Holiday Cheer

I am supposing that Monday marks the beginning of the Republican race for president. As such, you probably all saw this article about the GOP frontrunners committing gaffes here or there in the last coupla months. The Pawlenty bit has been bugging me for a couple of days now. Yes, it pretty funny fucked up that he got caught citing bad data from a Big Government article and doesn't seem to realize that relying on hard data from a propaganda site is dumb. He genuinely seems to not be in on the joke, which I guess is why he's a favorite among the powers that be in the GOP. W. again.

What has been bothering me though is that, while it is fun to make fun of the dumb guy who is running for president, what is being overlooked is that Pawlenty was attacking Obama for only creating jobs in the government, not the private sector.

In a Wall Street Journal column, he said most labor union members now work for governments, which Obama has rendered "the only booming industry left in our economy." Since January 2008, he wrote, "the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."

Politfact proved that the stats were bogus and that the 590,000 only included part-time census workers. The problem I have is that if the private economy did lose 8 million jobs, shouldn't the government have created a fuckload more than 590,000 jobs? Wouldn't we want the government to create something on the order of, oh I don't know, 8 million jobs? Of course it can't, but shouldn't that be the goal here?

I feel like this is a very minor replay of the tax deal. We are so far from anything that looks like the New Deal, the only conclusion we can possibly reach is that we lost the political debate to the extent that our talking points aren't heard. Where do we go from here?

Fortunately, we'll have a good two years of horse race to talk about and the Palin-Pawlenty ticket will remind us that the lesser of two evils really is the lesser of two evils.

Somebody Bet on the Bay

Ah, Good Ol' 1208

1208 Kelly Blvd., Springfield, OR, the house I grew up in, is for sale.

This 759 square foot beauty features two bedrooms and one bath. It has an "open floor plan" which, in this particular case, means that it would be crazy to waste the space between the living room and the kitchen with a wall.

As can see in this photo gallery, petty bourgeois indulgences like dining tables and/or space will not be a temptation. And check out that sweet gate (can I get a close up of that ironwork?) which is wide enough to allow you to park a vehicle in the back yard, should the garage, driveway, street, and tire-rutted side yard not be enough capacity for all your vehicles.

The immediate area features several unpaved streets, so male youngins can partake in the neighborhood tradition of rock fighting and making long skid marks with their bicycles. (I have no idea what a girl might do in this neighborhood. Not sure there were any when I grew up. Well, not at the rock fights.)

Can a family of four, two dogs, and two birds live comfortably in such space? No. No, they cannot.

How much would you pay for this fine house and piece of solidcitizen history? An astounding $165,000. I shit you not.

Regrets? I'm having some right now.

I, for one, argued early and often that BHO was our best chance to have a Democratic president that might, theoretically break to the left on important issues. I was convinced that Hillary would not do this, given the track record of her husband. That may have been unfair, but it's not like she ran away from her husband's record or said things that made me (or anyone else) think that she would be a liberal president. I also firmly believe that when she decided to run as the racists' Democratic candidate, it was the obligation of all good people in the Democratic party to oppose her.

And yet here we sit today, with a Democratic president that seems determined to be just as center-right as Bill Clinton ever was. To be fair to Barack, he ran as a centrist. Maybe it was too much to hope that a candidate that had achieved little other than getting elected would do anything other than seek to be re-elected. And, unfortunately, a politician gets re-elected by being as timid as possible.

Back in the old days of computing, there was a game that let you be a South American dictator. Your goal was to stay in power until you died. I quickly figured out that the only way to achieve this goal was by caving to whichever pressure group happened to be pressuring you at the time. Teachers on strike? Give 'em a raise. American-backed corporations want a military crackdown on rebels? Crack down. The people want land reform? Nationalize! Landowners want their land back? Denationalize! You get the gist.

After a while it became mindless, but I can see where it might be entertaining to play in real life. How do you stay popular with a populace that simultaneously demands an economic recovery (solution: massive government spending, deficits, tax increases) while demanding less government spending, deficit reduction, and tax cuts? We want health care reform, but not any kind of health care reform that might one day affect what I have right now! Could be fun. Or addictive, anyway.

So here we sit today with a president determined to drive down the middle of the road only dipping to the right every now and again. Here we are, again, with we on the left realizing that it will be another eight years of getting exactly nothing of what we want. We will be told to be grateful it's not worse. That's where we live in American politics, fighting a rear-guard action against things getting worse. We were kings of the world in 1935, it's been mostly downhill since then. Our successes since then - civil rights, women's rights, gay rights - have been hard fought and achieved by the people, with the politics lagging way the hell behind.

Don't mourn, organize!

Yes. Maybe what it will take is for all of us who are looking around for a third party to get out there and get involved. No one hates saying this more than me, as I love my couch and tv, but if I can drag myself out to knock on doors for mainstream, better than the alternative Democratic candidates, then I can certainly do it for someone or some cause that might actually make a fucking difference in this world.

Fuck, looks like I have to actually do something. I'll have to get my pleasure from telling my labor union 'no' when they ask me to go knocking on doors for whatever fuckstick the Democrats nominate.

Labor Day, 2009 WrapUp;

or, Scavenger Guy 2

You recall the subject of this previous citation sur l'OG? Luckily for us, MaxRedline took the occasion of Labor Day to reflect upon the state of the unions (ahem!) in 2009.

Even the most avowed of laborite, liberal firebrands would do well to consider this reasoned, incisive, intellectually responsible work of social-political cartography. Jeepers creepers, it is 2009.

Obama: All Owe A Debt To Unions

He should have stopped after the first three words. We all owe a huge debt - not to unions, but to the policies that Obama and his fellow Democrats (heavily supported by unions) have managed to ramrod through.

Unions had a place in American history, but their time has come and gone. The most productive states in the USA are all "right to work" states, and the unions have "prgressively" infiltrated the public sector, where they inflict far more damage than good.

Where union membership is entirely voluntary, it may well serve a good purpose: when people come together voluntarily in support of common objectives, they constitute a powerful force. But unions gave up on that approach long ago; thus their heavy push toward making "card check" national policy. Secret ballots are anathema to today's union leadership. They want to force people to "join" so that they can collect ever more "dues".

This is something that they view as "free money", to be used however leadership chooses. Today's unions are all about "organizing" - by force if need be - but not at all about representation, which was the common bond that brought unions into being.

Our armed forces don't rely upon forced conscription, because it was recognized years ago that the best and brightest come from those who choose to serve. Unions, once based upon this principle, have abandoned it in favor of conscription.

Given that it was Democrats who supported slavery, it is hardly surprising to see that their main base of support comes from union bosses today.

Jeepers creepers. We can laugh, but mainstream political "common sense" laughs back at us. On days like today, I fear that Max Redline's worldview resonates more deeply with the popular imaginary - if not the polis itself - then our own political understandings do*.

*(And yes, I realize how unduly overindulged that last bit of "syntax" was, and how microcosm-ish this zero degree 'academic emo' prosody is. And no, I won't write off that falling-short-in-writing as merely sloppy "irony.")

Banks, insurance companies, and the GOP can die in a fucking fire

One day, earlier this year, our neighbors across the street - an older woman and her daughter who had a developmental disability - suddenly moved away. When we got back from our vacation this week, we saw that the house was for sale as a foreclosure. Tonight, we learned why.

The woman had lived in the house for over 30 years. She raised 4 children in her home. One of her daughters apparently developed a drug problem, and the woman took out a loan on the house to help pay for her rehabilitation. She took out another loan to pay for another child's heart surgery. The woman, who was retired, saw her retirement investments go south when the economy tanked last fall.

This woman did everything right by her family, but the banks wouldn't even think about cutting her a break. No insurance company would cover her daughters' medical needs. And the GOP would never think about helping her out of a bad situation with loan restructuring or providing adequate access to health care.

And people wonder why I hate - hate - these fuckers.

There are not two Americas

Just so we're clear here...

If you're a US auto worker, it is pretty much your fault that your employer has decided to build large, crappy cars no one wants to buy. It is also your fault that your employer decided in the 1950s to oppose government-run health care in favor of employment-based health care, driving up their costs. It is also your fault that your employer engaged in decades of profit taking and dividend paying instead of reinvestment in the company. These things are your fault because you are in a union that has managed to negotiate you a wage that supports a middle-class lifestyle. This wage will be hype-inflated by including all projected future retirement benefits so that this country's right-wing media can say you earn $70 an hour. In order for your industry to get a government bailout, you have to agree to a pay cut and a reduction in future benefits. You are a greedy, grabbing, no-future-seeing asshole who could easily be replaced by any other Joe Lunchpail in America.

On the other hand, if you are an executive at the American Insurance Group, then you are a hard working slob who just happened to walk into a very fucked up situation. You are doing your best to bailout an company that was totally messed up when you got there, and now some government bureaucrat is talking smack about you receiving a bonus for not quitting, even though you are going to be allowed to actually keep all of it. While others only have to fear for their jobs, you have to fear for your life. For fuck's sake, some crazy union people plan on driving on public roads past your house! Union people!! Despite the fact that you earn well more than a middle-class wage, no one in this nation's media will actually mention what that wage is, let alone translate it into an hourly wage. You are a brave, brave person who can't begin to understand why this is happening to you. You are providing this nation a valuable service doing your best to oversee the spending of $85 billion dollars, a job that, if anyone else on this planet could do it, no one would want to. Not without some sort of million dollar bonus, anyway.

Dispatches from the class war

Lucky to be alive, I tell you. Amanda Carpenter and her colleagues, using their wit, daring, and near flawless camouflage,...



... infiltrate class enemy positions and get a small taste of the bloodbath that awaits upon the advent of our Glorious Socialist Яevolution, which will occur on or just before passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Her feverish dispatch:

Throughout the event labor members blasted employers who harassed them in the workplace for supporting the liberal policy. The funny thing is, several of those same labor members openly harassed a pair of men protesting the legislation.

Good lord, that never gets old! At any rate, yes, yes! Objective observer gets the vapors over the treatment of people with whom she's in no way associated!

The [sic] dressed up as "union bosses" looking for their payback for helping Democrats in the 2008 election: passage of EFCA [sic]

They dressed up with helpful signs pointing out that they were union bosses. Which helped, because otherwise a body would've thought they were two assholes there to disrupt the rally.

Anywhere Union Bob and Union Bill went, a crowd of union members followed them and pushed them to the perimeter of the rally. Union members pushed their way in front of them to hold up signs to hide the anti-EFCA signs from the cameras.

The bastards! How dare they try to silence two assholes there to disrupt the rally union bosses looking for their payback!

Essentially, they did everything the [sic] could to make sure no media could see an alternative message.

Unions, of course, being all-pervasive and able to keep the owners and managers of capital from using their various media organs to present a perfectly reasonable argument that the Employee Free Choice Act would TAKE AWAY EVERYONES JOB EVERYWHERE! AND NO PUPPIES! Thank the jeebus cracker Amanda Carpenter was to make sure these brave assholes' union bosses' voices were heard!

When I asked them why they were doing this most of them went mute.

One woman, however, had lots to say. She's in the third video and I'll warn you, her vulgar language isn't safe for work

OMFG! Members of the Яevolutionary People's Proletarian Vanguard cuss at their rivals!



The Huns! The savage fucking barbarians! Amanda was just kind of wondering about the irony of the whole situation, and someone had to go and drop the f-bomb. Why I've never heard those exact words boldly proclaimed in any workplace I've encountered over the last 8 years - thanks for that NSFW label!

But a taste of the fury that is class war has Amanda experienced! We have plenty more insults in store to sweep aside the NAM and their lackeys as we march to our Яevolutionary destiny: an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act! On, comrades!

The meme that they deserve

Via dave, if this is the zombie frame that a kleptocratic GOP wants to keep running with for the forseeable future...

Bush’s grand achievement on the domestic side was the most recent turn of a triple play of tax cuts — John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s and his own — all of which prove the incredible economic wisdom of allowing people to keep more of the money they make [emphasis added]. It is unfortunately a lesson that is as quickly unlearned as it is productive when relearned. We are watching its unlearning now.

... then I says, "Let's talk about it, shall we?"





You were saying?

Let's talk about restructuring for a moment, shall we?

To the Senators from the Deep South who decided that clinging to a dying ideology was more important than thousands of middle class jobs:

I couldn't help but notice that many of your home states receive much more federal revenue than you pay in taxes. Hardly the model of self-sufficient, pull yourself up by your bootstraps-tuitiveness, eh? Yet somehow you manage to pony up massive subsidies in order to lure automotive manufacturers from overseas into your states. In other words, the hippy-dippy West Coast, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and yes, Michigan - the very people you just completely fucked over - are making it possible for your state governments to give massive handouts to automotive companies (some based in "socialist," big gummint countries with free shriek! health care) that are directly competing with the domestic industry.

Let's say we withhold highway dollars, medicare funds, and social security payments until your states "restructure" those sweetheart deals. What's that? That will hurt people whose jobs and livelihoods depend on the flow of those federal dollars? That didn't seem to keep you from fucking anyone over, now did it?

Delusional conservative responses

From Red State:

Obama's use of "you'll lose employer-funded health care" scare tactics shows that he either doesn't understand himself, or knows that the rest of America doesn't understand, that health coverage, even when provided by employers, isn't funded by those employers. Rather, it is wages paid in the form of a benefit, rather than cash. Ending employer-backed health care could mean higher monetary wages in employees' pockets, and would absolutely mean more choice in what insurance coverage is purchased.

Raise your hand if you think any employer in the United States would pass on a raise to cover health care costs after ditching the employee health plan. For all of their supposed free market savvy, conservatives sure don't understand how businesses really run.

My fears

I've never seen a campaign like this before. I've seen presidential candidates viciously smeared and savagely attacked by partisans. But I haven't seen people yelling out "kill him," or "terrorist." I've never experienced the bestial morality of the modern presidential campaign taking aim at a person of color. I've never witnessed frightfully racialized gutter politics whipped up in the midst of a radical economic upheaval.

That only a small minority of John McCain's supporters vocally or visually express these sentiments is of little comfort to me. Others think it, and they think that those of us who are voting for Barack Obama are voting for a Muslim socialist communist terrorist Satan-worshipping traitor. In probable defeat, the McCain campaign is salting the earth, poisoning attempts to reach these people to solve common problems after the election. Whether intentional or not, I don't know. All I know is that there are going to be a not insignificant number of people who, already the victims of kleptocratic economic policies, are going to see their cultural and social values either be slowly marginalized (as with their views on same-sex marriage) or actively kicked to the curb (their racism) by a new majority. I don't know what this bodes, but I have an active and sometimes unpleasant imagination, and it does frighten me.

Sometimes You Find It in Unlikely Places

From Roger Ebert's review of Flash of Genius:

I know that I sound just like a liberal, but at this point in history I am sick and tired of giant corporations running roughshod over decent people -- cutting their wages, polluting their work environment, denying them health care, forcing them to work unpaid overtime, busting their unions and other crimes we have never heard George Bush denouncing while he was cutting corporate taxes. I am sure lower taxes help corporations to function more profitably. Why is that considered progress, when many workers live in borderline poverty and executives have pissing contests over who has the biggest stock options?

But enough. I have "Flash of Genius" to review. Yes, I am agitated. I am writing during days of economic meltdown, after Wall Street raped Main Street while the Bush ideology held it down. Believe me, I could go on like this all day. But consider the case of Robert Kearns, played here touchingly by Greg Kinnear. He was a professor of engineering, a decent, unremarkable family man, and had a eureka! moment: Why did windshield wipers only go on and off? Why couldn't they reflect existing conditions, as the human eyelid does?

Ebert is not the most sophisticated movie critic and he has a soft spot for the schmaltz, but I've always enjoyed his writing and mostly agreed with his reviews. I love the fact that unions got a positive mention.

Roger, you've earned the OG's highest honor: BOOM!

Let's Make Money, But Not Too Much Money, Ted

David Brooks' latest column contains some interesting points. "Interesting," of course, being academese for "batshit." The Bellman cover Bobo's call for a strong "public" hand to guide the markets while decrying "heavy-handed government regulation."

I'd like to focus on Brooks' complete misunderstanding of free market capitalism. He seems to be under the impression that the goal of capitalists is not to make the most money possible in the least amount of time. Instead, the default position of your average capitalist is set at restraint and self-discipline. Unfortunately, this crazy 21st-century, flat economy has got everyone all fired up to make money.

We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.

I'd also like to note that there is, apparently, and "excess of capital" in the world. Men that cocktail with Brooks know that when there is just the right amount of capital in the world, then a man is able to maintain his habits and justice reigns. Too much capital, however, and things go haywire. Unfortunately, Brooks does not offer any clues as to the appropriate amount of capital that should be sloshing around the world or how we might go about eliminating the excess. One suspects, however, that when Western European men were in control of all the capital, things were pretty good. Now that you have all these Asians, Middle Easerners, Russians, Indians, and (sweet jesus) Venezualens with money, things are truly going to hell.

Then there is the issue of the "just" capitalist vis a vis the "unjust" capitalist. The just capitalist, you see, protests the dissolution of sober business practices. The just man understands that there are limits dammit! You can drive an SUV, but make it a Navigator or a Lexus GX. Not an Escalade or (heaven forefend) a Hummer. The just business man wants just enough regulation to keep the money flowing, not no regulation at all. The just business man understands that it is okay to exploit the hell out of the poor, but when you do things that damage other men of a certain stature, well that just goes too far.