It's not going to be OK

I'm finding it difficult to have much to say about this article. For once, I don't have anything to criticize. I thought I might be able to pick on the reporter himself, but he's impeccably credentialed, as far as I can tell.

It’s Not Going to Be OK

Posted on Feb 2, 2009

AP Photo / Nikolas Giakoumidis

Riots have spread across Europe since the economic crisis began. Here, Greek riot police stand near a burning car.

By Chris Hedges

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless.

Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book “Democracy Incorporated” uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”

I reached Wolin, 86, by phone at his home about 25 miles north of San Francisco. He was a bombardier in the South Pacific during World War II and went to Harvard after the war to get his doctorate. Wolin has written classics such as “Politics and Vision” and “Tocqueville Between Two Worlds.” His newest book is one of the most important and prescient critiques to date of the American political system. He is also the author of a series of remarkable essays on Augustine of Hippo, Richard Hooker, David Hume, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Dewey. His voice, however, has faded from public awareness because, as he told me, “it is harder and harder for people like me to get a public hearing.” He said that publications, such as The New York Review of Books, which often published his work a couple of decades ago, lost interest in his critiques of American capitalism, his warnings about the subversion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the corporate state. He does not hold out much hope for Obama.

“The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged,” Wolin told me when I asked him about the new Obama administration. “This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium.”

Wolin argues that a failure to dismantle our vast and overextended imperial projects, coupled with the economic collapse, is likely to result in inverted totalitarianism. He said that without “radical and drastic remedies” the response to mounting discontent and social unrest will probably lead to greater state control and repression. There will be, he warned, a huge “expansion of government power.”

“Our political culture has remained unhelpful in fostering a democratic consciousness,” he said. “The political system and its operatives will not be constrained by popular discontent or uprisings.”

Wolin writes that in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive. I asked if the economic collapse and the steady decline in our standard of living might not, in fact, trigger classical totalitarianism. Could widespread frustration and poverty lead the working and middle classes to place their faith in demagogues, especially those from the Christian right?

“I think that’s perfectly possible,” he answered. “That was the experience of the 1930s. There wasn’t just FDR. There was Huey Long and Father Coughlin. There were even more extreme movements including the Klan. The extent to which those forces can be fed by the downturn and bleakness is a very real danger. It could become classical totalitarianism.”

He said the widespread political passivity is dangerous. It is often exploited by demagogues who pose as saviors and offer dreams of glory and salvation. He warned that “the apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness, will be very powerful elements in taking us towards a radically dictatorial direction. It testifies to how thin the commitment to democracy is in the present circumstances. Democracy is not ascendant. It is not dominant. It is beleaguered. The extent to which young people have been drawn away from public concerns and given this extraordinary range of diversions makes it very likely they could then rally to a demagogue.”

Wolin lamented that the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue.

“In the 1930s there were all kinds of alternative understandings, from socialism to more extensive governmental involvement,” he said. “There was a range of different approaches. But what I am struck by now is the narrow range within which palliatives are being modeled. We are supposed to work with the financial system. So the people who helped create this system are put in charge of the solution. There has to be some major effort to think outside the box.”

“The puzzle to me is the lack of social unrest,” Wolin said when I asked why we have not yet seen rioting or protests. He said he worried that popular protests will be dismissed and ignored by the corporate media. This, he said, is what happened when tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq. This will permit the state to ruthlessly suppress local protests, as happened during the Democratic and Republic conventions. Anti-war protests in the 1960s gained momentum from their ability to spread across the country, he noted. This, he said, may not happen this time. “The ways they can isolate protests and prevent it from [becoming] a contagion are formidable,” he said.

“My greatest fear is that the Obama administration will achieve relatively little in terms of structural change,” he added. “They may at best keep the system going. But there is a growing pessimism. Every day we hear how much longer the recession will continue. They are already talking about beyond next year. The economic difficulties are more profound than we had guessed and because of globalization more difficult to deal with. I wish the political establishment, the parties and leadership, would become more aware of the depths of the problem. They can’t keep throwing money at this. They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don’t think this will happen.”

“I keep asking why and how and when this country became so conservative,” he went on. “This country once prided itself on its experimentation and flexibility. It has become rigid. It is probably the most conservative of all the advanced countries.”

The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance.

“The left is amorphous,” he said. “I despair over the left. Left parties may be small in number in Europe but they are a coherent organization that keeps going. Here, except for Nader’s efforts, we don’t have that. We have a few voices here, a magazine there, and that’s about it. It goes nowhere.”

Oakland to fire 11 cops in search warrant case

Is it shocking to anyone that cops have been lying to obtain warrants? Especially in Oakland, California (site of the recent murder of unarmed and detained Oscar Grant at the hands of the police).

In this case, 2 sergeants and 9 officers are about to be terminated for lying to obtain search warrants. Is everyone clear what a lie is? It's when you tell something that isn't true. I only ask because the attorney for the cops apparently doesn't understand what the issue is here. Mary Sansen, the attorney for the officers, says they weren't trained on how to properly fill out an affidavit.

"The fact that I have anybody who's being terminated over this case is just simply outrageous," Sansen said. "Some of my officers have routinely been denied any form of training. I have clients who are writing search warrants who have never been to search-writing school, who have been expected to pick up as they go."

OK, I guess we're supposed to believe that training is the issue, it's not lying. When the cops told the judge that substances seized from suspects "had been identified by the Oakland police crime lab as narcotics", the judge gave them a warrant. But those statements were LIES. It doesn't matter if they didn't fill out the form correctly, what matters is that THEY WERE LYING. I don't care if they've never been to "seach-writing school", whatever the fuck that is, but I do care that THEY WERE DELIBERATELY LYING in order to get warrants that were not supported by the evidence.

Related Stories:

• 98% of Emergency Room doctors believe they've treated patients who were victims of excessive force by police. Ninety-eight percent!?!?!!! That's a staggering number. 95% report treating injuries caused by fists and feet. "Unlike cases of suspected domestic violence, elderly abuse and child abuse, which doctors must report to authorities, physicians are not required to notify anyone of suspected excessive force by police." How convenient, one law for us, and no laws for them.
• An Oakland man has stepped forward, saying that he is also a victim of police brutality at the hands of former-officer Johannes Mehserle. Mehserle was the pig who shot unarmed, defenseless, prostrate Oscar Grant in the back while another officer kneeled on his neck. Disturbing video of the execution can be seen here.
  

Riots: coming to America?

If you thought yesterday's post on the possiblity of civil disorder was outside the realm of possibilities, Freakonomics blog is discussing (for the second time this year) the possibility of economy-related riots in the US. The Freakonomics authors cite an article in the Atlantic by Robert Kaplan where he writes

It’s tempting to dismiss this as a purely Greek affair that carries little significance to the outside world. But the global economic crisis will take different forms in different places in the way that it ignites political unrest. Yes, youth alienation in Greece is influenced by a particular local history that I’ve very briefly outlined here. But it is also influenced by sweeping international trends of uneven development, in which the uncontrolled surges and declines of capitalism have left haves and bitter have-nots, who, in Europe, often tend to be young people. And these young people now have the ability to instantaneously organize themselves through text messages and other new media, without waiting passively to be informed by traditional newspapers and television. Technology has empowered the crowd—or the mob if you will.

Pay close attention to Greece; at a time of world-wide economic upheaval, it might eerily presage disturbances elsewhere in 2009.

So consider, whether in the United States, the "uncontrolled surges and declines of capitalism [that] have left haves and bitter have-nots". Wikipedia ranks Greece as having less economic inequality than the United States. The Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of the inequality within a given country, where the lower the number, the more equality exists. Greece has a Gini coefficient of 34.3, while the US is 40.8 (equally ranked with Ghana and Turkmenistan). Once people wake up and realize the true measure of inequality in this country, it will be hard to keep them satisfied with platitudes about the vagaries of the free market.

On worker solidarity

By the way, nothing in my last post should be taken to mean that I do not fully support these workers. In fact, I see it as a tremendously hopeful sign. Perhaps our society is not so passive, not so inured to corruption and hypocrisy, not so apathetic as to take this latest slap in the face lying down. In fact, I support the Governor's extortionate demands in this case, as do I support those that would pursue other punitive actions towards the Bank of America. A few of the proposals include picketing, boycotts, or perhaps a good old-fashioned run on the bank. The recent economic turmoil has exposed the vulnerability of these massive conglomerates, with the collapse of Indy-mac bank almost solely blamed on a letter from Chuck Schumer. An economic vote of no-confidence is enough to push any one of these massive banks into failure, and therefore ought to be another weapon in our toolkit as we push for economic justice for all classes, not just the ultra-wealthy.

This is indeed a decisive moment of reckoning for the independent labor movement, at home and abroad. If we want to create a world in which the conditions of economic life are organized fairly and democratically, according to basic human needs – and not according to the logic of speculative markets, or the interests of a wealthy ruling class – the Republic occupation offers a hopeful starting point for action. We are the only ones who can create this future – and our collective will is more powerful than we know.

Censorship at Open Left?

This was posted on Open Left, earlier today:

I Have Just Unsubscribed To Obama's E-Mail List

from Open Left - Front Page by avenged savant

First of all, I have been VERY VERY VERY incensed by Obama's flippant, dismissive, and almost contempt for liberals so far in his policy "changes" and statements since the campaign was over with.

Secondly, the lack of diversity in his Cabinet and advisors is dreadful. Only ONE token Hispanic, and he's not even a liberal, no openly gay person (no, Janet doesn't count, cus she's not open), and, most of all, no bona fide progressive.

When you press "unsubscribe" at the bottom of one of the deluge of emails Obama's team sends you, it prompts you to state your reasons for taking your email address off his list. So I did. And I listed the things written above.

I also told them (whichever flunky reads it...IF it even gets read), that I no longer support Obama, that I gave him over a grand in the campaign cycle, and that I consider him to be center-right at best. And that's not who or what I gave my money and time and efforts to.

He won't be getting my fucking money of my fucking vote in 2012.

Btw, our backlash MUST start in earnest NOW. Why? BECAUSE IF WE DON'T, THEN WE SURELY WON'T BE GETTING ANY TRUE PROGRESSIVES OF LATINOS OR ANYTHING ELSE BUT DEMOCONS TO HIS ADMINISTRATION!!! ONLY PUSSY "UNCLE TOM" LIBERALS HAVE THIS PUSSY-ASS, "WAIT-AND-SEE APPROACH."

I tried to click on the link from my reader, being certain some interesting stuff would be in the comments following such an incendiary post, but this is what I got. Followed in short order by this:

About the diary that disappered (Chris Bowers) Quick note and apology about the stupid diary that briefly appeared on the front-page:

Back when Open Left was started, posting Quick Hits required editor status. So, I promoted a bunch of people who had expressed interest in writing Quick Hits, under the condition that they not post front page diaries. The user in question was one of those early editor promotions. In this case, s/he broke his or her promise to not post on the front page.

Apologies to all.

And I understand that many of these blogs are trying to maintain "journalistic" standards, so I'm not necessarily mad at them for taking it down. I do think "avenged savant" had a valid point of view, one that is indisputably shared by many on the left. Further, the sense of betrayal in the post is almost palpable, and it's what I've been warning about since before the election. If you pin your hopes for change on a politician, especially one from the two indistinguishable major parties, then prepare to start removing the knife from your back. There is simply no way that your measly donation of "a grand" can compete with these types of donors. The real challenge is to keep this sense of betrayal from turning to apathy; we must learn to channel the frustration and anger at establishment politics into achieving our goals. But make no mistake about it: "our goals" will never be in alignment with Washington's goals.

Too big = made to fail. And take democracy with it...

We're using the bailouts to rebuild giant financial institutions. But what we really need are small ones. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine

Say what you will about Eliot Spitzer's personal life, I think he makes some pretty good points here. Although he doesn't take it so far as to connect the current economic behemoths and their natural instability as the inevitable result of capitalism itself, he's only a couple of steps away from that.

[The risk is] that current bailouts—a remarkable $7.8 trillion in equity, loans, and guarantees so far—may merely perpetuate a fundamentally flawed status quo. So far, at least, we are simply rebuilding the same edifice that just collapsed. None of the investments has even begun to address the underlying structural problems that are causing economic power to shift away from the United States, sector by sector:

• Our trade deficit has ballooned from about $100 billion to more than $700 billion annually in the past decade, and our federal deficit now approaches $1 trillion. These twin deficits leave us at the mercy of foreign-capital inflows that may diminish as Asian nations, in particular, invest increasingly at home.
• Our household savings rate has been close to zero—and even negative in some years—not permitting the long-term capital accumulation required for the investments we need; China's savings rate, by comparison, is an astonishing 30 percent of household income.
• U.S. middle class income has stagnated over the past decade, while the middle class in China—granted, starting from a lower base—has seen its income growing at about 10 percent annually.
• Our intellectual advantage could soon turn into a new "third deficit," as hundreds of thousands of engineers are being created annually in China.
• We are realizing that the service sector—all the lawyers, investment bankers, advertising agencies, and accountants—follows its clients and wealth creation. This, not over-regulation, is the reason investment-banking activity has begun to migrate overseas.

The great irony is that our new place in the global economy is a direct consequence of our grand victory over the past 60 years. We have, indeed, converted virtually the entire world into one integrated capitalist economy, and we must now bear the brunt of serious and vigorous competition. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States was essentially the only nation with financial capital, intellectual capital, skilled labor, a growing middle class generating consumer demand, and a rule of law permitting safe investment. Now we are one of many nations with these critical advantages.

While he's mostly right, there are a few other things I would like to point out. Assuming the American capitalism can weather the current financial tsunami (which is not at all guaranteed), this trend is unlikely to reverse itself. The Washington Post reported this week that access to college education in the United States gets an "F" in every single state except for California, "which received a C because of the relatively low cost of its community colleges." If you think community colleges are churning out the next world leaders, at least under the current aristocratic system, you're sorely mistaken. College tuitions and fees have risen by an astonishing 439% since the early 1980's, which is almost twice as much as medical care (251%) and three times faster than the median family income for the same time period (147%). So what are the implications of this? Only the wealthiest will be able to send their children to any institution of higher learning, thus furthering the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Secondly, the consolidation of companies in the financial sector is mirrored by consolidation in virtually every other industry. The Center for Corporate Policy points out that

The accelerated concentration of corporate power is reflected in the relatively small number of major media conglomerates, defense contractors, etc. Another symptom is the precipitous rise in the value of corporate mergers and acquisitions over the past 25 years – amounting to a total $1.4 trillion during the 1980s, exploding to $11 trillion during the 1990s, and continuing at an even greater frenetic pace of $7.6 trillion during 2000-2003 (including $3.4 trillion in 2000 alone) — adding up to a combined total of $20 trillion.(2)

This trend has not abated in the years since- if anything, it has accelerated. And, it's affecting all sectors of the economy. The big 3 automakes got bigger by acquiring other brands, which they are now frantically trying to spin off again (see Saab, Volvo, Saturn, Hummer, etc...). Six conglomerates control virtually all of the television, radio, publishing and newspapers in America. Saturday's Opinion page in the Wall Street Journal had this nugget to look forward to:

- Financial concentration will gain even greater momentum and influence. This is the most profound long-term consequence of the current credit crisis. Leading independent investment banks already have been taken over by large financial conglomerates that are controlled by commercial banking entities, as have giant deposit institutions. Within the next year, many smaller and medium-sized financial institutions also will lose their independent identities.

Today, more than half of all nonfinancial debt (debt held by households, nonfinancial companies and government) is held by the top 15 institutions. These were the very firms that played a central role in creating an unprecedented amount of debt by securitization and complex new credit instruments. They also pushed for legal structures that made many aspects of the financial markets opaque.

In the years ahead, the influence of these financial conglomerates will be overwhelming -- and they will limit any moves toward greater economic democracy. These conglomerates are and will continue to be infused with conflicts of interest because of their multiple roles in securities underwriting, in lending and investing, in the making of secondary markets, and in the management of other people's money. And because there will be fewer market participants of importance, the price volatility of financial assets likely will remain high.

Through their global reach, these firms will transmit financial contagion even more quickly than it spread in the current credit crisis. When the current crisis abates, the pricing power of these huge financial conglomerates will grow significantly, at the expense of borrowers and investors.

