‘Get a job’ easy to say if you’ve got one

Posted on May 13, 2012 by oddmanout215

Paul Krugman recently noted a close resemblance between Ben Bernanke’s famously lame prediction about the economy — “I think as those green shoots begin to appear in different markets and as some confidence begins to come back that will begin the positive dynamic that brings our economy back” — and the words of Chance, the simple-minded gardener who is mistaken for a sage in the satiric movie Being There, based on Jerzy Kosinski’s novel — “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden. . . . There will be growth in the spring.”

In the same piece, Krugman quoted from the novel Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by B. Traven:

Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.

B. Traven was a German mystery man who wrote in Mexico and probably was an anarchist. I’ve never read Traven, but the quotation and my fondness for the classic movie adapted from his novel makes me want to run out and buy the latter.

Footnote: I wonder if the the most famous line from the movie — “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” — was taken from the novel.

Posted in arts, movies, unemployment | 1 Comment

When will Obama ‘evolve’ on jobs?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by oddmanout215

From MoveOn.org:

Breaking: The Obama Announcement That May Just Make You Cry

And after the sappy headline:

Yes! We couldn’t be more excited! As MoveOn Executive Director Justin Ruben puts it: “This is a historic day. The president’s support for marriage equality is great news that’s likely to energize progressive activists across the country.”

I’ll bet most people who are excited by Obama’s lukewarm and long-overdue announcement live inside the liberal bubble, where no one speaks of how little leadership and passion the president has shown on most progressive concerns, especially the ongoing disaster of unemployment in this country.

Put another way, Obama had been described as “evolving” toward the state of mind he was in when he endorsed marriage equality. I’m wondering how long it will take him to evolve into a leader who recognizes the urgent need for economic equality.

It’s true Obama had nothing to do with the financial collapse. There’s no way he could quickly reverse the effects of Dubya’s disastrous stupidity, or defeat all by himself the loathsome Congressional Republicans who are happy that one percent of Americans prosper while the rest grow poorer.

But again — when will this guy evolve beyond equating “the economy” with the interests of big banks and multinational corporations? When will he stop hobnobbing with the heads of companies that make billions, are taxed at outrageously low rates, and continue to outsource jobs and lower the wages of Americans still hanging on to jobs? When will he at least try to appear to be serious about fighting for working people?

Here’s Paul Krugman on the extent of the problem:

… There are now four job seekers for every job opening, which means that workers who lose one job find it very hard to get another. Six million Americans, almost five times as many as in 2007, have been out of work for six months or more; four million have been out of work for more than a year, up from just 700,000 before the [financial] crisis… Not since the 1930s have so many Americans found themselves seemingly trapped in a permanent state of joblessness…

The fact that Obama made a condescending speech to endorse marriage equality — as if it’s a big deal that he’s for something that wouldn’t even be controversial in more civilized countries — while he continues to ignore the scope of the unemployment problem, sickens me.

And the fact that MoveOn.org functions as a cheerleading operating for the president instead of pressuring him to fight for job creation makes me think the Democratic Party will never re-connect with the working class.

Full disclosure: I’m an out-of-work writer. If MoveOn.org reads this and is seeking someone to crank out news releases that are realistic, as opposed to euphoric-sounding and worshipful, please contact me.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Mittens distinguishes himself again

Posted on May 10, 2012 by oddmanout215

How awful is Mitt Romney? Is there anything he won’t do or say to improve his chances of being elected? Here’s a for instance:

… On Thursday morning, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conducted tense negotiations with the Chinese government over the fate of Chen Guangcheng, the blind dissident who had sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, Romney seized on rumors of American capitulation to launch a political salvo: “If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration,” he said at a rally in Virginia. “We are a place of freedom here and around the world, and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack…”

The crisis ended in what Joe Conason called a “face-saving solution” for the Chinese and the Obama administration. It turned out to be a bright day for Chen. I don’t agree with Conason too often, but I’m with him on this:

