"The Crisis Is Upon Us"

We've been hearing this for over a year now, ever since Trump ascended the throne and before.

"Existential Crisis!!!! Run and Hide!!!! Resist!!!!! The Republic is Doomed!!!!! Russia! Russia!!! Russia!!!!" Yadda, yadda.

And  I've been thinking all this time that if the situation really is as described by the Doomsayers then surely there would be an intervention. Surely there would be.

Our government is quite adept at dealing with existential crises by any means necessary. And over the course of the current regime, we've seen plenty of instances in which this or that crisis or looming catastrophe brought on by Himself has been... handled... one way or another to mitigate the damage and effects that following the dictates from On High would have caused.

That's not to say things have been stabilized by any means. This has been a roller-coaster ride of unprecedented whipsawing and violent slides. It's wild, but I get the impression that the Overclass is so far fine with it.

If they felt any of the previous Existential Crises brought on by the regime were significant enough to do something about, they would have done it by now. That they haven't done it by now is the clearest sign I can think of that they're satisfied that Trump has been sufficiently limited in his ability to precipitate real Existential Crisis and that what he and his wrecking crew are allowed to do is essentially just what the Overclass wants done and would have done through any pretender to the throne.

Mrs Clinton would have gone about it somewhat differently, but the outcome would have been essentially the same. Maybe not so much Crisis and Chaos, but following the same path toward the same denouement.

But this time, what I see of the punditry (remember, no cable teevee in the Ché household --ever) seems to be saying "It's different." As if this were the Real Thing, we're reaching the end of the roller coaster ride, and it will be over sooner rather than later.

Skepticism is warranted. Too many people are profiting too much from keeping the ride going to shut it down now. Trump has shown that he can be rather easily hamstrung from doing what would jeopardize class and gang interests while he can be guided toward actions which enhance their interests.

The tax cut for the wealthy* was a step, not the end point, of an overall scheme to recreate "government" as the ham-fisted, jack-booted enforcer of Overclass interest. Of course, it's always had that aspect, but over the last generation or so (since Reagan), the purpose of government has been shifted almost entirely away from "public interest" toward private, pecuniary interest and enforcement of increasingly oppressive rules and laws over the Lesser People.

As has often been pointed out, the so-called tax cut actually increases tax liability for a significant percentage of the middle and lower classes. That's by design -- and it happened under Reagan, too. The Overclass simply doesn't believe it should be paying for government. Like medieval lords, they believe the Rabble should be paying them to lord it over all creation, and that all taxes should be extracted by any means necessary from the Rabble. That's the direction we've been headed for a very long time, and the tax cut is just another step.

When we examine what ICE and other agencies are actually doing we see the outline of what Our Rulers have in mind for all of us: No protection from social/political predators and despoilers at all. Unless you have the power (and money) to hire your own fixers and Guidos, tough luck, suckers.

Gangster rule.

Some people -- and it seems most People Who Matter -- are fine with it. It's what they've wanted all along. So now they're closer than ever to it. Calling it "The Crisis" may be accurate enough, but they're not planning to do anything about it. And even if there is a Dem Wave this fall, so what?

Apart from style, what would really change?

And even style may not be that different.

So despite all, I'm not seeing buy in from the Overclass that Trump has to go. He's proved his worth to them as entertainment for the masses over and over again. He's also a money-maker for them. Pence wouldn't be that. Not on a bet, and likely, if he rose to the presidency, he would have to be removed for cause. Not so much for Trump.

So let's say Trump does something really stupid and it has negative effects on the Overclass. The Crisis manifests in ways they don't like. What then? Remember, "Never let a crisis go to waste. Every crisis is an opportunity." In other words, "So what, let's make money."

And so it is likely to go.

The Crisis has been upon us for a very long time, hasn't it?

No matter what else happens, we'll still be in Crisis. Our Rulers like it like that.

Normalizing the Spectacle

Summer tends to be the media silly season dominated by sharks and missing white women. But because there is Trump and Republican dominance of government at every level, among other things, the usual summer media obsessions have to take a backseat. In fact, I haven't heard a single missing white woman story this summer, have you?

Something's different. Something's changed.

Without cable news in our house, our media landscape is somewhat different than that of many Americans, but the fact that we watch television news at all means that we're still subject to the propaganda, lies and strict gatekeeping that are big parts of the media landscape. Our preferred television news outlets are Democracy Now! and PBS NewsHour. On Sundays, we tend to watch one or another of the Sabbath Gasbag Shows, though sometimes we skip it. Why bother, right?

It's a rare thing if we watch one of the network news shows or one of the morning shows. (We watch endless repeats of "Laramie" on GRIT instead.)

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! tends to restrict her coverage to those issues and stories she is personally interested in or invested in. She corrals her topics so strictly sometimes that "news" -- as in what's going on now -- is absent while a sort of academic consideration of potentialities and so forth dominates her hour. When you're familiar enough with her ways, this isn't too bothersome, but it can be frustrating.

NewsHour is a more general and standard-model television news program -- with a twist. They have literary pretensions, and they often feature artists and writers who have something to say. Because Ms. Ché is in a creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she's more than a little interested in that part of the NewsHour.