So if you're happy with the way the last year has gone in the financial industry, you'll love what's ahead. Far more troubling to me, is the consolidation within the food industry. Mega-corporations have been trying for years to patent or control basic necessities of life, including water, something that ought to horrify anyone in today's business climate. If it doesn't, imagine Lehman Brothers or Citigroup in sole control of your water supply. In Stuffed and Starved Raj Patel discusses consolidation thusly:

It's a consolidation that spans the entire food system. The ten largest companies control half the world's seed supply... Ten firms control 84 per cent of the nearlyUS$30 billion pesticide markets, with analysts pointing to a trend in concentration that will see, by 2015, only three major players in that sector. The top ten in food and beverage processing amount for 24 per cent of hte US$1.25 trillion market in packaged foods. And the market with the sharpest trends in concentration, retail, sees the top ten players accounting for 24 per cent of the US$3.5 trillion market. (p.102)

Still, the government thinks it's good policy to hand out billions in subsidies and incentives to the megafarms as part of the travesty known as the Farm Bill. The end result? Virtually all fast food is made from corn- your burger included. High fructose corn syrup makes up the soda, cows are raised on a diet of corn, fries are cooked in corn. "Of 160 food products we purchased at Wendy's throughout the United States, not 1 item could be traced back to a noncorn [sic] source. Our work also identified corn feed as the overwhelming source of food for tissue growth, hence for beef and chicken meat, at fast food restaurants," says a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thirdly, Spitzer points out that our "grand victory" was conversion of "virtually the entire world into one integrated capitalist economy", but he neglects the extent to which that conversion was an unwilling one. We have created a world full of enemies, ready to mete out justice to their imperialist overlords that have been exploiting their natural resources, their environments, their labor, and their very cultures in the name of "economic growth". Of course, these giant mega-corporations have exploited those of us in the U.S. as well, but our travails are of little comfort to those in the massively impoverished global south.

I will close with a quotation from Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism that encapsulates a good portion of my argument.

Supercapitalism has triumphed as power has shifted to consumers and investors. They now have more choice than ever before, and can switch ever more easily to better deals. And competition among companies to lure and keep them continues to intensify. This means better and cheaper products, and higher returns. Yet as supercapitalism has triumphed, its negative social consequences have also loomed larger. These include widening inequality as most gains from economic growth go to the very top, reduced job security, instability of or loss of community, environmental degradation, violations of human rights abroad, and a plethora of products and services pandering to our basest desires. These consequences are larger in the United States than in other advanced economies because America has moved deeper into supercapitalism. Other econoimes, following closely behind, have begun to experience many of the same things.

Democracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to such social consequences. That's where citizen values are supposed to be expressed, where choices are supposed to be made between what we want for ourselves as consumers and investors, and what we want to achieve together. But the same competition that has fueled supercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbyists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns. The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Age-- industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, "corporate statesmen" responding to all stakeholders, and regulator agencies-- have been largely blown away by the gusts of supercapitalism.

Nepotism and the new American political aristocracy

Most Americans seem to believe that America is so special, we would never have a permanent overclass. This is the country where anyone can be president, right? It's saddening to realize that in politics, the best person does not always win- in fact, they rarely do. The biggest hurdle for a new candidate is name recognition, it would seem these relatives-of-other-politicians already have that. The second biggest hurdle is money, and that's obviously not a problem for any of these candidates. So how can this be democracy? How does someone with fresh ideas get elected? No name, no money, and no party support is a recipe for a losing candidacy, and an impoverished democracy.

Of course, this is also a side-effect of our celebrity obsessed "culture"- instead of film stars, these are the people that are on the other TV channels. If you like your celebrities a little vapid, you can watch Entertainment Tonight. If you like your celebrities a little more political, you can watch Bill O'Reilly, or Hannity and Colmes, or any of the other talking heads that are helping to reduce politics and life-and-death issues to little more than sound-bites.

This year more than most, elections were little more than a soap opera with political overtones. "What's the lecherous old McCain doing with that young, attractive governor from Alaska? Is Obama secretly a socialist? Was he even born in America? Tune in next time and find out the answers to these questions, and more on the shocking teen pregnancy of Bristol Palin!! Who's the real father???" The governor of California is Arnold Schwarzenegger-(click here for his IMBD profile). Even though I like a lot of what he has to say, Jesse "The Body" Ventura was governor of Minnesota. Don't harbor any illusions that if he were simply "Jesse Ventura", or "Joe the plumber" (with a small "p") for that matter, that he would have been able to win an election against well financed and organized major party candidates, regardless of how much sense they may make.

Nepotistic succession in the political class

(updated below)

Bill Clinton yesterday was forced to deny speculation that he would be appointed to replace his wife in the U.S. Senate. Leading candidates for that seat still include John F. Kennedy's daughter (Caroline), Robert Kennedy's son (RFK, Jr.), and Mario Cuomo's son (Andrew). In Illinois, a leading contender to replace Barack Obama in the Senate is Jesse Jackson's son (Jesse, Jr.). In Delaware, it was widely speculated that Joe Biden would be replaced by his son, Beau, and after Beau took his name out of the running because he's now serving in Iraq, the naming of the actual replacement -- lone-time (Joe) Biden aide Ted Kaufmann -- "upset local Democrats who believe the move was a ham-handed attempt to engineer the election of Biden’s son, Beau, to the Senate in 2010."

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, who was appointed by her father to take his seat in the U.S. Senate when he became Governor, yesterday warned Sarah Palin not to challenge her in a 2010 primary, a by-product of tension between those two as a result of Palin's defeat of Lisa's dad for Governor. In Florida, Mel Martinez's announcement that he won't seek re-election in 2010 immediately led to reports that the current President's brother, Jeb, might run for that seat. And all of that's just from the last couple of weeks.

The Senate alone -- to say nothing of the House -- is literally filled with people whose fathers or other close relatives previously held their seat or similar high office (those links identify at least 15 current U.S. Senators -- 15 -- with immediate family members who previously occupied high elected office). And, of course, the current President on his way out was the son of a former President and grandson of a former U.S. Senator.

Isn't this all a bit much? It's true that our political/media class in general is intensely incestuous and nepotistic. Virtually the entire neoconservative "intelligentsia" (using that term as loosely as it can possibly be used) is one big paean to nepotistic succession -- the Kristols, the Kagans, the Podhoretzes, Lucinanne Goldberg and her boy. Upon Tim Russert's death, NBC News excitedly hired his son, Luke. Mike Wallace's son hosts Fox's Sunday show. The most influential political opinion space in the country, The New York Times Op-Ed page, is, like the Times itself, teeming with family successions and connections. Inter-marriages between and among media stars and political figures -- and lobbyists, operatives and powerful political officials -- are now more common than arranged royal marriages were among 16th Century European monarchs.

But this fixation on parent-child, sibling and spousal succession for elected office is particularly problematic. It's certainly true that one can find, in individual cases, instances of self-sufficiency and merit even among those benefiting from nepotism and family names. But the fact that it is now so commonplace -- almost presumptively expected -- for political power to be passed along to close family members is quite anti-democratic. The number of families possessing some sort of aristocratic-like claim to elected office is clearly increasing. By definition, that diminishes the role of merit and the need for democratic persuasion in how elected leaders are chosen. And this dynamic, in turn, fuels how insular, incestuous, unaccountable and bloated with entitlement the Beltway culture is.

There are numerous factors that account for this artistocratization of our politics. Viewing political officials through the combined prism of royalty and celebrity naturally generates interest in, and affection for, their family members. The same deeply sad mentality that makes it worthwhile for celebrity magazines to pay many millions of dollars for celebrities' baby photos is part of what makes so many people eager to vote for the sons, wives, and brothers of their favorite political star. Independently, a rapid worsening of America's rich-poor gap stratifies the society in terms of opportunities and access and breeds a merit-deprived aristocratic culture.

Beyond that, the massive structural advantages of incumbency easily allow resources and other favors to be heaped on chosen family members for succession, and for loyalties and affections to be transferred for no reason other than family connection. Then there is the large number of uninformed voters -- working in tandem with our vapid, gossip-obsessed political media -- that place a huge premium on family name recognition and even generates some voter confusion that further aids family succession (how many voters who cast a ballot for Bob Casey and John Sununu in their Senate races -- or elected Harold Ford, Dan Boren, Connie Mack and Bill Schuster to the House -- mistakenly thought they were voting for their elected-official dads who had the same or very similar names?).

Family succession is hardly unheard of in U.S. political history, but what was once quite rare has now become pervasive. As The Washington Post's Dana Milbank put it in 2005:

With at least 18 senators, dozens of House members and several administration officials boosted by family legacies, modern-day Washington sometimes resembles the court of Louis XIV without the powdered wigs.

Illustrating that radical change, here's a revealing 1929 article from Time Magazine expressing some mild disapproval for what was, back then, the rare occurrence of a son who was elected to succeed his father in a Minnesota Congressional seat after the father was killed in a tragic fire (the new son-Congressman, the article noted, was "an engaging young man, thoroughly Nordic in appearance"). About this single familial succession, Time sternly intoned: "Primogeniture and hereditary public office have no place in U. S. tradition."

That is clearly no longer true. One of the most encouraging aspects of Barack Obama's success -- and, for that matter, the ascension of someone like Sarah Palin or Bill Clinton -- is the pure self-sufficiency and lack of family connection behind it. But even pointing that out demonstrates how meritocratic self-sufficiency has almost become the exception rather than the rule. That we now treat Presidents like Kings and expect them to exercise similar powers is consistent with the broader trend whereby we are ruled by a Versailles on the Potomac, with all the bloated, decadent insularity that implies.

UPDATE: In the comment section, Brenton Williams -- a Professor of American Constitutional & Legal History at DePaul University -- details one of the most egregiously undemocratic cases of nepotistic succession: Democratic Blue Dog Rep. Dan Lipinski:

His father, Bill, the long-time incumbent ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004 and won easily. A few weeks before the general election he withdrew and the Illinois Democratic Committee met with him for 15 minutes, late at night, behind closed doors before emerging with their new nominee, his son, then residing in central Tennessee where he was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee. . . .

Still worse, a family friend [Ryan Chlada] with no funding ran as the Republican in 2004 to help insure that Dan faced no more than token resistance.

As Professor Williams notes, the Lipinski son, ever since, has been vigorously supported by the Democratic establishment, particularly Rahm Emanuel, in order to defeat progressive (and meritocratic) primary challengers. He was simply handed the seat by his dad.

10 commandments vs. 7 Aphorisms- PART II

Sometimes I'm so brilliant, it scares me. Here's what I said this morning on the case:

The city is arguing that once they accepted the first monument, the city adopted it as part of it's own free speech, and therefore are under no obligation to accept competing messages. As far as I can tell though, you can't have it both ways. Either this is free speech or it's not; either it's an unconstitutional establishment of a state religion or it's a public park open to other messages. The city's kind of in an impossible situation here- they have to argue that the 10 commandments display is not an establishment of state religion while also denying competing religions the right to a similar public forum.

Here's the big issues in court today:

Though not directly at issue in the case, the establishment clause question lurked close to the surface in today's argument. Roberts said a declaration that the Pleasant Grove monument was government speech would make it harder for the city to argue that it wasn't favoring one religion over another.

``You're really just picking your poison, aren't you?'' he asked the town's lawyer, Jay Sekulow.

Justice David Souter said a high court ruling forcing the city to adopt the Ten Commandments message as its own would be fatal to the town's defense under the establishment clause.

``Isn't that what is driving this?'' he asked Summum's lawyer, Pamela Harris.

Harris said the city was trying to avoid having to formally subscribe to the particular version of the Ten Commandments on the park monument. She said the town ``wants to have it both ways.''

Face off: 10 commandments vs. 7 Aphorisms

The Raw Story | Supreme Court to hear Ten Commandments companion monument case

I heard about this story on NPR on my way into work this morning, and it made me laugh. Basically, some crazy cult was not allowed to donate a monument to the "7 Aphorisms" for placement in the city park alongside a monument of the "10 Commandments", which were allowed to be donated and placed in the park by some other crazy cult. The first group of crazy cultists sued, alleging a free-speech violation, a position that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with. Now its on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are my favorite things about this story, in no particular order:

• It's coming from the state of Utah, well-known for their religious tolerance and acceptance of alternative lifestyles. LOL
• The "cult" is named "Summum" and "was founded in 1975 by Summum Bonum Amon Ra (or Corky Ra), née Claude "Corky" Nowell, after an encounter with 'Summa Individuals'." OK, two things here: 1) the guy's name is Corky and 2) all of the names of everything in their cult just sounds like somebody mumbling.
• The first cult, Summum, actually sounds pretty cool:

Summum's one-acre compound sits 33 miles north of Pleasant Grove, in an industrial section of Utah's capital, surrounded by a graffiti-strewn building and a metal scrap center.

It's a tranquil spot, with fruit trees and peacocks. Dominating the site is a 27-foot-tall, 40-foot wide copper-shelled pyramid. An automatic door opens to a central space where members meditate.

Scattered about are preserved animals encased in bronze, Egyptian symbols, sofas, candles and bright murals adorning the walls. Off to the side is a large, stainless-steel fermentation tank, where sacramental "nectars" or "liquid knowledge" are produced for meditation sessions.

Oh yeah, those "sacramental nectars"? They're wine.

The city is arguing that once they accepted the first monument, the city adopted it as part of it's own free speech, and therefore are under no obligation to accept competing messages. As far as I can tell though, you can't have it both ways. Either this is free speech or it's not; either it's an unconstitutional establishment of a state religion or it's a public park open to other messages. The city's kind of in an impossible situation here- they have to argue that the 10 commandments display is not an establishment of state religion while also denying competing religions the right to a similar public forum.

They might have had a chance if they would have chosen to argue it based on the idea that it was part of the history of the area, and not part of government speech at all. Those types of arguments have been viewed sympathetically by the court, but I don't see how the city can win the case based on these arguments. Discussing a Texas case a few years ago

"No exact formula can dictate a resolution in fact-intensive cases such as this," Rehnquist read. "The determinative factor here, however, is that 40 years passed in which the monument's presence, legally speaking, went unchallenged.

"And the public visiting the capitol grounds is more likely to have considered the religious aspect of the tablets' message as part of what is a broader moral and historical message."

In a dissenting opinion, Souter wrote, "If neutrality in religion means something, any citizen should be able to visit [the capitol grounds] without having to confront religious expressions clearly meant to convey an official religious position."

So clearly, the court could be persuaded that the history of the monument should be taken into account, and the city may have won based on that argument. However, once the city began arguing that the 10 commandments were part of it's own free speech, then they are forced to admit that it is an establishment clause violation.

The Chomsky: United States Has Essentially a One-Party System

Chomsky nails it again. All emphasis mine.

The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Gabor Steingart

Der Spiegel Online, October 10, 2008

SPIEGEL: Professor Chomsky, cathedrals of capitalism have collapsed, the conservative government is spending its final weeks in office with nationalization plans. How does that make you feel?

Chomsky: The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable, its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

SPIEGEL: What exactly did you anticipate?

Chomsky: In the financial industry, as in other industries, there are risks that are left out of the calculation. If you sell me a car, we have perhaps made a good bargain for ourselves. But there are effects of this transaction on others, which we do not take into account. There is more pollution, the price of gas goes up, there is more congestion. Those are the external costs of our transaction. In the case of financial institutions, they are huge.

SPIEGEL: But isn't it the task of a bank to take risks?

Chomsky: Yes, but if it is well managed, like Goldman Sachs, it will cover its own risks and absorb its own losses. But no financial institution can manage systemic risks. Risk is therefore underpriced, and there will be more risk taken than would be prudent for the economy. With government deregulation and the triumph of financial liberalization, the dangers of systemic risks, the possibility of a financial tsunami, sharply increased.

SPIEGEL: But is it correct to only put the blame on Wall Street? Doesn't Main Street, the American middle class, also live on borrowed money which may or may not be paid back?

Chomsky: The debt burden of private households is enormous. But I would not hold the individual responsible. This consumerism is based on the fact that we are a society dominated by business interests. There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

SPIEGEL: How does it benefit politicians when the populace drives a lot, eats a lot and goes shopping a lot?

Chomsky: Consumption distracts people. You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption. The business press has been quite explicit about this goal.

SPIEGEL: A while ago you called America "the greatest country on earth." How does that fit together with what you've been saying?

Chomsky: In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

SPIEGEL: After travelling through the United States 170 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville reported, "the people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe." Was he a dreamer?

Chomsky: James Madison's position at the Constitutional Convention was that state power should be used "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." That is why the Senate has only a hundred members who are mostly rich and were given a great deal of power. The House of Representatives, with several hundred members, is more democratic and was given much less power. Even liberals like Walter Lippmann, one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, was of the opinion that in a properly functioning democracy, the intelligent minority, who should rule, have to be protected from "the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." Among the conservatives, Vice President Dick Cheney just recently illustrated his understanding of democracy. He was asked why he supports a continuation of the war in Iraq when the population is strongly opposed. His answer was: "So?"

SPIEGEL: "Change" is the slogan of this year's presidential election. Do you see any chance for an immediate, tangible change in the United States? Or, to use use Obama's battle cry: Are you "fired up"?

Chomsky: Not in the least. The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.

SPIEGEL: But he does say things that Europe has long been waiting for. He talks about the trans-Atlantic partnership, the priority of diplomacy and the reconciling of American society.

Chomsky: That is all rhetoric. Who cares about that? This whole election campaign deals with soaring rhetoric, hope, change, all sorts of things, but not with issues.

SPIEGEL: Do you prefer the team on the other side: the 72 year old Vietnam veteran McCain and Sarah Palin, former Alaskan beauty queen?

Chomsky: This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars, they would think the country has gone insane.

SPIEGEL: Arch conservatives and religious voters seem to be thrilled.

Chomsky: One must not forget that this country was founded by religious fanatics. Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

SPIEGEL: Is there nothing about McCain that appeals to you?

Chomsky: In one aspect he is more honest than his opponent. He explicitly states that this election is not about issues but about personalities. The Democrats are not quite as honest even though they see it the same way.

SPIEGEL: So for you, Republicans and Democrats represent just slight variations of the same political platform?

Chomsky: Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

SPIEGEL: You exaggerate. In almost all vital questions -- from the taxation of the rich to nuclear energy -- there are different positions. At least on the issues of war and peace, the parties differ considerably. The Republicans want to fight in Iraq until victory, even if that takes a 100 years, according to McCain. The Democrats demand a withdrawal plan.

Chomsky: Let us look at the "differences" more closely, and we recognize how limited and cynical they are. The hawks say, if we continue we can win. The doves say, it is costing us too much. But try to find an American politician who says frankly that this aggression is a crime: the issue is not whether we win or not, whether it is expensive or not. Remember the Russian invasion of Afghanistan? Did we have a debate whether the Russians can win the war or whether it is too expensive? This may have been the debate at the Kremlin, or in Pravda. But this is the kind of debate you would expect in a totalitarian society. If General Petraeus could achieve in Iraq what Putin achieved in Chechnya, he would be crowned king. The key question here is whether we apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others.

SPIEGEL: Who prevents intellectuals from asking and critically answering these questions? You praised the freedom of speech in the United States.

Chomsky: The intellectual world is deeply conformist. Hans Morgenthau, who was a founder of realist international relations theory, once condemned what he called "the conformist subservience to power" on the part of the intellectuals. George Orwell wrote that nationalists, who are practically the whole intellectual class of a country, not only do not disapprove of the crimes of their own state, but have the remarkable capacity not even to see them. That is correct. We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

SPIEGEL: Was there not, and is there not -- in the United States and worldwide -- loud protest against the Iraq war?

Chomsky: The protest against the war in Iraq is far higher than against the war in Vietnam. When there were 4,000 American deaths in Vietnam and 150,000 troops deployed, nobody cared. When Kennedy invaded Vietnam in 1962, there was just a yawn.

SPIEGEL: To conclude, perhaps you can offer a conciliatory word about the state of the nation?

Chomsky: The American society has become more civilized, largely as a result of the activism of the 1960s. Our society, and also Europe's, became freer, more open, more democratic, and for many quite scary. This generation was condemned for that. But it had an effect.

SPIEGEL: Professor Chomsky, we thank you for this interview.

Nader congratulates Obabma

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 12:00:00 AM

Independent candidate for President and Vice President, Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez, congratulated Senator Barack Obama on his decisive victory today to succeed the notorious regime of George W. Bush.

——

Senator Obama led a campaign of tactical brilliance that appears to be bereft of specific mandates. It is up to an aroused citizenry to organize behind these mandates which we were privileged to advance. These progressive mandates (living wage, Medicare for all, and a just foreign policy, and many more) reflect majority support and our long overdue redirections and reforms in our country.

Senator Obama will be President-elect Obama soon to preside over what our founders described as a representative government under our Constitution. Thomas Jefferson once said that the function of representative government is to "curb the excesses of the monied interests." The corporate dominated government that Senator Obama inherits includes what President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned the nation against in his farewell address — the military industrial complex. It includes many other priorities entrenched by "the monied interests," or global corporations, to drain and strip-mine the necessities and deserved justice long denied to so many Americans in their various roles.

Such challenges to apply available solutions to stagnant injustices and deprivations require a transforming leader who speaks truth with democratic power to falsehood and plutocratic power. This in turn demands a deliberate, thoughtful and challenging personality.

The Nader/Gonzalez campaign joins other Americans in wishing you well in the White House. We will remain alert to opportunities that advance those final words of the pledge of allegiance — "with liberty and justice for all."

Bailout: more bad policy on top of horrible policy

I've been against the bailout from the beginning, as have most right-thinking folks. Daily, more evidence piles up that the bailout was a bad idea, and the implementation is leaving a sour taste in everyone's mouth.

As a refresher: Sec. Paulson assaulted Congress and the American public and demanded $700 billion and unlimited power to do with it whatever he wanted, or else the economy would take a giant shit and we'd all get splattered. Nevermind that the giant shit was going to happen anyway, and we're all starting to get splattered. Predictably, the American public gave their collective middle fingers to that plan, and he was forced to say something about what he'd do with the money. His brilliant idea was to buy the worthless (err..... "troubled") "assets" from the crooks (err... bankers). OK, remember that plan (conveniently named "Troubled Asset Relief Plan- get it? It's a tarp, to cover up the giant shit). Presto-change-o the banks have adequate capital and crisis is averted. Oh, and he needed the money IMMEDIATELY, there was absolutely no time to look at alternatives. Congress decides to give Paulson the middle finger, the stock market drops 700 points, there was a bunch of secret late-night meetings held at the White House, they threaten to declare martial law, and then the bailout passes. With me so far?

Now, the secret reasons behind the bailout have started to come out, but you've got to put the pieces to the puzzle together. OK, remember the reason for the bailout? Banks couldn't lend because they've got all this worthless stuff that somehow magically ended up on their balance sheets, causing them to have to write all the worthless stuff down to it's value (0), which causes them to have to increase their reserves to compensate for the loss of these "assets". Banks weren't lending to each other, because they all knew that they all had this worthless stuff they were hiding and didn't know which one would be the next to go belly-up because of it. Paulson's theory was that the government would take all this worthless stuff off their hands, freeing the banks to start lending to each other again. But, as soon as the bailout passed, the plan morphed from buying "assets" from banks to straight liquidity injections, whether they wanted it or not. The idea this time was to cut out the middle step of buying the bad assets and just shore up the balance sheets immediately, thereby mitigating the need to raise more capital, even if the worthless (oops, I mean "troubled) assets come to light.

Now, it seems the plan has morphed again, albeit in a way that nobody's acknowledging. Now, the plan is to nudge the big banks to use that fresh liquidity to buyout smaller banks. Smaller banks didn't have the same exposure to these worthless derivatives, as a result of their need to actually serve their customers, so the smaller banks have excellent balance sheets compared to their larger brethren. Unfortunately for them, the big guys need that capital, so it's going to be merger time! Remember two weeks ago, when Citigroup was hoving over Wachovia, all set to go ahead with the buyout, when Wells Fargo swooped in? The Motley Fool breaks it down:

Why was Wells Fargo so eager to ante up a deal that was leaps and bounds sweeter than Citi was willing to pay? After all, Wells Fargo has a stellar reputation of keeping underwriting standards in check, so why would it want anything to do with a shoddy bank drowning in subprime mortgages?

Taxes. It was all about the taxes.

The day after Citigroup made its bid, the Treasury changed a tax rule that lets banks accelerate the losses and writedowns on banks they acquire against their own net income, offsetting the charges as tax write-offs.

Wells plans on writing off some $74 billion of Wachovia's $498 billion loan portfolio -- an insanely large amount that reflects just how poisoned Wachovia's books really were. With the new tax rules, it gets to use all of that $74 billion as a charge against its own net income, which means one thing: Wells Fargo's going to be a tax-write-off machine for years to come.

Just how much will it save? The Wall Street Journal, citing an independent tax analyst, estimates Wells Fargo could reap a tax savings of about $19.4 billion. To put that in perspective, the 0.1991 shares of its own stock Wells Fargo is offering Wachovia comes out to around $6.24 per share, or roughly $13.8 billion. Yes, Wells Fargo gets a $19.4 billion tax break for a company it'll pay just under $14 billion for (if the deal closed today).

In other words, Wells Fargo didn't pay anything for Wachovia: The IRS paid it more than $5 billion to take it. Who ever said you have to fear the taxman?

Nary a peep from Treasury on the deal, so the big guys figure it's a merger green-light. The Guardian reports:

A Californian lender, City National Bank of Beverly Hills, made it clear it would consider using its $395m capital infusion to make purchases. Its chief executive, Russell Goldsmith, told the Los Angeles Times the money "clearly enhances our financial capacity to make acquisitions and to lend to a larger degree".

The pace of deals in the banking industry has already picked up. On Friday, Cleveland-based National City Bank agreed to a $5.6bn buyout by a competitor, PNC, which is getting $7.7bn from the Treasury.

Keith Horowitz, a banking analyst at Citigroup, said National City did not need capital but had found itself vulnerable as a result of the bail-out.
"We believe [the bail-out] in a perverse way pushed/forced National City's management to sell the bank into a buyers' market," said Horowitz in a note to clients.

Not brazen enough for you? I agree- here's a more brazen example.

In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.

(He [JP Morgan executive] didn’t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)

“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

I think former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has good suggestions on his blog, too bad nobody in charge is listening. He argues that

the big bank beneficiaries of the bailout should be barred from (1) paying lobbyists who have anything whatever to do with administration or implementation of the bailout; (2) buying up other financial institutions; (3) paying dividends to shareholders; or (4) paying any bonuses or severance packages to any executives -- as long as the bailout continues. There's simply no excuse for using taxpayer dollars for any of these purposes.

This whole bailout has been a scam from day one, and I become more certain of that by the day. If they were committed to transparency and oversight as was promised, why would there be the secrecy and redacted documents?

The Freakonomics blog today asked a similar question to the one I posed yesterday. They just didn't take it as far... they were only wondering why there weren't any riots, I was wondering when the full-scale revolution is going to happen?

High time to boycott elections?

It seems more and more people are coming to a similar conclusion:

High time to boycott elections

The only choice: Don't vote!

A Former Voter is Rehabilitated

Excerpt of an interview with James Cromwell

James Cromwell is playing Bush Sr., in W, the new movie from Oliver Stone. The movie is not the interesting part, this interview with James Cromwell is. (emphasis mine)

Ryan Stewart:

You've been politically active for quite a long time -- does the moment we're at right now parallel anything you've seen in the past?

James Cromwell:

Well, for those people who went through 1931, it would be incredibly reminiscent. I don't know of that, but I think this is unprecedented in its condemnation of...I don't know what to call it...it's not capitalism. When you say 'capitalism' to Americans they think 'My god, that's small businesses, that's working folk!' and I don't mean that at all. I mean that large, predatory, multinational capitalism and the markets it supposedly regulates -- or doesn't -- is now defunct.

A new system will have to be developed. Will we have the will? Has this ever happened? On the radio they were talking about Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War; the dilemma for Lincoln was profound, so much so that it made the topic of slavery secondary in his mind to maintaining the union. The union was at stake. I believe the survival of this country is definitely at stake, and not only with the economic crisis.

The pursuit of American empire -- the plan laid out by Cheney for American bases from the Tigris to the Euphrates because we basically have no friends and in order to maintain our supremacy we need to control the energy resources in that area of the world -- is a collision course with the rest of the world, which we'll ultimately lose. It'll either destroy us or the entire planet. It also takes away from the multitude of issues also involving the survivability of the planet, which we should be facing with every resource at our command. How do we shift this lifestyle of consuming the world's resources and spitting them out into the atmosphere as pollutants? We're watching the biosphere die in front of us.

RS:

So maybe not the best time for the media to be focusing on things like the Weather Underground, in your opinion?

JC:

Of course it's not the time. Listen, I understand they're gonna run that out. If you wanna talk about things I condemned the elder Bush for, that campaign against Dukakis and the use of Willie Horton and the tank ad are two prime examples of Atwater-Rove manipulation of media that we are now experiencing again. I understand that McCain's ads are now 100 percent negative, but that's only a minor thing that involves one candidate. The fact that Obama can stand up there and answer questions that have been screened in a debate forum controlled by both parties and under a contract that they will not release to the press, and that they will not include Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader...the issues have nothing to do with goddamn terrorists –– they have to do with the terrorists who run our country. They are not allowed to ask or answer those questions appropriately in this forum. That is the crisis of this country. Not only do we know that the last two elections were basically stolen, we're watching them being stolen again right from under our noses! No one says fuck all about it!

RS:

I don't know, there's a pretty healthy alternative media in this country for those who want it.

JC:

I totally agree. Bless our hearts, that is quite true, but when I say that no one says fuck all about it, the mainstream media that reaches the majority of the people.... as almost anybody who tends to agree with us says, they're asleep, they're shopping, they're numb, they're distracted, they're lazy, they're stupid, they're unwilling, they're uninformed. Those people don't know what we know. Those people don't hear the truth. Only those people are gonna make a difference. We have to move them to action!

RS:

Does the presumptive Obama victory in a few weeks give you any hope?

JC:

I have hope. The conditions are so bad from this administration that, much like the country that Roosevelt inherited, I hope that Obama is a big enough man to respond to the needs of ordinary American people, and that ordinary Americans learn that it is not our leaders who lead us. All substantive change in this country has come from the people, not the leaders. The leaders don't lead -- they follow.

Now, the question is will we abdicate the way we've abdicated for the last eight years and probably the last forty years? Will we abdicate to the money forces, the Wall Street forces, the multinationals and the military-industrial complex? Or will we finally say, "This is it!? This is our country. We are taking it back. We believe in habeas corpus. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to maintain these rights, governments are instituted among men, who derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That when these powers threaten these rights it is the duty and it is the obligation of the people to throw off this government."

I believe that. That's what this country is founded on and that is what we have to rediscover. Barack Obama? As the Black Panthers used to say, you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. He has the choice. If he wants to be part of the solution, he has to listen to more rational voices. He has to listen to more progressive voices. He has to listen to his heart. He has to listen to his wife. He has to listen to his children and all of our children and do the right thing. That's the key, he has to do the right thing.

Life as a Cog

Life as a Cog

by Mike Jaynes / August 30th, 2008

The disturbing feeling of Cog-ness is slowly creeping into our nation’s educated citizens. By educated, I do not mean those of us with various alphabet soups behind our gentrified names, but those who have begun to realize this American Dream isn’t what we signed up for. And by Cog-ness, I mean the Machine. Much has been written on our quaint and overly mechanized materialistic system and its class slavery, but there is even more ground to cover. The wheel of the world keeps spinning around its eight-to-six slave driving and passionless axis while the outer rim of the super wealthy continues to be supported by the spokes of hard working American types who never take a day off unless they have to and believe in words like Freedom and Justice while possessing neither. And the wheel of America, in its ever accelerating downward roll, continues to squash any country and every culture that happens to wander into its path. For confirmation, examine the tread marks on flattened Iraq, Sudan, and the like. Or google “factory farming” and look at our wonderful factory farmed meat industry. Real warm and fluffy. Hopeful, you know.

We’ve been told that if we work hard, stay honest, do our best, and floss every day we will have good lives. We’ve been told not to complain, believe in God, and keep our heads down; keep a low profile. We’ve heard this our whole lives. The problem, and what inspires considerable stress related gastrointestinal cramps in The Man, is that the inherited sociocultural beliefs of past generations won’t do anymore. They are no longer relevant. Across the country, people are beginning to pay attention and complain with the best of them. But stay in line, we are told. Corporations weed out possible rebels and free spirits with standardized personality and drug testing and the university realm of academia scoffs at any would be teachers lacking multiple graduate degrees on their resumes. As if jumping through various systematic hoops of academic accomplishment proves one dynamic enough, creative enough, and worthy to educate the up and coming troublemakers of tomorrow. The low wage workers, as researchers such as Barbara Ehrenreich tell us, are told to value hard work and not complain and continue to pull the hard unforgiving yoke on the ground floor of the machinery.

And then there is God. Or rather, the popular Americanized version. The drifting vagrant Christ who said Love each other and Do the Right Thing before adorning some knotty pine seems not to be present. America holds God up as a threat to these low wage worker slaves showing them: See? Jesus had it way worse than you, and he didn’t complain. And often the low wage view is skewed as well. Here in East Tennessee, on UT football nights, God is undoubtedly inundated with countless southern inflected twangy voices begging for the Vols to make those two last yards for the first down. This is distressing, and it seems best if we just left the whole subject out of the quest for personal freedom. Often my students are confused, and we examine beliefs on God much like Serge A. Storms’ in Triggerfish Twist: “I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet.”

However, in my experience as a university lecturer in English and the Humanities and an animal advocate, plenty of students are catching on. They are getting the vague and uneasy feeling that overly reductionist religious systems and outdated social codes are selling a comfy cell block box with all the trimmings in which to live, in which to stay in line. Our jailers are masters of deception, and they use chains with such subtle disguising craftsmanship Hephaestus himself would be proud of them. In our comfy ornate boxes, the jailers give us pretty shackles to wear. Not only do we wear them, but we must go out and purchase them and pay for them with our hard earned money (nah, just charge it). Akin to docking a prisoner for his meals, we pull on the woolly snug chains of comfort in complete ignorance. Ipods, absurdly large and flat television screens on which we watch absurdly large and fake heroes. More clothes than anyone could wear, Hummers, overly aggressive predatory student loans, and more. Oh yes, don’t forget the wholesale slaughter of countless animals who think, live, and acutely feel pain. Sure, I realize many feel these purchases are their right. They earned the money or have the credit, so who am I to say these excesses are wrong? Who says we can’t eat animals? I do. The minute you find yourself plopping down huge percentages of your monthly income for unneeded things, you are wrong. I’ve been there as well, so save your righteous indignation. If you have not examined the reasons behind your desire for things, you need to rethink, or perhaps simply think. And that is why my writing and classes often inspire controversy…I feel no reason to subscribe to a hypocritical system of political correctness in which I do not believe. So I feel I am someone who is right and not hesitant to admit it. It is not ego; it is simply truth.

Ah yes, it is a part of my dilettante palm-tree-methodology and life path to live and let live, so don’t expect me to come fire bomb any Hummer dealerships. Been there, done that, so to speak. If you want to eat the cooked flesh of a tortured animal, that is your choice; it is our choice to live as we chose. That, in fact, is one of the only true values America has to offer us. Therefore, hateful small minded responses do not anger me. Rather, I am quite entertained by them because there always is the possibility that my paradigm could be flawed in some way unbeknown to me. You know, I could be wrong. But, materialism, class division, animal slavery, overly reductionist religious institutions, and ignorance are the problems in this society as I see them and unlike so many millions who have came and gone before me quite unnoticed, I don’t have a big interest in faking sincerity and keeping my head down.

Predatory credit card companies, criminal mortgage lenders, slaughterhouses and factory farms, absurd student loan companies, and well spoken politicians who truly do not care about the plight of commoners are all too vocal and powerful and committed to exploiting the lower classes for outrageous financial gain. So why should people who realize the version of Freedom we have been sold has come at the cost of soulless conformity remain politically correct and silent? Why should the cogs keep evenly greased and silently turning? The squeaks of social unrest, class consciousness, and animal/civil rights are quickly greased by cheap government bureaucrats with six part plans efficiently going nowhere. The truth is the poor are simply minor speed bumps on the road to upper class elitism, a minor annoyance with no real teeth, nothing to damage the SUVs of the Very Well Adjusted and Upwardly Mobile. So go ahead, crush them as you ladder climb because it’s completely your right to do so. Go ahead and destroy them and their hopes, you won’t hardly even think about it; it won’t trouble you at all.

Being a system in which one can rise above one’s situation, achieve a higher level of socioeconomic successs, and then haughtily look down on members of one’s previous socioeconomic class, America may not be as Great as they once told us. The present wealth oriented America system depends on the ignorance and placidity of us cogs to stay silent and take what they can give us. Then, after an adult lifetime of crushing labor, we can get a company watch and know that we never started any trouble and kept to ourselves. Perhaps the tombstones of the current American low wage workforce could have a single inscription above a collective mass grave: Good American. Worked Hard. Never Caused Trouble. Socially Accepted. Historically Irrelevant. Not that their one track activism is always the correct approach, but as those mysterious maskers at A.L.F. and E.L.F. would no doubt tell us, there is talking and there is doing. Until the majority of Americans realize our superimposed socioeconomic slavery and decide to raise complete and holy hell, this article — and all others like it — is the worthless talk of self-important academics. Thanks for reading. I’ll be around.

Letter to the editor: Why vote?

Recently, my local letters the editor column has been awash in letters urging people to do their
"patriotic duty" by voting. Even leaving aside issues of fraud, there are so many reasons to consider not voting. I originally started thinking about it in terms of game theory, but have since changed to more practical, easily apparent reasons to avoid voting. Or if not to avoid it altogether, at least vote for a third party that you feel best represents a shot at real change. In fact, I'm slowly coming around to the perspective that voting for third parties can send the same type of message to Washington that one would be sending by not voting, while also helping to "do" something to help that change come about. Anyway, here's my letter to the editor, then read on after that for more diverse perspectives on voting and change.

There has been some discussion in The Public Pulse lately as to whether one ought to vote or not. Democracy, in any meaningful sense, is a system that allows people to have a say in decisions to the degree that they are affected. Do we have that? The Bush administration has approval ratings stuck around 25%, while Congress struggles to keep their approval ratings in the double-digits. So it can hardly be said that the government has the support of the people.
Reporters without borders recently ranked the USA 36th out of 173 countries in it's annual Press Freedom Index. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of its member states only Turkey and Mexico have higher levels of income inequality than the USA. The United States has troops stationed in 136 countries around the world. We now have secret prisons, where we hold prisoners indefinitely without formal charges or access to representation. The world knows that we torture prisoners, despite the Geneva Convention. Our students have some of the worst educational scores in the developed world. Allegations of voter fraud and rigged voting machines have plagued elections in America since the 2000, and international election monitors had to be brought in to monitor the 2004 presidential election to ensure fairness. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. We only have 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners are in American prisons. The machinery of international capitalism is falling down around our ears and the major candidates are quibbling about tax policy on the richest 1% of Americans. I've heard more about lipstick, pigs, pit-bulls, and plumbers than I have about any of the issues that really matter.
Despite all assertions from hard-core partisans, there are no meaningful differences between the two parties. There is no way for citizens to influence the policies that affect them most. If you doubt this, consider the recent vote on the banking bailout. Despite the clear opposition of the majority of Americans communicated through hundreds of calls and emails to their "representatives", politicians from both parties scrambled to enact it anyway. Since it's been enacted, news of unbelievable corruption and greed have come from many of these financial institutions, including AIG and Lehman Brothers. It is clear that without access to millions of dollars and lobbying firms, the average American doesn't have any representation in the halls of Congress or the White House.
So for all of these reasons and more, a case could be made that by refusing to vote, one is withholding consent and taking a moral stand against the immoral actions of our "leaders". If you feel that you must vote, I certainly understand the urge to use one of the few constitutional rights you have left. But please don't harbor any illusions that a vote for either of the major parties will change anything that really matters.

How should you vote?

by Jeremy R. Hammond / October 21st, 2008

With the U.S. presidential election fast approaching, Americans are settling on their decision for who would best take their country in the right direction and serve their interests. Most view the political system with cynicism. Most see the two dominant political parties, Democratic and Republican, as serving the interests of corporations and the financial elite but not their own. Many feel disenfranchised. Many feel that to participate in a system that merely perpetuates the status quo without offering any hope for real change is to grant it legitimacy when it deserves none. And if past trends are any indication, most won’t vote.

Among those who will cast their ballot, most, even those who will vote along party lines, view both Barack Obama and John McCain with skepticism. They are both seen negatively, both representing the established order. But one or the other of them is viewed as the lesser evil. To keep the greater evil out of power, a vote for the lesser one becomes necessary.

This remains true even when there are alternatives to the Democratic and Republican candidates, and even when the alternative candidates are seen far more as representing American interests and far less as being corrupted. A great many voters will vote for who they see as a lesser evil rather than who they see as actually being a good candidate because they so greatly fear the possibility of the greater evil gaining power.

This voting strategy is deeply ingrained. During the 2000 election, Ralph Nader was an extraordinarily popular candidate, particularly among the left. He was seen as far more worthy than the Democratic candidate Al Gore. And yet many liberals who shared that view chastised their fellow leftists for casting their vote for Nader, particularly when it came down to the Florida election.

The reasoning is straightforward: voting for Nader meant not voting for Gore, which meant George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, had a better chance of winning. Voting for Nader helped ensure a Bush win, the argument goes, because liberals might swing their vote away from Gore, but conservatives were less likely to do so. Nader didn’t have nearly as good a chance as winning as Gore, and so the strategic goal of keeping Bush from power meant voting for Gore even if Nader was the better candidate.

While this appears to be a perfectly logical argument and pragmatic voting strategy, it is rooted upon a number of fallacies. First and foremost is the deeply ingrained belief that alternative candidates don’t have a chance of winning, and so to vote for one would mean “wasting” your vote.

This year, the most extraordinary candidate was, hands down, Ron Paul. He was extremely popular, and remains so after having withdrawn his candidacy. He made waves in America, and, despite being old enough to be their grandfather, spoke to a whole new generation of voters that are disillusioned with business as usual in Washington. His position on the issues make sense and Americans recognized that he represented real change. The fact that he was even in the running gave hope to many that the U.S. political system might actually be able to function as the founding fathers intended, that a restoration of the American Republic based upon the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land might be possible.

Still, one could turn on the TV and watch news reports where people on the street are interviewed about their preference of candidates and see people saying things like “I really like Ron Paul. I think he’s the best candidate. I like his position on the issues, and he makes sense. But he doesn’t have much chance of winning, so I’m probably going to vote for Barack Obama.”

Therein lies another fallacy. People don’t vote for who they actually like for the presidency based upon their opinion of whether or not they think it is likely that they will win. The “we have to ensure the greater evil doesn’t gain power” mindset wins out over “we have to ensure the best candidate wins”. But, of course, strict adherence to this electoral strategy can only result in the self-perpetuation of the same political process they are so disillusioned with in the first place.

The truth is that the only reason a candidate like Ron Paul is “unlikely” to win an election is because people won’t vote for him. And they won’t vote for him because they think he’s unlikely to win, which of course results in the self-fulfillment of that reality.

The American people need to recognize that an alternate reality exists, and that the way to bring it about requires merely a shift in paradigm. American voters should shift their electoral strategy from seeking to put the lesser of evils into power to seeking to elect the force for the greatest good.

There are, of course, those who already adhere to this alternative framework. If there were a few more among their numbers, alternative candidates like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader would gain more votes. They might still lose. But does voting for a losing candidate mean one’s vote has been wasted? How much more wasted is a vote that goes towards the lesser evil? You’ve still voted for the perpetuation of evil.

Far more worthy alternative candidates might still lose, but it wouldn’t mean votes were wasted. The increased percentage of the votes that went towards them would send a powerful message to Washington. It would encourage more people in the next election to do the same and vote their conscience, rather than adhering to a voting strategy that virtually guarantees nothing will ever substantially change.

Eventually, the number of votes being cast towards alternative candidates would be enough that the message from the American public could no longer be ignored. Even if still resulting in a loss for the worthiest candidate it would remain a win for the American public, because whichever evil from whichever party did win the election would be under far greater pressure to implement real reform.

And for Americans who don’t believe their voice is heard in Washington or that public pressure has any effect, a simple refresher course in history could remind them that advancements in society are not made at the behest of government or the ruling class, but only by pressure from the masses reaching a tipping point. Politicians don’t go out on a limb to promote radical change on their own accord. They have to be pushed out there under massive public pressure and under the fear that one’s constituency might very well vote one out of power if one doesn’t do precisely what they are publicly demanding.

One of the most effective means by which the American people could send a message to Washington would be by voting. There’s every reason to be cynical of the political system in the U.S. But there’s no reason for despair. There is hope. And there are individuals working within the system representing real hope and real change. More Americans need to take the time to stay informed and get engaged in the political process. And of those Americans who do vote each election, more need to recognize that the “lesser of evil” strategy only perpetuates the framework wherein it remains a choice between evils.

The only real voting strategy that can offer real hope for change is the one wherein Americans vote their conscience and cast their ballot for the candidate they think is truly the most worthy to be called by the title of President of the United States of America.

Until Americans realize this then there will indeed remain little hope for the future.

Taking Politics Seriously: Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

by Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood

We have nothing against voting. We plan to vote in the upcoming election. Some of our best friends are voters.

But we also believe that we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth. Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means asking considerably more of ourselves than the typical fixation with electoral politics.

First, we won't be coy about this election. Each of us voted for Obama in the Texas primary and will vote for him in November. We are leftists who are consistently disgusted by the center-right political positions of the leadership of the Democratic Party, and we have no illusions that Obama is secretly more progressive than his statements in public and choice of advisers indicate. But there is slightly more than a dime's worth of policy differences between Obama and McCain, and those differences are important in this election. The reckless quality of the McCain campaign and its policy proposals are scary, as is the cult of ignorance that has grown up around Palin.

Just as important, the people of this white-supremacist nation have a chance to vote for an African-American candidate. Four decades after the end of formal apartheid in the United States, in the context of ongoing overt and covert racism that is normalized in many sectors of society, there's a possibility that a black person might be elected president. Even though Obama doesn't claim the radical roots of the anti-apartheid struggles of recent U.S. history, the symbolic value of this election is not a trivial consideration. This isn't tokenism, but a sign of real progress, albeit limited.

But even though we make that argument, we will vote knowing that the outcome of the election is not all that important, for a simple reason: The multiple crises facing this country, and the world, cannot be adequately addressed within the conventional political, economic, or social systems. This is reflected in the fact that neither candidate is even acknowledging the crises. The conventional political wisdom -- Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative -- is deeply rooted in the denial of the severity of these crises and hostility to acknowledging the need for radical change. Such a politics of delusion won't generate solutions but instead will lead us to the end of the road, the edge of the cliff, the brick wall -- pick your preferred metaphor, but when the chickens of denial come home to roost, it's never pretty.

These crises are not difficult to identify; the evidence is all around us.

Economics: We aren't facing a temporary downturn caused by this particular burst bubble but instead are moving into a new phase in the permanent decline of a system that has never met the human needs of most people and never will. It is long past the time to recognize the urgent need to start imagining and building an economics based on production and distribution for real human needs, rejecting the corrosive greed that underlies not only the obscene profits hoarded by the few but also the orgiastic consumption pursued by the many. We can't know whether McCain or Obama recognizes these things, but it's clear that both candidates -- along with their parties and the interests they represent -- are not interested in facing these realities.

Empire: The way in which First-World nations have pursued global empires over the past 500 years to grab for themselves a disproportionate share of the world's wealth has never been morally justifiable. The recent phase of U.S. domination in that project is particularly offensive, given U.S. political leaders' cynical rhetoric about democracy. But whatever one's evaluation of the ideology behind the U.S. attempt to run the world through violence and coercion, the project is falling apart. The invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not just moral failures but pragmatic disasters. While McCain and Obama have slightly different strategies for dealing with these disasters, neither is willing to face the depravity of the imperial endeavor and neither argues for abandoning the imperial project.

Ecology: It's no longer helpful to speak about "environmental issues," as if we face discrete problems that have clear solutions. Without major changes to the way humans live, we face the collapse of the ecosystem's ability to sustain human life as we know it. Every basic indicator of the health of the ecosystem is cause for concern -- inadequate and dwindling supplies of clean water, chemical contamination in every part of the life cycle, continuing topsoil loss, toxic waste build-up, species loss and reduced biodiversity, and climate change. Unless one adopts an irrational technological fundamentalism -- the faith-based assumption that new gadgets will magically rescue us -- this means we have to downsize and scale back our lives dramatically, learning to live with less. Yet conventional politicians continue to promise to deliver a lifestyle that constitutes a form of collective planetary suicide.

So, we live in a predatory corporate capitalist economy in a world structured by the profound injustice produced by an imperial system that is steadily drawing down the ecological capital of the planet. The domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of this world is rooted in the ideologies of male domination and white domination. This belief in the inevitability of hierarchy grows out of thousands of years of patriarchy, reinforced by hundreds of years of white supremacy. Any meaningful progressive politics also must address not just the worst behaviors that come out of these systems -- the overt sexism and racism that continue to plague society -- but also the underlying worldview that normalizes inequality. Yes, Obama is black, and McCain selected a female running mate, but neither candidate ever speaks of patriarchy and white supremacy.

There are two common responses to the analysis offered here. The first is to condemn it as crazy, which is the response of the majority of Americans. The second, from people who don't find such claims crazy and share the basic analysis, is that we have to be realistic and tone down our arguments, precisely because most Americans won't take seriously anyone who speaks so radically.

But if being realistic has something to do with facing reality, then arguments for radical change are the most realistic. When problems are the predictable consequence of existing systems and no solutions are plausible within them, then arguing for continued capitulation to those systems isn't realistic. It's literally insane.

We live in a country that is, in fact, growing increasingly insane. Fashioning a strategy for political organizing in such a country, and shaping rhetoric to advance that organizing, is indeed difficult. But it must start with a realistic description of the problems we face, a realistic evaluation of the nature of the systems that gave rise to those problems, and a realistic assessment of the degree of change necessary to imagine solutions.

Taking politics seriously in the United States today means recognizing the limits of electoral politics. Voting matters, but it's not the most important act in our political lives. Traditional grassroots political organizing to advance progressive policies on issues is more important. And even more crucial today is the long-term project of preparing for the dramatically different world that is on the horizon -- a world in which an already unconscionable inequality will have expanded; a world with less energy to deal with the ecological collapse; a world in which existing institutions likely will prove useless in helping us restructure our lives; a world in which we will need to reclaim and develop basic skills for sustaining ourselves and our communities.

These challenges are daunting but also exciting, presenting us with tasks for which the energy and creativity of every one of us will be needed. Can we find a way to talk about that excitement which could encourage others to explore these ideas? Can we develop projects to put those ideas into action, even if only on a small scale? When we have tried to articulate this worldview in plain language in recent political lectures and discussions, we have found that a growing number of people not only will listen but are hungry for such honesty.

We don't pretend that number is large right now -- certainly not a majority, and not anywhere near the number needed for a mass movement -- but one wouldn't expect that in this affluent society in which many people are still insulated from the worst consequences of these systems. But that's changing. As more and more people, from many sectors of society, face these realities, they join the search for a community in which to confront this together. Our political work should focus on connecting with people on common ground, articulating a realistically radical analysis, and working from there to construct a just and sustainable society.

So, we will vote on Nov. 4, without hesitation. But more importantly, on Nov. 5 we will be realistic and continue talking about the radical change necessary to build a different world.