… Romney’s error was worse than a misguided political tactic. It showed a woeful ignorance of diplomacy and a callow opportunism that don’t befit the next occupant of the Oval Office. To endanger Chen’s safety and the prestige of the United States in those difficult hours was an act of weak character as well as stupidity…

Romney’s statements about Chen came shortly after another glaring example of his weak character — his decision to throw Richard Grenell under the bus. The openly gay staffer resigned after taking a lot of heat from anti-gay rights Republicans. Romney didn’t defend the man, and didn’t ask him to stay on. Conason again:

If Grenell was qualified to hold the sensitive post of foreign policy spokesman, why did Romney cave instantly to demands from radio hosts and other ignorant bigots to let him go?

Gee, I don’t know. Could it have anything to do with the fact that he’s simultaneously ruthless and cowardly, not to mention morally bankrupt? He also came out against same-sex marriage, of course, to counter Barack Obama’s position on the issue.

Footnote: I’ll take it all back if Romney turns out to be an android — a suspicion I expressed in a previous post — like those creatures in Blade Runner. Except that the Blade Runner androids had character.

Posted in humor, Mitt Romney, Politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Cut food stamps, save the F-35!

Posted on May 8, 2012 by oddmanout215

The projected costs of this war toy have hurtled through the stratosphere and are moving into deep space.

And save the rich from having to return to those grim days before the Bush tax cuts, which have, over the past decade, added $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit.

From ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, House Republicans moved legislation forward aimed at preventing any reductions in military spending, even if that means cutting much needed programs for the nation’s poorest. The House Armed Services Committee’s bill provides $554 billion for the Pentagon — $29 billion more than [the Department of Defense] had requested — while the GOP-led Budget Committee packaged six bills that would “slice $261 billion from food stamps, Medicaid, social services and other programs for struggling Americans.”

From DoD, the Online Defense and Acquisition Journal, March 20:

Cost overruns for the first batches of F-35 Lightning IIs total more than $1 billion, Congress’ watchdog agency said Tuesday, in the latest report to detail the woes of the world’s largest defense program.

The overall cost estimate for the whole program is now close to $400 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office, and although investigators were careful to note the progress DoD and Lockheed Martin have made in the past year, the overall picture remained very bleak.

Also from ThinkProgress:

While Republicans push these cuts [in programs for the poor] in the name of righting America’s balance sheet and staving off a debt crisis, their efforts are miniscule compared to their push to extend budget busting tax cuts for the rich. By promising last week that they will offer a full extension of the Bush tax cuts — at a 10-year cost of $2.4 trillion — without offsetting the cost, GOP leaders assured Americans that their deficit-reduction efforts will never be achieved.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

A lie is a lie is a lie is a lie

Posted on May 6, 2012 by oddmanout215

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

― Gertrude Stein

How many of you English majors knew that Gertrude Stein took the side of Frenchmen who sympathized and collaborated with the Nazis before and during World War II? From the New Yorker:

… In 1941, at [Bernard] Faÿ’s suggestion, Stein agreed to translate a set of speeches by Marshal Philippe Pétain—a hundred eighty pages of explicitly anti-Semitic tirades—into English. (She hoped that they would be published in America, although they never were…)

… It would be easy to chalk up Stein’s endorsement of Pétain to her gratitude toward Faÿ, who shielded her from persecution during the war (Stein and [Alice] Toklas, both Jews, stayed out of the capital and in the countryside throughout the fighting), or to her political cunning. But her enthusiasm for Pétain, who was responsible for the death and deportation of nearly eighty thousand French Jews, was nothing new. After she met Faÿ—the first professor of American studies in France and a friend of Pétain—in 1926, she increasingly warmed to his political thought, writing to him once that she “sees politics but from one angle, which is yours.” Stein felt it vital for artists to work in undisturbed serenity in a climate of political stability; on the day, in 1940, that France fell to the Nazis, she published a book in which she wrote, “I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free…”

The latter quote, possibly a distortion of something Flaubert wrote, is key. Stein was saying that artists, in order to be free to make art, must not defy the powers-that-be, even when freedom is being stomped out, and people killed, all around them. As if art exists in a realm outside of human experience. As if you don’t have to decide at some point to be on the bus or off it.

