He did something very dangerous

The other day Our President held a news conference during which he did something very dangerous. Well, two things.

One, he brought Huffington Post Blogger Nico Pitney to the front, said Nico (he named him, "Nico Pitney") and the internets had been doing outstanding work on the crisis in Iran, and said he understood that Nico might have a question from an Iranian.

Now, I have no particular brief for Nico Pitney or the Huffington Post when it comes to that. I've looked at Nico's Iran stuff from time to time, find it interesting certainly, and sometimes informative, but it is by no means definitive, and sometimes his judgement and skepticism regarding the information he is receiving and aggregating seem to fail. There's a whole other side of this Iran Thing that never seems to make it into Huffington Post or Nico's stuff. And we might get into that eventually.

As it happened, Nico did have a question from an Iranian, and he asked

"Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working toward?"

Perhaps not perfectly phrased, but interesting just the same. Exactly what the demonstrators are working toward is something of a mystery -- which isn't to say they don't know what they are protesting and what kind of redress and resolution they want. It is to say that the way what they are doing is communicated to Americans, whether through Nico's postings, or in pretty much any other form, is being re-framed and re-interpreted to suit various domestic American political interests, in some cases completely transforming whatever is going on in Iran into some kind of dumbshow recapitulation of other events at other times in other countries.

American media seems to have no idea who this Mousavi is, for example, and has no interest in finding out. That translates into what could be a complete misinterpretation of the popular unrest following his apparent defeat in the Iranian presidential election. Also, the government destabilization program that the United States has been declaring it's been operating against Iran for years is completely ignored in most of the reporting on the Iranian Crisis. Given the history of these things, to suggest that the Iranian uprising is entirely spontaneous is somewhat naive.

But that aside, Nico provided a substantive question -- which the President sidestepped rather masterfully. I don't recall him actually addressing the issues in the question, but he did have a message for Iranians which he delivered in his usual style. One assumes it went directly to the Iranian people and government, and that, as they say, was that.

One thing I've noticed about this crisis is that the some of the Iranian people are communicating (often in correctly idiomatic English) directly with Americans, appealing to Americans. I've noticed the American government has treated the crisis very delicately, and has, for the most part, treated the government of Iran with a great deal of respect (which of course gets the wingnuts to frothing). And interestingly, in the denunciations issuing forth from the Iranian government, the British seem to be the ones taking the most heat; denunciation of the United States seems to be pro-forma and really quite mild. This indicates to me that even as there is uprising and crisis in Iran, the government there and the government here are moving along the path of accommodation to some things that the Obama administration set forth very early in its tenure.

Diplomacy aside, the whole situation surrounding the "Nico Incident" is potentially dangerous for Obama because he deliberately went outside the Protocols of the White House Press Corps to bring Nico into the August Presence and to address the Iranian people directly through this (Internet, ptooey) agency. Needless to say, the White House Press Corps is still in a snit about it. And they can be a vicious little pack of snarling and snapping juveniles when they want -- which they seem very much to want right now.

The other thing Obama did at his press conference was to slap down the demands of cable teevee's "24 hour news cycle" by telling MS/NBC's Chuck Todd that he has greater responsibilities than fulfilling cable's need for "news."

That sort of comment will just get the snarling and snapping by the WH Press Corps into a fevered pitch.

Is this White House really oblivious to what these media bullies and their toadies can do -- and have done -- when they feel they have been "wronged" by the White House or a candidate thereunto? "Heathers" isn't the half of it.

Well, the gauntlet is down.

To their corners and may the best team win.

It won't be pretty.

Californication

[OT Note: I would say something about the Red Hot Chili Peppers just because, but it will have to go in another RHCP-specific post, assuming I get around to it. In the meantime, we'll attempt to deal here with California's Meltdown.]



As we know, California is falling deeper and deeper into perdition. There is no going back.

Well. I'm assuming people all over the world know in grim detail what is going on in California as its government essentially runs out of money and out of time and can't seem to get its groove back.

Things, as they say, fall apart.

But then, of course, I realize that many Americans don't know -- and if they do know, they don't care -- about what's happening to the Golden State. The primary failure of knowledge and interest in what's going on in California seems to be taking place in Washington, DC. I can't get over the image of our representatives and rulers simply paying no attention as California's government in large part collapses.

Things have been falling apart in California for more than a generation, starting when Ronald Reagan took the Corner Office on Jan 1, 1967. That seminal event seems to have been overlooked in all the blame-casting and order-issuing that's going on.

Reagan started California on the path to its anti-progressive present, and once the momentum got under way, there was no stopping it. He started by emptying the state mental hospitals -- and providing few/no other mental health services; he continued by "administering" public education to death; imposing law/n/order (against what was then an uprising of students and Negroes) setting us on the path to the current prison state; he railed against taxation, setting the stage for the later imposition of Proposition 13, cutting property taxes primarily for commercial properties (but incidentally keeping Granny in her home, too).

California's current inability to govern itself comes from the Reaganite dismissal of Progressive California governance, and their eventual destruction of it through various means and methods such as ballot-box bugeting, strict term limits for officeholders, misuse of initiative and recall provisions, and on and on and on and on.

This is what Reaganites and their Libertarian fellow travellers wanted.

California is now a shadow of what it once saw itself as and wanted one day to be, a shining model, an ideal, a way forward for all.

No more.

That notion is gone, vanished. Realistically, it ain't coming back.

What's going on now can be characterized as a final assault on the poor and what's left of the middle class, in an effort to force an out-migration from California to... wherever, primarily for the comfort and convenience of the super-rich, who, on their hilltops behind their gates and their walls, seek to live some crabbed and ugly version of what they thought the California Dream might be if they could only get control of it away from those Awful Progressives.

And they are very close to final success.

The Class War? Well, isn't it obvious who's winning?

Of course from down below, the victory of the rich and powerful over everyone else in California will be hollow at best. But so? They still won.

What's happening is causing some of our best remaining thinkers and doers to go all whack on us, calling down Destruction and Despair as the corrective we need to get past the Crisis. But what they don't seem to comprehend is that Destruction and Despair are integral to the Crisis; they don't have to be called upon, and they can't by themselves get us to the correct other side of the Crisis.

People are gonna die. And the "serious" thinkers and doers prove their "seriousness" by looking the deaths of others in the eye and not flinching. It's a Manhood thing. You accept that Death is inevitable and if it comes a little sooner to some folks than it might otherwise (if, say, they continued to receive care or meds paid for by the State), oh well!

Schwarzenegger set the standard in his speech from the thronlet announcing his draconian cuts only budget "solution" in May: Yes, I know you people will die. And I'm very sad about it. Oh well....

Now even so-called Progressives have taken up the cudgel: Yes, people will die, we can't do anything about it, we have to get Democracy restarted in California, that's the only thing that matters. -- a perhaps unfair paraphrase of David Dayden (dday) at Calitics and Digby's who seems to have gone completely off the deep end, seeing the Crisis as Opportunity for some kind of Vast Grassroots Takeover Through Democratic Processes... uh... Comrade. Uh... David... uh... no.

Do we really need more democracy? Not immediately, no.

We've had more than our fill of manipulated (or as some say, "Managed") democracy, and trying to lard a whole (and so far entirely fantasized) Grassroots Democracy on top of it, to solve the Crisis, is both a witches brew and a fool's game.

No, what we need is Intervention; basically direction at the top -- and from outside -- on how, specifically, to get through the current Crisis and the most appropriate means to correct the whole host of missteps and misdirections that have got us to this point.

"Democracy" on its own can't fix what's gone wrong. "Democracy" on its own is what has got us here.

I've said several times in other fora that the absence of Federal involvement and interest in what's happening in California is unconscionable. I believe sincerely that Federal officials should have been integrated into whatever planning was underway (assuming there was any) to deal with the Crisis from the outset, but apparently, there has been little or no interest on the part of the Feds in the California Crisis.

I don't know that on their own the Feds can fix much of anything, but we're in a very, very odd position, with something like $80 billion in Federal Stimulus funds on tap for California, but little or none of it (apparently) can be used to backstop programs that will face draconian (or even modest) cuts. What's up with that? It doesn't make any sense.

How exactly are Stimulus funds to be used at all if the state government can't function due to its partial collapse? It doesn't make any sense.

As California's unemployment rate skyrockets (officially 11.5% as of today, but in many counties it's over 25% and climbing, and the "official" rate doesn't count the "real" number of unemployed and underemployed which is typically double the "official" number) with no sign of stabilization or a turn around any time soon, and no significant jobs program as part of the Stimulus, just how are income taxes supposed to be levied and collected from people who have no income and won't have income any time soon?

Even the legislature's less draconian budget adjustments assume income tax collections from people who are employed, but with employment falling through the floor, just where are these collections going to come from?

This is just a small part of the strangeness that is overcoming good sense in California, and the nearly total failure of institutions to address and deal with the basics of collapse.

So just what is the way forward? Do we just throw up our hands and let the neo-liberal idealists have their way, radically reconfiguring California's present and future along the lines of Louisiana and New Orleans after the Hurricane?

That's what's on tap right now with the efforts of the Governor, the Parsky Commission, California Forward and the Bay Area Council. These are the people and the institutions that are boldly trying to blaze a new path. One that essentially confirms and permanentizes California's descent into the Third World kleptostate of massive wealth at the top supported by immense poverty below.

That's where we're going.

What's the alternative?

OT: Burglar!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Yes. Well. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

I had to go out of town to do some work. On the way back, using a rental car, I had a flat tire on the highway. Before AAA got there, another local dude pulled up. His truck had scrawled on the back "Mobile Mechanic" and a phone number. Well this seemed like the kind of person who'd be sent by one of the other services, so I asked him, brightly, "Were you sent by AAA?"

"Oh no," he says, "I work independently. I saw you were broken down, so I thought I'd see if you need any help."

I told him AAA was on the way and thanked him. When the guy from AAA came he said that there are so many breakdowns on that stretch of highway, there's plenty of work for everyone.

Still had a hundred miles to go before I got home. On that little bitty spare tire. Oh well. Made it. Things seemed OK. Got ready to take the car back, a caravan, me and another person to drive me back. Relative in hospice care at home asleep. Process may take forty-five minutes or so.

When we get back from the airport, car has a flat in the driveway. Oh noes! Well, I'll change this one. Meanwhile some odd stuff is going on in the house. "Has somebody been here?" Asking relative, she says that somebody was banging on both outside doors, for quite a while, but she can't see, and she can't get up, either.

We looked around. One of my laptops was gone (the one that I'd taken to work earlier) and some jewelry had been taken.

Oh. Dear.

I had to report the stolen laptop to my employer. And to the police. The jewelry was mostly of sentimental value (old watches, etc.). Police came. Reports, fingerprint dusting, all the usual.

It's been quite a long while since we've been victims of burglary, and just as then, it is the sense of being violated in your own space that's so creepy about it. We felt very lucky that my relative was not harmed, she wasn't even aware, she said, that anyone came in the house. But it does put us in a very curious situation.

How to juggle it will be the next challenge.

Walk Like an Egyptian

I watched a little bit of Obama's speech in Cairo on al Jazeera English. He seemed to be very well received. The commentators on al Jazeera were thrilled and delighted.

But it seemed to me that for all the highflown speechifying, there wasn't a whole lot of policy difference between Obama in Cairo today and Bush practically anywhere between 2006 and 2009.

As very many others have pointed out, apart from tone, there really are no significant changes in Obama's positions vis a vis terrorist/muslim affairs and Bush's.

The ones who are out in the cold are the neocons and the Family Cheney.

So, for something completely different, here is American phenom Tarik Sultan dancing at Giza in 2005:



Now you dance.

(PS: here's a link to the post I used the picture of Akenaton in back in March of last year...)

Next Exit

Hellhole, CA. (h/t Robert Cruikshank at Calitics)

The latest eminations from the Corner Office at the Capitol -- on top of what's already been proposed or enacted -- will push California way off the edge of civilized societies, into uncharted realms of barbarism and despair.

We have not been down this path before.

We're looking at the virtual elimination of every state program and service that benefits the poor and working class -- so as to maintain, insofar as possible, the comfort and convenience of the Upper 1%.

There will be no more CalWORKS -- the welfare-to-work program instituted as part of the "welfare reform" package passed during the Clinton Administration. Hundreds of State Parks will close. In Home Support Services workers will have their pay cut by a total of 20% since the beginning of the year and services will be limited to only the most gravely ill and/or disabled; people who can at least sit up on their own, tough luck.

State worker pay will be cut 14% and at least 5000 will be laid off. 19,000 or more prisoners will be released early. Probation services will be sharply reduced. Drug abuse and rehabilitation programs in prison: ffft. Gone. Mental health services will disappear. Access to Medi-Cal will be severely restricted and payments to providers will be further reduced.

All levels of public education will face severe cuts. The K-12 school year may be reduced by up to seven days. CalGrants for college students will go away -- this on top of all the additional charges added for college tuition and housing.

Healthy Families medical insurance program will be eliminated, forcing close to a million more children into the "uninsured" pool, there to sink or swim as may be. The Adult Day Health Care program is to be eliminated, ending day care for recovering patients. People on SSI will have their benefits cut again to the federal minimums.

And these are just some of the proposed cuts on top of those already enacted.

Will this lead to a Social Darwinist/Randian struggle for survival? Or will these and many more reductions and eliminations of state services be accepted with hardly a backwards glance, as the corpses of the old, the sick, the frail, the very young, the disabled and the deranged pile up in the streets, to be collected (we assume) by some private company on a no-bid contract for disposal?

"Bring out yer dead!" indeed.

At this point, I'm not really sure there will be any wide-spread murmuring as those who have got theirs batten down and those that don't... tough luck. Suckers.

No. What I'm sensing is that a lot of Californians, despite their supposed "liberal" bent, really like the idea of cutting off the old, the sick, the halt, the lame and the very young and letting them fend for themselves, or -- as one Republican put it: move somewhere else.

Emptying California of its "surplus" population seems to be percolating in the think tanks, the idea being to just get rid of those useless extra mouths. When the housing market collapsed -- years ago now -- a lot of the illegals who were building all those houses that are now being demolished went home. As joblessness rose in many sectors, the roads cleared of congestion. ERs were no longer as full. The casinos were not as jammed. Who could complain?

If Californians can figure out how to dump their homeless, their diseased, their deranged, their old, and their surplus young elsewhere -- in other states or countries, or just someplace else -- Hellhole, CA will be turned back into the Earthly Paradise it was meant to be, ne?

There's been no leadership from the Democrats in the Legislature at all. The Orange Waxy Man is leading the charge to slash, cut and dump, and very few coherent voices are being raised against him. Instead, we have the usual set of "interests" demanding their own pieces of the shrinking pie before it's all gone. There is no comprehensive alternative to the march of barbarism. Nothing.

So. Into perdition we go.

Hallelujah!

Shock Doctrine: California

As my last post indicated, the fallout from the impending California state and local budget cuts will be immense, and for some populations, they will be devastating.

Almost the entire social safety net (such as it is) is proposed to be cut by the governor in order to just begin to meet the looming deficit. The destruction will commence on July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, and it won't stop until... who knows.

Of course the Doctrinaires are salivating. There has never been an opportunity like this in their lifetimes, and there probably never will be one again. California state government is effectively bankrupt, and though it will not exactly cease to exist, its services to citizens will start to disappear, and in some cases will be terminated forthwith.

Of course the main cuts are going to fall on the poor, the old, the sick, and the demented, the way they always do, only this time in too many cases, there will be nothing at all to cushion the blow. Too bad, so sad. Bye bye.

Democrats and Republicans will collaborate in this endeavor. Democrats of course will say they just HATE to do it, sorry, sorry, while Republicans as one will say, "Tough luck, suckers!" and will laugh at the suffering left in their wake.

And who is on the sidelines?

Silent?

Disinterested?

Otherwise engaged?

Our President, of course.

Simply can't be bothered right now. GM, Chrysler, and the Financial Sector have sucked up all the money; the Congress stripped out much of the state stabilization funding from the stimulus; Californians, so sorry, are on their own.

And so, the domestic Shock Doctrine laboratory, the Demonstration Project if you will, gets under way in a little over a month. Hope everyone has stocked up on popcorn.

This ought to be good.

rocky horror - sweet transvestite
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California's Crisis

Everyone is expecting the California Bloodbath to commence on July 1. State government is, in effect, going to grind to a halt, out of money, and to survive as an entity, the State Powers That Be will slash and burn the budget in wild abandon, putting almost the entire burden of California's economic collapse -- which has led to the government collapse -- on the poorest, the weakest, the sickest, the oldest, and the least able.

The propositions failed. Well, all but the one that forbade increasing legislative and state officer salaries when there is a "deficit." Since the state government can't theoretically operate at a "deficit", this measure is really nothing but a slap in the face of the Governor and the Legislature for their pissery over the last many years that has brought us to this point.

In their defense, there's not a lot they can do. To pass a budget or to raise taxes, they have to have a 2/3rds majority in both houses of the legislature. The remnant Republicans have one-third of the votes in both houses and they are rigidly united against any increase in taxes (although sales taxes and VLFs -- "car taxes" -- were raised, strangely enough, while billions of dollars in tax breaks for corporations "balanced" the revenue increase so it wasn't a net increase in taxes. Such is hypocrisy in the California legislature.)

The Orange Waxy Man, the man who invented John Bohner Tan, the Governator, swept in to office by throwing out the pencil-necked Gray Davis (who had quite a small budget pickle compared to Schwarzenegger's) and promptly cutting taxes, throwing the state into several years of tumult while adjustments were made for the lost revenue.

Only adjustments never were made, and things just got worse and worse and worse.

And with the collapse of the economy, there is nothing to be done about it. There is no more revenue "reasonably" to be had. ("Reasonably" because you can't tax the rich or they'll flee the state; the burden on everyone else is close to the maximum right now; the faltering economy isn't stable.) That means $85 billion in revenue this fiscal year (maybe), which is about the same as the revenue projection for 1999. And the budget is $110 billion. Oops.

The budget has increased essentially no more than inflation since 1999; revenues have obviously declined. They decline because, in part, the rich have the rump Republicans in the legislature to protect them from the ravening hordes. And the state constitution is set up to ensure that protection.

The governor -- no matter who it is -- flaps his gums and flails around; the legislature throws pies and plays with blocks; the prophets of Doom pontificate; and everything goes to hell in a handbasket, year in and year out, guaranteed.

And when the People, in frustration and anger, bestir themselves to do something about it through the Initiative process (ie: Proposition 13, Proposition 209; Proposition 8) their betters in the Governor's Office and the Legislature and the various branches of the bureaucracy do their level best to slap the People silly -- and make as many painful, horrendous, gawdawful cuts and administrative decisions as they possibly can.

It is ever thus.

The War between the People of California and their Government is ongoing, neverending, debilitating, cruel, and often deadly.

The fact that the Government decided to use the ballot process to paper over the budget mess in the Capitol for the time being led to the People soundly rejecting this nonsense. The legislature and the governor had been dithering for months -- some would say years -- over the looming budget problem. No sensible solutions were possible because of the complete recalcitrance of the rump Republican caucus that would not provide the votes necessary to pass a flawed but feasible budget. So they came up with a Rube Goldberg scheme that made no sense to anybody and foisted it off on the People, who they knew weren't going to vote for it, or they should have known, and now, of course, they blame the People.

It's what they do.

This is actually a Reagan/Jarvis legacy but we won't get into that.

Always the People of California are blamed for their own folly. This mess is of their own making, and they deserve to suffer, severely if necessary, in order to "teach them a lesson."

Great.

It's not the Nanny State, it's the Daddy State.

This has been going on in one form or another for decades, since Reagan was governor really, and it is time to call a halt to the madness.

The problems California's government continually faces are structural, built in to the loopy taxation and expense system that itself is built in to the State Constitution.

Time to change the Constitution. Which state governments can do with much more ease than the Federal government.

Progressives, supposedly, are preparing a package of initiatives for the 2010 ballot that are supposed to address some of the structural issues that have long plagued the state and its budgeting, but I will say right now they are going to fail -- if they can even manage to get any on the ballot.

Why not go for broke and re-write the Constitution?

Well connected political and financial interests in California are headed in that direction as this Dan Walters column from the Sacramento Bee makes clear:

Dan Walters: Two strategies to change California government

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Apr. 21, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

California's never-ending budget crisis has, if nothing else, solidified broader acceptance of what until recently had seemed to be a radical notion – that the state's governance is deeply flawed and needs fundamental overhaul.

Two centrist, bipartisan civic groups – California Forward and the Bay Area Council – are pushing two different and somewhat competitive reform strategies, both aimed at asking voters next year to take action of some kind, and both appear to be picking up steam.

California Forward, an organization financed with millions of dollars from the state's top foundations, had been pursuing an incremental approach to reform. It endorsed shifting legislative redistricting to an independent commission, which voters approved last year. It is also endorsing the six budget-related measures on the May 19 special election ballot and has been poised to support a form of open primary elections on next year's ballot, aimed at reducing partisanship.

The Bay Area Council, a collection of corporate CEOs, has had a more aggressive approach, working on two ballot measures for 2010, one that would allow voters to call a constitutional convention without going through the Legislature, another that would call such a convention to overhaul state and perhaps local government.

Both have implicit, and sometimes explicit, support from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I think that eventually the state of California has to look at a constitutional convention, to really look at the whole thing, the way government works in California," Schwarzenegger said during a presentation to the Commonwealth Club last month, "because there are many aspects of government in California that are dysfunctional."

That was a boost for the Bay Area Council, but California Forward is dominated by the governor's allies and advisers. They include Robert Hertzberg, the former Democratic speaker of the state Assembly who has assumed the group's co-chairmanship. He succeeded Leon Panetta, now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Monday, Hertzberg laid out a more aggressive agenda, calling for sweeping changes in fiscal procedures, including two-year state budgets and eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement for budgets (while retaining it for new taxes), tax reform, modifying legislative term limits, and strengthening local governments.

"The public doesn't trust Sacramento," Hertzberg told the Sacramento Press Club, adding, "People are mad as hell … it's real."

His reform list is similar to the Bay Area Council's, but Hertzberg says he wants to give the Legislature a chance to fashion a reform package through a constitutional revision commission, rather than jumping to a constitutional convention. "We are going to light this thing up," he said.

The two groups, which have been conducting talks together, appear to have agreed on a two-pronged strategy. They'll try the legislative route first. If that fails, they'll pursue a constitutional convention proposal for the 2010 ballot.

Where are the Progressives?

The answer is nowhere. Well, nowhere that is going to stop the corporate steamroller that's getting under way.

The whole idea of getting out in front of pernicious actions like those outlined in Walters' piece is anathema to progressives, especially of the internet variety. They are culturally attuned to reaction, not action, and so various interests such as the corporate/foundation cabal mentioned above run rings around the progressives in California and throughout the land.

Progressives need to recognize the power they have -- at least in theory -- to precipitate change, radical change if need be, and stop reacting to the radicalism of others.

But we're not there yet.

OT: Hospice

Had to call Emergency Services yesterday for the first time since starting the Hospice Care at Home program for the elder relation being cared for here. She... expired... on us. But then, after the incident was over, she said, "They sent me back."

When the EMTs got here, maybe three minutes after calling and perhaps ten minutes after she "expired", she had somewhat revived, was breathing and semi-conscious, and they did their tests and exams, pronouncing her "Eh, OK," and -- after some discussion about DNRs and whatnot -- decision was made to keep her here, not to transport her to the hospital (all her vitals were good enough, and there wasn't anything they could do for her at the hospital that we couldn't do here.)

She came to after they left, and her first remark was: "I don't want to go anywhere!" I said, "Oh no, they're gone now. They're not going to take you anywhere. You're home. You're going to be all right."

That's when she said, "They sent me back." She said she didn't remember anything of what happened, wondered if she fell down, though. I said, "No, no. You just collapsed. Passed out. You didn't fall. You were unconscious."

Well... she's been having bowel trouble, persistent diarrhea that we treat with medication. The medication works fast but it's temporary, and what's been happening is that she will have a normal bowel movement followed by diarrhea. In the past, this has made her cranky, but apart from the clean-up, it hasn't been a big deal.

This time was different. She had a normal bowel movement, but she was complaining about head aches and dizziness, and quite suddenly she said, "Oh, it's coming," and she practically exploded with diarrhea. As she was sitting on the commode, she started to drool and fall over and become less and less responsive. I sat her on the bed. She was unconscious but breathing with difficulty. Then those... erm... rattles. Then she stopped breathing. Her pulse stopped. She started turning gray. She was completely unresponsive. This went on for maybe a minute or two. Time to call. While I was on the phone, she began to revive, haltingly, but come back she did. And then she had another episode of diarrhea, poor thing.

According to the EMTs, she'd probably pinched the vaugus nerve at some point while she was having a bowel movement and that caused her to lose consciousness. Fairly common in old people. It had never happened to her before, but there's always a first time. There was no sign that she'd had a heart attack, but it was possible. They'd have to check that at the hospital. No obvious sign that she'd died.

But I've seen people die, and that's what I saw her do. She herself thinks that's what happened. But... "They sent me back."

And though she is very weak right now, she said, "They sent me back, so I guess that means I'm supposed to live to 100, eh, like our neighbor did. Good!"

She'll be 89 next month. I'd say she's good for at least a few more years.

A reminder

Franken isn't in the Senate, and Lieberman is.


Franken may get a meeting with Joe Biden, but Lieberman has the ear of The President.



It was Lieberman, along with his pal Little Lindsey, who convinced Obama to withhold the additional photos of abuse of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And this man (and his spawn) is on my teevee all the time now, when he couldn't be bothered to show his face or reveal his location during most of the Bushevik reign of error.




He -- and she -- is on the teevee so often, it seems, that as far as the newsreaders are concerned, he IS (still) the Vice President. This is not an honorific in their eyes, this is an actuality. The man never left office as far as they know, and given the control he apparently still has over the levers of government power, who's to say they're wrong?

Questions?

Expectations

People who grew up in the 1950's have a certain -- perhaps unreasonable -- expectation of life. Kind of the flip side of Old Soviet pensioners: they expected a certain level of accommodation, even regard, for their contributions to Post War Soviet recovery and achievement, whereas Americans expected "progress," unbounded progress, and the perfection of American ideals.

Events did not meet expectations.

Old Soviet pensioners have been in dire shape for years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Empire; many simply expired, died off from various untreated ailments, alcoholism, poverty, starvation, exposure to the elements, etc. It's called "thinning the herd." The ones I've talked to who emigrated to the United States have a certain far-away look in their eye, remembering what it was supposed to be like, horrified and disgusted at what it became, blaming the Communists, and blaming "others" (named and unnamed) in equal measure for the failures that led to their exile from the Motherland and to the tragedy of living there now.

Young people from the former Soviet Union don't seem to have that sense of loss and longing the old folks do. While they may not be Happy Americans (yet), they never seemed to key into the Soviet system, were always skeptical of it, and when it failed, they said "Good Riddance." Russia today is for the young, not the old, I guess.

In this country, the 1950's were a shiny, glittery time for most Americans, a time when consumerism and conformity took over common sense, and whatever was "new" was seized on with near-worshipful glee.

The need for conformity came with the promise of Progress, and consumerism was necessary to the perpetuation of the New. I always thought that the conformity that characterized the 1950's was primarily a consquence of the nation's collective experience during the Depression and its overwhelming militarization during World War II. So many people experienced life in the military, for example, and the Victory of WWII that they quite naturally translated the concepts of military life into the civilian sector, with a focus on suppressing independence of thought and deed and conforming to norms and expectations of Society. From their own experience, that's what was necessary.

They had given up so much material well-being during the Depression and World War II that it was not surprising at all that they would turn to rampant consumerism after the War. Finally they could afford modest luxuries like teevees, and finally there were products available they could buy.

Of course there were critics who decried this "decline" in the American Way of Life. What happened to Rugged Individuality? Where were the creators and inventors and enterpreneurs who had characterized American Life through most of its history? Why did everyone want to be the same? What was the good of that?



Conformity was the first to go, rejected by college students in the early 1960's, completely overthrown as an American Value by the end of the '60's. Americans have mostly not returned to Conformity -- and would have a very hard time doing so in any case under the current highly polarized political framework.

Consumerism has waxed and waned. Once everybody had their suburban houses and their teevees and their high-finned new cars every couple of years, it became harder and harder to sell to an already saturated market.





There was only so much you could reasonably "consume," only so much you needed, and as conformity was rejected, consumerism fell into disfavor as well.

Yet few Boomers expected to see what we do today, a return (almost) to conditions that prevailed in the 1930's, and the serious possibility of falling so deep into economic depression, the majority of people may never see recovery.

As Boomers age, they're told -- like Soviet Pensioners -- they'll have to make do with less and less, and if it is too little to get by on, oh well. Tough luck, suckers. Sweep the streets and sell your trinkets. Just shut up.

Social Darwinism once more rears its ugly head. The American Empire, now almost completely consolidated as a political reality, has no use for excess baggage and has no compunction about torturing and exterminating whomever stands in its way. We witness with a kind of shocked horror what's been going on overseas, what is still going on overseas despite our new Good Emperor's many assurances, and some of us react with disgust and despair as we realize those practices now so commonly applied overseas -- like the drones flown over Pakistan firing at will, piloted by pimple-faced 20 year-olds at Groom Lake, Nevada, "Area 51," no less! -- can be dispatched domestically in a twinkling. Have any thoughts of rising up? Think again. Blackwater is still a chief government contractor.

The government patiently assures us that unemployment will continue to increase at least through 2010, and that many of the millions and millions of jobs that have so far been lost are never coming back. We are experiencing as thorogoing an economic restructuring as has ever happened in this country, and what has been lost is for many people gone forever.

Foreclosed and overbuilt homes are being demolished while the ranks of the homeless increase. Communities and whole cities are economically devastated and very little -- or in some cases nothing -- is done; recovery programs are limited and strictly confined to certain favored sectors of the population. There is no intention to reemploy people thrown out of work quickly, and in many cases there's no intention to reemploy them at all.

And through all of the restructuring going on around us, the constant refrain is and has been "Entitlement Reform," which means cutting and reducing and restricting and eliminating what very little is left of the social safety net so laboriously constructed by previous generations.

De-Entitling the masses is the key to understanding the Future as envisioned by the Powers That Be.

And don't ever think those Powers will lose their Entitlements. Not on a bet.

With all this swirling instability around us, the economic and political opportunists -- the Randians, the Objectivists, the Libertarians, and so on -- see plenty of hay to be made, offering bogus Individualist "answers" to the masses to the fear and the uncertainty of Modern Times.

It was happening in the '30's as well, but most people could see that the Randian Individualist response to despair and destitution might be something to think about or enjoy as an observer, but there was no chance for Individuals entirely on their own.

Nevertheless, the call is out there to shuck off the bonds of Government per se, live free, go your own way, forget about the uselessness of a corrupt and decadent Central Government, grow your own food, build your own place, live off the grid, and protect yourself with abundant armaments. That's the future.

Warlordism.

What a concept.

F**king Brilliant

My contempt for Libertarianism is boundless, and this little video I found posted at dKos this morning encapsulates a dose of it.

When people rage against teh Central Government or piddle on the Government Schools or demand the liberty to impose their authority on others (ie: Warlordism) in a Regulation Free Market, I about puke.

And then when they start celebrating Ron Paul as the ideological key to the New America, I laugh and laugh.

He claims to be some kind of "Constitutionalist" but what he really is is a Confederate who disputes the entire history of Constitutional self-government in this country. He would go back to 1789 -- pre-1789 in fact -- and start the Government over; to him, pretty much everything the Government has done since Ratification has been in Error.

That may be, but it is not "Constitutionalism" to claim nothing but Error on the part of Government since the beginning of the Constitution. The absurdity of his position is plain. And yet there are always some who can't see it.

He's a Confederate; he does not believe in a Constitutionally Self-Governing Republic as defined -- and operated -- under the Constitution of the United States of America since 1789. He believes in the Confederation under the previous Articles, which proved even in its own time to be unviable as a nation.

In fact, it's more than possible to make a case for some other form of Government than we have, and that case should be made in my view. It may ideed involve reflection on the Confederation. The United States Government has become rotten and corrupted and Palace oriented, and the Constitution itself has provided the means and the impetus to that development. The nature of the Constitution of 1789 made the current Imperial State almost inevitable, and now that we are there, it's more than reasonable to evaluate it on the basis of the Public Interest. Is this what the People truly want?

The Government, for its part, doesn't really care what "The People" (a fiction in Government eyes) want. The practice of Government has long been to govern counter to the People and the Public Interest, and little or nothing has stood in the way of that practice. That practice of governing against the People's Will and the Public Interest was quite open during the Bushevik years; Cheney was (and is) proud of it.

The answer is not Libertarianism, however.

The video shows why.

If I can find some time, I'll try to expand on these thoughts (as I have tried in the past). The current situation is unstable. Under the circumstances, we should be thinking about and arguing over and considering options on a way forward. There is no going back, but we don't know what the best way forward is. The Government, to be sure, is busy consolidating its Imperial Grandeur, safe (it thinks) behind it's Palace Gates. Operating quite independently of us, We, the People.

How do we deal with that?

So it's come to this

This is in Victorville, CA; reports are that the same thing is going on or planned in Temecula. Spec homes in new developments demolished rather than completed or sold at a lower price:



The builder was Matthews Homes, a long-time California builder, the bank foreclosing on these properties was Guaranty Bank of Austin, and the destruction of these new homes shouldn't really be so surprising.

Many areas of California (and elsewhere) were vastly overbuilt during the real estate boom. There is a huge inventory of unsold and foreclosed new and nearly new homes throughout the state, and despite extraordinary efforts by the state and other interests and authorities, these homes cannot realistically be sold soon in this market. In many cases, the inflated mortgages have already been paid off on foreclosed properties through Private Mortgage Insurance, but the idle properties themselves are an expense (fines, taxes, upkeep, security, etc.) and rather than pay for the expense involved in holding these properties, owners of record demolish them. By doing so, they reduce inventory, clear the "nuisance" and the costs associated with it from the property and they make it possible to eventually rebuild if market conditions ever warrant.

And that's a big If.

Many areas of California have gone through repeated real estate booms/busts, and of course some of them have ultimately become very successful. Los Angeles itself is a prime case in point. But the outer fringes and most desert areas of California have had their occasional booms (or not as the case may be) only to see the projects ultimately abandoned and never revived. The skeletons of these projects are all over the state, if you know where to look and what to look for, some completely abandoned, others barely hanging on with a relative handful of hardy residents.

Victorville is not exactly a highly sought after location, but it is not by any means an abandoned railroad siding like many other places in the Mojave Desert. It "grew" very fast during the real estate boom, and it has suffered more than many other areas during the bust. How much of the "growth" can be sustained still remains to be seen, and one way to manage that "growth" is to prune the excess.

Demolishing houses that have already been paid for (or have already been written off as the case may be) in areas like Victorville -- where growth is not likely to return soon to the rates seen during the boom -- makes a kind of yucky economic sense, and we're liable to see more of it as the real estate market finds its bottom and stabilizes.

Still, it's shocking to witness.

Pushing Them Into Poverty

The World Bank declares that 50 million people world wide are being forced by the global depression into extreme poverty, and they call on rich countries to stop dallying and get with the program of assisting the worst off in the world.

There is no doubt that globally the depression has hit poorest the hardest and the consequences are barely recognized in this country.

The poorest Americans are hit hardest at home as well, and one thing that keeps getting ignored (among so many ignored items!) in the United States is that millions and millions of people are being pushed into -- or are being pushed back into -- poverty.

Current statistics show that around 6.5 million Americans are collecting unemployment insurance payments. A recipient is lucky to receive 1/2 their former pay while on unemployment, and in many cases they receive much less.

About half of those who are out of work don't receive any unemployment insurance payments at all, so the real number of unemployed is closer to 13 million. There are also an untold number of Americans who aren't employed but who do not show up in the statistics because they've given up looking for work and are now considered "out of the workforce." They may want to work, if there were jobs available, but there aren't any, at least not for them.

Added to those who are completely out of work are many millions -- at any given time between 10 and 15 million -- who can only find part time work and who are considered "underemployed."

Bob Herbert, in today's New York Times, picks up on a theme I've been hammering for quite a while: with these massive levels of unemployment and underemployment, really not seen in this country since the Great Depression, there are surprisingly no significant jobs programs to put people back to work quickly, and there are many in the field who are saying that the contraction in employment is essentially permanent, that many of the jobs people no longer have are not coming back, and further, many of those who are now unemployed cannot expect to return to the workforce. Ever.

Yet the highrollers continue raking in the Big Money, now out of the treasury coffers.

Herbert:

The folks who led the nation to this financial abyss are the ones being made whole on the taxpayers’ dime. We can look after them, all right. But we can’t seem to get credit flowing in any normal way again; we can’t stanch the terrible flow of home foreclosures; and we’re not doing nearly enough to address the most critical need of all: putting people back to work.

While Wall Street is breaking out the Champagne yet again, the rest of the economy is beyond terrible, and will be for the foreseeable future.

True. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to talk about it. And more to the point, nobody who can do anything about it wants to do anything about it.

Many of these people who are being "shed" from the workforce (still around 600,000 a month) will never have a job again. Some of them became gainfully employed as part of the vaunted Clinton Welfare Reform -- when President Clinton demanded of employers that they find work for the many millions who would no longer be eligible for welfare. Employers stepped up to the plate, and jobs were found. But many of those jobs are disappearing and many of those who were employed as part of the Welfare To Work Program are now unemployed, and there are no other jobs for them, nor is there any welfare to take up the slack.

Homelessness is skyrocketing, and charitable giving is declining. The squeeze on the lower and middle classes is getting tighter and tighter, while the upper 1% continues to swim in champagne.

At some point, this situation will not be sustainable. Those on the lower end who have been "shed" by the depression will have little choice but to fight back if they intend to survive. And we can be certain that our Government, which has decided its survival is in serving the rich and the powerful almost exclusively, will find a means and a method to suppress any rising of the modern day sans coulottes crying out for a scrap of bread.

The surprising thing is that with so many currently unemployed, and with more and more added to the unemployment statistics every month, many of whom will never work again, there has been so little grumbling and so muted a rage among the masses up to this point.

The problem hasn't reached critical mass.

They still won't call it Torture

[From: http://mcncirce.com/history1.html  ]

The "Torture Memos" were released last Thursday, April 16 -- some wags said as a distraction from the Teabaggery -- and  brilliant minds all over the blogosphere went to work. The ACLU, of course, got its props for forcing the release of these memos that describe in excruciating, ugly detail just what is permitted to be done to American captives in the Great and Global War On Terror, and the efficacious results of said practices. Very Medieval.

All the witches confessed, don't forget.

The picture shows, among other common practices, what's called the strappado. As viewers of "24" will know, it is how you hold terrorists captured on the field of battle, and -- when necessary -- it's what you do to anybody else at all who crosses you or who might have "information" that must be extracted.

It's also called Palestinian Hanging because it is what the Israelis do (or are said to do) to the Arab captives they hold, routinely. It was commonly used at Abu Ghraib and at the other prisons run by Americans in the Great and Global War On Terror, and -- not to play favorites here -- it is a commonly used "technique" by all of our many enemies as well.

It is torture, plain and simple, common as dirt, and quite likely as widespread now as it was at any previous era in history.

Also shown in the picture is the Famous Waterboard. Which -- according to reports -- was used hundreds of times on American captives in the Great and Global War On Terror; it is the same torture for which American service personnel were courtmartialed during the Vietnam War and during the Philippines Insurrection. Japanese prisoners were sentenced to death for doing it to American prisoners of war during WWII.

And yet, still, even now, Our Major Mass Media will not call it -- or anything else done by our various services and their contractors -- torture.

It's the most amazing thing.

This is how the New York Times refers to waterboarding captives hundreds of times:

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

And this infuriates me. The whole world calls it torture, not just "top Obama administration officials" (like the President himself, e.g.), but the New York Times, in its wisdom, will not call it torture, nor, apparenly, will any other mainstream mass media outlet.

Since the Torture Memos implicate all sorts of people, including an array of Busheviks, sitting judges, CIA operatives, contractors and mercenaries, medical and legal professionals, and on and on, could it be that the NYT's interconnections with all those interests, all of whom might suffer irreparable harm if the Times took to calling these "techniques" what they are -- ie: Torture -- prevents the Times from using the correct term for fear that people they know and people like them might wind up before a tribunal somewhere?

I don't know.

All I know is that the continued refusal of the major mass media in this country to call a thing "torture" -- unless it is being done by our many enemies (under those circumstances, they have no problem using the right terminology) helps keep Americans befuddled and confused and deeply ambivalent about what's been done and what is being done in their names.

Re: Teabaggery

(Picture lifted from FDL --  I think. But who can recall? So many things...)

Organized by FOX "News" and a couple of right wing think tanks, hundreds of thousands turned out on April 15 -- some in clever little 18th Century get ups -- to protest "taxes and spending" by hollering about immigrants and the price of tea and hurling their teabags hither and yon. 

It was the Feel Good uprising of the season, kicking off the Insurrection and Rebellion activities to come.

Or something.

Ten thousand protestors were expected locally; news reports had it that around 5,000 assembled -- still a throng, though hardly a mass movement. They were harangued by radio personalities and FOX "News" presenters, by Republican state representatives, and by anti-taxers from far and wide. I half expected them to come armed -- as they proudly did during the 2000 Election Recount Protests (yes, they were protesting counting the votes, harangued and whipped to a frenzy by many of the same radio personalities and teevee stars), where gun-waving and flag-waving seemed to get equal emphasis. But so far as I know, armaments were mostly kept at home, and the protesters seemed to be having more fun than trying to raise hell.

Of course they said that about the Boston Tea Party, too. So I wouldn't put too much stock in how much "fun" appeared to be under way.

The Left Blogosphere, of course, made a point of mocking and deriding the Teabaggers, and of course they made much of the endless double-entendre "teabagging" provides. The form of "teabagging" I'm familiar with -- a sort of frat-house hijink in which the balls of the teabagger are placed on the head of or in the mouth of a sleeping -- or passed-out-drunk -- brother as a gentle form of good spirited insult -- seemed almost the appropriate metaphor for the actions of the multitude on Teabagging Day, for it seemed they were out more for highjinks than not. These people are not used to taking to the streets, after all, so most of them don't know the correct protocols, don't have the right gravitas for serious marches and sign carrying and full-throated chants. It's not really in them.

The problem for me with the Left Blogistan mockery of all this was the fact that there is still little or no recognition within the higher reaches of the so-called "progressive" blogosphere that the middle and lower classes -- regardless of their political orientation -- are drowning in debt, and their condition and position is made exponentially worse by all the trillions of dollars pledged and paid to those who are already among the very richest in our land (and overseas). There is little or no recognition that in all the frenzy to bailout and stimulate coming from Washington, very little -- indeed, almost nothing -- is being directed toward relieving that enormous debt burden the masses are struggling under, and in fact, that burden is increasing with every bailout.

Part of what the Teabaggers are responding to is the fact that essentially all the money in the whole wide world is being handed over to those who already have more money than God, and people like the poor schmuck in his 18th Century Revolutionary get up have to pay for it. 

Nobody is taking the schmuck's side at all -- except FOX "News" and the various right wing interests that are always on the look out for opportunities and found one in the inchoate rage of the masses.

Masses and rage that the Left (so-called) has avoided like the plague. The Left that never misses and opportunity to miss an opportunity...

I could go on, but we have to get to the Torture Memos before the weekend is out, and -- OT -- there are home hospice care issues that have tended to keep me well away from my own bloggery more often than not. 

Strangely

Not every topic you're not interested in is a distraction from everything else.

Not everyone you disagree with is a narcissist or a sociopath.

Banks are not your friends.

The media is not your friend.

Just a reminder, as if one were needed.

Lenin

Is there a Lenin in our future? A demagogue and a firebrand who will harness the rage and outrage of the American People and ride it like a tiger into a New Dawn? A revolution as it were?

Hard to say, though there have been and still are plenty of candidates on the right who would dearly love to capture the revolutionary ferment for themselves and precipitate their longed-for crypto-Fascist dictatorship of wealth and privilege and be done, finally, with the impediments of law and the constitution and the Public Interest.

But Limbaugh, Gingrich and the like are getting old, and though they may enjoy their demagogery for its own sake, and Gingrich for his part loves to parse and prate and come up with slogans that are supposed to pass for policy prescriptions. Few are listening.

Hannity? Younger. Fiery-er. Or Beck's untamed emotional fury?

Well, there are plenty of candidates on the right, almost none on the left, what left there is in this country. The absence of a Left or any (real) Leftist firebrands in this country leaves a vacuum, and it is filled by corporatist/imperialists like... well... Our President, His Excellency Barack Obama. He fills that vacuum very well, it seems to me, but there is no doubt in my mind that he's got no interest in building a movement and leading a revolution. The idea is absurd. His whole purpose in office seems clear: to further a neo-liberal program of loot and pillage to further enhance the power and wealth of the already obscenely wealthy and powerful, with occasional scraps and bones thrown to the masses to keep them tame or at least quiet.

For now his program is working. Whether it can continue to, as the real economy continues to spiral into the toilet and more and more real people suffer, can't be foretold. Things are not nearly as bad as they most certainly can get.

But every one of us is aware as never before of the suffering all around us if we are not already in that state ourselves. There is little or no succor available to most of those who have fallen through the gaping voids in the American "safety net", and as more and more Americans fall into the Abyss, their outcries are heard more and more clearly.

Many of those who have lost their jobs are not going to be re-employed, ever. The industries or businesses they once worked in are gone and are not coming back. There are no jobs programs to put people back to work in part because there is no intention of re-employing many of those who are now "surplus labor". One of the caveats of Clinton's Welfare Reform efforts was a requirement that business and industry provide jobs for the millions who would no longer be receiving welfare. And the plutocracy stepped up (of course they had "incentives," but that's another issue.) Jobs were found for many people who had not been employable for much of their lives. It was the most amazing thing. Many of them stayed employed, even though they had never been considered stable workers before.

But now, many of these workers -- we might even expect most of them -- have been sloughed off, forced back out of the labor system, and more than likely most of them will never go back to work. But there are no welfare or other programs for them. Right now, many of them are winding up in the tent encampments that are springing up around nearly every major city in the country. "Hoovervilles" in modern dress. They are living on whatever charity communities can muster, but there is less and less of that as the need increases and the number of those who can contribute declines.

What happens in a few years when these encampments have grown with more and more "surplus" and dispossessed Americans, and nothing has been done to relieve their situation? Hardly anyone is even considering that.

But as the vaunted middle class continues to be devastated by the economic decline, more and more seemingly secure individuals and households will wind up in the camps, and what then? What happens when there is no work, no money, no more charity?

Do Americans just lie down and die?

In fact, Death is stalking the land even now, as the economic collapse forces governments and foundations and other institutions to cut back on or eliminate programs of medical aid to various populations, cutting them off from treatment, drugs and so on that have kept them alive, and they are dying. That's what happens.

Suicide and mass killing statistics aren't looking good. How much worse these factors can become before Americans are induced to do something about it is hard to gauge. Americans have been almost sublimely passive for many years now, no matter what happens, and though we wonder what might trigger them to action, nothing that has so far happened has spurred very many of them from their torpor. As a friend said, as long as they have their Big Screen TeeVees and their Take and Bake Pizza, they'll sit in their easy chairs and eat and be entertained and do nothing.

And that is just the way The Powers That Be like it.

But as more and more of them head to the tent-camps with their few pitiful possessions....?

Is there a Lenin on the horizon?

As the Russian Empire collapsed, there wasn't a Lenin -- not until he appeared, out of exile, seemingly out of nowhere, at the Finland Station in Petrograd and started haranguing the People. To act. To do something. To take control of their own future.

The rest, as they say, is History.

Too Late for Tumbrils?

I always had this notion of a Grand Parade of Tumbrils down Pennsylvania Avenue with all the hucksters and (neo)conmen who have been robbing and killing and raping with such utter impunity for years and years trussed up and hauled forth to their disposition on the steps of the Capitol.

But no.

We're still too polite for that.

It should be glaringly obvious by now that the Current Administration has no intention whatsoever of interfering in any way with the continued payment of extortion to the Masters of the Universe who order them around just as they ordered around the Busheviks in the Previous Regime.

It should be further obvious by now that the Current Administration has no intention of doing much of anything to provide more than minimal (and hard-to-get) aid and succor to the millions of proles who are down on their luck and out on their asses right now, nor for the millions more yet to be surplussed.

And the People continue to take it.

It may well be too late for tumbrils or any effective Peoples' Action against the looters and murderers who control this country with an iron grip.

Who could have imagined...?

Another New Mexico Story

"Salt of the Earth" (1954)

It's still one of the most inspirational Labor movies of any era, and it really puts to shame the languid indifference and/or passive argumentation that passes for "opposition" today.

That it is set in New Mexico, based on a real strike at a real mine in 1951, is a bonus. The movie deals with racial, ethnic and gender discrimination quite openly and productively; labor exploitation of course is central. But what moves people still is the fact that the strikers take charge of their own fate, they are prepared to suffer, be gassed, jailed, starved out, run over by rogue cops, etc. in order to achieve their objectives -- which they do -- and they are supported by hundreds of thousands of workers all over the country and the world.

Of course the picture was made by blacklisted Hollywood types who ran afoul of the Red-baiting of the post WWII era. But their work stands tall, today as yesterday, and it should be seen now as a reminder -- as a forceful reminder -- of just what "struggle" means.



Also available in a somewhat better version at Internet Archive.



"The People, united, will never be divided..."

Here in New Mexico, otra vez

About Albuquerque.

The Marrakesh, the Timbuktu of America, The City at the End of the World.

V. B. Price speaks of the Albuquerque he found in 1958, and speaks of the freedom, the liberation he felt crossing the Arizona/New Mexico state line on Route 66 (through one of the most baroque clefts in the mesas you could ask for, but he doesn't mention that) and I know just what he means. I feel the same liberation feeling every time I drive through that cleft. My heart soars. A big grin plastered on my face. "Home."

KNME has lots of online videos at its site. Worth spending some time exploring.

Here in New Mexico...

Well, not exactly. I'm back in California now.

I was intending to post while I was away in New Mexico last week, but discovered an internet connection was impossible to maintain for more than a few minutes at a time and my laptop was giving me headaches with frozen/nonfunctioning browsers. Rather than rassle with it and try to make it work, I let things stew for the duration, didn't even get off more than an email or two, and busied myself with chores and other business neglected since I was there in August of last year.

There was plenty to do, as there always is at that old adobe ranch house we picked up "cheap" in 2005. It needs fairly constant maintenance and attention which it doesn't get when I'm as tied up with other things (like hospice care at home), so coming back to it after so many months away made for many discoveries and a lengthening lists of items to take care of.

Starting with the landscaping. This was something that got put on hold when the nice lady we'd engaged to do the preliminaries, planning, cleanup and whatnot flaked on us and disappeared. I'm not all that surprised, actually. It was a challenge, to say the least, and I know she was frustrated at many turns as she tried to get helpers from Albuquerque and the local area to work on the trees, prepare plantings, lay out paths, get some gravel in and so on. But then, she kept saying she was hauling the cuttings and whatnot out to Bernalillo County's landfill in Tijeras, and she had to pay every time, and I thought that was kind of crazy because it was over 30 miles, and as far as I knew there was a recycle site not more than a mile away from our place where they took everything, including garden debris and cuttings, and they didn't charge. I told her about it, and she just seemed flummoxed, and continued hauling to Bernalillo. Yikes. After she got the high grass cut down and most of the trash taken away, she was gone. Left no plans, nothing, and we got a bill for all that hauling in addition to what we'd paid for the cleanup and the plans.

I understand from neighbors, however, that there is a man in the neighborhood who is interested in picking up where she left off. I've talked to him briefly, and when I have more time -- which I didn't have during this trip due to other priorities -- we'll get together and figure out what to do.

Well, let's hope anyway.

One of my priorities while I was there was taking care of some wiring issues, and to do that, I needed some wire nuts, a handful, you know, this sort:



common as the day, and you'd expect available most anywhere.

Only you'd be wrong. There's an Alco store -- something like a Woolworth's -- that has a modest hardware section, a few miles away in town and there was not a wire nut to be found. There were other sorts of connectors, but not what I needed or wanted, so I thought I'd go to the Ace Hardware and feed store a few miles away in the other direction. They always had what you needed though it might take some time to find it.

Closed. Shut down. Out of business. Oh.

Well, there were other Ace Hardware stores in other towns nearby; there was even a dreaded Wal-Mart no more than ten miles away, and surely they would have wire nuts, right?

Wrong.

Checked the Wal-Mart first; no wire nuts. The first time I went there a few months after it opened, for a shovel, they didn't have any pointed blade shovels, either. What exactly is the point of Wal-Mart?

The Ace Hardware that had been at the crossroads? Gone. Not even a sign that it had ever been there. Next town over, same thing. No hardware store.

So what I eventually wound up doing was going all the way to the Lowe's on Juan Tabo in Albuquerque, on a crazy expedition for a handful of wire nuts. At least I knew they would have them, right?

Well, as I sought them out, I almost thought they didn't, every other kind of electrical connector imaginable, but not common wire nuts, at least not until the very end of the aisle, where finally I found them. Whew. Mission accomplished.

Of course by that time, I almost forgot what I needed them for.

But boy, it got me to thinking. Thoughts that had been in the back of my mind for some time, the sort of "What If" thoughts that nobody really wants to contemplate:

"What if things you take for granted are no longer available or easy and convenient to get? What do you do?" In New Mexico, this is a reality that people have been dealing with for centuries, so people who are adapted to the way things have long been in rural New Mexico rarely let the absence of something bother them too much.

They make do, find substitutes, or they do without. It's a way of life.

For a city boy like me it takes some getting used to, and sometimes I'm better at it than others.

An expedition like I did, for wire nuts, was silly, at bottom, and I knew it at the time, but I wanted to see what was happening to some of what we do take for granted as the economic collapse ripples through the country and what kind of impact it's having on rural areas in NM especially.

Locally, the impact was more pronounced than I at first thought. Not only was the Ace Hardware and Feed Store gone, but lots of businesses had closed -- well, "lots" in a comparative sense, not being so many to begin with. The losses left swaths of vacant business properties along the main road, some sporting For Lease signs, but some just boarded up or even abandoned altogether. Restaurants had closed -- I counted three that were no longer in operation, though one that had been marginal at best last year was apparently thriving now. Even the Flea Market appeared to be shut down, though I wasn't sure and didn't ask anyone.

The real estate market had essentially collapsed. Nothing was being bought or sold, only one property transferred in the last six months.

The grocery store was well stocked, and the in-store hot food and deli section was mobbed at lunch time, which I thought was a positive sign.

One gas station had closed and was completely gone -- as if there had never been one there at all. Others had changed hands, doing what looked like a kind of musical chairs -- the Chevron station had become a Conoco, the Phillips 66 had become a no-name discount station, Texaco at the truck stop had been replaced by Shell, etc.

I even found a new hardware store in town, next to the surviving rib joint, in what had been a small vacant building last year, so my expedition wasn't really necessary, but if I hadn't done it, would I have discovered what I did?

Some of my neighbors were doing very well on a comparative prosperity scale while others were having a very tough time of it indeed. A number of residences round about had been abandoned or were vacant, while one had burned due to arson, the culprit caught, tried and sentenced already. I realized our house had been in that same abandoned situation for years before we bought it, and it's now occupied only a few weeks a year, and the outside still looks pretty shabby because nobody's around to do the landscaping -- among other things. Thank goodness for neighbors who look out for us. There was a tagging incident last year, "4:20" (for which we're assuming the more benign interpretation), but it hasn't been repeated.

Wasn't able to do a complete assessment, but it appears the local population has dropped by some dozens, from a high of only 1,500 or so anyway.

And the future?

Remains to be seen, but we can say with some certainty that much of what we are counting on just won't be there, many of our assumptions will be challenged, and our expectations won't be met.

How we cope is the question.

The Plan

(Image from Despair, Inc., where you need to go to consider your ultimate Demotivator­® and then end your sorry existence on our overburdened planet and be done with it.)

So far as we can tell, the Recovery Plan now going forward in the United States does not intend to provide significant debt relief for households. Instead, the Plan will be focused on rescue for the banks and Wall Street, in what looks like a never-ending stream of multi-trillion-dollar bailouts that primarily benefit those individuals and interests that got us into this mess and appear to fully intend to keep us there indefinitely.

We, The People, are to be allowed to focus our attentions on getting out from under the debt burden imposed upon us (as well as that we have taken on ourselves) by cutting back on spending and devoting more of our income to debt service. Those who can't do it due to the contracting economy -- because of job loss or other conditions -- are to be permitted limited opportunities for debt restructuring, sometimes debt discharge, in bankruptcy.

Otherwise, it's pay till you drop. Whatever your creditors demand. And be quick about it.

The economy is tailspinning downwards because there is so little household spending, and so the Government is set to pick up the slack, or at least some of it, to keep the economy from complete collapse.

Government spending on programs and services is to increase substantially -- including aid to the states and to localities for various social services and to help them cover budget deficits due to declining local and state tax revenues -- and a sort of semi-public works infrastructure planning and construction effort is to get under way that is intended to put some of the unemployed (primarily heavy construction workers) back to work beginning sometime this year and continuing for many years to come.

So far as I can tell, there seems to be an effort afoot to restructure the workforce, essentially making some segments of the workforce "redundant", as they used to say in Britain, and potentially unemployable going forward. In other words, a lot of those who have lost their jobs and will lose their jobs in the current economic situation will not return to the workforce, by design.

This is in some ways a return to the way things used to be, pre-Reaganism and especially pre-Clinton Welfare Reform. The problem is that many of the social services and much of the public acceptance of a large body of "unemployables" no longer exist to handle the millions who are being thrust into this condition. Millions have lost their jobs, millions more will lose them. Millions of people have lost their homes, millions more will lose them. And many will not get jobs or homes back any time soon. And, at least for the time being, there will be few or no social services to assist the bulk of them.

By design. By intent.

I'd call this state of affairs Social Darwinism, social engineering on a grand scale, but when the People have essentially no opportunity to contest the situation, and no skills to do it with if the opportunities were there, it's more like an Imperial conquest of yore -- without the bloodshed. Yet.

So we can start imagining what the future holds, just what it is Our Rulers have in mind over the long term, and we can start thinking about what sort of society we want to emerge from the current crisis.

One of the aspects of the Reagan/Bush years that was so startling to me was the absence of any sort of Future Vision, especially during the Bush 2 Regime. That period is marked by a complete disregard for, indeed disdain for, The Future, as if it not only didn't matter, it wasn't going to happen. Period.

Now we're slowly shifting back to a Future Vision perspective that will allow us to imagine what will be and what ought to be even as we pick through the rubble of What Is.

All I'd say right now is that it is very unwise to leave envisioning the Future entirely to the Ruling Class. They've made such a cock-up of the Present, perhaps someone else -- We, the People, for example -- ought to take the lead in this endeavor.