Romney is in a cult, but it’s not Mormonism

Posted on October 9, 2011 by oddmanout215

Don’t wonder if Mitt Romney wears magic Mormon underwear. Don’t fret that he’s a member of the Mormon Church — officially, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — started by Joseph Smith, a 19th-century con man who claimed he was visited by an angel named Moroni who directed him to a pair of golden plates engraved with ancient characters that Smith somehow translated into what became the Book of Mormon.

Don’t worry about Mormonism, it’s no crazier than any other religion. It has millions of followers. It’s not a cult.

Worry about the cult that Romney does belong to — the corporatocracy, the cult through which corporations dominate governments, “… even those governments nominally elected by the people…” It’s an updated version of the system Dwight Eisenhower warned against in 1961.

Romney is a corporatist of the first order, a vastly wealthy man who made his fortune through leveraged buyouts — “essentially, mortgaging companies to take them over in the hope of reselling them at big profits in just a few years.” Profits are made at the expense of the rank-and-file workers who typically lose their jobs and are robbed of their pensions after the company’s cash reserves are raided.

Here’s Romney on the campaign trail: “Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people.” If he were honest, his sentence would have ended “… to the people who own the corporations.”

Romney is Gordon Gekko without the charisma. His cult is a relatively small group of executives, lobbyists, deregulating lawyers and corrupt politicians who devote their energies to bolstering and defending corporate monopolies and mergers that destroy the jobs and lives of ordinary people. Meanwhile, the favored companies become “too big to fail,” because their failure would mean the collapse of the entire economic system.

Romney is the scum of the earth, but his religion isn’t to blame. He is a cultist, but his cult isn’t Mormonism. He is a corporatist, and corporatists arguably are fascists, but we’re not going to see that argument discussed by the corporate media, are we?

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Do you know a gal, or guy, like Nicole?

Posted on October 8, 2011 by oddmanout215

I was re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934) and ran across this masterful description of the great divide between rich and poor, in the 1920s and now:

… She bought a dozen bathing suits, a rubber alligator, a traveling chess set of gold and ivory, big linen handkerchiefs for Abe, two chamois leather jackets of kingfisher blue and burning bush from Hermes — bought all these things not a bit like a high-class courtesan buying underwear and jewels, which were after all professional equipment and insurance — but with an entirely different point of view. Nicole was the product of much ingenuity and toil. For her sake trains began their run at Chicago and traversed the round belly of the continent to California; chicle factories fumed and link belts grew link by link in factories; men mixed toothpaste in vats and drew mouthwash out of copper hogsheads; girls canned tomatoes quickly in August or worked rudely at the Five-and-Tens on Christmas Eve; half-breed Indians toiled on Brazilian coffee plantations and dreamers were muscled out of patent rights in new tractors — these were some of the people who gave a tithe to Nicole, and as the whole system swayed and thundered onward it lent a feverish bloom to such processes of hers as wholesale buying, like the flush of a fireman’s face holding his post before a spreading blaze …

Not to be reductive, but I think the novel is partly about the the author’s struggle to appreciate beauty as something that exists above and beyond the trappings of wealth and power. Fitzgerald may not have successfully made this leap in his short life, but his best works are testaments to how well he succeeded in his art.

Posted in arts, economic collapse, fiction, globalization, The New Depression | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

These protesters are ‘angry at the right people’

Posted on October 8, 2011 by oddmanout215

Who would have thought a few weeks ago that hundreds of protestors from something called Occupy Philly would set up camp in Center City? The idea is almost as far-fetched as a tent city next to Wall Street.

But there they were at 9:30 Thursday night, with small groups of cops gathered near their campsite, on City Hall’s Dilworth Plaza. About a dozen tents had been pitched and many sleeping bags unrolled. Bicycles were locked up on the plaza, all along the railings that face 15th Street. Motorists sped by honking their horns to show support for the protesters, who cheered back at them.

Placards were stacked against the brick walls of the plaza. There was little light but people hung out, chatting in small groups. Those I spoke to expected the site to remain occupied for a long time, with individuals coming and going.

Stations were set up for the group’s various committees, for everything from first-aid to food. A young guy named Patrick DeWitt was chopping onions in the dark, on a folding table stacked with bowls full of sliced rolls, vegetables and donuts. He and others were glad to hear that a large supply of pizzas might be delivered around noon on Friday. (Call Erika Bell at 609-670-8545 about contributing food.)

The nearby Friends Center and Arch Street Methodist Church are helping. No major hassles regarding permits yet. No confrontations with cops or anyone else. Let’s see how long the honeymoon with the cops lasts.

It’s happening all over the country. Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Buffalo Springfield, got it right in his Friday column: “What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.”

Footnote: Jonathan Alter called Occupy Wall Street “a cross between a Hooverville and Woodstock – the middle-class jobless of the 1930s and the hippie protesters of the 1960s.” This is also a fairly apt description of the Philly site. There were many older people camped out at City Hall, some of them homeless. The big difference between the 1930s and now is that we don’t have an FDR or anyone remotely like him “occupying” the White House or campaigning to do so.

Posted in City Hall, economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Philadelphia, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Cheez Whiz is legal, so why not pot?

Posted on October 7, 2011 by oddmanout215

The Philadelphia Daily News recently had fun reporting a story about a drug bust involving a manager at Jim’s Steaks. You know, the usual jokes about South Philly accents and dining preferences:

HOW YA LIKE yer cheesesteak…? Whiz Wit’? Maybe with a side of cocaine and Xanax…? Such a delicacy would have been possible at South Street’s Jim’s Steaks, if not for police intervention… Over the summer, investigators uncovered alleged drug dealing inside the steak joint and arrested one of Jim’s managers, Andre McMillian.

McMillian was nabbed by cops on Aug. 4 as he supervised the cooks preparing cheesesteaks behind the counter, said Lt. Joseph Bologna, one of the arresting officers… The narcotics unit confiscated cocaine, marijuana, 272 Percocet pills, 95 Xanax pills, 21 Endocet pills, $2,400 and McMillian’s Chevrolet Venture, according to court documents. Police estimated that the seizure was worth $25,300…

Twenty-five grand is small cheese fries in the world of drug-running, but I guess Daily News couldn’t resist using a story that led with a cheesesteak-wit’-Xanax-on-the-side joke. Reporter Regina Medina (a nom de plume?) noted that this “delicacy” would have been possible “if not for police intervention,” but isn’t it likely the guy was dealing for a long time before the bust? This is South Street, after all, not Ocean Grove, NJ.

Anyway, what’s the big deal about Xanax and pot, aside from the risk of being busted if you don’t pay off the right people? Can those drugs be any worse for the human body than artery-clogging Cheez Whiz and minute steaks? I doubt it.

Just to clarify: I’m not dissing Jim’s Steaks. Whenever someone stops me on the street to ask where Pat’s or Geno’s is — it happens often, tourists believe the hype about those two steak sandwich joints — I tell them go to Jim’s, it’s better, if only for aesthetic reasons. The Art Deco facade at Jim’s is way cooler than the neon nightmare of Pat’s and Geno’s, at Ninth and Passyunk. Standing down there at night feels like being on drugs — really bad drugs.

Posted in Great Recession, humor, livable cities, mainstream media, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Obama sides with banksters, not protesters

Posted on October 6, 2011 by oddmanout215

OK, we knew this all along, but I still winced when I read it in Firedoglake:

For perhaps the first time, President Barack Obama was forced to explain why there have been no prosecutions of Wall Street executives for their fraudulent actions during the run-up to the financial crisis. Asked by Jake Tapper to explain this behavior, Obama basically suggested that most of the actions on Wall Street weren’t illegal but just immoral, and that his Administration worked to re-regulate the financial sector with the Dodd-Frank reform legislation.

“Banks are in the business of making money, and they find loopholes,” the President said. Apparently forging and fabricating documents to prove ownership of homes that are subsequently stolen from borrowers is now a loophole.

The Occupy movement, as it spreads from New York City to all parts of the country, is shining a light on all those murky-minded Democrats who haven’t had the balls to speak up for the unemployed, the underemployed, the homeless, the near-homeless and all the other beleaguered people the Democratic Party used to represent.

The most important of these Dems In Name Only, of course, is President Obama, whose tightrope act — his attempt to reconcile his deep connection with the banksters and his tepid support of the backlash against them — is causing cognitive dissonance among those who voted for him in 2008, even as it is being largely ignored by the corporate media.

An L.A. Times report on the same press conference covered by Firedoglake doesn’t even mention Obama’s negative response to questions about prosecution of banksters. Here is the Times‘s no-shit lede:

President Obama said Thursday that the Occupy Wall Street protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans about how the US financial system works.

And here is Firedoglake again, getting to the heart of the matter:

… [Obama] took ownership of the extraordinary financial support given to banks as they teetered on the verge of collapse. And this is a central grievance of the protesters on Wall Street and across the country.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Weird NJ’s phantom tollbooth attendant

Posted on October 6, 2011 by oddmanout215

The good old days

It was a wonderful night until I tried to leave New Jersey.