How ironic that such a sophisticate, so famous for her literary ambiguity, would stumble so badly over her own lies and self-deceptions.

Posted in arts, history, liar, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

It’s the jobs market, stupid

Posted on May 6, 2012 by oddmanout215

Last week I noted that Mitt Romney — insipid, empathy-free, and a congenital liar — was a gift from the gods to the Barack Obama re-election campaign. But even the gift of Mittens won’t help Obama if he continues to campaign as if that alone will get him re-elected.

Put another way, if autumn rolls around with the unemployment numbers — the real numbers — as bad as they are now, and with Obama continuing to passively allow the Republicans to blame him for this, he’ll lose.

Here’s Robert Reich on the latest misleading jobless estimates — 8.1, my ass! — reported by the mainstream media:

Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people…

Most observers pay attention to the official rate of unemployment, which edged down to 8.1 percent in April from 8.2 percent in March. That may sound like progress, but it’s not. The unemployment rate dropped because more people dropped out of the labor force, too discouraged to look for work. The household survey, from which the rate is calculated, counts as “unemployed” only people who are actively looking for work. If you stop looking because the job scene looks hopeless for you, you’re no longer counted…

Most of the job gains in April were in lower-wage industries – retail stores, restaurants, and temporary-help. That means average wages continue to drop, adjusted for inflation – continuing their long-term decline. Most of the new jobs that have been added to the U.S. economy during this recovery have paid less than the jobs that were lost during the downturn…

Voters might forgive Obama for screwing up most of his first term — i.e., for focusing on bank bailouts and faulty health care initiatives at the expense of jobs programs. But at this point he should be on the road as often as possible, in the home districts of corrupt Republican stooges, exhorting them to quit pretending billionaires are job creators, reminding voters that cutting public-sector jobs and shredding the social safety net can only make the situation worse.

Instead, Obama is mildly reproaching the GOP for blocking jobs. He’s staging publicity stunts such as his secret trip to Afghanistan last week, during which he implicitly bragged about his role in the slaying of Osama bin Laden.

What a dope. Most voters want a president who seems fully engaged in helping the middle-class and poor get out of the ditch dug for them by Wall Street and advocates of globalization. They don’t want a Dem who reminds them of that jackass who strutted across an aircraft carrier, trying to look manly. Not this year.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Obama, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Demon weed or regular fags?

Posted on May 5, 2012 by oddmanout215

Don’t tell the Department of Justice, but Ray Davies may have been substituting the rhyming slang term “Harry rag” for “marijuana cigarette.” But the song could just as easily be about regular cigarettes, or fags, as the Brits call them.

Footnote, from Alternet:

More U.S. teens are now smoking marijuana than smoke cigarettes.

That’s right. Among high school students, current use — defined as use within the last 30 days — is now higher for marijuana than for cigarettes. According to the [Center for Disease Control and Prevention], 21.9 percent of teens reported smoking cigarettes within the last month, while 22.4 percent smoked marijuana.

There is a lesson here, but one that policymakers won’t want to hear: If the idea is to stop teen substance use, the approach we’ve used with tobacco works better than the approach we’ve taken with marijuana. That means regulation of adult use, rather than prohibition…

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The DOJ’s jihad on medical marijuana

Posted on May 3, 2012 by oddmanout215

The world’s most ridiculously named law enforcement organization — the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms — is one of many federal agencies participating in the crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, something that many Barack Obama supporters couldn’t have imagined happening when they elected him. From Time:

…In 2011, the Department of Justice revised its guidance to U.S. Attorneys, allowing them to target any medical marijuana activity except for ill patients and their immediate caregivers. The Drug Enforcement Administration has made it clear that “medical marijuana is not medicine,” and even called it a “mortal danger.” The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has banned the sale of guns to medical marijuana patients. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has told public housing authorities that they can’t rent to medical marijuana patients. And the Internal Revenue Service has reiterated its position that medical pot businesses cannot deduct expenses related to an illegal drug. Fearing federal intervention, many banks are now dropping medical marijuana dispensaries as customers…

…Individual sick users are safe from prosecution, but they are likely to find it harder in the coming months to get the drug. Growers and dispensers are not protected by state law from federal prosecution, especially if they become large enough to get noticed by federal investigators. And the likely result is that more of the medical marijuana industry will be pushed underground in the coming years, making it more difficult for local officials to track the business. This arguably will only increase some criminal activity, as large amounts of money and a very profitable commodity move through the system by way of small-time dealers working without sophisticated security systems…

I can’t help wondering just how nervous the law-breaking banksters who ruined our economy would be if the feds went after them with a tiny fraction of the same zeal.

Footnote: Tell me again, Obama fans — what does this guy stand for that you admire?

Posted in health care, liar | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bill Clinton’s disastrous assumption

Posted on May 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

Somebody at Truthdig was pondering the gulf between rich and poor in America and, not coincidentally, thought of the 1996 State of the Union address, in which Bill Clinton “kneecapped Franklin Delano Roosevelt” by declaring that the era of big government was over:

The full line, which is awfully haunting 16 years later with record poverty and the safety net in tatters, is “The era of big government is over, but we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”

Later that year, on Aug. 22, Clinton would sign the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which sounds like it was titled by George Orwell and ended the way welfare had been distributed to the poor, mostly women and children, since the 1930s.

“Welfare reform” was a plank of Newt Gingrich’s true believers in Congress. Clinton’s acquiescence and the line about big government, replayed below, were, a skeptic might say, an election year maneuver to show that the president could be tough on poor people. It worked in the sense that it helped Clinton win re-election. It failed in the sense that the welfare system is now so broken and insubstantial, some poor people don’t even bother applying.

In acquiescing to the wishes of the Gingrich gang, Clinton was indeed consigning America back to a time when citizens in need were left to fend for themselves. You can’t really have it both ways, can you?

Posted in economic collapse, history, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Why we’re still in Afghanistan

Posted on May 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

Misleading headline. I’ve no idea why the American military presence in Afghanistan is, in fact, three times as large as it was before Barack Obama took office. Does Obama know? If he does, he’s keeping it to himself. He’s saying things like this, from the speech he gave during his surprise visit to Bagram Air Base:

…Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon…

He makes Afghanistan sound like “mission accomplished,” then allows that the military will be there through 2014, and maybe much longer, at who knows what cost. He doesn’t say why. How does such a gifted, well-educated man bring himself to use such banal and deceitful language?

I just finished reading the Vanity Fair piece about Obama in the 1980s, living in New York City and attending Columbia, doing a lot of reading and thinking. This is from a letter to a girlfriend in which he expresses admiration for poet T.S. Eliot’s world view:

…Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini…)

I know, don’t make too much of the self-infatuated ramblings of a bright guy in his early 20s, but those lines arguably shed light on why Obama turned out to be a major disappointment to progressives who expected him to put a lid on exorbitant “defense” spending, curtail growing economic inequality, crack down on banksters, and so on.

Obama is attractive and socially adroit but he’s essentially a private man who learned early on to rein in his passions and hide his conservative beliefs regarding how to change the world for the good. He learned to veil his beliefs in abstract language that would appeal to progressive voters on an emotional level.

The irony is that, in pursuing power, he may have fooled himself as much as he fooled the rest of us. What is the good of his cautious, ostensibly middle-of-the road approach to governance? How different are his speeches — his beliefs — about the conduct of foreign wars from those of the much less gifted George W. Bush?

Posted in history, mainstream media, Obama | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment