Mr. Miner, there is no doubt, Leslie Calvin Jr. will be missed by loved ones and vilified by those he menaced. However, you and your colleagues in the press, repeatedly fail to bring any “clarity” whatsoever to the issue of gang-violence. Rainey is just as daft, suggesting that the community should be focusing on finding the killer, not silencing insensitive alderman. While it might come as a comfort to some to find the killer, the systemic violence prohibition creates will rage on no matter how many people we lock in cages. Supposedly Rainey pointed out that the crime was “drug-related,” but like you, she fails miserably to connect the dots.

The shootings in poorer urban communities of color can’t be solved by the national guard, catching the criminals, or gun control. The killings are centered around protecting and enlarging market shares in the illicit drug trade. Because the product is illegal, there are no property rights besides those which can be asserted by force or good will. In a highly competitive market with no rules, people exhaust good will quickly and do terrible things to on another. Long story short: end prohibition, end gang violence.

In the future, please spare us your vague prattling about gun control. The city banning handguns is practically just an economic stocking stuffer to sporting good stores outside of Cook Country. As for the Second Amendment, it is quite clear, even though the court has made it murkier. It is there so that the tree of liberty can be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. If the press really offered any real clarity, perhaps such a Jeffersonian outlook wouldn’t be necessary.

Curiously the response that also made the Reader was “samsa’s”. I present it to you below in its entirety.

It is there so that the tree of liberty can be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. If the press really offered any real clarity, perhaps such a Jeffersonian outlook wouldn’t be necessary.”

I love that we feel the need to reiterate this over and over and over as though this is a brilliant idea. Jefferson thought that the terror of the French revolution was a minor hiccup, mostly a good thing. On the other hand, Jefferson himself was not exactly volunteering himself for guilloteening. On any question relating to Virginia, he was suddenly a member of the landed gentleman’s class.

If we must treat Jefferson’s writings as religious texts for governance, then I suppose we must treat all of his writings as such (who will arbitrate amongst them?) and have every law expire every 19 years, abolish corporations, renege on our nation’s debt, re-institute slavery, depopulate the cities, and ban women from public service.

Or we can just be Jeffersonian about the whole thing and just admit that in the 19 years that have passed 11 times over, we have decided that he sometimes wrote like a seventeen year old Megadeth fan.

He harps on my Jefferson comment as if I am an NRA certified militia pretender.  To be honest certain components of Jeffersonian-ism do appeal to me. Ironically samsa points some of them out. For instance I would rather abolish corporations than live by the Supreme Court’s recent indiscretion into the land of make believe.  Where nations compete as nation states against one another for economic supremacy. A veneer of freedom. This is 2010 not 1750.  We obviously need a complex system of interlocking systems of authorities that have partial sovereignty over decisions that will effect them in which all organizations are respected and legitimate. A where the machinations of the nation states are dismantled so they can never rain war on those whose resources their benefactors wish to exploit.

The problem is this guy is thinking I’m a conservative or right wing. As opposed to being left wing. This is interesting because he points out that Jefferson wanted to abolish corporations and make all laws expire in 19 years as if its going to scare me. Now those  are interesting ideas! Anyways the problem for most people is these things are off the chart. Were either left or were right in this country. Some might call them selves a centrist or an independent, but most times they don’t know shit about politics and they don’t want to piss anyone off.

But what if we ditched this idea of two different options liberal or conservative. Its a one dimensional analysis. And they don’t mean what they used to anyways. Liberals were the original conservatives. Private property, a truce with the aristocracy, and hear comes with capitalism! In a land that casts such broad and vague labels its no surprise Obama treats being asked if he is a socialist is a joke. I mean the number one bad-guy super-villain of all time is Jimmy Carter. Well that is what the threat of Nuclear fission in the atoms above your head will do to a society: scare it shit-less. Even though being a socialist doesn’t mean your necessarily a communist, if you asked this guy I am guessing he wouldn’t know the difference.

A certain third party identification that can help smooth over encounters with Republicans is libertarianism. This is because many Republicans say their a liberatarian, but unwaveringly vote Republican. Name recognition is a bitch.  Libertarians have the “Worlds shortest political quiz”, which is poppycock because any major news outlet hosts shorter yes or no polls up on their websites. You will notice however this quiz is still only operating in two dimensions. Up, Down, Left, Right.   However, Life happens in three dimensions.

So I present to you three dimensional politics and the worlds longest political quiz. The quiz is called life and the politics is up to you, but you shouldn’t be so stupid to think that DemReps are gonna make anything about our government substantively better. I suggest withdrawing your support from either side because of your “conservatism” or “liberalism” and start supporting other things for concrete reasons.

For instance, I support ending prohibitions because of shit like this. I don’t support wars because of shit like this. All these things happen in three-dimensions regardless of labels. Do you think a bullet cares whether you vote red or blue. The reason I don’t like the amalgamation of real and economic power we call the “free-market” is because of shit like this. It doesn’t have a thing to do with property rights, freedom, or Americanism.

What difference does it make if a country calls itself fascist, communist, capitalist if in every instance Elites (whether established or freshly catapulted to power) collude to turn the state on commoners. A left vs right mentality only serves to confuse that instance. It creates a set of ideals that is fiercely defended by politicians though rarely followed up on and sometimes of no particular consequence except to establish divisions. These pseudo-political dogma  serves only to split hairs and keep the demagogues in office. Its self serving agenda that doesn’t result in much substantive differences in three dimensions.  To illustrate this point and remindyou ne’er do well DemRep voters of it, I created a small poem.

This November, just try to remember

that two party politics is a pig skin ball,

Lucy, the master and wearer of crowns;

She voraciously laughs;she vividly calls!

That Hope springs eternal for poor Charlie Brown.

Though I am no sucker for nostalgia, I do ride a bicycle, which was a nineteenth century invention and is timeless. As oppossed to spending 55 hours a week at ”a career,” I will do whatever the hell I want until I am forced to get a job, which is as I understand it a much older invention that has stood the test of time.   Though, I’m not sure what it is exactly I’ll be doing hopefully it will help solve all the money laundering problems in Zimbabwe. Yes, ending the global crapitalism Empire is certainly a priority, but how important I just can’t say. I haven’t seen any adds on craigslist either so it makes it a bit more difficult than jobs.  If you haven’t noticed the blogtacular website has some seditious undertones. Some might even call it sardonic to the point of Anarchy. I’ve been asked by my own mummy in fact, “What does Anarchy mean? And won’t there be Chaos! What is your alternative?” They had spent much time working on their “career,” so I couldn’t really blame them. When you have a career there is no time meditations on politics realiity and misbelief, mysticismss and trickery, and besides that’s not appropriate for the office in the first place.  No the bar is really a much better venue.

Anyways I got to thinking with all these people wasting their days renting themselves out. I should start an Anarchist street canvass, to enlighten them about the ways of Anarchy. For those of you unfamiliar with the term ”canvassing” it basically means either going door to door or as in this case standing on the corner and asking for money and volunteers.  I’ve done it for work before, but perhaps now that I have temporarily freed myself from wage slavery I might canvass try this. So I present to you how an ideal Anarchist street canvass would opperate.

Anarchist: Hey!? You look like you can’t stand the government!

Confused Wage Slave or CWS:  Yeah, those bullshit Democrats/Republicans, damn IRS, taking my money, vauge poltical reference to freedom and possibly yesteryear…

Anarchist: Indeed, so what do you do about this?

Crapped-on Worker Subordinate or CWS: Well I vote.

Anarchist: Do you know how many voters it takes to change a light bulb?

Croney Winked Sucker or CWS: I don’t know three or something…

Anarchist: Its a trick question. Voters can’t change anything (shit is also acceptable and encouraged if CWS has already gone there). Every year people line up behind either a Republican or Democrat and punch the  card and though candidates are shuffled around nothing ever really changes for the better.  Why don’t you do more about it?

CWS: Well I don’t really know what to do or what would be better? Show me something better, this is the best country in the world!

Anarchist:  Maybe, but image if there weren’t countries or governments to rule over people. Then everyone everywhere would be better off. Doesn’t that seem better?

CWS: That sounds like Anarchy. There would be chaos!

Anarchists: So if there was no more United Snakes Government stopping you, you would go rob your neighboor?

CWS: Yeah, maybe I would.

Anarchists: Don’t you think thats a little short sighted, he will just steal from you when he figures it out. I don’t think you even know what Anarchy means, in the Greek it means without rulers, which doens’t mean there would be chaos, I mean not to fetishize the Greeks. They are kinky enough as is… Thats a different issue though, look at the world right now/ Isn’t there arleady chaos?

CWS: Look this is stupid. Of course there is  some chaos, but atleast people aren’t blowing eachother up.

Anarchist: Some Chaos? I’m sorry but if you haven’t checked recently, but blowing each other up is clockwork for some poeple. Not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but around the globe. There is apartheid in “the Holy Land.” People in the Congo are at war for the metal in our cell phones. I mean there are plenty of examples of just violence against humans. We’re over farming at a rate that will turn this county into a desert just like humans did in the middle east.  Ever wonder why the fertile crescent is a desert? There are hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil flying into the gulf of Mexico on the daily. Again that is just two examples. Do you really expect the system that produced these conditions to do anything about substantial about it?

Corporate Whack-job Swine or CWS: I suppose your right but what can I do about it?

Anarchist: Well what do you feel  passionately about?

Career Wanting Simpleton or CWS: Well I want to help kids/ the environment/ animals/ workers/ immigrants/ LGBT people/ black and brown people everywhere/ run as an independent/ break out bank windows/ burn cop cars ect…

Anarchist: [Busts outs action calender], Well there is Group X for Issue Y meeting up this Saturday to do a family friendly March. Do you think you can be there? It starts at four.

CWS: Sure is there any thing else I can do?

Anarchist: Well, if you want want make a contribution to the cause so I can keep doing this and don’t end up in a cubical selling toilet paper rolls, but first let me get your number and email.

CWS: Okay, It’s 555-555-0003 and CWS@workerbeecorp.com. how much should I give?

Anarchist: Ten Thousand Dollars would be nice. However, I think as much as you feel comfortable giving is more appropriate.

Now this again is an ideal conversation. Most conversations wouldn’t likely go that way. Invariable you would run into objections, which should be overcome if possible. Here are some such objections, I think and anarchist street canvasser might run into?

CWS: Well how are we going to have no rulers and still get things done?

Anarchist: No rulers doesn’t mean no organization. It just means no one is the boss, everyone decides for themselves with out physical or economic coercion what to do with their time. Then decisions would be made by the people that the decisions effect. Like the decision to close a factory being made by the workers, not the some banker who has decided a fire sale of the company’s equipment and property is more profitable. Is having corporate oligarchs and political hacks miles away fighting amongst themselves for a bigger piece of the pie really a better option?

CMS: That kind of stuff has never worked.

Anarchist: Or the only examples of that time of decision making that hasn’t worked are brought to light, because the fat cats running big media don’t want you to get any bright ideas.  Six years ago, it worked in Argentina when the economy collapsed.  Plenty of religious groups and indigenous people have made less hierarchical and community based groups. Not to mention the autonomous zones and reclaimed spaces in Italy, Greece, and other countries that go about each day without violent internal strife. Have you really looked into this or are you just going on what you thought was the case?

CWS: Well what makes you mister know it all?

Anarchist: Look I don’t claim to have The Answers, I’ve just maybe looked into this a little more than most people. I hear most people wining about the Government, but not really thinking about what they can do to change things for the better or even understanding what the better might look light. I’m just trying to have a conversation with you and see what your passionate about, so I can connect you with people who are passionate about the same thing.  If you don’t want me to do that for you, then you are free to turn and walk away. If you care to keep talking what are you you politically passionate about?

Now this is a scenario I would expect to be unfortunately inevitable.

CWS: Well if we could just get rid of those damn Blacks/ Jews/ Arabs/ Mexicans/ Japanese/ Whites/ Gays/ Catholics, ect…

Anarchist: Whoa, I think your getting the wrong idea here. If you really are going to blame all your problems on one group of people, I don’t think we should be talking. The problem isn’t a certain group of people, the problem is the people who think they can order people about to better themselves and the institutions that allow them to do it. To be clear, if you refuse to judge people based on the content of their character, but on some other erroneous characteristic, I can’t do anything for you.

Or you could get something like this.

CWS: Alright, Hells Yeahs, lets go violently overthrow the government and take that shit over.

Anarchist: Whoa, I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea. Although I can appreciate a diversity of tactics, You can’t replace a violent and repressive order with a violence and repression. That will just lead to the same set of conditions with different people at the top. Any real revolution can only use violence when all other options are exhausted. Until people are out in the streets and the government is shooting and them, wide scale violence against any humans is simply unacceptable. Are you familiar with Monkey Wrenching or the Luddites?

Anyways that would be my way of Anarchist canvassing. It would be fun to try, maybe I just might.

While the “Religious Right” in this country may have been responsible for electing the most irresponsible and reprehensible president of recent history, zealots in this country have much to learn from the whack jobs over seas.  They are much more adept at the art of lunacy and tryanical puritanism than anyone state side.

One extremely sticky situation that made some ripples last weekend is that of the Israel and Palestinian conflict. A flotilla of activists was boarder by Israeli commandos, for trying to bring stuff to the Palestinians in Gaza without the permission of Israel. The interesting thing about this conflict is that on both sides combatants are so completely involved in the conflict that any sort of reasoning or compassion normally gets tossed out the window early on. As was the case here.

Listening to and reading the rationalization by the agents of the state of Israel for their actions is at times mind boggling. Most apparent is it seams that the Israelites, though very dependent on support from the U.S. still don’t quite understand out traditions. The reaction on the ship from Turkey has been repeatedly described as a lynch mob, an art the southern whites of the U.S. perfected during Jim Crow era. In this gruesome display of xenophobic mob rule, a mob is first formed. Then the mob travels to the residence of the Lynchee. The lynchers then demand for the head of the Lynchee and threaten violence against others if specific lynchee is not surrender to them. Then they kill the lynchee.

The group most associated with this tactic was the Klu Klux Klan. Now they lynched Jews as well as Blacks and the occasional Gypsy or Catholic. So it supries me that so many Jews can seem to be confusing a lynch mob with violent resistance. See normally the lynchee was unarmed and occupyed a lowly rank in society. It is hard to lynch miliary personel because they armed. A key to a successful lynching is that the the person being lynched is powerless.

Now another key to aspect to lynching is that the crowd must go after the lynchee. As in romance the chase is half the fun. There was never a case of lynching in the south where a group of Black folks came to a Klu Klux Klan rally with paint ball guns and started pushing people in white robs around. No the Klan would have to seek out their prey, they never rappelled out of helicopters into their laps.  See Black people in the Jim Crow South knew they weren’t invited to such gatherings and as such didn’t go into them with paintball guns hoping that the Klan would peacefully disperse.

While I’m sure that the Israeli soldiers lives were in danger (one of them died, I think), they managed to kill 9 activists. Though we hear about the rocket attacks on Israel, its pretty rare we hear about the the death tolls on the other side of the wall.  Like the time a Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian boy. Or of course the white liesIsrael was telling about its ordinance.  Some have said there was insufficient intelligence during the planning of this raid. I’d agree.

However, the most hypocrisy has come from Israelis describing Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas for those of you prefer to live your lives with your heads up your arse (excuse my British) has been democratically elected by the Palestinian people to represent them. So when Israel says it has a right to defend itself like any other state, Hamas theoretically has the same right if it is part of the government that rules Palestinians. All the while Israel is casting Palestinians as religious extremists when Israel fights wars (killed people) to take back land that they believe God had explicityly to them.  Anyways… thats all for today…

The metaphor that casts our leaders as “actors” on the “world stage” makes me cringe. Could there be a more misleading and romantic metaphor for international politics? Granted it is a great way to attract the avaricious and vain to the leadership.  Tell them they will be like Marlon Brando or Audry Hepburn , a  great star in the great unfolding drama of history.  Frighteningly enough, this is exactly how poli-sly students are taught to think about international politics.

Sure as Shakespeare noted,

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,

But the so called actors on the world stage tend to determine other peoples “exists” and might even prevent some people from entering in the first place. This is exactly the problem. An actor works in the realm of fiction. Our politicians clearly don’t need the encouragement to dabble in fiction. The result can be very embarrassing.  Not to mention deadly. And even white lies* can have damning and terrible consequences.

This metaphor clearly contributes to the lemons problem (as we say in ickonomics) that we face when it comes to “leadership.”  All the nice people don’t really care about bossing other people around. The quintessential “A-hole”, however, thrives on power, and naturally takes advantage of any chance to tell people what to do. Its an ironic maladjustment inherent to hierarchy. The people at the top must step on other people to get there and naturally the ones who rise to the top also tend to be the most ruthless.  Which leads us to our next old as dirt smart dude quote, Niccolo Machiavelli, “If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud.”

The powerful and ambitious must one-up one another in ruthlessness to obtain power. They must be willing to break the rules because everybody else is. It is impossible to be successful without having the same edge. Look at Jimmy Carter. Everyone says he was just too nice of a guy. Another example is the behavior of banks during the mortgage bubble inflation. If they didn’t dabble in the risky stuff the customers would take their money somewhere else to get a higher return. Bush most likely won the Presidency twice by voter fraud in Ohio and Florida. Gore was just too much of wimp for that. If you can’t take the heat, then don’t try to raise hell. That’s what I say.

As if these natural inclinations of society aren’t enough, we go around glorifying our rulers and making them celebrities. The media also loves to do this, because they need characters and stories, not accurate news. Accurate news tends to get boring. George W. Bush is a lone-start desperado type. Palin is a rouge. Apparently because she is as dumb as the average Republican voter.  President Obama is the ambassador of change we can believe in. This fact is vetted by his brown skin but contradicted by his economic team. Although he is being cast more and more as a Jimmy-chump-Carter type as the republicans do everything they can to block legislation. Or a Maoist if you like to take your commentary from nationalist snake oil salesmen.

But what about those actors in the big show. Hugo Chavez, the new great red tyrant, who is stealing the land and oil from foreign companies that they worked so hard to steal from the indigenous populations in the first place. There is also Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. He is currently playing the scary nuclear zealot.  Kim Jong Il just wasn’t ready for the spotlight. Hopefully Mr. Arhmadinejad isn’t planning on doing anything too drastic during the second act.

All these characterizations though lead us to believe in images of our leaders. We then judge them based on their how they are playing their role. This allows us to conceptualize political issues on the basis of feeling rather than thought. It is always so much easier to feel than to think.  The whole don’t-think-double-think routine. Chavez isn’t a democratically elect populist grappling with an elite controlled media and U.S. backed coup attempts, he is tyrannical socialist. Ahmadinejad isn’t trying to arm his country as well as most the countries that oppose him. He is bat shit crazy hell-bent on destroying Israel and all the rest of the infidels. (To be fair though he is a theocratic ruler, which to some qualifes for bat shit crazy [depends on if you're from Texas], and seems a little hell-bent on destroying Israel.)   Bush isn’t a dumb-shit megalomaniac. He just your average guy who isn’t scared to go it alone and get ‘er done. Obama isn’t a moderately liberal democrat. He is the harbinger of change and great imperial wizard of freedom. Need proof he represents change you believe in? He is black, if you haven’t noticed.  It doesn’t matter his economic team has been borrowed from the most elite offices of Wall St. It doesn’t matter has escalated the conflict in Afghanistan. And it doesn’t matter that he has acted like a big puss-ball when it came timeto trying to get promised health-care reforms passed. All that matters is that he is the hope and change we can believe in (because he is black). All these characterizations are great, just great… only  not of you want to understand reality.

Our leaders aren’t actors playing out some great drama. They rule us in real life. Their decisions have real (often dire) consequences.  So next time you turn on the boob- tube and some fast talking pundit  present a caricature of a world leader, take a second to think about why your being presented with this crude image of a human being instead of a less dramatic profile.

This is the great scam of international finance, especially for less established nations. We will loan you plenty of Euros, but we want it paid back in Dollars. This is can be devastating for developing nations. If they try to print their own currency foreign companies refuse it as payment.  No one will take it, it isn’t real. Its only real if they borrow it from someone else in a currency currently accepted. When they are unable to pay back their loans countries like Haiti are cut off from credit, “It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt.”  We will only bury nations in debt free of ruble. Its only logical, how will they pay off the loans if the country is buried in ruble?

Goldman seams to be rearing its head everywhere these days.  The bank also made new by suggesting that American investors need to be more “worldly.”  Which is euphemism for move your money over seas where the getting is good because there is no money to be made here in the U.S.

The “bank holding company” is also in the news haggling with AIG saying the insurer ows it more money on insured assetts that went south. AIG is claiming just the opposite that Goldman overstated its losses and that Goldman needs to pay back some of the money. While the two mega-finance corporations squabble over the easy government money. This year has not been spectacular for AIG, for Goldman however 2009 has been a year of record profits.

Re-capitalized by the government Goldman did what it does best in 2009, capitalize.  Since the other American premier investment houses Bear Stearns and Lehman either were absorbed or destroyed by the market, Goldman was the only game left in town willing to dabble in the scary stuff. Taking advantage of the slack market Goldman bought the risky mortgaged backed securities at low prices and turned record profits in 2009.

Yeah, Goldman Sachs raked in 13.4 billion this year.  Just for a point of refference, if Goldman Sachs was its own country it would push out Gana for the 100th spot on the list for GDP accross all nations.  Of course even though average total employee compensation at Goldman is $500,000 per year, the CEO is making headlines for only taking $9 million worth in stocks for bonus. This is after it earlier came to light that he was set to stash a hundred million this year. Poor guy. Blankfien will just have to get by. Hopefully he stashed some of his $68 million bonus  from 2007 for a rainy day. Or he could just have some of those guys who working with the Greeks to hide a hundred billion in derivatives… one hundred times more than what he made…

The saddest part of the whole situation is while Americans love to bash the corporate chieftains for their greed yet we are still completely enamored by them. From the industrial revolution onward the characterization of businessmen has gone back and forth between two different character types. The captain of industry, master of organization sent and ordained by the Almighty to make decision inferior creatures are incapable of.Of course the doppelganger is the  greedy capitalist pig willing to do whatever it takes to protect its profits. A significant shift occurred. In the past the U.S. economy was reliant on our industry to make stuff poeple buy. Since the 1970′s more and more profits have come increasingly from stock jobbing or financial speculation – in the  jargon of late.  More and more people have been making money not by making tangible goods but in the markets.  They have been making more and more money by betting on (or against) savings and loans, tech stocks, and mortgage schemes. Activities that  don’t end up making any useful things.

The result is that no longer is that what’s good for GM is whats good for America, its what’s good for Goldman that’s good for America (not exactly leisurely reading). GM hasn’t made a profit off an car in decades. They make money off the loan on the car.  Economic dependency on our financial services sector, which surely lends itself to political clout, is what got the laws separating banking activities and regulating risk wiped from the books. Now, businesses can contribute unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. No doubt Goldman will have a bit more leverage over legislators than they gained with Blankfien’s hurricane defense of the low interest rate – double ended – speculative frenzy we call the housing bubble.  Such undeserved power might ensure the business community a deregulated climate for conjuring up the perfect storm.

However I must say, the tea partiers are the equivalent of the democrats who thought electing Obama was the a “movement”. Unfortunately electing mainstream politicians or campaigning for them (basically what the tea party is doing by forming PAC’s and providing grass roots conservative organizing) , isn’t exactly Radical.   Just because the man is half black, which makes him all black in the U.S., doesn’t mean he is going to turn the system on its head.Though that is what most seem to think.

So the U.S. manages to be just as racist as before. The fist Black President has the republican-idiocracy turning out for spontaneous mass demos and has the democratic-lackeys thinking all their problems have been solved for them. Really though it’s sad that the first Black President is elected and white people just start having meetings in Pizza Huts to figure out what to do next.  Though a lot of the tea party propaganda evokes the cold war a fair amount is overtly racist. Similarly the best thing to ever happen to Klan membership was the civil rights movement.

Both sides think a radical has been elected just because he is brown, when in truth the man is moderate as vanilla ice-cream. The most revolutionary policy he has attempted has been instituting a public health-care system, and he gave up under pressure from congress. For all you jackasses who think that is radical lets list the developed countries with-out some form of universal health care: The United States of America. That was easy. I thought we’d be here all night.

The section of the American polity best represented by the Tea Party movement is proof of Steven Luke‘s third face of power. The basic idea of this theory is that people are indoctrinated with a false consciousness that doesn’t allow them to properly understand politics as it relates to their own interests. They become confused as to what their interests actually are. Then the rulers, whoever has the power it doesn’t have to be a monarch, is able to get their subjects to act serve their interests while the subjects think they are serving their own.  Tea Party convention is proof that this phenomenon exits.

For example one of the things the Tea Partiers agreed on was their bread and butter issue: fiscal responsibility.  I’m not sure if this was before or after they sang happy birthday to Ronald Reagan, who would have been 99 this week. Tea Partiers aren’t likely aware of this, but Ronald Reagan was piss-poor on fiscal responsibility.  Not just him, all of our Republican Administrations have been terrible with countries finances.  Oh, well I guess I can blame them its not like that information is out there for free on the internet.

While the Tea Party bills it self as a populist movement (which is further proof these people are delusional seeing as the poor would benefit from social programs they are railing against), the cost of attendance to the weekend long even was just under six hundred dollars.  While this evoked grumblings from some of the tea partiers, from the press reports not too many wanted to form a formal third party. Not surprisingly Palin encouraged the convention goers that America is ready for a  revolution while urging them to vote Republican! We need a revolution kiddies. Now go out there and punch my party’s ticket.  You’ll be part of a revolution…

It many ways the Tea Party effect speaks to the wondrous nature of the political mass-0consciousness. With the rising Podge comes the falling Hodge. Which will soon, no doubt, rise again. In other words,  for every action an equal reaction.  The liberals have a fake revolution with the first Black President. So the republicans need a fake revolution too with the Tea Party. I do agree with Gov. Palin, we’re ready for a revolution, but when is the real revolution going to happen?

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t a non-violent demo caught up in race and partisan politics. It was a criminal act. These weren’t fat blue collar Americans working under some delusional capitalism vs. communism paradigm, they were intelligent professionals provoking a war.  They didn’t want to pay taxes to the same sort of multi-national financial exploitation mechanism our own elites now pressure on other counties. The Boston Tea Party was part of a revolution. The Modern Tea Party is an inbred preemptive counter-revolution. The preemptive nature of the movement is because there was no real revolution to counter. Its just the mere notion of one is that scary to these miserable slobs who think America is baseball, the Cleavers, white picket fences, tilt-o-whirl and that a communist agents are trying to take it all away.

Are the justices really so confused to think that brands are people? Is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy desperately looking for a boy named Target? Does Chief Justice Roberts think he met Disney on his trip to the Magic Kingdom last fall? This is exactly what the marketing wonks want too. They hope you think Nike is your friend. That he makes you cool and athletic. It’s that branding and relentless advertising that keeps you coming back to McDonald’s. It isn’t the food. Modern Man sees the ad on the subway. His stomach twinges and next thing he knows there he is, at the counter. He hands the girl on the other side a dollar. She hands him a shitty burger, and -smile- he’s loving it. Sometimes he stays awake at night wondering what he was eating before they started advertising 100% pure beef. Was there dog in there?

While all of congress stood when Obama scolded the Supreme Court, there must have been more than a few happy Republicans and Democrats. If we take that gesture as a form of political speech then we can safely say that they were standing their lying asses off. Standing during a political rally to show your support is a reasonable enough right to give people. Other forms of political speech protected by your first amendment rights are flag burning, holding up god-hates-fags signs, distributing Nazi propaganda, and getting naked in public. We take this right very seriously in this country.

So seriously that activists create organizations around people engaging in, sometimes heinous, political speech. Activists create these organizations to make their voices louder and for legal protection.  A corporation, though, is formed first for profit. Its political contributions will surely spent so as to bring about a climate suiting its primary nature.

The ideal political climate for corporations would be a privatized Utopia where every service is a market and every resource a commodity. The water, the air all of it should all be up for sale. A RFID chipped supply chain of goods would support the Human Animal from cradle to grave in every endeavor. GE will just stick a reader in the refrigerator so they can monitor consumption from production to destruction. Provided of course the animal can pay, a consumerist fun house of gimmicks and gadgets will be showered down upon them provided by cheap labor. (This private utopia of course requires the right to exploit the most amount of work from workers, otherwise it wouldn’t be a “free market.”) They, the corpratocracy’s chosen daughters and sons, become advertisements themselves. Look at how happy they are with all their shit. Clearly those labels they wear make them superior creatures. Soon or later we might end up there. Perhaps sooner considering that corporations can spend as much money as they like to make this dream a reality.

Corporations though are not people. They are social constructs designed, as stated before, to make profits. It could be said corporations have interests but those interest are a construed amalgamation of the aspirations of the CEO, board of directors, and shareholders. By colluding through the corporate structure each actor augments their power. They have all thrown their lots in with on another.  The company acts as the formal social structure to codify economic power. It turns financial power into real economic power by amassing machines, trucks, bulldozers, loading docks, goods and employees. Huge amounts of funds and real capital allow corporations like Wal-Mart incredible amounts of leverage not just over law makers and municipalities, but also over suppliers and employees.  Apparently the majority of the Supreme Court sees no problems with enhancing corporate power. Never mind that ownership of the capital is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Never mind growing income inequality. Never mind labors ever weaker bargaining position. We’re in a recession. That means we have to do what’s good for business even if that undermines our long-term economic stability or our personal freedoms. Whats good for GM is good for America! What is good for Goldman is good for America! So whens the next round of bail outs?

Seriously though, at least there is a backlash against this ruling. Perhaps people are beginning to wake up and smell the fascism.

For all of those readers lucky enough not to have spent hours scouring political text, the nation-state is this relatively new concept that really arose in the wake of the enlightenment. After loyalty was not required to our sovereigns, the bourgeois and the remaining landed class came up with this idea of the nation-state and the idea of nationalism that comes with it. It wasn’t long before the Kaiser drummed up a great deal of Nationalism and used it to start the Franco-Prussian war, the precursor in many ways to the world wars to follow.

Still the nation-state is a tricky concept. A nation is a people. A state is a group with enough guns to gain the moral legitimacy to use them.  There can be state-less nations, like Palestine, though Hamas seems to be evolving into state.  There are also perhaps nation-less states. The Vatican could be an example, a sovereign territory with-in a city with out a real people to govern.

So a people don’t need a state to be a nation, and a state only needs enough people to man the guns to be a state.  The question to ask then is what is our state’s relations ship to the people. Then we can perhaps discern what this “anti-Americanism” means.  One of the interesting things about the modern nation state is the inevitable coalescence of the forces of business and the state. In fascism the state directs the private industry. In communism the state owns the industry. In capitalism industry subverts the state. Thanks to the privatization of our money-supply, revolving door policies, and a thriving corporate-lobbying sector much of the businesses world is for all intents and purposes part of the government.   So now matter what form of government, political force (the sticks, guns) and economic force (the carrots, money) end up on the same side in order to exploit the proles. The proles aren’t just the working class, technology has made every white collar worker a slave to their cell.  A prole is anyone who hasn’t fallen off the assembly line. Anyone who can’t see through the smoke screen. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, take a look in the mirror. You are a prole.

The latest, greatest rip-off our nation-state has orchestrated against the proles is the Wall Street bail out. The tax-payers effectively gave trillions of dollars to the banks that they have to pay back to the FED at interest! All those T.A.R.P. funds that were plucked out of the air have to be paid back by the tax-payers or else the country will go bankrupt. The bonds backing the dollar won’t be paid back with dollars already created and the value of the dollar will fall to zero as it’s value is undermined.  So we created a huge glut of funds for the banks to loan out to us at interest, that we are going to have to pay back in taxes at interest.  Several firms handed out record bonuses again this year. Meanwhile one in fifty Americans is living on food-stamps with no form of cash income!

I hope my “anti-Americanism” is offensive,  compared to the Americanism I’m up against it better be.

Now I promise not to bitch about political apathy  in middle of the game. I won’t talk about how fucked the meat industry is while you are enjoying a porter-house.  I won’t criticize foreign policy at a soldiers wake. I even try not to talk politics when drinking, even though the American revolution was spread through the pubs.  However, if you find yourself at this site, don’t bring any weak-ass O’riellian arguments.  This ain’t Fox News. I am not going to pretend that such arguments are relevant. I will happily dissect them to prove that such critics are too short sighted see past their own dicks (or tits). So unless you want to get cyber-bitch slapped, you best save any tricks you learned from Ann Coulter for the next Palin book signing. Either engage the argument at the points of the argument or shut the fuck up. That should be plenty of room for you to express your opinion with-out sullying the parking-lot fields with regurgitated talking points that don’t really mean anything.

Anyone who subscribes to the noise artists’ point of view, whether its mouth pieces on the left or the right, is likely confused as all hell as to what effects and drives the economy. Unfortunately for partisan simpletons it isn’t the actions of congress or the president that can save or destroy the economy, although such actions certainly have an effect. The most ridiculous of the rabble rousing at this point must be that centered on regulation. Even the arch-conservative Richard Posner blamed a large part of the economic nose dive on the de-regulatory dogma of the nineties.

Even after the debacle in credit default swaps, the unregulated assets that bankrupted AIG, pro-market-or-die Republicans are still lambasting attempts at regulation as bad for business.  Congress was repeatedly advised to regulate the assets, which basically uncollateralized insurance policies on mortgaged backed assets. That didn’t stop Congress from blasting Ed Liddy (the government appointed chairman of AIG) for letting AIG deal in CDO’s. This occurred when he handed out huge bonus to- according to him- retain the employees necessary to wind down the riskier business practices AIG had gotten itself into.  Apparently Congress also forgot that Liddy was only appointed to head AIG after the risky business had already been undertaken.  As congressman after congress man lined up to ask the same questions as the one before, I couldn’t help feeling depressed and anxious, amazed at how blithely stupid our politicians can be.

Unfortunately for them and us, the paying out of huge bonuses to top-level managers is consistent with a systemic and long-range analysis of the principles of economics. The underlying problem in our understanding of economics is due to widespread ignorance and politically motivated deception. All we ever learn about Adam Smith in high school is the theory of the invisible hand. We never hear that he supported government intervention in some areas of the economy, especially where it could reduce poverty. Also since the cold war Marx has been represented as communist theorist that only traitorous scoundrels would reference.  In truth Marx’s theories of capitalism were very insightful while what he wrote about the Revolution was dead wrong.  There was not a spontaneous workers Revolution in Russia or China. Dedicated strategists and politicians led both revolutions. Marx’s temporary dictatorship never dissolved into communism in any of the Red states.  However, a Marxian approach to the counter cyclical path of economic growth sheds light on our own “Great Recession.”

In the past people traded goods for goods. Then we started using currencies and we traded currencies for goods. However, the advent of business enterprise changed all that.  No longer were goods traded for currency in the hopes of obtaining more goods. The goal then is to get some goods, turn around and sell them, and end up with more money than originally had. Now goods were traded, not in the pursuit of other goods, but in the pursuit of money. Now get ready to strike a pose because were going to do a little modeling here.

Let’s suppose an economy where there is one good. It takes two things to make that one good, capital and labor. Now we will also assume the cost of capital either stays the same or rises because we also assume constantly increased competition in the market. The point of capitalism now is to always make a profit which can be represented with the equation, p-(C+L)=P where p is price, C is cost of capital, L is cost of labor, and P is profit.

Now because competition is always going up prices eventually must come down. As supply will eventually grow firms must compete by lowering the price. This puts downward pressure on profits. However, because competition is constantly increasing there is upward pressure on the cost of capital. This leads to more downward pressure on profits, the pursuit of which is the ultimate goal of capitalism. Because managers will all seek to protect their profits they must cut costs somewhere. So they cut the cost of labor to secure sizable profits. Assuming things continue on like this more supply problems are inevitable. Not only is there an abundance of supply, but also now there is less of a demand for it. As workers are paid less they can spend correspondingly less. So even as prices fall the money paid back to workers falls too. Eventually the system proves deficient. As profits shrink to zero so do the value of the firms. So value is lost. What is then necessary to solve the problem of over supply and too little demand is the destruction of productive capacity. This either can occur by literal destruction of capital or by simply devaluing capital.  This analysis explains why these downturns are endemic to the system. Something no free-markets-or-die republicans will ever acknowledge.

It’s clear to see that this has been happening. Since the de-industrialization of the seventies high paying jobs have become fewer and farther between. The growth of the Service sector meanwhile has left us with plenty of jobs for the most passionate of dog groomers, burger flippers, and wait staff. The overall reduction in the pay of individuals is also apparent by our un-indexed minimum wage. Which overtime has become worth less and less.  Now in the midst of the recession workers, including my father, have been forced to either take pay cuts or lay offs and the American worker ends up with an even smaller piece of the pie.  This is only half the story of the collapse and why blaming either party is an exercise in futility.

The second half of the story has to do with a systemic analysis. Systemic analysis contests that it’s impossible to understand one economy with out understanding the role it plays in the world economy. The basic premise of the systemic perspective is that a global hegemonic (dominant) power is necessary to provide security to those who wish to engage in trade. Since that dominant power provides the security it also makes the rules. The hegemony of “the center,” in the dialect of world-system analysis, becomes dominant by being stronger militarily. This is achieved by being more efficient at production, because the better your killing technology the better you are at killing. Eventually technology spreads and “the periphery,” the other countries, catch up to the dominant country. Then the economic advantage that ensured the security of the system is undermined. In this second stage of the cycle profits from production of real goods are effectively quashed to zero as a system of perfect competition ensues. Since real production is no longer a viable source of income, profit seekers resort to financial speculation to make money.

We can see this today in our own economy. GMAC the financial division in GM was, before the crash, the only profitable wing of GM. Now it just petitioned for more bail out bucks. Similarly GE makes very little profit by selling a dishwasher. It makes up for that by financing the purchase of the dishwasher. See the U.S. after WWII was the hegemonic power. With all the industries of Western Europe and Japan bombed to high hell, the U.S. had the clear economic advantage. Not only that but high wages paid during the war years created a savings glut as no consumer goods were available. In the post war years consumer demand at an all time high as factories switched from making hand grenades to hair dryers. The U.S. was also the only developed nation left not blown to bits. Around 1968 the rest of the world caught up in terms of productive capacity. Now the big three couldn’t compete with each other with features alone, because Honda was competing with them in terms of price. The effects on our economy when the down turn kicked in was de-industrialization and increased financialization of our economy.  No longer would goods be produced in the U.S. and then sold over seas. Now U.S. companies would buy parts from abroad at as low a price as possible and act as only organizers of the product chain. Meanwhile reduced wages at home diminish demand for goods here. Despite what the right wing noise machine may have you believe, demand is the driving force behind the economy, not the degree of regulation placed on companies. What has occurred to buoy demand is a glut of debt and money creation. However increased liquidity only goes so far, especially once people have already taken on huge swaths of debt to finance consumerist lifestyles.

You might be reading at home thinking, but wait during the nineties we had a huge boom. Realize though over-valued tech stocks drove that boom. These tech stocks were over valued because of the increase in institutional investors like insurance companies, financial wings of corporations, and expanded commercial banking investment. The increase in risky investments by commercial banks was due to the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act. The law divided commercial banking and investment banking activities. The repeal of which also gave rise to the “too big to fail” megaliths like Citi Group and Bank of America.

In my opinion the reason why the economy is in the shitter is for all the aforementioned reasons.  There is a deficiency in demand. Americans don’t want a new car every year. We’re sick of running up our credit cards to buy shit we don’t need. Shit that will probably break due to some planned malfeasance. Perhaps if we were paid more we would run out and buy the newest plasti-form junk-o-matic. But then the managers wouldn’t make enough money. As the process of managing a successful business becomes harder because of the downward pressure on profits endemic to the system, firms are forced to pay out the huge bonuses like those paid out at AIG last spring. Otherwise the top-level managers capable of turning a profit will go somewhere else.

So the next time you curse Obama for attempting to get some regulation in the dangerously deregulated financial sector, shut up. Democrat’s regulation of the economy isn’t what is causing this downturn.  If you’re tempted to go the other direction, please shut up! Obama’s green jobs plan isn’t going to save the economy. Even with the most generous of multiplier effects the 17,000 green jobs his plan is supposedly about to create aren’t going to fix an economy of 304 million people. Understand that the economy isn’t going to respond to even the most vigorous sloganeering.  As long as the underlying production of goods isn’t met with sufficient demand the economy is going to suck. No amount of money creation by the FED will fix that. Neither will all the hope in the world. So please stop looking for simple solutions, because there aren’t any. It’s time to start asking serious questions about the future of capitalism. Different approaches to ensure steady growth and a more equitable dispersion of the spoils of growth without encroaching upon our individual liberties are out there. We just haven’t thought of them yet.