Why We Are Passive

"A nation that has lost hope can no longer be democratic. What paralysis is to the individual, the listlessness that comes from hopelessness is to the nation."
--Edward A. Filene, President, Economic Club of Boston, March 9, 1905

The genius of the Corporate United States is the thrall of helplessness that steadily wears down and overwhelms its working subjects. The principle stands enshrined in the phrase "Too Big to Fail". I suspect much of the Tea Party's appeal was simply in its call for action, action that was instantly overtaken and exploited by the very powers its advocates either consciously or unconsciously opposed.

It is this festering urge to fight-- the resistance to being frail and uncertain that makes the current Egyptian rebellion so transfixing for those who gave up trying to find change to believe in. The protesters suddenly finding their voices across the Middle East shame us, for we are reminded what the very notion of democracy once used to mean.

Freedom sold for a pottage and a wide-screen TV

Back in 1905, these were the words that thundered from the lips of a Republican President: "Neither this people, nor any other free people will tolerate the use of vast power conferred by vast wealth and especially wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power ..." Theodore Roosevelt condemning the Railroad Monopoly's corporate rebates.

By choosing subservience to amoral profit over idealism and intellectual independence Americans became witless marks for Wall Street's hustle; their "Can-Do Spirit" broken by the malaise that attends both despair and self-aggrandizement, they were left to grovel at the glittering altar of greed. Now, having failed to heed all warnings, like the oppressed of Egypt, their tardy attempts to revive their democracy will demand much blood and sacrifice.

And moral courage

Just Words

Yesterday Rachel Maddow cogently explained how Reagan redirected the political trajectory towards the right where it has headed ever since. Her argument was meant to elucidate the strategy driving President Obama's new "Centrism" as presented in his SOTU address. Unlike President Clinton who continued the rightward trend by means of his now infamous "Triangulation" she sees Obama as determined to realign the middle ground leftwards. This as if the fallout from Citizens United vs the FEC and 30,000 K Street lobbyists were about to magically disappear.

The end of U.S. democracy is not a simple consequence of rhetoric or political corruption. It is the inevitable result of imperialist capitalism. Laud him or not, Marx's analysis has stood up to the test of time: "big business, having achieved a monopoly or cartel position in the markets of importance, fuses with the government apparatus. A kind of financial oligarchy or conglomerate therefore results, whereby government officials aim to provide the social and legal framework within which giant corporations can operate most effectively."

This was not the result of any Reaganeque vision but simply the recoupment of the Big Capitalist's briefly weakened post-WWII position.

Money talks and B.S. walks

Ignore Wall St.'s grotesque privileges and perquisites. Just take for example this sudden capitulation on the part of Whole Foods. Merely last October the company announced that its retailers across the country would celebrate Non-GMO Day to raise consumer awareness about the [threatening] presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply. A Non-GMO Project, the Sunday’s events were meant as a wake-up call to consumers across the country.

And why not? If you're going to charge a premium for your product it behooves you to explain why you're offering a "healthier" alternative. At least until one of the government's pet giants puts you in its cross-hairs. Our fine organic growers find they are now unwillingly 'induced' to sing a drastically different tune.

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

Organic Consumers know manure and they smell betrayal

"In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack."

Whether it's BP, GM or Monsanto, in our current economic phase in late-stage capitalism government is run for and by our corporate captains of industry. They are ones who've been shoving the country ever rightwards and no president, no matter how eloquent or well-meaning, has the means to war against, much less resist, that system.

A Total Perversion

With the long-awaited end of the calamitous Bush years Americans woke up in 2009 to a black man in the White House and the shocking realization that their government was a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. With the Bull at the Courtroom door in the form of Citizens United vs the FEC they discovered their legal rights had been officially rendered subservient to big business and corporate interests.

Many are still left wondering just how this all came about. The Tea Party aims it ire at Washington convinced more than ever that 'big' government spending was the dark black threat to Liberty. Meanwhile Progressives castigate the ever-conciliatory President as Appeaser-in-Chief in between venting their rage at the DLC Blue Dogs. But the destruction of American democracy did not begin with Obama, or the Roberts court, nor did its great unraveling start with the Corporate-crafted Powell Doctrine or with Buckley vs Valeo in 1976 when the Court declared money the equal of speech. It began the moment after the North was deemed victorious and with the Union safely preserved the public stood mutely by while their fellow citizens they had fought to set free were returned to peonage and virtual slavery.

At the very moment when the alarm should have been raised (after all, were not those in the slave-free states also fighting for freedom and against tyranny) the Capital Interest, seeing the apathy towards the 14th and 15th amendments, used those very provisions meant to safeguard the rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens to agitate for corporate personhood, and against the public prerogative.

The late Justice Hugo Black observed, that by manipulating the 14th Amendment corporations had found an ingenious way to to resist state authority and taxation. With the rise of post-Civil War Jim Crow and its new era of structural oppression, the 14th amendment was allowed to drift from its foundational principle and become a shield for unbridled corporate wealth.

Atty Doug Hammerstrom lays it out plainly:

While very few people were turning their attention and energy to bringing former slaves into society - indeed, far more energy was being put into NOT bringing them into society—corporations were using a great deal of their wealth to hire lawyers to advance their interests in the courts. The Fourteenth Amendment offered an opportunity to advance corporate interests, and the corporate attorneys set out to exploit it.

Of the 150 cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment heard by the Supreme Court up to the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 that established the legal standing of “separate but equal,” 15 involved blacks and 135 involved business entities. The scope of the Fourteenth Amendment to secure the political rights of former slaves was so restricted by the Supreme Court that blacks won only one case. The expansive view of the Fourteenth Amendment that comes down to Constitutional Law classes today is the result of corporations using the Fourteenth Amendment as a shield against regulation. Ultimately the Plessy decision left Jim Crow laws, state laws discriminating against blacks, in place because of doctrines developed in those corporate shield cases….

In the 13 years before 1912, 409 due process opinions were handed down. From 1886-1912 two cases restrained or annulled State action involving Negroes, and 39 cases restrained or annulled State action against corporations.

While the corporations were triumphant in wielding the Fourteenth Amendment as a shield against democratic control, blacks were abandoned by the Supreme Court. Not only was the law not used to protect their Constitutional rights, the law was used affirmatively to degrade them.

The great irony here is that these corporate victories represent the very same interests that led our early patriots to fight a war for democracy. Even after the Revolution had succeeded, America's citizens and legislators took careful charge of the chartering process. The men and women opposing King George III knew to fear the power of large corporations. As pamphleteer Thomas Earle wrote:

"Chartered privileges are a burthen, under which the people of Britain, and other European nations, groan in misery."

Thanks to America's disdainful ignorance if not outright antagonism towards her exploited minorities (that's their problem not mine) and her perverted grasp of history we have finally lost what our forefathers fought for and won.

The Nature of the Beast

While the above analyses and analogies are both apt and colorful, they are also flawed as they fail to address the actual disease which is what is truly terrifying the bankers (whether they know it or not), that being the self-devouring nature of unfettered capitalism.

David Ignatieff in the Washington Post: "What scares the central bankers now is the evaporation of trust from the system. Banks don't believe each other's numbers; since nobody knows the real value of these mortgage-backed securities everyone is holding, they assume the worst. They start hoarding cash as a buffer against their own losses and because they're nervous about lending to anyone else."

One of the great myths bandied about right and left is that the last 30 years have seen steady growth in American productivity. But as economist, Henry Liu points out, the Clinton economy was a mirage: "there was no productivity boom in the US in the last two decades of the 20th century; there was an import boom that came with productivity fallouts. What’s more, this boom was driven not by the spectacular growth of the American economy; it was driven by debt borrowed from the low-wage countries producing this wealth. The acceleration of productivity was accomplished by someone else doing the producing without getting proper credit for it. It was called a “bubble” for a reason.

Marx understood this basic flaw in capitalism over 150 years ago. The capitalists profit not by selling their product at a price above the cost of materials plus labor, but by paying their workers less than the value of their labor. So the banker is not the only parasite, the investor,(which include our cherished 401k's and pension funds) is feasting on the 'body' as well. Clearly in such a scenario the diseased, diminishing body (the American worker) can only be saved by cleansing and recapturing its lost blood (progressive taxation) and shrinking the parasites. So while Clinton's tax increase did not grow the economy, it provided the vital infusion it required to survive... until the bloodsuckers recouped and grew stronger.

The worker can never be burdened with sufficient debt to sustain endless profit. It's not that the scorpion is evil or the parasite is stupid. It's just the nature of the beast.

Panama Canal Closed

Last Week, for only the 3rd time since it 1914 opening, the Panama Canal was forced to close.

More than a thousand people were evacuated due to flooding caused by record rainfall. So far ten people are reported to have died.

This is rain as never seen before. "Our meteorologists says it's never rained so much in Panama in the 73 years that we've kept climate records," -President Martinelli.

The Panama Canal Authority said ship transit was "temporarily suspended" Wednesday because the Alajuela and Gatun lakes were at the highest levels ever recorded, according to Newsroom Panama. The 48-mile-long, man-made shipping channel was closed in 1989 when the United States invaded Panama to depose strongman Manuel Noriega, and in 1915 and 1916 because of landslides, CNN said.

Manuel Benitez, executive vice president of operations for the canal authority, said the closure was necessary because transit through the canal could be affected by the currents of the Chagres River, which flows into the channel on the way to Gamboa.

A Corporate Thanksgiving

As reported in the NYTimes corporate profits for the last fiscal quarter were the highest (before factoring in inflation) in U.S. history. While America's workers see their future crumble under the weight of joblessness and debt, the lords of Wall Street can hardly contain their glee. As the WSJ coyly describes it: the record bonuses being lavished on managers demonstrate Wall Street's "knack for finding a way to churn out profits and prop up pay levels despite uneasy markets, mounting regulation and mistrust by many Americans."

In the past when we spoke of two Americas the discussion centered on race and its intersection with poverty. No more. America's chickens or should I say turkeys have finally come home to roost. Having worked tirelessly since the end of post Civil War Reconstruction to keep black, white and brown labor at each others' throats our scions of Wall Street are callously setting about destroying what remains of the country's middle-class. We are evolving towards a system where the corporation replaces the old plantation: the haves get to govern as barons and the slaves are forever the have-nots.

Roasting the Middle Class Goose

The top 1 percent has been able to see their incomes rise almost twenty-fold over the past thirty years by playing each class of worker against the other, all with the encouragement of our own government. As a result we have the unconscionable spectacle of U.S. banks using taxpayer money to pay themselves massive bonuses while laying off American workers to hire temporary foreign replacements on the cheap.

"An investigation by the Associated Press revealed that major U.S. banks brought in foreign workers for high paying jobs while laying off American workers at the same time. The investigation revealed that a dozen banks requested visas for 21,800 foreign workers over a six-year span."--

(Now picture 21,800 mortgages sliced and diced and parceled out into Collateral Debt Obligations going belly-up. That's what our grifter class declares as smart money.)

As for those good blue collar jobs, thanks to his manipulated failure to make common cause with the black brown and red, the pale working stiff is getting the same shaft his "white trash' ancestors did when their wages were kept meager because of slavery.

In her excellent book "The New Jim Crow" Michelle Alexander explains how thanks to the policies of the government elite African Americans have been systematically kept apart and economically weak. She describes how the so-called 'War on Drugs' replaced the insidious control of race segregation. But the benefit of mass incarceration of the dark-skinned working poor goes even further towards enriching the investor class.

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

As the writer sums up in El Diario-La Prensa: the rich have a lot to be thankful for. Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work designed for Third World labor. Now we know why Wall Street is so content to sell out the country and give us the bird.

Drinking Hot Kool-Aid Tea

There has been a lot of breast-beating lately about 'taking back the country' and 'honoring the Constitution' but the republic is rotting on its old abused foundations. The U.S. Senate, conceived as the 'saucer' in which to pour and cool an impassioned public's 'hot cup of tea', is now a cabal of co-conspirators committed to the art of delay and shameless obstruction.

Rules once employed to ensure proper deliberation and consideration of important issues are now used to pursue an exclusively partisan agenda. As a result, problems mount, progress is delayed at the public's expense simply for a political gain. Half of the Democrats and the entire Republican Party now apply obstructionist tactics. The Right-Wing with one goal in mind: defeat Barack Obama. America be damned.



This extreme oppose-at-any-cost tactic is about to send American foreign policy into disarray. It does not matter if the security of the country is at stake. For the Senate's hyper-partisan Republicans all that matters is that no good deed gets credited to a Democratic president.

"key Republican senator casts on the Obama administration's chances of passing nuclear treaty with Russia".--Washington Monthly "... a treaty endorsed by six former secretaries of state and five former secretaries of defense from both parties; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; seven former Strategic Command chiefs; national security advisers from both parties, and nearly all former commanders of U.S. nuclear forces."

Meanwhile the rest of the world looks on in horror, wondering what on earth are these Republicans drinking? Apparently a lot of hot tea and kool-aid.