: Apologies to Faulkner fans for the screwed-up chronology. I got my idiots mixed up.

Posted in arts, fiction, humor, mainstream media, weasel | 2 Comments

Boyz II Men to make sexy time in Russia

Posted on February 3, 2013 by oddmanout215

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing his fellow citizens: “I have beeg announcement. American sexy band Boys II Men come to Moscow this week. Show love, comrades.”

OK, Putin didn’t exactly say that, but the Grammy-winning R&B band really is flying halfway around world on special sexy mission. From Britain’s Daily Mail:

…Putin apparently hopes to harness the all-American boyband’s raw romantic charm through a gig in Moscow to encourage their legions of Russian fans to reproduce ahead of Valentine’s Day to songs such as “I’ll Make Love To You” and “On Bended Knee.”

[skip]

Band members Wanya Morris, Shawn Stockman and Nathan Morris will take a break from their Las Vegas hotel residency and rehearsals for their upcoming tour with New Kids on the Block and 98 Degrees to perform in Moscow on February 6.

[skip]

Despite being the worlds largest country at over 6.5 million square miles, high rates of smoking, alcoholism, pollution and poverty, together with falling [birth] rates, mean Russia’s population will shrink to 116 million by 2050 from 142 million last year.

Russia also has the world’s third-largest heroin abuse rate and accounts for a third of all heroin deaths worldwide…

Funny guy, that Putin, especially for an ex-KBG agent. Maybe the Boyz will do their sappy 1992 ballad “End of the Road”: Although we’ve come/To the end of the road/Still I can’t let go/It’s unnatural/You belong to me/I belong to you.

Da! Pass bottle, Mooshka. Now we make sexy time.

Footnote: Meanwhile, America’s population is booming. President Obama should organize a special concert here to discourage reproduction, maybe with Nine Inch Nails performing Ghosts.

End note: No truth to the rumor that Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will be released from prison in time to open the Boyz II Men show.

Posted in arts, climate change, humor, Obama, pop music | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Are permatemps here to stay?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by oddmanout215

robots

One of the things I can’t stand about Barack Obama is his glib complacency regarding the job market. He’s a great talker, but I’ve never heard him make a truly impassioned speech about putting the unemployed and the underemployed back to work. Worse, I’ve never heard him convincingly argue that the downsizing of the American workforce and the declining quality of available jobs — lower wages, fewer benefits, fewer hours — are reversible.

From an op-ed by Erin Hatton, author of The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America:

…Low-wage, temporary jobs have become so widespread that they threaten to become the norm. But for some reason this isn’t causing a scandal. At least in the business press, we are more likely to hear plaudits for “lean and mean” companies than angst about the changing nature of work for ordinary Americans.

How did we arrive at this state of affairs? Many argue that it was the inevitable result of macroeconomic forces — globalization, deindustrialization and technological change — beyond our political control. Yet employers had (and have) choices. Rather than squeezing workers, they could have invested in workers and boosted product quality, taking what economists call the high road toward more advanced manufacturing and skilled service work. But this hasn’t happened. Instead, American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry, which rose from humble origins to become a global behemoth…

When you see the word permatemps, think permafrost, the name given to surfaces that remain frozen over many years until radical climate change forces widespread thawing or melting. Is this what it will take to reverse the permatemps phenomenon — a radical change in the socioeconomic climate?

Good luck with that. The entrenched two-party system in this country is owned by big business. The established parties have swung so far to the right that a timid centrist like Obama is routinely referred to as a socialist by wing-nut politicians and pundits.

Will disenfranchised workers continue to passively accept their slide into serfdom? Who knows? Hatton’s column ends on this vague note:

If we want good jobs rather than just any jobs, we need to figure out how to preserve what is useful and innovative about temporary employment while jettisoning the anti-worker ideology that has come to accompany it.

But you can’t just jettison an ideology, not when its proponents hold all the power. What if the era in which pro-worker ideologies seemed to gather momentum in America, from the the 1940s to the 1970s, was an aberration? A freakish interlude between gilded ages? What if the liberal belief in slow but steady progress is bullshit? What if I stop with all these depressing questions?

Posted in globalization, history, mainstream media, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Joking about the jobless in The Times

Posted on January 28, 2013 by oddmanout215

The final destination of your online job application

The final destination of your online job applications

There are many jerks in positions of authority, but this fact isn’t likely to hit you on a gut level unless you’re unemployed and in debt and sending resumes to that black hole in the Internet where job applications disappear.

Just ask The New York Times‘ Nelson D. Schwartz, who reminded readers on Sunday that finding a good job is entirely about who you know, not what you can do. Referrals get you good jobs, not applications to those thousands of online listings that don’t really exist for anyone who isn’t well connected:

…Indeed, as referred candidates get fast-tracked, applicants from other sources like corporate Web sites, Internet job boards and job fairs sink to the bottom of the pile.

“You’re submitting your resume to a black hole,” said John Sullivan, a human resources consultant for large companies who teaches management at San Francisco State University. “You’re not going to find top performers at a job fair. Whether it’s fair or not, you need to have employees make referrals for you if you want to find a job.”

Among corporate recruiters, Mr. Sullivan said, random applicants from Internet job sites are sometimes referred to as “Homers,” after the lackadaisical, doughnut-eating Homer Simpson. The most desirable candidates, nicknamed “purple squirrels” because they are so elusive, usually come recommended.

“We call it Monster.ugly,” said Mr. Sullivan, referring to Monster.com. “In the H.R. world, applicants from Monster or other job boards carry a stigma…”

A witty fellow, this John Sullivan. Probably the sort of guy who pulled wings off flies and burned ants with a magnifying glass when he was a kid. Just think of all the suckers on the brink of bankruptcy or foreclosure who spend hours a day job-hunting online, unaware that corporate jerks are dumping their applications into the “Homer” bin.

OK, the fact that online job searches are a waste isn’t news to the long-term unemployed, but Schwartz’s peek at the jerks on the other end of the application process should be a wake-up call for the have-nots in this country.

To recruiters, you’re either a purple squirrel or a Homer who looks for work on Monster.ugly If you are one of the latter — i.e., one of the vast majority of the unemployed — you are never going to find another good job, no matter how much the economy recovers. The so-called recovery is directly related to the fact that payrolls have been drastically and permanently cut. All the networking in the world won’t change this fact.

All of which is perfectly obvious, and apparently funny, to the John Sullivans of the world.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, humor, mainstream media, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What John Mackey can do with his vegan stir-fry

Posted on January 22, 2013 by oddmanout215

boycott-whole-foods-market

Oh, the ironies of the Obama era! Last week John Mackey denounced Obamacare as “like fascism.” This was a few years after damning it as socialism. The Whole Foods co-CEO doesn’t see, or pretends to not see, that Obamacare is a gift to hospital chains and health insurance companies — corporate monsters, just like Whole Foods. Under Obamacare, the government doesn’t control “the means of production” in health care, as Mackey charged. It merely ensures that Aetna and the other companies remain a wastefully expensive obstacle to health care for most Americans.

But enough about the big chief, it’s the day after the inauguration, let him enjoy his eloquently empty promises. Let’s dwell on the ironic fact that Mackey, a right-wing, low-paying, union-busting, small business-killing, Romney-endorsing, climate change-denying megalomaniac is one of the the most well-known advocates of organic foods.

It’s one thing — a good thing — to support farmers’ markets and independent health-food stores, but anyone who thinks of him/herself as a progressive and shops at Whole Foods is a hypocrite or just D-U-M dumb. Mackey’s organic foods chain is eating up all the smaller stores and paying rank-and-file workers next to nothing. When it comes to labor relations, Whole Foods is about as progressive as Walmart.

Mackey was in The New York Times Magazine this week, bragging about his vegan diet and describing a recent meal he made for himself, a vegan stir-fry that included kale, chard, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, a walnut-cashew-based dressing and almond milk. The sort of foods most people who get paid Whole Foods-level wages couldn’t possibly afford on a regular basis unless their other expenses were minimal and they were receiving food stamps.

Bottom line: I like to eat healthy, when I can afford to, but I’d rather buy lunch from a grungy hot dog vendor than from the cold-blooded plutocrat who runs Whole Foods. He’s a multimillionaire, well-fed and fit, but all the vegan stir-fry in the world won’t cure what ails him.

