Robert Reich Tells a Late April Fool's Joke About Hillary Clinton

This late April Fool's joke by former Labor Secretary and "liberal firebrand" Robert Reich is so funny I really did laugh out loud:

Which brings me to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Some wonder about the strength of her values and ideals. I don’t. I’ve known her since she was 19 years old, and have no doubt where her heart is. For her entire career she’s been deeply committed to equal opportunity and upward mobility.

Some worry she’s been too compromised by big money – that the circle of wealthy donors she and her husband have cultivated over the years has dulled her sensitivity to the struggling middle class and poor.

But it’s wrong to assume great wealth, or even a social circle of the wealthy, is incompatible with a deep commitment to reform...

Oh please Robert, stop it, I don't know how much more I can take. And just how is Queen Hillary supposed to show her "commitment to reform" anyway?

So we must resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and bust up the biggest banks, so millions of Americans don’t ever again lose their homes, jobs, and savings because of Wall Street’s excesses.

Also: Increase taxes on the rich in order to finance the investments in schools and infrastructure the nation desperately needs.

Strengthen unions so working Americans have the bargaining power to get a fair share of the gains from economic growth.

Limit the deductibility of executive pay, and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Oppose trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership designed to protect corporate property but not American jobs.

And nominate Supreme Court justices who will reverse “Citizens United.”

Oh fuck it, I'm not laughing any more. I'm not laughing because it is obvious that Robert Reich is being a duplicitous piece of shit. Reich knows damn well which president signed the repeal of Glass-Stegall: Bill Fucking Clinton. And Reich was IN FUCKING OFFICE as Labor Secretary when Bill Fucking Clinton signed the first two major "free" trade agreements, NAFTA and GATT, into law. And he surely knows raising taxes on the rich or the federal minimum wage will be a total non-starter with the Republicans in charge of one or both houses of Congress. Not to mention that Reich cannot possibly believe that Hillary can get elected without mucho donations from Wall Street and big corporations, the spurning of which would likely put her at least a billion dollars behind Jeb in fundraising.

Some of you may think I'm being unfair to poor ol' Robert Reich. Yet I truly believe he is not a stupid man. Therefore, the only explanation I can come up with for why he wrote this particular piece of drivel is that he is lying through his teeth in order to give his delusional liberal/progressive audience false hope. Sadly, he is hardly alone in that regard.


Bonus: "Let 'em eat cake," she says...just like Marie Antoinette

The Continued Liberal Reluctance to Point the Finger of Blame Where it Really Belongs

In the past two days, two editorials were published that do a reasonable job of summing up some very disquieting new American political realities. The first, entitled "Ferguson and the Criminalization of American Life," by Anthropoly Professor David Graber of the London School of Economics, uses the recent Department of Justice report as a centerpiece to show how local governments are increasingly becoming predatory institutions, using the criminal justice system to financially squeeze those at the lower end of social ladder on behalf of the big banking institutions:

The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked, such as the enforcement of civic ordinances about the sale of untaxed cigarettes.

For most of American history, police enforcement of such regulations was not considered a major source of funding for local government. But today, in many municipalities, as much as 40% of the money governments depend on comes from the kinds of predatory policing that has become a fact of life for the citizens of Ferguson. How did this happen? Some of it, of course, has to do with populist anti-tax movements, beginning with California's Proposition 13. But much of it has happened because in recent decades, local governments have become deeply indebted to large, private financial institutions—many of the same ones that brought of us the crash of 2008. (In Ferguson, for instance, the amount of revenue collected in fines corresponds almost exactly to that shelled out to service municipal debt.) Increasingly, cities find themselves in the business of arresting citizens in order to pay creditors.

In this light the killing of Michael Brown can seen in a much different way, one in which Darren Wilson may not have acted as an out of control racist cop but instead as a glorified bill collector with a gun who overreatced when Brown forcibly refused to be exploited financially for the "crime" of walking in the street rather than on the sidewalk. It is very possible, even likely, that Brown's death was due as much to the greed of the big banks as it was to an institutionally racist police department and citizen apathy.

