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.

America's Yet Unbridged Divide

Colorado Tea Party Billboard

The election of President Barack Hussein Obama has cemented the fissure at the heart of American politics. It is a divide that ironically enough exists in the man himself. Part white, part black, like the antipathies made extant by his very name, Obama is the walking manifestation of the contradiction wrapped inside the enigma known as the U.S. of A.

Founded on the radical principle that "all men were created" the Founders promptly granted themselves the right to buy and sell others as chattel. Eighty years later the South would defend the practice by expounding states' rights yet at the outset it was the states themselves that often decided that owning other human beings ran against the Constitution. In fact, even earlier, in 1770, a colonial Massachusetts Superior Court found that slavery was unconstitutional on the basis of common law. In Georgia, the colony's governing trustees strictly prohibited the practice of slavery, declaring it to be not only immoral, but contrary to English law.

These early rulings were extraordinary when one stops to consider that in the mines and plantations across the 'New World' slavery was not only common practice but the backbone of Europe's economy. In fact were it not for the wealth of the plantation system, there might never have been an American Revolution.

"the vast sums pouring into France from Saint Domingue at exactly the same time made foreign aid to the New World a distinctly more attractive option than it would have been otherwise. The 1770s and 1780s were the richest decades Saint Domingue had ever seen. It goes without saying that the entire enterprise rested on the backs of the men and women whose labor powered it." --Ted Widmer

So why, if not the democratic conscience of the Founders, when it came to sanctioning slavery, was there an American exception? Simple: In order to manage the country's inherent contradiction the Right to Life, Liberty and Happiness was tacitly reserved for white skins. Despite the Massachusetts and Georgia court rulings, the Framers made sure that their "great Democracy" implicitly provided for slavery:

Article I, § 9 of the Constitution expressly states that "a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person." Under Article IV, § 2, clause 3, the Fugitive Slave Clause, recognized the individual property rights of a slave owner in a slave, indicating a constitutional protection of slave property. Article IV therefore implicitly sanctioned the product that flowed from slave property, namely, slave labor.

John Locke himself, though he once eloquently deplored the practice, wrote Carolina's pro-slavery Constitution. And yet, through it all, the American people remained hopelessly divided. Aggrieved by their own frustrations, women understood that just as sexism justified their subordination, the pillar of slavery was America's racism. Conversely, when an angry mob killed the antislavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, in Alton, Illinois, the North's poor were persuaded to join the abolitionists, not out of love for the African, but fearing the loss of their own liberties.

These historical contradictions persist, woven into our conceptions of the country itself. Which America one chooses to defend depends on whether a Constituted Right to Life, Liberty and Happiness was meant to extend equally from the days of George Washington to the contentious times of Barack Hussein Obama.

The Burden of Color

"[Mississippi's] position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization." --The State of Mississippi declaration, January 9, 1861, in support of Secession.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) recently declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, saying it was important for Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present.” When asked why his proclamation made no mention of slavery McDonnell replied he only wished to highlight things that were significant to Virginians. I guess the whole raison-d'etre was lost on the Old Dominion:

Cornerstone Speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in declaring Secession:

“Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [assumption of equality of the races]. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great and moral truth.”

One would think a state governor in a nation with a history as brief and dramatic as the United States would feel ashamed to proclaim such dissembling. But as we see from the meteoric rise of the likes of Sarah Palin and Glen Beck, ignorance sells very well in America...

In an essay entitled "The Negro in the Class Struggle" socialist leader Eugene Debs reflected on his experience in Yoakum, Texas when he came upon a group of white men at a railroad station spouting racist comments about African-Americans. "Here was a savory bouquet of white superiority. One glance was sufficient to satisfy me that they represented all there is of justification of the implacable hatred of the Negro race. They were ignorant, lazy, unclean, totally devoid of ambition, themselves the foul product of the capitalist system and held in the lowest contempt by the master class, yet esteeming themselves immeasurably above the cleanest, most intelligent and self-respecting Negro, having by reflex the "nigger" hatred of their masters.."

and as the gap between America's rich and poor more and more mimic a banana republic those masters could not be happier. That's not to say they've had an easy time, to quote George Bush, "catapulting the propaganda". But as the defamation of Shirley Sherrod so clumsily exposed the diversion of class warfare by the bugaboo of race is still the favorite weapon in their arsenal.

Tri-Color Army

The great myth that most revisionists seek to perpetuate is the notion that blacks and native-born Americans were, if not wholly indifferent to, merely tangentially involved in the Civil War. A UC historian has just shot a hole in that cherished script. Even before the heralded 54th regiment celebrated in the movie "Glory" a troop of Blacks, whites and Indians had all fought together, winning the key battle of the Civil War in Indian Territory by routing a Confederate force twice their size.

As Professor Lause significantly argues in his new book, “Race & Radicalism in the Union Army”: "the very existence of such an army points to an understanding of the Civil War as a truly revolutionary period, one in which the prevailing regimes of white supremacy, colonial expansion, and class oppression came under direct challenge. It wasn't just the Confederate military claim to the region that was under threat; -[but]- the entire set of social relations involving race, property, and nationhood."

Such an alliance between white, black and red would have been a powerful check to the land grabbing robbers barons who made huge fortunes thanks to the betrayal of the freedmen and the dissolution of native treaties made possible by Lincoln's assassination.

(It is interesting to note that before his death a delegation from the Creek nation had traveled to Washington to discuss their treaties with Lincoln personally. Instead, they were met by officials from his administration who "strove heroically to keep them from meeting the president. Indeed, OIA [Office of Indian Affairs] officials cynically introduced one of their number to the Indians as 'Lincoln,' apparently leaving the president ignorant that the delegation was even in Washington).

And so the great American Dream marches on.

Shearing Us Sheep

Why, it is reasonable to ask, would the government allow to continue what the much pilloried Jim Cramer rightly calls "naked and illegal short-selling" when the world economy is facing a meltdown? One has to look beneath the "reported" stories and delve into the global netherworld where power, politics and state-sponsored crime have operated since 1562. That was the year the first English slave trader, John Hawkins, left home with 100 men in 3 ships, captured 300 slaves in Sierra Leone along with hides, ginger and sugar and found a delighted business partner in Queen Elizabeth I.

To appease her subjects appalled by the accounts of slavery coming from Spain's New World colonies, the noble queen declared that "if any of the Africans were carried away without their own consent, it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers." So detestable, in fact, that England proceeded to dominate the trade for the next 250 years. Much like the fight against godless Communism, it justified the practice on the pretense of saving those poor African heathens from savage ignorance and showing them the redeeming love of Jesus Christ.

When the burden of the lie became too great the Church of England would ease their monarch's conscience by declaring that Africans had no souls. In fact the English church found African slavery to be of great benefit-- for instance The Church's missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts, owned the Codrington plantation in Barbados and slaves had the word "Society" branded on their chests with red-hot irons.

If a Muslim fundamentalist understands anything about the glorious West it is the value placed on honor and the depths of Christian charity... to the extent of their bankers' profit.

As a consequence of the Triangle slave trade each plantation economy became part of the new global economy. American financial and shipping industries were dependent on slave-produced cotton, as was the British textile industry. As the cotton plantation economy expanded, the banks and financial houses in New York supplied the loan capital and/or investment capital to purchase land and slaves. Enslaved Africans became a legally traded commodity, frequently used as collateral in kind for goods and services.

Had Eliot Spitzer paid closer attention to that history he might have spared himself a great deal of trouble and allowed us New Yorkers to retain an ethical governor. Instead he violated the sacred rail of politics by exposing corruption that flourishes in "service of the state".

the Online Journal explains:

Greenberg and AIG had a long association with the CIA. Cornelius V. Starr (yes, uncle of that Ken Starr,) started AIG as “American Asiatic Underwriters” in 1919 in Shanghai. He moved AIG from Shanghai to New York after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ironically, AIG is back in China through its ownership of People’s Insurance Company of China. AIG also owns AIG Korea Insurance.

AIG has, on behalf of U.S. intelligence, kept tabs on rising players on the Asia political scene, particularly in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. The quid pro quo for AIG is that it has weathered the storms generated by Spitzer and the global financial meltdown.

While the U.S. taxpayer is being fleeced for trillions of dollars, Gretchen Morgensen writes in the NYTimes "at A.I.G, good luck finding the money."

(it seems even A.I.G.'s own independent directors haven't been told which of the counterparties were paid. Huge claims have been paid off in full, even though widespread defaults have not actually occurred. Yet the government continues to pretend it's all hunky-dory.)

For those who suspect that the subjugation of the "coddled" American middle class is the goal of our ruling capitalists I submit a poem penned in defense of 19th century slavery.

He who to thwart GOD'S system tries,
Bids mountains sink, and vallies rise;
Slavery, subjection, what you will,
Has ever been, and will be still:

Fat on Slavery

Michael Jackson's big brother Marlon wants to bring tourists to Nigeria by building a $3.4 billion luxury resort—complete with a slavery theme park, a replica slave ship, a slave route, a life size replica of a slave ship, a music pavilion, and an amphitheatre. Visitors to the park, located in Badagry, the departure point for thousands of slaves, can relax after visiting the memorial or museum with a trip to the casino or a round of golf.

Tasteless does not begin to describe the vulgarity of 21 century capitalism.

When transnational agribusinesses, like U.S.-based Cargill, began pushing for the passage of NAFTA they had one quiet yet hopeful goal in mind: complete market control of their key agricultural sectors. As a result when prices rise for major staples such as rice and beans Cargill can stop buying from the Mexican market and turn to their own reserves and flood the market. The most sinister aspect of this "fair" trade deal was that U.S. taxpayers are supporting these giant agribusinesses with massive subsidies. American farmers receive 7.5 to 12 times more in government help than Mexican farmers. The result has been to drive the small farms out of business leaving Mexico's peasants with a Hobson's choice: migrate or starve.

Welcome to Slavery

Since the passage of NAFTA there have been multiple federal prosecutions for slavery in the Florida agricultural industry. Agricultural contractors are charged under slavery laws dating back to the end of the civil war for forcing illegal immigrants to work in the fields under threat of violence.

Since 1997, law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women held in virtual slavery by their employers. Threatened with violence should they attempt to escape and able to speak little or no English, most slaves refuse to testify, which means their captors cannot be tried.

"Gov. Crist should publicly acknowledge and condemn the existence of modern-day slavery, meet with the CIW and federal officials about solving the problem, pressure the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to support the CIW's agreements with more socially responsible corporations, and take action to abolish slavery in Florida."--Tenessee Democrat, Daphne Holden

The conditions under which these workers toil would have been condemned in many states almost a hundred years ago. To earn all of 45 cents a tomato picker in Florida must fill a 32-pound basket. If conditions are perfect a 12 hour day working at breakneck speed might yield that worker $ 50 but the chances of that are extremely slim.

As long as there is poverty cheap labor will always be ready and available. The question that needs to be answered as we sink into another global recession -- beyond the level of moral obtuseness required to dream of designing a theme park to celebrate slavery -- what exactly have we gained in this race to the bottom?