‘Central Government for Dummies’

Posted on February 3, 2012 by oddmanout215

The Tea Party likes this cartoon, but they don't get it. Should we blame TV?

Last week I wrote that the Tea Party is a dead end, mainly because its members don’t seem to understand they’re serving the rich and powerful, and surrendering power in the process. They love the idea of a “maverick” Republican presidential nominee, but they are going to get Mitt Romney, and most of them are going to vote for him. And if Mitt’s campaign implodes, they will end up with someone owned by the same monied interests that Mitt represents.

The thing that’s most pathetic about the Tea Party crowd — mostly middle-aged, formerly middle-class white men — is that they’re too blinded by ignorance and fear to see their actual enemies.

Robert Parry was lucid on this point in a recent essay. Here are the final paragraphs, but please read the whole piece:

When the Tea Partiers dress up in Revolutionary War costumes, they apparently don’t know that their notion of a weak central government and state “sovereignty” was anathema to the key framers of the Constitution, especially to Washington who had watched his soldiers suffer under the ineffectual Articles of Confederation.

And, when the Tea Partiers wave their “Don’t Tread on Me” flags of a coiled snake, they don’t seem to know that the warning was directed at the British Empire and that the banner aimed at fellow Americans was Benjamin Franklin’s image of a snake severed into various pieces representing the colonies/states with the admonishment “Join, or Die.”

Nevertheless, false narratives and false arguments can be as effective as real ones to a thoroughly misinformed population. Thus, many middle- and working-class Americans still cheer when Newt Gingrich references Ronald Reagan and his “supply-side” economics.

But the failure of Reagan’s economic strategy should be obvious to anyone who is not fully deluded by right-wing propaganda. Not only has the national debt skyrocketed over the past three decades, but whatever economic benefits that have been produced have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthy – while the nation as a whole has suffered.

Posted in Mitt Romney, Nativism, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Hope you don’t find no shadow…

Posted on February 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

Groundhog people with your groundhog ways
I see you in the sun but you fly when the shadows get long

This is an alternate version of the song that appeared on Clear, the third Spirit album (1969).

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And the big story is… Phil

Posted on February 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

'Are you guys tripping?'

From today’s Washington Post:

At 7:25 a.m. this morning, amidst mostly cloudy skies, and temperatures in the low 30s, Groundhog Phil saw his shadow in the little town of Punxsutawney, Pa.

According to folklore, Phil’s sighting of his own shadow means there will be 6 more weeks of winter. Had Phil not seen his shadow, it would have meant “there will be an early spring.”

If Phil’s forecast is right, it signals a dramatic reversal from the mild weather pattern affecting much of the country. Many parts of the central and eastern U.S. have seen temperatures 20 to 30 degrees above normal in recent days. On February 1, just 19% of the Lower 48 had snow cover compared to 52% at this time last year.

Footnote: If Phil’s sighting means anything, it’s “there will be an extremely late winter.”

Photo by Laugh It Out.

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The Facebook bubble

Posted on February 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

A massive con job may be in progress in the form of the coming Facebook IPO, which will supposedly value the company somewhere in the vicinity of $75 billion to $100 billion.

From DJ Pangburn of Death and Taxes:

… As I noted in early 2011, all of this smells exactly like another tech bubble to replace the burst housing bubble. The Great Facebook Bubble‘s inflation is absurd. Wall Street banks and investors, as well as Facebook’s numerous stockholders—many of whom are looking to cash out their stocks with the IPO—stand to benefit if they can create the illusion that Facebook is actually worth $100 billion.

The goal is to spread the belief in the illusion such that the valuation reaches its apogee, then falls over time (as all stocks do), by which point the wise investors will have already laughed all the way to the bank. As initial investors that is their right, of course, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t create and sell an illusion in the process…

Posted in Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Poe at the billionaires’ bash

Posted on February 1, 2012 by oddmanout215

Bill Moyers and William Winship commenting on the arrogance of “imperial swells” who throw grand parties to congratulate themselves on their great wealth:

This one occurred here in Manhattan at the annual black-tie dinner and induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi. That’s the very exclusive Wall Street fraternity of billionaire bankers, and private equity and hedge fund predators. People like Wilbur Ross, the vulture capitalist; Robert Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, the insurance giant that received tens of billions in bailout money; and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former chairman of Bear Stearns, the failed investment bank bought by JPMorgan Chase.

They got together at the St. Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue to eat rack of lamb, drink and haze their newest members, who are made to dress in drag, sing and perform skits while braving the insults, wine-soaked napkins and petit fours – those fancy little frosted cakes – hurled at them by the old guard. In other words, a gilt-edged Animal House, food fight and all.