Graeber goes on to write:

Almost every institution in America—from our corporations to our schools, hospitals, and civic authorities—now seems to operate largely as an engine for extracting revenue, by imposing ever more complex sets of rules that are designed to be broken. And these rules are almost invariably enforced on a sliding scale: ever-so-gently on the rich and powerful (think of what happens to those banks when they themselves break the law), but with absolute Draconian harshness on the poorest and most vulnerable. As a result, the wealthiest Americans gain their wealth, increasingly, not from making or selling anything, but from coming up with ever-more creative ways to make us feel like criminals.

This is a profound transformation, and one we barely talk about. But it is rapidly altering people's most basic conceptions of their relations with society at large.

Fair enough. But before I comment on Graeber's conclusion, I want to move on to antiwar writer Tom Engelhardt's latest essay, entitled: The New American Order--
1% Elections, The Privatization of the State, a Fourth Branch of Government, and the Demobilization of "We the People." The premise of Engelhardt's essay is that American governance is entering a new era that is so dominated by a tiny oligarchy that it makes the Gilded Age of the late 19th century look like the late 1960s by comparison:

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of "we the people."

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.

Engelhardt then goes on to make his point much more than just "minimally," and actually concludes by saying:

In the meantime, let me be as clear as I can be about something that seems murky indeed: this period doesn’t represent a version, no matter how perverse or extreme, of politics as usual; nor is the 2016 campaign an election as usual; nor are we experiencing Washington as usual. Put together our 1% elections, the privatization of our government, the de-legitimization of Congress and the presidency, as well as the empowerment of the national security state and the U.S. military, and add in the demobilization of the American public (in the name of protecting us from terrorism), and you have something like a new ballgame.

Still, don’t for a second think that the American political system isn’t being rewritten on the run by interested parties in Congress, our present crop of billionaires, corporate interests, lobbyists, the Pentagon, and the officials of the national security state.

Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.

I'm not really sure who Engelhardt is addressing with that last sentence. Certainly, if your deep down far enough in the weeds of awareness to be reading his blog (or this one, for that matter), you're probably not in denial that something has gone horribly wrong in this country. But it might be because Engelhardt has deluded himself into thinking that he has a greater audience reach than he does and is NOT just preaching to the choir that he starts out so tentatively and, like Graeber, fails to address the really big question of exactly who is to blame for this state of affairs.

Engelhardt dances around the question, citing the influence of big money on politics, particularly after the Citizen's United decision, the supposed "demobilzation" of the Democratic Party and the effects of voter suppression laws. Graeber doesn't assign any responsibility at all, which I guess means that the profound changes he so earnestly documents in his essay have just fallen out of the sky. It's a common affliction of liberal essayists to either cop out by blaming "wealth inequality" for America's political ills or to want to avoid discussing the subject altogether. Because to cite the real problem is to admit that the ignorance and stupidity of the little people they so desperately wish to "save" are in fact the root cause of the very trends that are destroying our so-called democracy from within.

Engelhardt reports that the amount of money spent on the 2014 midterm elections was over $4 billion and that the 2016 presidential race alone is expected to top $5 billion--up from just over $2 billion in 2012--without mentioning that the overwhelming majority of all that campaign cash will be used to buy television advertisements. The days of door-to-door canvasing and get out the vote efforts are as forgone as the need to raise lots of money from small donors in order to have a viable campaign.

Consider the above, and now consider for a moment the level of discourse included in your average 30-second campaign commercial while recognizing that despite their sheer imbecility they are what decide our national elections. The reason for that is simple--the average American voter is so uninformed or misinformed that they either base their voting decisions on the messages they receive from such simple-minded ads or upon the fact that they see more far more ads for one candidate than they do the other.

For state and local elections the problem is far worse. As I cited in my previous article about the Ferguson DOJ report, only 12% of the registered voters in that community bothered to turn out for the last mayoral and city council election and the mayor ran unopposed. And as John Oliver points out in the brilliant rant below from his HBO show, over 1,000 state legislators ran unopposed in 2014--around than 25% of the total. Additionally, if Virginia politics which I follow are at all typical of the other 49 states, even in those instances where an incumbent state legislator or local official does draw a challenger it is rare that the race is even remotely competitive.

All of this is only possible in a system in which the citizenry has collectively abdicated its basic responsibility to stay well enough informed for representative democracy to function. It is true that the rich and powerful have a vested interest in keeping the citizenry distracted through their control of the mass media, but Americans seem particularly eager to allow themselves to be distracted and to thus become effectively disenfranchised from having any voice in their own governance.


Bonus: Why does it take an Englishman to so deftly point out what's going wrong in America?

The (Fat, Old, Pasty) Ugly Americans (Part 2) - Shop Till You Drop

The travel and tourism industry has become such a scam these days. I’m so old I can remember a time when the advertised cost for say, an airline flight or a hotel room, was the actual price you paid and you didn’t get hit with hidden fees every time you turned around.

Due to my illness I hadn’t travelled much the past couple of years, so that might be why it felt like a bucket of cold water dumped had been over my head when I showed up at the airport—proud of myself for travelling lightly enough despite a fairly lengthy journey to be carrying just one large suitcase—only to be charged 25 bucks to check said suitcase. I’d have gladly paid that much more for the fare, but getting unexpectedly stuck in the ass like that on both of my flights really pissed me off.

That was bad enough, but what was even worse was not being informed ahead of time that I would be charged $45 a night to park my rental car at the hotel where I stayed after the cruise (oh, but I got a “great deal” on the room at Priceline!). I’d have told the good people at Hyatt to go fuck themselves on that little bit of highway robbery, ‘cept there wasn’t a public lot anywhere near the place. That particular outrage then got me wondering how these businesses get away with so obviously boning their customers in a country where it is normal for folks to BRAG about what a great deal they got on whatever particular crap it is they just bought, when I thought back to the passengers I was on the cruise with and it struck me: the top 10% in this country are literally partying like there is no tomorrow and it’s their loose wallets that are propping up the creaky American consumer economy.

As anyone whose has cruised in recent years well knows, when it comes to hiding extra charges nobody is better at it than the cruise ship lines. Want to drink any kind of alcoholic beverage during your time on board, or even have a bottle of water or a can of your favorite soft drink? Hotel prices for that, my friend. Want to go anywhere but the usually fairly ugly cruise ship dock at your exotic ports of call and ensure that you get back before the gangplank goes up and you get hopelessly stranded ashore? Oh, that’s another considerable extra charge. Want to generously tip the incredibly hardworking, underpaid staff who are stuck on board for six to eight months at a time? Oh, doesn’t matter if you want to tip them or not—that sizeable collective tip is automatically added daily to your on board account. If you want to give say, your stateroom steward something extra, that’s your call (actually, I was quite proud of myself as the company I booked the cruise with sent me a $500 on board credit, which enabled me since I cannot drink much these days to walk off the boat owing the cruise line just a bit over $11 more than my fare had been. Bet that pissed ‘em off).

But what was really amazing to watch was the relentless flogging of products. Not only did the ship have numerous shops selling “duty free” luxury goods (another scam I’ve never understood the attraction of), but just about every day there were “special” events featuring a different type of jewelry or other fashion accessory. And I know people were being suckered into buying the stuff because at dinner one night the wife of the doctor from Texas was flashing her brand new necklace, and a different night the husband of the couple from Montana was showing off his brand new “atomic” watch (I really have no idea and didn’t ask, was it powered by a tiny nuclear reactor?). What was really funny is that he freely admitted he had no idea how to even set the thing, and was glad that the clerk who sold it to him promised to adjust it to Montana time the night before the end of the cruise.

Even during the shore excursions we were encouraged to make sure we only shopped for jewelry at a cruise line approved jewelry store—ostensibly so we wouldn’t get ripped off by any surly, dark skinned third worlders—but in reality so the line would get its cut of the no doubt highly over inflated prices. And heck, if shopping really isn’t your thing, you could instead while away every night in the ship’s casino where, the activity newsletter reminded us daily, you could bet (and presumably lose) up to $3,000 nightly and have it charged to your on board account. Yep, if I weren’t the type who is perfectly content to park my ass on a deck chair with a good book to while way the lazy hours under the hot tropical sun I could have damn near bankrupted myself.

And after all, isn’t that what travel is REALLY supposed to be about? It isn’t about going to different places, seeing exotic sights, exposing oneself to different cultures and hearing different languages spoken. Nope, it’s all about doing the one thing you could just have easily stayed home and done—shopping. Because it isn’t enough to show off that flashy bit of jewelry to your friends back home—nope, you have just GOT to tell them all about how you bought it while floating somewhere off the coast of Costa Rica.

Yep, it’s people like this boatload of fat, old, pasty, mostly American baby boomers—not truly rich (or they’d have their own yacht) but upper middle class—who are still doing what their great “war president” instructed them to do to save their country after 9/11. Their portfolios were saved by the Wall Street bailouts, and now they're doing a great job of spending their kids’ inheritances. They're bucket listers merely crossing off one more item while frittering away a bit more of their accumulated wealth buying more shit they don’t need because they have completely forgotten (or never acknowledged) that they came of age during a brief moment in time when it looked like just maybe it was possible that their generation could lead the way as America turned its back on big business, war and empire and actually began to live up to its bullshit ideals.

Come on, people, smile at your brother. He just bought himself an atomic watch, whatever that is.


Bonus: "Good Lord, help us all...while we try to stay afloat. If you could Lord, send a boat"

The (Fat, Old, Pasty) Ugly Americans (Part 1)

So I’m back to freezing my rear end off after a few blissful weeks in the tropics. Or at least as long as it took my cruise ship to sail from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal. Seeing the canal was one item on my bucket list and yeah, yeah I know how environmentally damaging cruise ships are, but with my health condition there really wasn’t any other way for me to see it.

One thing to note about these giant cruise ships if you’ve never been on one. It is generally pretty easy to tell the difference between passengers (mostly older, fatter and white) and the crew (mostly younger, thinner and darker skinned). There are some exceptions to that rule: ship officers and the staff that greet you when boarding tend to be European born or even occasionally Aussie, Canadian or American. Some of the regular crew might also be European—but they are almost uniformly from former Soviet bloc countries, in other word the kind of people economically desperate enough to join their fellow Thais, Philippines and Chinese working six to eight months straight without a day off. And I mean without a day—these ships pull into their final port of call at 7:00 A.M., discharge 2,000 or more passengers, take on another load of 2,000 or more and are gone again within 12 hours. The profit margins for these boats are so slim that there is no other way the cruise lines can stay in business. But it must REALLY suck for the crews.

Anyway, for the most part I enjoyed my trip. Seeing the canal was as I said a lifelong dream, and some of the other ports of call in Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua were fascinating if all too brief. I would have enjoyed the experience a lot more, however, were it not for having to spend so much time cooped up on board with my fellow passengers.

The very nature of cruising encourages you to get to know those you’ve embarked with. Unfortunately, the very length of this cruise (15 days) meant the passengers were overwhelmingly retirees as few working people can spare that kind of time all at once these days. That also meant the average age of those on board had to be about 70—in other words right in the wheelhouse of being the older half of the baby boomer generation and, worse still, though there were some Canadians, Europeans and Aussie passengers they were mostly AMERICAN baby boomers.

Let me paint you a gruesome picture—imagine a crowd of mostly pasty white, overweight Septuagenarians in bathing attire, some who had to tip the scales at twice to three times healthy body weight for their height (I had to dodge around a lot of “mobility” scooters as well). Now imagine being stuck among that same crowd for two weeks straight. I wouldn’t have even minded the sight of them so much as much as that talking to them revealed that many had as much blubber clogging the space between their ears as they did around their midsections.

One fine morning I was lounging in one of the hot tubs after a vigorous weightlifting workout in the ship’s (largely underutilized) gym when a particularly ugly old specimen climbed in and caused a large amount of water to slosh out over the sides. Dude seemed nice enough at first, and when I described my recent cancer battle said all of the right supportive things. Then he found out I was from the DC area and his brow furrowed. I’ll never forget his reaction: “Of course,” he said, “I’m a true rebel…I’m a proud member of the modern American Tea Party.” Yeah, a true rebel…one no doubt sucking down social security and Medicare benefits as fast he can, and one whose already horribly overtaxed heart would no doubt explode if he ever heard a shot fired in anger. Nevertheless, I was polite. I didn’t laugh right in his pudgy face.

It’s also standard on cruise ships to be seated for dinner each night at a large table with two to three other couples. Again, the people at my table were nice enough (and actually among the slimmer passengers on the boat), but whoo boy what a group of reactionaries. There was the 70s-ish orthopedist from Texas and his much younger Philippine second wife (a rare breakage of the ship’s demographics) who was quite impressed upon hearing about my cancer battle but who just couldn’t resist saying he hopes Ted Cruz runs for president. Probably not coincidentally, he also admitted to not ever reading any books beyond medical journals.

More disappointing was the naturalized couple from Chile who said they had fled their homeland for the states 40 years ago. Intrigued, I asked for details only to be horrified that it was the election of the “monster” Allende who had caused their flight and how grateful they were that Pinochet had “fixed” their country. Though I noted to myself that the Pinochet regime’s torture and murder of thousands of their “monstrous” countrymen weren’t enough to cause them to return from America—
which they claim to love because of all the “glorious opportunities" it offers people.

The nicest couple was actually the pair from Montana. For the most part I enjoyed talking to them—except the one occasion when the Vietnam vet husband went on an extended rant about Jane Fonda. One evening, he and the doctor were comparing the number of foreign countries they have visited in their lifetimes (85 versus 61). But here’s the sad part. Chalking up those numbers seemed to be merely a matter of bragging rights. Anytime I tried to bring up any deeper subject about any of the countries they mentioned having seen they could not have been less interested. So much for the idea that international travel—which so few Americans do anyway—would broaden their perspectives and make them more empathetic towards other nations and cultures.

After 15 days I was more than ready to flee the boat, even if it meant returning to an American homeland I had been desperate to get away from in the first place. I guess the rule is that if you want to get as far away from America as you can you also need to get as far away as you can from Americans. With a few exceptions. The one delightful and meaningful conversation I had during the cruise was with a retiree from USAID. There’s nothing like immersing oneself in third world poverty for much of one's career to give one a deeper perspective about the way the world really is.

So now I’m back, for better or worse. Oh, and if anyone gives a damn, in the wake of the cruise my “number of foreign countries visited” count is now up to 31.


Bonus: Okay, I'll admit Bill probably HATED this song

Over 40% of Americans Took ZERO Vacation Time in 2014

There have in recent years been a lot of electrons annoyed pointing out the sharp increase in wealth inequality in America. And now comes survey results showing that not only do the well off enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than the working class, they actually have leisure time in which to enjoy their largess. All in all, 41% of American working adults reported taking no vacation time whatsoever. And as the chart above shows, by far the highest percentage of people in that category made less than $25,000 a year. Here are some more of the gory details:

Although it isn’t legally required, most full-time employees in the US receive some paid vacation. It’s around 10 paid work days a year in addition to six federal holidays, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonprofit think tank.

That may seem like small mercy by Western standards (European workers typically get far more), but the sad truth is that Americans aren’t even using the handful of vacation days at their disposal. Last year, Americans left 169 million paid vacation days on the table, saying they were too busy to use them. A series of consumer surveys conducted by travel website Skift throughout 2014 summed up Americans’ woeful travel habits. Here are some highlights:

--Only 13% of Americans traveled abroad for a vacation from August 2013 to August 2014.

--Nearly half of Americans didn’t take a single day off in the summer of 2014.

--63% of Americans did not travel at all from September 2013 to September 2014.

Skift’s latest survey is even bleaker: 41% of Americans didn’t take any vacation days in 2014. The latest survey was administered to 1,500 American adults through Google Consumer Surveys from Jan. 3-5 of this year.

Referring again to the chart above, you'll notice that as incomes rise the percentage of people who did not take any vacation time sharply plummets until it hits zero at $150,000 and higher. There are several points I'd like to make here.

Fist off, imagine just how depressing it would be to be forced to work year in and year out with no time off except for a few measly holidays. Oh, and you can forget about the "six" annual holidays if you work retail, since Thanksgiving has now become another shopping day in which many retail employees are now expected to come to work at 6:00 in the evening instead of getting to spend even that little bit of time with their families.

Secondly, even the ten vacation days a year reported to be average is pretty grim. Say you want to take the day after Thanksgiving and maybe a few days around Christmas to be with your family. Now you're already reduced to just one week away from the workplace during the rest of the year. Even if you take it all at once, it hardly represents enough time to de-stress before having to rejoin the rat race, let alone jet off to Europe to take in a bunch of cultural sites.

Thirdly, the fact that no one making over 150K a year faces this problem shows why the upper middle class, in particular, is so clueless about how awful the American working life has become for those below them on the economic ladder. Why is that so important? Well, if you pay attention at all to our media culture, particularly the commercial advertisements, what you see is that an upper middle class lifestyle is sold to viewers as being the ideal of the American dream. Every sitcom family lives in a nice big house, and every Christmas images of families buying each other a brand new Lexus with nice bow tie ribbon attached to the hood are flashed at just about every commercial break.

Our political battles are also fought at the upper middle class level, as the arguments for both sides are primarily being tailored to appeal to those among each of the two colored tribes who can afford to drive a minivan or an SUV (the difference being the tone of the bumper stickers plastered on the back). Liberal or conservative, the fact that those who serve them their coffee, wait their tables, clean their houses, check them out at the grocery store or who staff the local Macys at dinnertime on Thanksgiving night may not be enjoying the same fabulous leisure lifestyle as they do never occurs to them.

And all of that doesn't even touch on the issue of the unused vacation days that overstressed workers leave on the table not because they are too busy but because they are fearful of being replaced if they are ever absent form work. Add it all up and it makes for a pretty grim picture for anyone outside of about the top 10% of wage earners in this country.

But don't worry. I'm sure some of the money spent next Christmas on those Lexus SUVs will trickle its way down and make things all better.


Bonus: "Vacation...all I ever wanted"

My Own Personal Version of the "Two Americas"

I've written numerous posts on this blog about my hometown of Freeport, Illinois, a small manufacturing center in the northwestern corner of the state that interestingly peaked in population (according to the U.S. Census Bureau) in 1970, the same year as conventional U.S. crude oil production. By the 1980s, Freeport was already hurting economically before NAFTA, GATT and the the economic crash of of 2008 really kicked it in the balls. The former Goodyear tire plant where my dad served most of his working life as a middle manager now employs roughly one-tenth the number of workers it did when he retired in the mid-1990s, and as I wrote about back during the 2012 presidential campaign, the local Sensata plant that was bought out by Bain Capital so the operations could be stripped down and shipped out to China is now effectively closed for good.

Meanwhile, like a good number of my high school classmates I split town permanently after I finished college--starting out my career in Chicago before decamping to the Washington area the month before Bill Clinton won his first term. Thanks to the insane levels of federal deficit spending that has accompanied the global war on terror and the economic bailouts after the crash, the DC area these days has become the ultimate boomtown. Everywhere you look there are new McMansions, shopping centers and 20-story office towers going up.

I currently live just outside the capital beltway in Fairfax County, Virginia, and was amazed to see a new sign go up in my neighborhood the other day proudly announcing that one of the few remaining empty spaces around here is about to see the erection of some new homes "starting" at a mere $1.1 million. Mind you, if other recent residential construction around here is any guide these won't be gigantic mansions surrounded by high security walls but oversize, cheaply built, ugly ass faux mansions squeezed onto lots not much bigger than the foundations of the the houses themselves. Once completed they will most likely be occupied either by upper middle class liberal twits or Ayn Rand worshipping contractor assholes who think selling 100% of their vastly overpriced services to the federal government makes them great businesspeople.

Over the holidays, I reconnected by phone with two of my old high school buddies who still live back in Freeport whom I had not seen or spoken with in a very long time, and who did not know about my recent cancer battle until I mentioned it in a note I sent with my Christmas cards. Fortunately, both of them are doing all right health wise and economically. In fact one is an engineer, bizarrely one of about 40 who still work in the office area of that former Sensata plant. He had a front row seat during the 2012 protests over the closing and subsequent election-induced media circus--but it haunts him now to walk through the empty factory facility that used to employ around 400 people, including a few friends from our old high school days.

He also told me another economic anecdote that was quite telling. Growing up, we were neighbors who lived not far from Freeport's east side, which is the older part of town where people who were stung by the first round of globalization in the late 1970s and 1980s began to cluster. As things grew worse, the blight of drugs, petty crime and broken down looking homes spread slowly westward until it eventually enveloped our old neighborhood. The last time I visited back in 2006, the house I where I'd lived was up for sale as part of a HUD auction after the family who bought it from my father had apparently been foreclosed upon.

Anyway, a guy my friend knows bought a house on that same block about ten years ago for around $49,000--as a globalization loser Freeport never really got caught up much in the housing bubble. Yet--and get this--with the continued decline of the neighborhood he now desperately wants to move but can't because he's too far underwater. That's sad not only for what it says about the current state of home values in my hometown but for the homeowner's apparent inability to pay off a house mortgaged a decade ago for about the price of the countless Lexus SUVs I see driving around in my current neighborhood.