Footnote: Mackey later said he regretted using the word fascism in regard to Obamacare, but he clearly remains confused. Someone should send him reading material for when he’s not puttering around the kitchen. Maybe a Political Science 101 textbook.

Posted in climate change, dirty rotten scoundrels, food, health care, humor, mainstream media, The New Depression | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A rear-view glance at Lance

Posted on January 19, 2013 by oddmanout215

Between Lance Armstrong admitting he was doping and Jodie Foster coming out as a lesbian, it has been a rough week for the clueless. — Bill Mayer, Real Time, Jan. 18

I groan when the corporate media declare a new villain of the week, seemingly to distract us from the truly awful people who are rewarded for undermining what used to be called the common good.

Sure, Lance Armstrong is a sociopath, a guy who’d bike over his own grandma to win the big prize. But sports fans who were paying attention knew this years ago, without Oprah’s help. And yes, Lance is a liar, but there are many liars in public life, and how foul are his lies compared to Dubya’s WMD con game, or Jamie Dimon’s claim that JP Morgan never needed or asked for the $25 billion in TARP money that kept it from going bust?

The major villains in this country — banksters and corporate bosses — don’t ‘fess up to Oprah or anyone else. They hover above the law in glass-and-steel towers figuring out how to make more millions to hide offshore while putting more and more Americans out of work. They lie and steal with impunity — i.e., with full cooperation from the U.S. government — and then suggest that working stiffs who retire at age 65 and collect Social Security are being coddled.

Somehow, the corporate media never get around to reporting the scope of the banksters’ crimes, or the extent to which corporate CEOs and their friends in D.C. have gone to enrich themselves at the expense of workers in a job market that gets smaller and weaker with each passing year.

Instead, reporters attach themselves to frauds like Lance and Barry Bonds, and freaks like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan. They feed us soap operas and morality tales about “celebrities,” ignoring any facts that might spoil the celebrity stories before they run their course.

It turns out that heroic Lance was doping — a shocker! — and it’s time for his public comeuppance. He and our other fallen celebrity heroes have important ritual roles to play. They are stand-ins for the truly vile — people like Dimon and his fellow chief executive gamblers on Wall Street who will never be formally accused, let alone brought to justice, for the economic disaster caused by what Matt Taibbi called their “greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit.”

Even more than in other eras, the news business today is about encouraging us to cheer and boo cartoonish heroes and villains — to keep our minds off the truly dangerous bad guys, the ones with the power to create a permanent underclass where a middle class used to be.

Clarification: I’m not saying the Lance Armstrong story — ruthless, creepy cancer survivor cheats his way to the top and uses his fame to raise great sums for cancer patients — isn’t worth telling. I can’t wait for the TV movie, maybe with Lohan as Cheryl Crowe, singing “Every Day Is a Winding Road” while Lance is having a blood transfusion on the floor of his tour bus.

I’m just wondering what happened to the quaint idea that a free press, by definition, should insist on an adversarial relationship with government, big business and the financial industry, in order to make sure Americans don’t become too clueless to realize when they’re being oppressed.

Posted in bicycling, dirty rotten scoundrels, economic collapse, humor, liar, mainstream media, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto’

Posted on December 24, 2012 by oddmanout215

Listen, people: The word “ghetto” dates to 16th- or 17th-century Venice, where Jews were restricted to living on an island near a foundry that produced a lot of ghet, or waste products. Or is it simply derived from borghetto — “little borough”? Help me, mothers and soul brothers, Wikipedia and various dictionaries are a bit vague on this.

“Ghetto” became a tag for any inner-city area dominated by a particular racial or ethnic group. By the 1960s, the usage usually was for urban areas in America where poor blacks were crammed. Brown was born in a rural setting, but he grew up poor as any big-city kid: Tell ’em James Brown sent you, huh/And go straight to the ghetto/You know that I know what you will see/’Cause that was once… me.

“Ghetto” is more often used these days as an adjective describing a narrow frame of mind — “That girl is so ghetto” — than as a geographical term. Which is not to say there’s less poverty now than in the 1960s.

Never mind. There’s nothing ghetto about “Santa Claus Go Straight To the Ghetto.” It’s funky, funny and wise, and has a very cool guitar lick that reminds me of “Highway 61 Revisited.” Hit it! Hit it!

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