Hell House
I had some fishing clients from Alabama last week who were the most polite, helpful, and friendly guys I've guided in a long time. They were also big into the Tea Party and convinced the nation needed a "big change". I don't let myself get drawn into political discussions so I just nodded and obfuscated-circumvented. ( my labor makes me self-censor and silence myself, one of capitalisms most pernicious attributes)
They were of course Christians and way into college sports, not particularly well read and avid watchers of Fox so they bought into all the "anchor baby" and "sacred ground" narratives. They didn't like "either Party" but were especially critical of Obama and his "leftist" policies. But as I said, they were super-good natured and treated me with respect, even comradery, in that particularly Southern way of class-blindness that is a trait of the New Rich. I grinned and joked about making them fish off the "left" side of the boat.
On my way home I passed a signboard over a local business that read : Watch Fox News- Be Honest- Vote Republican. There was also a huge billboard asking me to vote out the County Commissioners who were "against Private Property Rights". (in other words, saw a need for land-use planning) I also drove by a yard filled with junk vehicles and old single-wides, tractor parts and scrap lumber that had a huge sign saying : Protect Your Liberty- Stop Zoning.
The Tea Party Patriots sent me a message saying: "This year 9/12 will again be a day that is remembered by future generations as a symbol of our nations decision to reject socialism and return to the founding principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets."
Bolstering my argument that behind all the blather over Mosques, guns and immigrants it is really all about profit. And individuals can be sweet as a Georgia peach as they promote a system that spreads death and misery worldwide.
posted by troutsky @ 9:17 AM
24 comments
24 Comments:
Yeah there'll be a changing of the guard in November and there still won't be much job creation. Will our right wing brethren see this as the time to repudiate supply side economics so we can make a little progress.
I doubt it. The rabies media will spin it. I think Fela Kuti and his Egypt 80 band called it "Noise from Vendor Mouth". I'll have to dig out that CD.
Meanwhile we've convinced everyone that we're out of Iraq.
... and we have a right wing that's so dumb they can't figure out why unemployment benefits and food stamps are an efficient stimulus and shouldn't be blocked.
But if you don't think the rabies media are controlling the national dialog, well ... you know the deal.
I wish the left had widespread media coverage.
Thank goodness Obama has started peace talks in the Middle East, it's about time we resolved all that. I've become cynical.
From The Business Insider
It's not an idea you'll hear in America, but the Brits at FT Energy Source give a nice discussion of how the oil spill will bring job growth to the Gulf.
Short-term it was hell for the region, killing jobs in fishing and energy.
Long-term you have to figure all forms of drilling will return. The world is running out of oil and there's no way any known reserves get left in the ground.
And when it returns it will bring a surging demand for regulation, training, and technology. In other words, JOBS.
---------------
See, trout, you're just looking at the glass as half empty. Completely trash as many major ecological sites as we can and we've got the old economic blender on puree.
Nothing to it.
Whether its mosques, or aborted babies, its all cynical politics. Do you expect the right to run on its real program of trashing Social Security?
In all fairness, we've been building ground zeros in Iraq, next to mosques since 2003.
Ah yes spreading a system that spreads death and destruction. You are projecting the evils of your death cult onto your betters.
The spokesman for a crack addicted narco terrorist war criminal who actively persecutes Jews forgets that Muslims blow up Mosques themselves all the time. Ren needs to visit Gaza from a roof top like his commie PFLP buddies. Of course the usual suspects remained silent
as Commies were tossed from roof tops by Islamonazis.
Beak, Ren hints at the goals of the right wing by mentioning the dismantling of Social Security.
Do you agree or disagree that large deficits are a tactical tool of the right to force the abolition of social security and medicare?
Do we gain more benefit from those programs or from excess corporate profit?
Please take your Lithium before answering.
Ducky
As a political criminal the views of Ren are comedic. Communists like yourself have placed everyone on the dole so the system will have to crash.
The reality is that I will have to work till I am 75 or die.
Corporations create jobs. Americans
( Ren as a commie is not American)
want to work and have no desire for
handouts.
Corporations need to be nurtured to
provide the jobs our nations need.
We need to eliminate the subsidies
for the Old Bolshevik Club in higher ed and dismantle public school monopolies. Let private schools do the job where Bolshevik hacks have allowed stooges like Ron Gochez and Che Bob to do everything but their jobs.
Before you start to cry most government jobs come with conditions. People can be dismissed for a DUI that has nothing to do with their performance. If a federal worker can be dismissed because of a DUI
than Gochez who call for revolution
should be terminated. Folks like Che Bob should be told that subsidized foreign travel by hostile regimes violates ethical standards and creates the perception of impropriety.
I'm sorry, Beak but you don't seem to have said anything about the question at hand.
Lets try again, I'm sure you keep up with a variety of informed sources, what do you think of Eric Alerman's article in this week's "The Nation" which questions whether even a progressive government is possible in America.
This has been a topic here at times and we tend to agree with Alterman, what is your opinion?
Ducky Americans want jobs. Corporations provide jobs and commies
waste our money. It is not for you to
kill the corporations that provide the jobs America needs.
The USA wants no part of EU style socialism or Obama as diet Chavez.
Notice how he is not only incapable of argument but even informed discussion.
That's what we have on the far right these days. It's a hopeless situation.
In case you folks didn't know it, in the face of low demand the only thing stopping a corporation from adding jobs in a period of excess capacity is taxes. It's just a matter of supply side theory. You add extra workers in a period of low demand. I know it's counter intuitive but I got this piece of brilliance from Beak.
Duncy
Taxes create no jobs
Marxism= Death
Look - you know that I agree with you guys on the death dealing ways of capitalism. (Oh, no! I hear beak!)
And certainly we have destroyed or enslaved much of the worlds resources and populations... it doesn't matter if you look at Haiti, Africa, India China, Mexico or South America... our way has left its mark.
But to look for any positive change, in the direction of less enslavement through commodification and monetization is unrealistic.
Look, this ship is going down. The course was set into motion 5,500 years ago, and the trajectory was fine tuned over the millenia until the great industrial revolution. Now, like the Titantic, those who bought the expensives seats - and continue to lord it over the 'have-nots'- those barons will not give up their place at the craps table until they break the house.
It is a fate that was laid out with the dawn of history... and it will continue undeterred until it brings history to an end.
May the goddess bless us all!!
And Beak - fuck you in advance!
;-)
But when the ship goes down kultur, Beak will be there passing out free chips and serving drinks to the high rollers.
...just before they cut out his inards, and eat the soft fleshy parts for a last supper.
BTW - here is an article I think of interest. I had never read this guy before.
http://www.zcommunications.org/on-realism-and-revolution-by-paul-street
Who says Commies can't be funny
Nature Boy KKKultur the Communist hack wants to talk of the sins of Capitalism. We can talk about KKKulture thinking he is a Marxist Tarzan tiptoeing through the tulips with the super violent Yanonami or New Guinea tribesman.
Of course the doodling teacher from MA has never held a real job in his life. Sorry, but the bird brained poultry doesn't have a clue.
Meanwhile the spokesman for the Crack Addict Narco Terrorist Antisemitic Lunatic has laid waste
to the Venezuelan economy with typical Marxist Malfeasance. No doubt after the place is torched and then run competently after his assassination or being deposed in a coup the Duck will wax about growth.
As a teacher of doodling the Duck has forgotten that growth is predicated on prior performance. So if a crack addicted commie clown mismanages the place it helps the person who cleans up the mess look good.
KKKulture
Can you regale us with more Mazola
fantasies of peaceful hunter gathers. They have no basis in reality. In your case you are talking about paradise never was.
If it were not for the Old Bolshevik Network in higher ed you might have earned a living commensurate with your limited IQ, sloth and lack of industry such as panhandler or general mendicant.
Ducky; My wife and I were discussing social security ( we are close though our benefits meager). If they lowered the age of"entitlement" many of us oldsters would gladly give up our jobs to youngsters. Win win!
It is not just a failure of supply side but a failure of the market system.Clean-up jobs are no more productive ( in the economic sense) than military jobs.
Ren : All of Wall Street should be removed from the hallowed ground.
Kultur: I am more and more impressed by the power of the Spectacle and becoming pessimistic about change. Still, I sent money to Street so he could go on a speaking tour, he does meticulous research and he is properly outraged. I also like Giroux over at Truthout.org.An angry educator.
Within the limits of capitalism, it doesn't matter who is in power now. The crisis is not the US only, it effects the world.
Obama is not immune from cutting Social Security. To show bipartisanship, he may go along Alan Simpson's committee.
People keep responding to the Tea Party, but it's the Democratic Party in power. In SC a labor party candidate is running for the House.
Beak is wrong about taxes. The economy of the 1950s, had more and better paying jobs, when taxes were higher.
I would go so far as to say Obama supports Simpson.
The goal of large deficits that have done little but move the income discrepancy higher is to force the severe reduction of SS and Medicare. That's been the goal since St. Ronnie Raygun started boosting them and state capitalists like Clinton and Obama will stay on the page. As you point out, ren, these folks are all capitalists. That's the critical marker.
You are far too easy on Beak. Like most on the extreme rabid right, if yu are looking for sustainability and more equal distribution, he's wrong about everything.
Trout, I'm curious about your definition of "market economy". Do you mean a system of pricing consumer goods or is it the more generic destructive capitalist system gaining a monopoly of power?
I have three friendly suggestions for you:
1) Get a different job. Your current way of making a living seems to bring you into close contact with people who exemplify much of what you despise, i.e., rich and "conservative" types who are quite pleased with themselves.
2) Move to a different part of the country. Your current domicile is smack dab in the middle of the throbbing center of American rugged individualist self-hypnotized lunacy.
3) Do not engage with commenter such as beak who say things like "Taxes create no jobs. Marxism = Death." Really, what's the point?
Hey, kultur, that's a pretty good site. The article reinforces a feeling of pessimism, however but that's these times.
Another interesting link
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/attali.html
I followed Kultur's suggested link, and found the quotation below. Funny, just the other night I was watching the original (1975) Rollerball. Has someone been cribbing?
Eventually, democracy will fade away, having been replaced by market mechanisms and corruption. We will have a kind of market dictatorship, a "lumpen market," without strong democratic institutions to serve as countervailing powers. Political outcomes will be bought and sold, and the market economy will rule every element of public life, from police protection, justice, education, and health to the very air that we breathe, paving the way for the final victory of "corporate" economic rights over individual human rights.
Ducky: I use "market" broadly, as in "invisible hand of",or place where goods and labor are priced, allocation and remuneration decisions made according to supply and demand. So much energy is spent by progressives trying to ensure "fair" markets and by conservatives who want "free" markets. I think, from the most basic Marxist standpoint, that those are false choices.
Lichanos: My life , like most I suspect, is a trade-off. My career choice means a certain level of frustration but my point is that it is not about individuals, it is systems and structures. Sort of like Arendts "banality" only I don't like the word evil. No matter where I lived or what I did for a living my politics would force me into these compromised positions (frustrating? challenging?)
As for Beak, I don't really "engage" with him.He is not here to communicate obviously.
Lichanos
The only job that is suitable for lazy, stupid and deranged types is Kultur's. In fact when the Old Bolshevik Boy's Club advertised his position it stated those qualities.
Troutsky is not qualified for gainful employment in civilization. He is fit to match wits with fish that frequently outsmart him.
I think Ren and Troutsky should emigrate to Caracas and bring their own toe tags and body bags.
Ren can dress like Super Fly and talk of mugging the people to liberate them.
Marxism = Death
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