Both news programs must be conscious of their funders and do what they can, and sometimes what they must, not to cross them.

Amy's funding tends to be somewhat opaque, but it appears to come from Pacifica and a select group of well-off patrons and foundations which seek to ensure that a leftish perspective on the news is at least available to the public if not dominant therein.

NewsHour's funding is much more mainstream. Thus their news is, too, but with that literary/artistic twist that you generally won't find in the typical network or cable news program.

With all that said, it appears that the entire news media industry has collectively decided to normalize the spectacle of Trump-de-do this summer in place of the usual diet of sharks and missing white women.

In other words, whatever he tweets, whatever he does, wherever he goes, and whomever he chitters with will dominate all news cycles of every outlet almost as if he were a shark or missing white woman.  We're supposed to be amazed and appalled, I guess.

It's the spectacle that matters most. And making believe it's like any other summer spectacle. Keep the Rabble entertained and unable to focus on what's really going on.

So long as Trump can do that, so long will he be secure in office.

He seems to be doing that with a kind of sharp-elbowed relish that we haven't seen in presidents for a long time -- most of us alive today have never seen it which is why it's so shocking on the one hand, and so entertaining on the other. Mr. Trump has no sense of noblesse politesse. 

He's a gangster, and a lot of Americans like that.

He's an upper crust twit. Some Americans seem to like that, too.

He's a buffoon. Addled. Clearly out of his depth, but he doesn't care, nor do enough Americans to worry about.

He obviously doesn't have enough handlers to keep him in line, but so what? The presidency has been so jokified during his reign to date, all the handlers in the world wouldn't be able to restore the "dignity" to the office. That's gone. Precedent has been set. Oh well!

From now on, presidencies will have to include a lummox squiring around a surgically remodeled Stepford Wife, A boy that "ain't right." A craven group of toadies. An ultra-craven group of ideologically driven "disruptors." Incompetence and incoherence will be the standard of rule from the Oval Office. There will be no going back.

I always dread the summer silly season because it tends to shroud the important issues that can easily lead to catastrophe after Labor Day. We've been down this road before. But this is different, I think, because more of those issues are out in the open. The precipitated crisis in the Persian Gulf, for example, over Qatar's "support for terrorism" could very easily lead--  stupidly and inadvertently -- to a Guns of August scenario that could touch off the War of the Ages . Who knew that the Balkan Thing and the assassination of an Archduke nobody liked would lead to WWI for example. The Saudi royals simply  aren't very bright, but none of these anachronisms in the Gulf seem to have very much on the ball smarts-wise.

Inject something like the Trump Spectacle into the midst of it, and... whoopsy!

So it goes.

But then, taking advantage of crisis is what it's all about, isn't it? Even if you have to engineer crisis. Somebody comes out on top, no? So let it be...who?

This is all becoming normalized.

I'm such a stick in the mud, I don't like it. Doesn't get my juices flowing.

It's garbage day out here in the wilderness. Have to get m'sef in gear and get the can out to the road. At least we have garbage pick up. A lot of folks around here -- even the fancy ones -- have to shlepp their trash to the transfer station themselves. The way of the world...

The Kennedy Assassination -- Fifty Years On

Official Portrait of John F. Kennedy

Yes, I remember where I was and what I was doing when the word came over the high school loudspeakers that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, and then, a little while later, that he was dead, and we would be sent home for the rest of the day.

Though it was quite a distance, I walked home because they said the buses wouldn't come for several hours -- at the regular time. I was in a daze pondering the meaning of what had happened, pondering, too, whether it could be true.

At the time, the very idea of assassination was almost beyond comprehension. Oh, in the dim and distant past, there had been a number of presidential assassinations, but to hear of one now was simply out of the question. We Americans didn't do those sorts of things. Not any more. We were too advanced for such crude and shocking methods of political change.

Stock Market Turbo Drive

Once there was news of a Cliff Deal, the stock market shifted into Turbo Drive, running up the Average by double digits, on the promise of... what, exactly?

The "news" has been all agog about "certainty." LOL.

"Knowing what the tax rates will be" was all it took for the Market to fluff itself up and dance a little, it seems. If that's the case, why wasn't something done sooner? After all, everyone wants to see their stocks fluffed and dancing, don't we? High prices for stocks mean that our Retirement Funds have recovered, don't they? High prices for stocks mean that all is right with the world, regardless of whether God's in His Heaven, né?

"Certainty!"

Of course the certainty that most households are facing is that their take home pay will be ratcheted down by 2%, starting now thanks to the expiration of the Payroll Tax Holiday.

Initially as I scanned the "news" about the Deal, there was no recognition of this factor at all; it was as if the effects of the Deal were entirely a matter of the handful of people who would be experiencing higher income tax rates. Then, slowly, the millions who would continue to receive extended unemployment benefits were included in the mix (note: they pay income taxes but not payroll taxes).

Then yesterday, of a sudden and as if it were the dawn,  there was some chatter on the "news" and in the blogosphere about that fact that "everyone's" take home pay would be lower by 2% -- well, up to the SS cap of $113,000 or so. This was, so the narrative aborning said, the result of the expiration of the Payroll Tax Holiday, and while nobody said anything about it during the Cliff Negotiations, it was well-known that the Holiday was only temporary and would certainly be expiring at some point. That point came. You see.

Consequently, most households will experience a diminution in their take home pay, the median being around $1,000 this year, the maximum being around $2,300. Per worker. For someone in the upper income brackets, that's a hardly noticeable hit.

For someone just getting by, it could be devastating.

Many "news" reports tried to make light of it, as if reducing household incomes further in this economy is going to have either no effect on the overall economy or will somehow make things better by enforcing thrift, don't you know. There was the cheery morning story that you could always go out and get a part time job to make up the shortfall. Ha ha. Right. There are no jobs, remember?

The commentariat which had been largely silent about it divided along predictable lines. The clearest division was the notion that so long as "I've got mine" (ie: continued low income tax rates, unemployment benefits, or what have you), the effect on you doesn't matter a whit, and you should have known this was going to happen anyway, too bad so sad.

Against this was posed the part of the commentariat that can do arithmetic and who pointed out that cutting household disposable income by 2% (even if it is to shore up Social Security, which is a whole other battle field) in this economy is an austerity measure that will have severe consequences to households in the short term and will do nothing to shore up the SS system over the long term, because as an austerity measure, it does nothing to improve the employment picture, in fact makes it worse by further tamping down demand.

"But but but but Social Security! You want to save Social Security, don't you!" Yes, well...

You can't "save" Social Security in this economy by further reducing the amount of money households have to spend; it's insane. It doesn't work.

Reducing household spendable income by 2% doesn't shore up Social Security; in fact it reduces Social Security finances by limiting or even reversing job growth due to the fact that households have less to spend and so demand is reduced. Job growth is what maintains Social Security's financial well-being, and Our Rulers have been doing everything they can to ensure that job growth is minimized and that salaries and benefits are reduced during this Perpetual Recession.

The whole struggle over the Chained CPI to figure Social Security (and other) benefits is a backdoor means of reducing Social Security benefits, which has additional negative effects on job growth and demand.

It's a vicious cycle that we've been going round and round on for years.

The economic effects of reducing household income while burdening them with ever greater levels of debt are plain to see. Yet because the stock market is in turbo drive, only a few seem to notice, and they can be easily dismissed as spoil-sports and cranks.

The White House, we're told, decided not to fight to further extend the Payroll Tax Holiday, and decided it wasn't worth the struggle to find some other form of replacement. The White House decided that reducing most household's disposable income by 2% was a small price to pay for raising the top income tax rate to 39.6% -- which will have the effect of reducing some top earner household's disposable income by something less than 1%. It's a bargain, innit?

We can expect more of this kind of thing as the various economic crises and cliffs baked in to this year's budget and economic struggles are reached.

The American People are going to get even poorer while the High and the Mighty get even richer.

That's the Real Deal, no matter how high stock prices climb.

When Words Have No Meaning -- the Continuing Threat of DomesticTerrorist Outfits Like Occupy

Freedom of Information Act requests by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund have led to the release of a trove of FBI documents related to the surveillance and violent suppression of Occupy and related groups during this year and last, including not-surprising references to them as potential "criminal" and "domestic terrorist" groups, despite the fact that Occupy organizers professed nonviolence and called for peaceful protest.

Wouldn't you know.

It's no surprise. Those of us who were involved with Occupy, even peripherally, during the heady days of occupation and demonstration were well aware of the constant surveillance by various representatives of authority -- some of whom were pleased and proud enough of their duties to introduce themselves to us.

Furthermore, as soon as the police actions began the appearance of squadrons of police in full riot gear was something of a sure indication that the Occupy demonstrations were officially considered primary threats to civic order and domestic peace. Once the official "snatch and grab" actions began (ie: targeting, kidnapping, and arresting seemingly random Occupy participants) it was clear that the police considered the Occupy activities per se to be criminal.

Nevertheless, the use of terms like "criminal" and "domestic terrorist" to describe or define Occupy and the activities and demonstrations in any official context shows how debased our language has become, and that in turn helps us understand how debased our government and its official representatives have become.

"Crime" and "terrorism" have become meaningless terms, bandied about to describe any activity at all.

Here's a link to the PCJF report: http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

And here's a link to a really great interview with Scott Noble: http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/the_power_principle_an_interview_with_filmmaker_scott_noble/

Merry Christmas!

As For Me

One Kaiser Plaza, Oakland, CA. Headquarters of Kaiser Permanente.

I think I posted a while back that today is the last day I will have comprehensive health care coverage. For a little over a year when I am eligible for Medicare, I'll be on my own. 

I have been covered through Kaiser Permanente for the last 25 years or so, very rarely using their services but comforted by the knowledge that it was there if I needed it. I didn't realize how costly it had become until the COBRA statement came saying that to maintain the coverage we have would cost close to $3,000 per month. Oh really. Isn't that something. At Kaiser??? Eeek.

Well, after considering the risks/benefits, the costs, and the fact that we would soon not be anywhere near a Kaiser facility, the answer was "No thanks." Other COBRA plans were available at $1,500 a month and up, but they didn't seem worthwhile either -- high deductibles, limited coverage, rather pointless, really.

Thankfully, while I've faced some life-threatening illnesses, I don't have a chronic condition that requires continual treatment and care -- at least not yet. The debilities of age do seem to be creeping up on me, but I've been able to manage them on my own well enough up to this point... let's hope it stays that way.

Interestingly, while medical coverage was hyper-expensive (I have no clue how older workers -- or ex-workers as the case may be -- are supposed to manage such huge COBRA bills to maintain coverage), dental and vision coverage were made available at no cost. So there's that.

I don't know that the ACA would actually have any positive effect on this situation. COBRA would still be available, but it would still be out of reach financially -- at least so far as I've been able to puzzle out the limited information I've seen. If there really is a 6% of gross income limit on health care insurance costs to households, then that actually would make a big difference, but nothing is in stone until it is graven there, and nothing will be graven until after Decision 2012 concludes.

The notion that the First Thing President Romney Will Do is "Repeal Obamacare" is patently absurd, of course. Having seen this man's ways for a while, what he will do First is to sell the rubes on the kabuki that he will be conducting from day one. He has no intention of repealing Obamacare -- it's too lucrative to his owners and sponsors. Besides, despite his August Pretensions, even he doesn't have the power to "repeal" it. Not that he would want to. He might be inclined to suggest changes to the program that increase costs and limits coverage to individuals and households, but otherwise he will leave it pretty much alone. The Industry won't let him muck with it very much.

On the other hand, if Obama receives another term -- which is looking more likely, his political instincts are still astonishing -- he would probably be inclined to tweak it in a similar direction, simply because that's what he does. If an R suggests "improvements" he's right there. So. ACA or nothing, that's what the nation is going to be stuck with.

I've dealt with Medicare and Medicaid on behalf of others in the past, and as long as you can get care, they're fine. The problem is getting care prior to a crisis -- or even in a crisis in some cases. I've spent up to 12 hours in an ER waiting room with a Medicare patient before any sort of treatment at all was offered; and of course once she was seen and treatment was begun, she was in dire shape.
Who would have thought.

There was no cost to the patient for Medicaid treatment, though now there are small co-pays for doctor visits and much higher ones for ER visits (of course, when the doctor refers you to the ER, what are you supposed to do?)  Medicare co-pays are still something of a mystery to me. At no time was anything out of pocket demanded, but costs beyond what Medicare reimbursed would be billed to the patient up to certain limits. I still don't quite understand how it worked, though. Nevertheless, I am well aware of all kinds of shady billing practices by providers. Rick Scott is only the tip of the iceberg. It seems like every provider engages in bill-padding at the very least, frequently much worse.

 There are nowhere near enough providers and facilities to accommodate a large influx of new patients, and it has long been my impression that the basic idea of the ACA is to get payment now for future medical care -- that quite likely will not be available. It certainly won't be in the short term. This will mean that people will be "covered" for treatment they can't get. Brilliant!

As I understand it, money for more community care clinics is being fervently stripped out of the ACA. These clinics are an important step in expanding access to care, but if the money is being stripped out as we speak, it's patently obvious that expanding access is not on the agenda, not that it truly ever was. If I recall correctly, Bernie Sanders was the one who demanded the clinics, and he was bought off with promises that have been relatively meaningless ever since. If there is little or no access to care due to lack of personnel and facilities, regardless of coverage and subsidies and all the rest of it, then it's pretty obvious that the whole Rube Goldberg contraption of the ACA was never meant to do much more than keep the insurance cartels and the medical industrial complex in profits forever.

Yes, I'm cynical about these things.

From the beginning the correct solution to America's medical care crisis was expanding and improving something like Medicare for All. This is not rocket science, this is obvious, and it was obvious when the correct solution was never on the table let alone considered that the point of the ACA was profit for the medical cartels. Period. If somebody gets medical treatment they otherwise wouldn't, oh well!

The correct solution was to remove the middle-man cost and inconvenience burden of insurance companies, simplify, streamline, make care available, tax to fund it, aggressively expand professional training, and provide an extensive network of primary care facilities. The correct solution was to put all of this in the public sphere, as a public health matter, rather than expanding private, for profit health care.

This has all been known for decades.

And yet the Health Care Reform panels never even heard let alone considered the correct solution.

Ah, but ACA is better than nothing!

The question is for whom?

The Greek Thing Continued

Though you wouldn't know it in this country, the media not working weekends and all, there will be a do-over Greek election tomorrow in which the radical left might eke out a victory -- yes, it really is a radical left over there, whereas in the United States, what passes for the "left" is composed of merely slightly less overtly radical rightists. It is widely assumed that no matter what the results of the Greek election are, some sort of jiggering of the enforced economic terms dictated on Athens from Berlin and Brussels will take place.

The fact that the Greek People are in extremis has not escaped notice either in Europe or in the rest of creation. That even greater levels of hardship are being demanded of the EuroPeriphery by the Core is widely recognized as self-defeating, and yet, there they go. As if it is the only thing they know. No matter what, the Greek -- and other Peripheral Peoples -- must be made to pay for the gambling losses of the major banks.

Bluntly put, this is how the colonial powers behaved toward their targets of opportunity back in the day. Much of the expansion of European colonial power was driven by very similar economic extortion. When the peoples to be subjected to colonial rule balked at the extortionate demands of the colonial powers -- demands that were made whether or not the to-be-colonized peoples were in debt to the colonial powers -- the colonial gunboats would commence shelling ports, the governmental palace (if there was one) was put to the torch, and members of the elite were rounded up and executed; a puppet of the colonists was put on the throne or in charge of the colonized sector, and the Europeans flocked in (though never in great numbers) to extract labor and resources from the cowed and terrorized People while piously nattering about Civilizing the Natives. Natives who were subject to extreme cruelty, brutality, sometimes genocide (let's talk about the Belgian Congo one day) famine, disease and massacre until they were "pacified" in service to their masters.

So now Frau Merkel and her assistants are trying to do it to Greece. That the Hellenes balk is of no account to her or to Mme Lagrand over at the IMF or to any of the other Core leaders. Hell no. Let them balk,  they can't do anything about the looting, plunder and pillage that is under way, let alone what is to come. They are as powerless as any other subject people. They have lost and they must pay.

Reversion.

It's the new "Forward!"

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Of course what's striking about this video documentary of the Greek healthcare system in mortal crisis is that these are the approximate conditions that millions upon tens of millions of Americans face all the time, indeed, which many more Americans can identify with even if they (still) have health care coverage.

Restricting access -- whether or not the patient has coverage -- has become the mantra of the field.

Statistics and Stories

Arrest in Nashville




Denver Police Action -- suspected provocateurs spotted as well... hmm.


Sam Seder Explains It All For You -- Re: Albany, NY

I've been idly working on another statistical snapshot of the Occupy Movement, this time concentrating on Capital cities and the contrasts in how the Authorties have been dealing with the demonstrations and occupations.

Albany, NY, is of course the stand out model, where the local police department essentially refused direct orders from on high to arrest the rabble and clear them from the Capitol grounds. The police said No, they had many more important things to do.

To be blunt, this is what has to happen. The police have discretion, everywhere, in their enforcement of the Law, and it is quite possible for them to use that discretion to say, "No, we won't arrest them, this is a waste of our time."

Denver, CO on the other hand, has witnessed repeated episodes of clearance and return, and at least one episode of police pepper spraying, tear gassing, and firing of "rubber bullets" on the crowd. ("Rubber bullets" in quotes because they are projectiles related to paintballs, fired from paintball guns, rather than actual rubber coated bullets fired from regular rifles.) There have been several dozen arrests over the period of the confrontations.

Richmond, VA's Occupation had a Visitation from its mayor that felt -- at least in the video I saw -- not unlike the Visitation in Sacramento by KJ, the upshot being that He, in His Majesty, would treat with the "leaders" of the Occupation, in Dialogue, to See What Could Be Done.

Of course, days later, the camp was cleared with a bulldozer. So it goes. I don't know about arrests yet.

Santa Fe, NM's Occupation, on the other hand, has been given a chunk of park land in the Railroad District where they may stay indefinitely with the encouragement and support of the City.

Of course, this has led to jealousy in Albuquerque where the Occupation was evicted from the UNM campus the other night, without much ceremony, but with several dozen arrests, and the protest demonstration that followed the clearance of Camp Coyote was met with considerable force by the police -- who used tear gas to break it up. Some wag pointed out that Santa Fe's Occupation was getting away with it because they can afford lawyers to fight the matter in court. UPDATE: UNM has just re-issued a permit for (Un)Occupy Albuquerque's stay on campus.

Austin, TX has had quite an up and down ride with its Occupation of City Hall's brutalist concrete exterior. The other day, 38 Occupy Austin participants were arrested for... something. Being there, essentially, and not being polite about it. They had set up tables in the City Hall forecourt for food and information, an action they believed was permitted. Police arrived in force and took down the tables; this caused a loud verbal reaction by the Occupiers which in turn led to numerous arrests for disorderly conduct. There have been many incidents of harassment by the Austin authorities during the period of the Occupation, from insisting that the site must be power-washed every night, to prohibitions on this, that, or the other necessary accessory to the Occupation.

Nashville, TN's Occupation was cleared from Legislative Plaza one night, by order of the City, for all the usual "sanitation" reasons, with dozens of arrests, destruction of the camp, yadda, yadda, and until a local judge intervened, all seemed lost. Behold, he ordered a halt to the arrests and that the camp be restored. Who'd a thunk. But the arrests have continued.

Atlanta, GA's Occupation was cleared from a downtown park with many arrests and has regrouped indoors temporarily. Occupy Atlanta announced its intention to reclaim Troy Davis Park on November 5.

Sacramento, CA's crack legal team is supposed to file a suit in Federal court to stop the arrests today (Tuesday), but we'll see. Press conference scheduled at 10am at the Federal Courthouse.

Des Moines, IA's Occupation was cleared, with dozens of arrests, weeks ago now. The Occupation resumed and it is now being subjected to the usual idiotic harassment.

These are just the ones I've been able to follow to date; there are many others of interest, and I'll be trying to collect information on all the Occupations in Capital Cities.

Meanwhile, some stories of being arrested and incarcerated for 'being there' have begun to emerge. I'm surprised there aren't more of them, though. I've heard some brief comments by people who have been arrested here that they have experienced and witnessed things at the jail that have been eye-opening and horrifying, including incidents of arbitrary, unprovoked violence and brutality by the deputies.

But they haven't testified.

This surprises me.

This story, from one of the women who was arrested at the CitiBank branch in New York on October 15 is unusually graphic. It's well worth a read.

A key graph:

During an inordinately lengthy fingerprinting procedure, with the male officers operating the machines and the female officers locking and unlocking our cells as we were called out one by one, it sometimes seemed the police outnumbered us. But still, it took what seemed like hours.

Barely back in our cells, we were taken out again, handcuffed again, this time with a chain between our cuffs, and led “upstairs.” But there had been some mistake. A female officer told "our" officer that, no, she couldn’t process us. Some paperwork was missing, some order, some stamp. Time to cuff us again and go down the stairs back into our cells. How many more instances of handcuffing, uncuffing, leading us up and down stairs and long hallways, waiting, returning, repeating what seemed nonsensical procedures and reversals then followed I do not know and did not count. But a deep sense of disorganization, competence fighting incompetence, if not chaos, reigned. It seemed as if, in the name of bureaucratic rules and regulations, in the name of "security," we were witnessing a dysfunctional institution and people not used to daylight shining in; people generally accountable to no one but themselves.

It's not just a waste of time and money, it's stupid.

Mind-bogglingly stupid. And if this level of official stupidity is applied to peaceful protestors, just think what it is like for someone criminally arrested.

About That All-Important Deficit Crisis

[click image to embiggen]

I wanted to post this handy graph from the New York Times so that it wouldn't get lost in all the yammering about Debt and Crisis that will continue indefinitely. It shows you where the bulk of the deficit has come from (the Bushevik Wars and tax cuts combined with recessionary forces and massive unemployment) and who actually holds the debt Our Rulers are trying to default on (the People of the United States of America, either directly as bondholders, in their pension plans, or indirectly in the Social Security Agency.)

It's pretty clear.

And it's pretty clear who will be hurt if there is a default or downgrade (which, btw, there will be with regard to Social Security almost certainly).

That's what it is.

Stochastic terrorism

This article by dKos writer G2geek is getting a lot of coverage or at least exposure, and it seems to fit in with my notion that these routine killing sprees are actually "triggered," in G2geek's view by cultural and media contexts, they are not the accidental outcomes of "lone wolves" or "psychotic nuts" gone inexplicably rogue.

They are "triggered."

G2geek doesn't discount the possibility that the triggering may be intentional, but seems to shy away from it nonetheless. In such a toxic cultural and media environment, one can assume that some people will be triggered to act out their fantasies and kill. One doesn't have to trigger them intentionally; it happens automatically -- and regularly. And yet, if those who do the triggering are aware of their power to set the killers in motion, why not do it intentionally, at particular times and places, if it's possible to do so?

I can understand shying away from the Tinfoil on a topic like this, but often enough the conspiracy you suspect is actually real, or some version of it is.

One of the aspects in Loughner's case that I find very intriguing is that he really does seem to be trying to communicate (in those videos) what is happening to him. All the talk about mind control and how it is being done may not make sense on the surface but if you think about it in the context of Stochastic Terrorism, you start to realize, "OMG! He's trying to tell us!" I think we'll see that with a lot of the other Shooters out there, too. They understand that they are being "driven" by a force or forces completely beyond their control, and in so many cases, they can point to something in the media that has triggered their rage.

I've noticed who's been out defending the "vitriol" and denying that it has anything to do with the creation of these shootings, each of which, of course, is a singular event with no connection to anything else.

It is the entire Republican political establishment. It is the entire Rightist media complex. It is most of the Mainstream Media plex. It is almost all the Libertarian media -- including the "progressive" blogosphere (Jane and Glenn have become especially shrill in defending the vitriol.) And I noticed last night with a kind of horror that Ezra Klein has taken to defending the vitriol too. Though he rattled on at great length, he was not making a coherent argument; he was all over the map, flailing. And when he was confronted, by another commentator, he practically had a meltdown right there on the teevee.

A case can be made that he wasn't actually defending the vitriol, only the freedom to be vitriolic without being blamed for shoot-em-ups, but the case being made for Stochastic Terrorism is that shoot-em-ups are the inevitable consequence of the kind of media vitriol that Americans are soaked in.

I'm reminded of something from years ago. I think most people who read this little corner of Cyberspace know that I live in Sacramento -- when I'm in California! -- and have lived here for quite a while. Most people know that Rush Limbaugh got his major media start here when he was given a regular show on KFBK Radio. It was at the time a very provocative, even shocking show, but not a whole lot different than his national show now. One of the targets for his vitriol was gay people. It was early in the AIDS epidemic, and he railed against gay people day in and day out. All of a sudden, "incidents" started happening. Gay men -- and suspected gay men -- were being attacked all over town, some badly injured, and I believe one was killed. People were horrified. The police were stymied. The mayor, however, recognized that these attacks stemmed from Limbaugh's constant raving against gay people on his radio show, and she called on him publicly to desist. Of course he denied any mal intent -- as he always does -- but he did tell his followers that he never wanted any of them to attack anyone and if any of his followers were involved in the attacks, he wanted them to stop.

Sure enough. They stopped. At least for a while.

In this case, it wasn't "unstable" people who were being influenced to attack targeted outsiders mindlessly. It was pretty ordinary folks exposed to a constant diet of media rage and outrage, with the implication, always, that they had "permission" to act out their rage violently. This is little different than the talk radio influencing, aiding, abetting and enabling the genocide in Rwanda.

At some point, Americans and their media have got to come to grips with the pervasiveness of hatred and rage and gun violence as the "solution" that they purvey and absorb all the time. People ARE triggered to act. And the outcome gets worse and worse.

What Should Happen

I actually heard a version of this notion on the radio as I was driving this afternoon listening to the Tom Sullivan show. Right wing hack that he is, sometimes Sullivan lets a smidge of uncommon sense slip through.

The idea goes something like this:

While trillions upon trillions of dollars are being shoveled out of the Treasury to support the lavish ways and styles of the plutocracy, the common folks are withering on the vine, their homes foreclosed, cars repossessed, jobs disappearing, credit evaporating. The crunch on Main Street is gathering steam even as the hit on Wall Street is deeply cushioned to say the least.

So why not do a "bottom up" stimulus? This is something people have been clamoring for and it is something the Powers That Be have resisted with all their souls and all their might.

So do it anyway. And the way to do it is to issue a credit account to every taxpayer, an account of say $100,000 for individuals, $200,000 for families (more or less), that could only be used for certain things, such as:

to pay down or pay off a mortgage with the limitation that the mortgage must be at least 24 months old.


• to pay off credit card balances more than two years old.
  
  
• to purchase a new fuel efficient vehicle and/or pay off a car loan
  
  
• to pay off certain other debts (such as medical bills)
  
  

to purchase certain kinds of efficient appliances or to weatherize or improve homes, etc.



Any amounts not used within, say, 12 months would revert to the treasury.

Something like this, essentially getting large amounts of money into individual taxpayers' hands to use for specific purposes intended to "turn the economy around" could well do the trick.

Throwing more trillions at phantoms of wealth on Wall Street and in the bankers' boardrooms can't and won't do it.

Putting significant amounts of money in circulation at the bottom of the pyramid just might.

Ah, the Pause that Refreshes!

Image: World War I Color Photos

So the Senate passed the Bailout, 74-25, their usual count on Important Issues, and this Christmas Tree of a bill will now go to the House, where something like it will be passed, and then it will go to conference committee, where something closer to the original Paulson Plan will emerge, to be quickly approved by both houses, and thence to the President's Desk, where he will sign it, and append a Signing Statement that will get it right back to the beginning and the Extortion will be paid.

Whew!

We know the way these things go.

Always.

Of course with President Barack they won't go that way, but that's different. All of a sudden, the right wing authoritarians who have been backing every Constitution shredding action of the Bushevik Regime will rediscover that tattered parchment, and amazingly will insist on Adherence ThereUnto, without let or hindrance, and the Dems, being Dems, will say "Uh, OK."

And for years nothing will really get done at all in Congress, and the Presidency will not be used in its current Autocratic Mode, but will be quiet and persusasive and try to convince recalcitrant Republicans to do what is best for the Public Interest.

So obviously, nothing will get done at all.

Despite constant and enormous crisis from every direction. If things continue on their current path, it could well be that the Natives Around the World will commence to throw off the Yoke of Hegemony, assert their own Public Interest with people like Putin and Morales and Chavez -- among many others -- to lead them on their way to Freedom, Justice and Dignity.

It would seem that Osama's Plan is working just fine.

And why in the course of these recent events was the focus once again on the Duality of either going along with the Paulson Plan or Doing Nothing? Have they learned nothing during the disasters of the past eight years? The choice is not limited to something terrible or doing nothing at all. And yet that all our Ruling Class seems to be able to see. Ever.

And so... The Decline continues.

Welcome to America.

[Followup: The House passed the Senate bill without amendment, so there was no conference committee. Bush signed it, so far without a signing statement. Clearly all that Treasury and the White House wanted was authorization to spend the money, and they got that. Everything else was just decor. Something needs to be emphasized: the process in Congress and through to the signing was just the way the legislative process is supposed to happen. Except for one thing: the People were and are deeply, fundamentally opposed to this measure. Consequently, the Congress, though following set procedure, and pretending to act in the interests of the public studiously ignored them, except on Monday when the House rejected the bill. But the conclusion was foregone. There was no chance at all that the Congress would reject the White House demands in the end. No matter what the People wanted. Which, in essence, is about as perfect a deonstration of the corruption and futility of our legislative process as you could want. -- Ché]

Chickie Run

Not to be a spoilsport, but it is really over. We have reached the bottom of the cliff, and all that's left now is cleaning up the mess.

Reuters:

China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

"The decree appears to be Beijing's first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland's major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis," the SCMP said.

A spokesman for the CBRC had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Alan Wheatley and Langi Chiang; editing by Ken Wills)

Seriously. This was the great fear that stalked the markets (and the Regime) during the Par-tay Time, when everybody but us poor saps were getting rich. China could pull the plug.

Well. Today they did.

It's well and truly over now.

Welcome to the Brave New World.

I say why stop with nationalizing the financial sector? Nationalize energy and transportation, nationalize health care, nationalize communications. Nationalize all natural resources. Nationalize what's left of manufacturing.

Run these markets solely for the Good of the People. Socialism for All!

If China demands payment on its debt, let them try to come collect. They won't. But our problem is, of course, that we have so little manufacturing left, having transferred most of it to... well, China! So we are dependent on Chinese products, and China will make us pay for them, a lot. "Wal-Mart! Always the High Price Leader!"

Will the People rally to clean up the monumental mess at the bottom of that cliff we were always not quite going over (except we really went over it a long time ago)? If they are called to, I think they will.

But those who profited on the way down better look to giving up their gains and then some.

There is the Devil to pay.

The Heist

The Congress is about to appoint and fund a Royal Overseer -- some call him a King in his own right -- to disburse gargantuan amounts of money to banks and large financial institutions of all kinds, in order -- they say -- to keep the economy afloat.

But Americans know what it is: a Heist. Extortion of the purest sort. "Protection money."

They're being held up for ALL their coin. "Spare change?" Everything.

Oh there's a bit of slapdash afterthought "oversight" and "accountability" skimcoated over the Heist. Yes, it will be done with all due diligence, all due efficiency, all due speed. After all, if the money isn't handed over pronto, in large denomination unmarked bills, the Economy gets it, right between the eyes.

Some of us realize the Economy has already suffered a mortal blow, and paying out sack-loads of money to the perpetrators now is not going to save the situation.

I think even our dumbest Congresscritters and media personalities sense it, even if they don't quite understand it. They are trying to sell this heist as a way to insulate or save "Main Street" from the vicissitudes of "Wall Street." But it won't do that; it will have no perceptible effect on Main Street, and cannot "insulate" anything or anyone except the corporate pillagers and their handmaidens from the malestrom that has already begun.

This is like convincing yourself that paying your extortionist will somehow keep you safe: it won't. It can't.

That's why so many people are saying, "Look, the crash is already under way; bailing out Wall Street (or whatever) is not going to prevent or reverse it. Let the 'financial system' fail. It will anyway. Use the money for infrastructure, use it to keep people in their homes, to give them jobs."

But that won't happen as long as Reaganism continues to rule.

On the other hand, things are likely to get so bad so fast that any injection of taxpayer money into Wall Street will have no effect at all, and the "$700 billion" -- or whatever -- will never be paid...

Need we ask what we did to deserve this?

Food!

While American media is obsessed with whatever the latest Democratic political gaffe is, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. There is a Big Problem.

Food.



Not even the disastrous Bush Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can compete with the global food crisis that is rolling like a thunderstorm across the Developing World.

So far, almost no notice of it has been taken in the American Mass Media. But the blinders can't be kept on forever.

Staple food prices have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in many areas where people have little to get by on at all, and no margin for higher food prices. Asian countries are girding for the worst.

We Americans fret about the cost of filling our gas tanks, and it is a reasonable fret to be sure, but it is, for most Americans at present, a marginal fret. I filled up the other day, for example, as local gas prices are edging closer and closer to $4.00 a gallon, and a full tank cost me $6.00 more than last month, $11.00 more than last year, $26.00 more than when the Busheviks seized the presidency. Well. Annoying increases to be sure, but still marginal.

Yet last year, I noticed food prices at my local market were going up, and around February, the management at the store warned customers to brace for more. By March, pretty much everything cost around 20% more than last year, and some things were 40% or 50% higher. I wasn't so worried about gas prices, but food prices? You bet.

An overall 20% increase in food costs is significant, but we hear little about it. The few press reports that discuss the situation elsewhere refer to a "food shortage," but that's hardly what it is. As has so often been the case in the past, there is plenty of food. The problem is the price, and the price is being driven higher and higher by commodity speculators who see huge profits on the horizon from the rising standards of living in China and India and elsewhere.

Much like the fuel cost increases: there is no real shortage, but there is rampant speculation, and rampant greed.

It is more of the Class War we have been subject to for more than a generation. And as the global situation deteriorates, our petty obsessions will become more and more irrelevant.



If we don't take care of the situation ourselves, someone is gonna do it for us.