This year, the butt of many a joke were the protesters of Occupy Wall Street… The whole affair’s reminiscent of the wingdings the robber barons used to throw during America’s…Gilded Age a century and a half ago, when great wealth amassed at the top, far from the squalor and misery of working stiffs…

It’s also reminiscent of “The Masque of the Red Death,” the Edgar Allan Poe short story in which a thousand royals in an unnamed territory hole up in a walled abbey to protect themselves against a disease that’s killing off the common people. At some point the royals grow bored and throw a masquerade party. A mysterious figure in a blood-stained robe and a death mask disturbs the mood of the revelers. They attack the offending figure but discover there’s no form under the costume, just the dread disease:

…And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Poe may or may not have meant the story as an allegory, but I sure as hell like reading it that way. The revelers at the St. Regis — “the winners in our winner-take-all economy,” Moyers calls them — are the revelers in Poe’s abbey. The only thing lacking in the modern version of the story is a similarly satisfying ending.

Footnote: I’m picturing vulture capitalist Wilbur Ross trying to make a deal with Mr. Death: “I just bought the Bank of Ireland. Take my euros, please…”

Posted in economic collapse, fiction, Goldman Sachs, history, humor, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dirtballs face off in Florida

Posted on January 30, 2012 by oddmanout215

Background on Mitt Romney’s “you’re as big a dirtball as I am” line of attack:

A recent newspaper story detailed at great length how campaign strategists for Romney and Newt Gingrich are battling to secure a win for the their respective candidates in the Florida primary. Multimillions are being spent on attack ads, mostly by Mitt, who also hired a new debating coach and “fearsome researchers.” Newt accused Mitt of having mutual funds invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, mortgage lenders backed by (gasp!) big government. Mitt counterattacked with the same charge when he learned Newt also had invested in Freddie and Fannie.

Mitt made his fortune destroying companies and putting people out of work. Newt, a former influence peddler for Freddie Mac, has been fronting since the 1980s for those who want to eliminate social services. Mitt is by far the wealthier of the two, but both candidates are up to their ears in dirty money, and ultimately answerable to the big banks, corporations and individual billionaires (Newt is Sheldon Adelson’s boy) that back their campaigns.

It’s as if John Dillinger and “Pretty Boy” Floyd were arguing who was the bigger criminal, except that Dillinger and Floyd weren’t hypocrites and front men for The Guys Who Really Run the Show, and didn’t harm nearly as many people.

In a just world, all those millions being spent on the primary would go to the huge number of Floridians who have lost their jobs and/or homes in the so-called Great Recession, but I think it’s safe to assume the fate of poor people doesn’t figure into the campaign strategies of these candidates.

In fact, who but a rich person or an imbecile would vote for either of them?

Oh, now I remember — “low information” voters.

Posted in campaign finance reform, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

‘Job creator’ myth debunked

Posted on January 28, 2012 by oddmanout215

NYT reporters don’t seem to have access to the same facts as NYT columnist Paul Krugman, maybe because he doesn’t have an intranet connection to the newsroom. I’m kidding, but who knows? On Friday, Krugman lit into Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels for misleadingly referring to Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, as a job creator, even though Apple employs only 43,000 people in the U.S. while indirectly employing 700,000 people in other countries.

Yes, the Times did report those figures in a piece that helped explain why Apple does so much work in totalitarian China — the Chinese government subsidizes huge manufacturing centers with reliable supply chains and ultra-cheap labor — and so little in the U.S.

However, a more thorough investigative piece would have put Chinese manufacturing efficiency in perspective by including the sometimes startling information in Krugman’s Friday column:

…Germany remains a highly successful exporter even with workers who cost, on average, $44 an hour — much more than the average cost of American workers. And this success has a lot to do with the support its small and medium-sized companies — the famed Mittelstand — provide to each other via shared suppliers and the maintenance of a skilled work force.

The point is that successful companies — or, at any rate, companies that make a large contribution to a nation’s economy — don’t exist in isolation. Prosperity depends on the synergy between companies, on the cluster, not the individual entrepreneur.

But the current Republican worldview has no room for such considerations. From the G.O.P.’s perspective, it’s all about the heroic entrepreneur, the John Galt, I mean Steve Jobs-type “job creator” who showers benefits on the rest of us and who must, of course, be rewarded with tax rates lower than those paid by many middle-class workers…

I think Krugman’s larger, implicit point is that American corporations do what they do — off-shore millions of jobs while being treated to gigantic tax breaks — only because our corrupt political system allows them to do so. We could be Germany, a democracy with strong unions, good wages and universal health care, if we had laws that reined in the Ayn Rand disciples who sell out American workers but are portrayed as heroes by the American media.

Posted in campaign finance reform, economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Newt promises the moon

Posted on January 28, 2012 by oddmanout215

Newt Gingrich was in Florida the other day, speaking of plans to build a colony on the moon.

This is funny, but cruel. Florida’s economy collapsed when the housing bubble burst. There will be no more housing booms in Florida, and only a looney would believe there will be a new aerospace boom. Gingrich isn’t looney — he’s just another corrupt hack trying to convince desperate people he can make their lives more bearable. To the moon, Newt!

Footnote: “Rope Ladder to the Moon” is from Songs For a Tailor, Jack Bruce’s first release after Cream broke up, and a good example of the boldly eccentric style he cultivated throughout most of his solo career. His lyricist, Pete Brown, often went over the top, but how could he not, working with someone who wrote such off-the-wall melodies?

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A life-affirming little theft

Posted on January 27, 2012 by oddmanout215

Call Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad a collection of interrelated short stories. Or call it a novel, if you like. The book has won several prestigious awards, so Egan might not care what you call it. She read Wednesday night at Rutgers-Camden from the book’s opening story, or chapter, called “Found Objects,” about a New York City woman named Sasha who has a one-night stand with a man named Alex. Sasha finds time to indulge her ruling compulsion, kleptomania, when Alex uses her bathroom, and this is where Egan conjures up the sort of little surprise that makes short fiction worth reading:

… She knelt on the floor and slipped his wallet from his pants pocket and opened it, her heart firing with a sudden pressure. It was a plain black wallet, worn to gray along the edges. Rapidly she flicked among its contents: a debit card, a work ID, a gym card. In a side pocket, a faded picture of two boys and a girl in braces, squinting on a beach. A sports team in yellow uniforms, heads so small she couldn’t tell if one of them belonged to Alex. From among these dog-eared photos, a scrap of binder paper dropped into Sasha’s lap. It looked very old, the edges torn, the pale-blue lines rubbed almost away. Sasha unfolded it and saw written, in blunt pencil, “I BELIEVE IN YOU.” She froze, staring at the words. They seemed to tunnel toward her from their meagre scrap, bringing a flush of embarrassment for Alex, who’d kept this disintegrating tribute in his disintegrating wallet, and then shame at herself for having looked at it. She was faintly aware of the faucet being turned on, and of the need to move quickly. Hastily, mechanically, she reassembled the wallet, keeping the slip of paper in her hand. I’m just going to hold this, she was aware of telling herself as she tucked the wallet back into Alex’s pocket. I’ll put it back later; he probably doesn’t remember it’s in there. I’ll actually be doing him a favor by getting it out of the way before someone finds it. I’ll say, Hey, I noticed this on the rug, is it yours? And he’ll say, That? I’ve never seen it before—it must be yours, Sasha. And maybe that’s true. Maybe someone gave it to me years ago, and I forgot…

Buy the book. Support the arts. Support fiction writers!

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Natural-born faux populists

Posted on January 26, 2012 by oddmanout215

Watching Barack Obama’s speech the other night, my mood swung from bemusement to grudging admiration to laugh-out-loud disbelief. I wrote a post yesterday that focused on the president’s innate acting ability. Today, Robert Scheer noted that Obama’s gift is strongly reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s:

I’ll admit it: Listening to Barack Obama, I am ready to enlist in his campaign against the feed-the-rich Republicans … until I recall that I once responded in the same way to Bill Clinton’s faux populism. And then I get angry because betrayal by the “good guys” for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm.

Yes, betrayal, because if Obama meant what he said in Tuesday’s State of the Union address about holding the financial industry responsible for its scams, why did he appoint the old Clinton crowd that had legalized those scams to the top economic posts in his administration? Why did he hire Timothy Geithner, who has turned the Treasury Department into a concierge service for Wall Street tycoons?

Why hasn’t he pushed for a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Clinton’s deregulation reversed? Does the president really believe that the Dodd-Frank slap-on-the-wrist sellout represents “new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like this never happens again”? Can he name one single too-big-to-fail banking monstrosity that has been reduced in size on his watch instead of encouraged to grow ever larger by Treasury and Fed bailouts and interest-free money..?

Footnote: Thank God that Mitt “Carried Interest” Romney is such a bad actor. Imagine if he were able to fake concern for people who work for a living.

Posted in Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, humor, mainstream media, movies, Obama | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment