“(Those)who so hated FDR’s reforms must be chugging cognac in hell celebrating today’s America. America’s unions have been neutered and taught to beg. At long last we have established a permanent underclass and deindustrialized the country in favor of low wage service industries here and dirt cheap labor from abroad. We’ve managed to harden the education and income gap into something an American oligarch can take pride in. Hell, my bank card is issued by Prescott Bush’s Union Bank and my most recent mortgage was held by J. P. Morgan’s creation. My electricity is generated by Rockefeller’s coal and energy holdings and my Exxon gasoline credit card is issued by a successor to Standard oil. The breakfast I eat comes from Archer Daniels Midland. So did my dog’s breakfast. We are the very products and property of these people and their institutions.” – Joe Bageant
By Thurman, on August 26th, 20102010-08-27T00:43:01ZF jS, Y
Sometimes I get a bit discouraged by the dominant American attitude, especially in the business world, that we can’t take what we know to be the right action or make the right decision because to do so would be unprofitable.
I spent a good portion of this week at work making and carrying out decisions that ran the gamut from slightly discomforting to morally reprehensible. I have bills to pay and a family to care for, so my options in this sorry economic time we’re living in were limited to say the least.
After a week spent having my soul ripped from the body I’m still living in, it was encouraging to discover others in the world who understand that putting profits before people and our natural world is neither practical nor expedient. One such opinion was expressed by a blogger named Ian Welch, who posted a piece earlier today called The Right Thing To Do.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about foreign affairs, where the money used on Iraq and Afghanistan could have rebuilt America and made it more prosperous. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about health care, where everyone knew that the right thing to do was single payer or some other form of comprehensive healthcare, which would have reduced bankruptcies massively, saved 6% of GDP and massive numbers of lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the financial crisis, where criminally prosecuting those who engaged in fraud (the entire executive class of virtually ever major financial firm) and nationalizing the major banks, wiping out the shareholders and making the bondholders eat their losses was the right thing to do, and didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about drug policy, where the “war on drugs” has accomplished nothing except destabilizing multiple countries and giving the US the largest prison population proportional to population in the entire world and where legalizing marijuana, soft opiates and coca leaves would save billions of dollars, reduce violence, help stabilize Mexico and would help tax receipts. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about food, where we subsidize the most unhealthy foods possible and engage in practices which have reduced the nutritional content of food by 40% in the last half century. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about environmental pollutants, which have contributed to a massive rise in chronic diseases so great it amounts to an epidemic.”
By Thurman, on August 25th, 20102010-08-25T23:59:54ZF jS, Y
Apparently our Fourth Amendment protections against privacy violations by the government only count if we’re rich enough to afford fancy gates and tall fences, at least out west.
“Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.”
It used to be that the general area around one’s home, the “curtilage” was considered sacrosanct – protected space to be violated only through the due process of a valid search warrant. Not so according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Continue reading No Privacy In A GPS World
By Thurman, on August 22nd, 20102010-08-22T23:07:57ZF jS, Y
I discovered this gem of a video earlier this afternoon while watching LinkTV. I’m glad to see that there are still people out there in the world – in the US no less – who are willing to stand up against the racial profiling, religious intolerance, and general culture of ignorance that seems to be so pervasive in my country today.
There is everything wrong with supporting and participating in terrorism, but there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, an Arab, or any of the other labels we use to continually divide ourselves and maintain the ‘us and them’ mentality that causes so much strife and hurt in the world. If only we could learn to live with only one label: Human.
By Thurman, on August 22nd, 20102010-08-22T21:17:53ZF jS, Y
Here’s an interesting post I found today at BlueNC that fits nicely with the message I’m trying to propagate here.
“…the American Dream is a religion – a civil religion, but a religion nonetheless. We have the Bill of Rights taking the spot of the Ten Commandments; we have heaven and hell in the form of wealth and poverty; and our politicians and pundits are our clergy. (Does that make the President the Pope?) Hell, we even have witch hunts of “socialists” as enemies of the religion who are, much like the original witch hunts, entirely innocent of the accusation.
The Right has twisted and usurped this civil religion so that it now resembles Dark Ages Catholicism. The overclass of the wealthiest and most powerful are using it to not only mask their own evils, but to trick the “serfs” into supporting the very people and system that prevents them from achieving their own wealth and independence. They keep the masses ignorant (Fox News & the Right’s scarily efficient propaganda machine spreading their muckraking into the mainstream; tax cuts in favor of more spending on education), which is the key to their success, just like in the Dark Ages.
Also just like the Dark Ages, it’s not about the religion, it’s about power. The religion is just a useful tool.”
By Thurman, on August 21st, 20102010-08-21T16:09:52ZF jS, Y
I’m accused of being a rather negative individual. It’s easy to see how my writing might convey that sense of despair, but often that’s the entire point. I believe so strongly in what I say that to express myself otherwise would be dishonest.
This morning I found a post at Plainly Pagan in which the author perfectly expressed my sentiments regarding this so-called negativity and the foul, depressed moods that precipitate such expressions.
“…my sadness is often counted as a spiritual failing or at least as a barrier to my ability to be joyful/rational/successful. It makes people very uncomfortable to see my sadness. It makes them more uncomfortable, I think, that I am not very interested in ridding myself of it. Alleviate it? Retreat from it? Take a break from it? Sure. But rid myself of it? No way. To quote from Star Trek’s boldest captain, “I need my pain!” It is the sensing device I use to recognize my call to service in a battered world. It does me no good to bend to the will of those who want me to medicate myself into complacency. My brain is different. It is not defective.” Continue reading Different Does Not Equal Defective
By Thurman, on August 20th, 20102010-08-20T19:15:49ZF jS, Y
Unemployment filings continue to rise as our economy continues to stagnate. Despite some reports to the contrary, the recession is not over yet, and some economists are now talking openly about a “double-dip” recession.
I’m still not convinced we’re in a recession, or that there will ever be any sort of meaningful recovery in terms most of us would recognize. Instead, I believe we may be experiencing the slow death an unsustainable, fossil fuel dependent lifestyle, built upon an economic system that demands sociopathic behavior as a prerequisite for success in business, and a political system unable to divorce itself from the corrupt corporate oligarchy it was designed to serve
As Jim Morrison once sang, “This is the end,” hope you’ve all enjoyed the ride.
An earlier version of the following post was originally published February 15, 2009 and was featured at A World of Progress.
-
A while back I read the transcript of a talk given in San Francisco by Dmitry Orlov. The title of Mr. Orlov’s speech was Social Collapse Best Practices. There were a lot of thought provoking ideas tossed out to the audience, but what struck me most was the contrast between the differences in how well prepared to handle economic turmoil the old Soviet Union was in comparison to how American society is to likely to bear a similar challenge.
Dmitry Orlov is in a good position to make such a comparison, having spent the first twelve years of his life living in the USSR, before immigrating to the US. He has traveled back many times since, and thus has a unique perspective from which to observe both societies. Continue reading Gimme That Old Time Religion
By Thurman, on August 18th, 20102010-08-18T23:03:19ZF jS, Y
The other night, while perusing the Internets I ran across a brief post on the New Yorker financial page titled Soak The Very, Very Rich written by James Surowiecki. The author points out that there are several tiers of wealth among our ruling elite, but only two tax brackets for them.
“Our system sets the top bracket at three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, with a tax rate of thirty-five per cent. (People in the second-highest bracket, starting at a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars for individuals, pay thirty-three per cent.)”
Anyone who’s read more than a handful of my rants knows that I believe the super-rich in the US not only ought to pay much more in taxes, but that if they had any heart, soul, or conscience they’d be lining up to chip in a bigger share in appreciation of all this great nation has afforded them. After all, conventional wisdom holds that their excess wealth was only made possible by the deregulated capitalist paradise that was late twentieth century America. Continue reading To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Required