I’d read my short story “Chokepoint” at the Walt Whitman Arts Center in Camden, and I’d heard sharp, witty poems by West Coast transplant Seve Torres and a virtuosically funny short story by Violet LeVoit, from her collection I Am Genghis Cum.

Everybody was there, even my blogger friend Susan Madrak, an avid Phillies fan who could have stayed home and watched the game but is probably glad she didn’t. (The Cardinals won.)

Heading back to Philly, I got as far as the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge and realized I didn’t have enough cash to pay the toll, which is up to five dollars. The attendant at the toll booth I approached told me no debit cards or vouchers, they don’t do that sort of thing in Jersey.

Her preternatural calm rattled me. She had belladonna eyes and wore large silver earrings and silver eye makeup and speckles of silver paint on her cheeks. Her voice was barely audible. It’s not even Halloween yet.

My only option was to go back to Camden and get cash, the attendant whispered. I tried arguing with her and reached for my wallet to show her my ID. When I looked up she had vanished, but the gate had been raised so that I could loop back around to the city of the dead.

Two cop cars were parked not far from the tollbooths. I knew they’d be on me in seconds if I tried to cross the bridge, so I swerved to the right and took Lonely Avenue to Tombstone Boulevard, which brought me to Nowhere Road and then to 30 East, where I found a gas station convenience store with an ATM. You don’t know the meaning of “desolate” unless you’ve tried to get from here to there in South Jersey at night.

My second attempt to cross the bridge went smoothly. The attendant was a big, smiling woman. I said to her, “It’s no accident, is it, that you can drive into New Jersey for free but you have to pay to get back out.”

“Have a nice night,” she said after I handed her the cash.

Posted in NJ, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

What’s crazier, belief in UFOs or in ‘free trade’?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by oddmanout215

"Let's watch the American Earthlings destroy themselves."

Who else remembers when presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was kneecapped by the corporate media? During a candidates’ debate in 2007 Tim Russert asked Kucinich if it were true he’d seen a UFO years before. “I did,” Kucinich said. “It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It’s like, it’s unidentified. I saw something.”

Afterwards, Russert and other Beltway journalists pondered Kucinich’s answer out loud and at great length in order to portray him as a kook, as if sighting a UFO was more bizarre than, say, religious beliefs espoused by other presidential candidates.

The truth is that Kucinich was singled out for ridicule because he’s not in lockstep with the corporate interests that own the major news media outlets and fund presidential candidates.

Kucinich isn’t running for president this time, but he’s still saying all the things that make the corporate media and corporate-owned politicians uncomfortable. Yesterday, I read this by Kucinich and thought, damn, I’d vote for him over Barack Obama in a heartbeat:

Today President Obama submitted three free trade agreements to Congress based on the flawed North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has been devastating to our economy, American workers and to labor and environmental standards. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been displaced and outsourced as a result of our pursuit of trade policies which are adverse to the economic interests of the American people. My home state of Ohio is one of the top-ten states posting the biggest job losses since the passage of NAFTA.

Unfortunately, the proposed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama do nothing to address the significant flaws in the free trade model that prioritize the rights of multinational companies over the rights of workers and the American economy. The Korea-US and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements are expected to increase our trade deficit by over $16 billion and result in the displacement or loss of over 200,000 jobs. This is on top of the over 2 million American jobs that have been displaced or eliminated over the past 10 years as a result of our increased trade deficit with China.

The last thing American workers and our economy needs is more NAFTA-style free trade agreements.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, Uncategorized, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

‘Mainstream’ is the wrong word for corporate media

Posted on October 5, 2011 by oddmanout215

Leslie Griffith makes a good point: What we call the “mainstream” media is anything but. She’s not quibbling about semantics, but rather trying to impress upon readers the importance of accurately naming forces that have a direct effect on our welfare:

… We have been sold words that lack any real meaning. The “Main Stream” no longer speaks for Main Street, it speaks for Wall Street. But we buy into the lie when we buy into those words.

We must be more critical of what we see. For example, how many times did we see “reporters” like Brian Williams standing next to our Gulf Coast as the British Petroleum disaster unfolded? What did he tell us in the first days of that ecological disaster? “These are the smartest and most responsible oil workers on the planet.” He gushed, just like the poison spilling into the Gulf… And then there’s Andrea Mitchell. She sleeps with and is married to Alan Greenspan, the man who helped get us in this economic debacle. Mitchell has her own “Main Stream” broadcast. She is sold as “middle of the road.” But, of course, she delivers “Corporate-Government” controlled news…

The “Main Stream” now works for the same power brokers who seem to ignore the fact that we all breathe the same air, eat the same food, drink from the same water faucets and swim in the same sea…

The thought of anyone sleeping with Alan Greenspan makes me queasy, especially right after dinner, but the reality of Greenspan’s wife having a prominent job in TV news has always seemed downright sickening. Even worse is the reality of talking heads such as Williams being introduced on talk shows — Jon Stewart’s faux-news show, for example — as if they were experts on what’s going on in the world.

Griffith is right — the mainstream is we the people, not the entities dishing out the news that fits the interests of the wealthy and powerful. These entities don’t represent us. It makes more sense to think of TV network news, NPR and the major dailies in terms of corporations, and to call them the corporate media.

Posted in mainstream media, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tom Friedman’s ‘hyperconnected’ fantasy world

Posted on October 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

The NYT headline was “How did the robot end up with my job?” It was on an op/ed column by Tom Friedman, the corporate media’s foremost cheerleader for the brave new world of downsizing, outsourcing and off-shoring that is the new reality for the growing number of underemployed Americans.

Friedman’s column is about the forces that helped stoke the outrage behind Occupy Wall Street and similar movements around the country. He likes these forces.

The pudgy pollyanna thinks he’s a visionary, of course. He writes with monotonous enthusiasm and salesman-like optimism about opportunities created by the forces that enrich the corporate cutthroats in the vanguard of the push for further globalization. Plug him in and switch on a button and I bet he could chatter for days on this subject. Here he is in print:

In the last decade, we have gone from a connected world… to a hyperconnected world… The connected world was a challenge to blue-collar workers in the industrialized West. They had to compete with a bigger pool of cheap labor. The hyperconnected world is now a challenge to white-collar workers. They have to compete with a bigger pool of cheap geniuses — some of whom are people and some are now robots, microchips and software-guided machines…

It is a huge inflection point masked by the Great Recession.

It is also both a huge challenge and opportunity. It has never been harder to find a job and never been easier — for those prepared for this world — to invent a job or find a customer. Anyone with the spark of an idea can start a company overnight, using a credit card, while accessing brains, brawn and customers anywhere. It is why Pascal Lamy, chief of the World Trade Organization, argues that terms like “made in America” or “made in China” are phasing out. The proper term, says Lamy, is “made in the world.” More products are designed everywhere, made everywhere and sold everywhere.

How can Friedman, in good conscience, serve up such garbage to readers? In fact, it has never been harder for Americans to find jobs, period. This is largely because the corporate monsters Friedman champions are free to moves jobs overseas with impunity — without even being penalized by the government that has subsidized the growth of these companies, often by granting them outlandish tax breaks.

Friedman notes that competition for high-level freelance jobs that pay next to nothing is becoming fiercer by the day — and he thinks this is a good thing. Coining another of his inane phrases, he refers to “The Great Inflection” that is collapsing multiple jobs into one, in just about every line of work. He believes this is a good thing, too.

Apparently, Friedman thinks the sort of unregulated free market capitalism that continues to lower the quality of life in this country is an incentive for entrepreneurs to be more productive and inventive. He pretends the forces driving the destruction of the middle class and the deeper impoverishment of the poor are inexorable, and that the idea of putting the brakes on these forces is absurd.

Ultimately, Friedman is an apologist for the ruthless few who, for the sake of higher profits, would destroy the existence of a social safety net for the poor and luckless. Like most pollyannas, he is blind to the dark side of his grand notions of how to improve the world.

Posted in economic collapse, God Squad, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Fiction reading Wed. at Rutgers-Camden

Posted on October 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 5
Walt Whitman Arts Center, 2nd Floor
101 Cooper St.
Camden, NJ

David McKenna, a.k.a. Odd Man Out, will read “Chokepoint,” from Idiot Lights, his collection of thematically related short stories set in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, told from the point of view of protagonists who suspect that, rather than moving forward in life, they are harboring delusions of progress that repeatedly bring them back to the same starting points. Their only relief from delusion is achieved through sex or violence, or an occasional good movie (vicarious sex and violence).

Also reading will be fiction writer Violet LeVoit, author of the short story collection I Am Genghis Cum, and poet Seve Torres.

Directions from Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Center City Philly:

1. Stay in the right lane.
2. On Jersey side, take the Sixth Street/Broadway exit toward Camden
3. Turn right onto N 6th Street
4. Turn right onto Cooper Street

Destination will be on the right:

101 Cooper St
Camden, NJ 08102

(For a map, Google “Benjamin Franklin Bridge” to “101 Cooper St., Camden, NJ”)

Posted in arts, Camden, fiction, NJ, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment