"They Think It's A Joke, They Think It's A Game"

They think it's a joke, 
They think it's a game...

Perhaps the primary direct action being taken during the ongoing #Ferguson protests is "shutting shit down" ("Who shuts shit down? We shut shit down!") most dramatically shutting down the freeways.

On the night that the Darren White Exoneration Jury's results were made public, 11/24/14, a good thousand or more demonstrators took over I-44 that runs through Shaw and Compton Heights. I haven't been in St. Louis for thirty years or so, but many memories of my time there have been triggered by the continuing demonstrations. Watching the events unfold on the livestreams has been remarkable -- both for the persistence and perseverance of the demonstrators and for all the memories that are being evoked... It's an odd and exhilarating experience.

Rebelutionary_Z was on the scene Monday night when the shut down of the freeway took place and his video documentation is striking. The freeway shutdown starts a little past 1:05:00 in the video below, and it's worth observing how it was done and how effective it was.



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

There have been dozens if not hundreds of similar actions all over the country as a result of the systemic failure of the injustice system. This is a significant escalation in the use of direct action to inconvenience the multitudes. It's not just the interstsate freeways that get shut down; intersections in towns all over the St. Louis area and well beyond are also subject to sporadic and almost randomized shutdowns, often for the purpose of holding "die-ins" which last for four and a half minutes to symbolize the four and a half hours that Mike Brown's corpse lay the middle of Canfield Drive while the authorities with their dogs kept the people  back from the scene.

I'll note in passing that shutting down the interstates is considered a National Security issue, and if these actions continue or spread, we're liable to see a furious reaction from authority. From such kindling do revolutions flare.

Police impunity and the many murders and executions that are the result of a culture of killing that has infected domestic policing from coast to coast for decades is the proximate cause of this uprising.

Killed by Police has recorded 1,010 police killings since January 1, 2014; 1,764 since the website began tracking news reports on May 1, 2013.

These casualty figures are almost entirely on one side -- the side of the people -- for police are very, very rarely killed by members of the public, despite hysterical and false claims by police departments that they are under extreme and growing levels of lethal threat from... who? The Criminal Class -- which is everyone who isn't them, it would seem.

The number of police officers deliberately killed by members of the public is extremely low, like crime in general, the lowest it's been in generations. Police can't acknowledge that. Most public officials can't either.

The public has to say it loud and clear and has to repeat it endlessly otherwise those in power will never hear.

Direct action is one way to make those voices heard...

The Correct Understanding of What The Debt Crisis Crisis is All About

Via WSWS:

US budget deal sets stage for intensified assault on social programs

By Andrei Damon and Barry Grey
17 October 2013

The bill passed by Congress late Wednesday reopening the federal government and temporarily lifting the debt ceiling establishes the modus operandi for a bipartisan deal to deepen cuts in social spending and initiate an historic attack on the core social programs dating from the New Deal and Great Society periods—Social Security and Medicare.

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The outcome of the 16-day government shutdown and threat of a US default was entirely predictable, following the pattern set in previous artificially created budget and debt crises in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Once again, the most right-wing elements in the Republican Party took the initiative and set the tone for a shift further to the right by the entire political establishment.

Behind the appearance of partisan gridlock and mutual recrimination, the crisis provided the means for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to move ahead with their own agenda of savage cuts in social programs upon which tens of millions of working people depend. To the extent there was a conflict, it was over means and tactics, not goals. At issue was how best to escalate the onslaught against the working class.

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 81 to 18 to accept a deal that raises the debt ceiling through February 7, 2014 and funds the operations of the federal government until January 15. The bill mandates the formation of a conference committee headed by the chairs of the budget committees in the Senate and House to forge a bipartisan budget agreement by mid-December that will reduce the deficit and the national debt. This is to be achieved by implementing long-term “reforms” in basic entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and extending cuts in “discretionary” social programs such as education, housing, nutrition, the environment, health and safety and infrastructure maintenance.

At the same time, both the White House and congressional Republicans are insisting that any budget agreement include sweeping cuts in corporate tax rates.

Later Wednesday evening, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 285 to 144, with 87 Republicans joining all 198 Democrats in voting to approve. President Obama signed the bill into law early Thursday morning.

Significantly, the bill extends the automatic across-the-board “sequester” cuts that began last March into the new year. This means the $85 billion in cuts enacted in 2013 will not be restored and the budget negotiations in the coming weeks will take as their starting point the $1 trillion in cuts over the next eight years mandated by the sequestration process. It is to be expected that the Democrats will, in the name of “ending” or “reforming” sequestration, seek to continue the cuts in discretionary social programs while restoring funding for the military, the intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department.

Obama has already made it clear that he favors unprecedented cuts in Medicare and Social Security, including raising the eligibility age and introducing means testing for Medicare and slashing cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

More at the link.

And so it goes. No matter what, We the Rabble get screwed.

Armageddon Delayed

Or so it seems. The Congress is still styling for the cameras, but for all intents and purposes, the latest Debt Crisis Crisis is put off for another few months, the government will limp along somehow on austerity rations thanks to the continuing sequester, and Football will once again become the highlight of the season.

The attempt to fund government services one by one depending on their notoriety or popularity didn't get very far, but I have no doubt the tactic will be revived sooner rather than later. And we'll see the "reorganization" of government that the Kochs and all the other plutocrats and mountebanks have been angling for.

Sigh.

We did see sandhill cranes wheeling in the sky a little north of our place today, so there is that.

'Money for Nothin' and Your Chicks for Free'

 

Dire Straits - Money For Nothing - Music - More Music Videos

When the Default comes -- which may be this week, maybe next -- some of the Highest of the Mighty will be rolling in money, more money than they ever imagined was possible back in the '80's when Greed turned into their religion.

They've commodified everything in the interim, including what passes for the US Government, and they fully intend to take advantage of the looming Default. Shorting is one of the biggest money makers there is.

What the rest of us lose in the process is none of their concern, how does the old song go? "It's your misfortune and none of my own?" Something like that. That's their world. Take whatever they can grab from anyone who doesn't get out of their way fast enough. They've been stealing from one another for years, now it's time to steal everything that's left from the rest of us.

The Default, along with the continuing Shutdown, has already had the effect of reprioritizing government function and spending, and the way it works is, there's no going back. We're on a different path than we were. Permanently.

"It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own..."

"I want my, I want my, I want my.... MTV... Boo-ah, boo-ah."

Regarding the House Gerrymander

It's been pointed out many times lately that the TeaBaggers in the House are running the show because they are all in safe seats and nothing at all can dislodge them short of revolution -- something that's not going to happen, at least not from the left.

Their districts were gerrymandered by Republican legislatures following the 2010 census; at this point, there's no way to rearrange the district boundaries until after the 2020 census. Isn't that special?

But the political failure, which isn't generally noted, goes back to the 2010 election, not the census, in which the Democrats basically ceded state level and many local level elections by not contesting seats or not contesting them vigorously (like funding Democratic candidates). This was one of the starkest signs that the Dems -- who had gained such majorities in the 2008 elections -- were simply giving up.

We may want to consider one day why the Big Wigs and Pooh-Bahs of the Party did this. From my perspective, it was a calculated and deliberate move, with full knowledge aforethought what it would lead to -- exactly where we are, with a government shutdown and looming federal government debt default, both engineered and implemented for one main reason: to have the ability and wherewithal and reason to "restructure" government along the lines of and in the interests of the corporate owners and rulers.

This is the End Game of the sequence of actions that became clear when the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in the election of 2000, following, of course, the ridiculous spectacle of the Clinton Impeachment.

The High-level Dems in my view threw the election of 2010 for the purpose of enabling the Rs to manage their minority take-over gambit as smoothly as possible -- and as soon as they were able.

Here we are.

Furloughed

New Mexico relies heavily on Federal spending, and before the Shutdown, there was a lot of speculation about how bad it was going to be. Of course, being out in the Empty Quarter as we are, it doesn't seem like the Feds are either welcome or ever-present, but then there is an Air Force base just over the spine of the mountains to the west, and we hear that almost all their civilian employees are furloughed, and the essential civilians are not being paid. I guess the uniformed personnel are being paid, though, so that's good. I guess.

IHS is operating, they say, but with a skeletal staff, and with many routine services unavailable. The Indian Health clinics will continue to operate until the Service runs out of money to pay them, and then... who knows? They have contingency plans in place and ready to go. It's not as if health care is readily available to rural residents of New Mexico in any case.

Bosque del Apache is closed -- well, anything you might need there, like the visitors center and such, is closed, but you can still drive through much of it. They're getting ready for the Crane Festival in November, but the Shutdown has made it difficult to do preparation work.

Trinity Site has announced the cancellation of their October Opening, one of only two Openings they have a year, so thousands of people from all over the world who were intending to make pilgrimage to the site of the first nuclear bomb explosion will have to make other plans. Oh well.

It's not really clear how the nuclear labs are faring, but I'm sure the furloughed employees are pretty antsy about their projects and all. On the one hand, putting some of those projects on hold might be a good thing for all mankind as they say; on the other hand, the labs are not exclusively dedicated to blowing shit up. So there is something to ponder there...

IAIA is canceling/postponing some of its scheduled programs apparently due to the Shutdown; but there have been financial problems for some time thanks to the Sequester as well. The Sequester has sort of faded into the background of consciousness, but there are real and ongoing consequences from it as well.

Chaco Canyon is closed. As are all the other National Monuments in New Mexico. We were planning on going to a Night Sky Party in Chaco Canyon this October, but maybe not. Well, I'm sure one can still drive that washboard dirt road out to Chaco, maybe even make it to the edge of the Monument (I believe there is a gate where the dirt road changes to pavement at the entrance) and so see the stars from there, but the Night Sky programs they present are really good, and they have very nice telescopes to peer through. But not for now.

I could go on and on, because there are so many things people in New Mexico have taken for granted that simply aren't functioning or available right now thanks to the Shutdown, and many things were suffering thanks to the Sequester.

I was kind of flip in saying "no one would really notice" the Shutdown, just as they haven't really noticed the consequences of the Sequester (unless they're Federal workers or their work is funded by the Feds), but in this case, it's really not so. People are noticing, and thousands are sitting home wondering when they'll go back to work -- or of if they will.

I don't know how to explain it, but there is a growing sense of finality regarding this Shutdown, as if many of those furloughed suspect they will never go back to work, at least not at their former jobs. Could be, I don't know. I have long sensed that the makers of this mess are intent on transforming the government come hell or high water, and they will do it by any means necessary, whether it be by coup as in the SCOTUS usurpation of the 2000 election, or by compression through the Sequester, or by what they are doing now, simply cutting off a fifth of the government through the Shutdown. There is an obvious intent to re-make the government entirely, to serve only the interests of the Highest of the Mighty. The Shutdown serves those interests just fine.

The piece-by-piece restoration of funding the Rs are attempting on behalf of favored interests is an example of how they and their puppetmasters see the situation resolving. The government will be "destroyed" and then those parts of it which serve the Interests will be restored piecemeal, and no one can say a damned thing about it.

Whether this is the End Game or not, I can't be sure. But it is obvious to me that the current engineered crisis is being used as yet another opportunity to further those Interests at the expense of everyone else.

We live in interesting times...