I read recently that Brooklyn is now ranked as the least affordable housing market in America. There have also been numerous stories recently about the insane prices that high rise luxury condominiums are going for in midtown Manhattan these days. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which two sectors (other than Silicon Valley) have done the best in Obama's "zombie economy"--finance and government contracting. Yet the average American citizen consumer idiot insanely still believes they'll strike it rich someday playing in the former's rigged markets and that it really matters which party's politicians' pockets are being lined by both.

Back in 1970 my hometown, sporting a brand spanking new tire plant that was only six years old where my father (who was a recruiter then) had to travel all over the midwest to find enough warm bodies willing to make big bucks at what were admittedly physically demanding jobs, was an offshoot from places like Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland of an American manufacturing economy that supported the most robust middle class the world has ever seen. Though the seeds of the destruction of that economic model ultimately lay within that same peaking of crude oil production, it was the parallel rise of the zombie economy (aided and abetted by fearfully ignorant voters who repeatedly elected the same assholes who sold them down the river) that accelerated its demise.

Happy New Year, everybody.

You Might Be An OPWAL If...

Back in the 1990s, mediocre Georgia-born stand up comedian Jeff Foxworthy became a big star thanks to his inane "You Might Be a Redneck If..." routines. Though the routines themselves seemed fairly harmless at the time (Foxworthy was adverse to using profanity on stage), in retrospect it seems that plenty of Americans--and not JUST from the south--were taking perverse pride at being exactly the kind of people he was allegedly poking fun at.

I hadn't thought about Foxworthy for a long time, until the recent news reports about the idiot Greenpeace protestors who damaged a national historical monument in Peru while filming an anti-global warming video to coincide with the recent carbon emissions conference being held in Lima. Somehow, none of the twelve morons who reportedly participated in the protest nor anyone else in Greenpeace who was aware of this pending protest before it happened recognized how culturally tone deaf and idiotic it was for a pack of liberal gringos to go traipsing around on some sensitive 1,500-year-old Native American geolyphs. Not only did this stupid stunt open Greenpeace up to charges of insensitivity to native cultures, it also basically handed its conservative opposition plenty of (ahem) ammunition with which to totally discredit the very message it was trying to get across.

But, sometimes such things happen when you're an OPWAL (Over-Privileged, White, American Liberal). And no, we don't know if ALL the Greenpeace protestors were in fact white, but they all easily demonstrated what I would call an OPWAL mindset.

Exactly what is an OPWAL mindset? And how do you know for sure whether or not you in fact are one? Well, in the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy I've developed a series of tests so that you, too, may determine whether or not you are actually an OPWAL. Let's begin, shall we?


If you believe driving a hybrid or even an electric car is good for the environment...you might be an OPWAL.

If you believe having a black followed by a female president is more important that what those presidents actually do while in office...you might be an OPWAL.

If you believe Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize...you might be an OPWAL.

If you agree with Obama that the country should "look forward and not dwell on the past" when it comes to the Iraq War, torture and the Wall Street crimes that led to the economic crash of 2008...you might be an OPWAL.

If you blame the Republican minority in congress circa 2009-2011 for blocking the many great things Obama promised to do while in office...you might be an OPWAL.

If you're a registered Democrat but cannot name a single famous labor leader other than Jimmy Hoffa...you might be an OPWAL.

If you believe Bill Clinton was a good president because he presided over a strong economy...you might be an OPWAL.

If you still blame Ralph Nader for costing Al Gore the presidency in 2000...you might be an OPWAL.

If you believed that the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity wasn't a complete waste of fucking time and energy...you might be an OPWAL.

If you hate congress as most Americans do, but voted to reelect your Democratic congressperson anyway...you might be an OPWAL.

If you have a "support the troops" sticker on your vehicle but don't personally know anyone in the service...you might be an OPWAL.

If you have a Stop Global Warming bumper sticker on your Minivan or SUV...you might be an OPWAL.

If you call yourself an environmentalist but live in the exurbs because your precious snowflakes "need" to have a yard to play in...you might be an OPWAL.

If you saw no reason for antiwar protests to continue once Obama was elected...you might be an OPWAL.

If you think Obamacare has solved America's health care crisis...you might be an OPWAL.

If you ever read a book based upon a recommendation by Oprah Winfrey...you might be an OPWAL.

If you think MSNBC is a true liberal alternative to Fox News...you might be an OPWAL.

If you think NPR and PBS are unbiased news sources...you might be an OPWAL.

If you still have a subscription to the New York Times or Washington Post...you might be an OPWAL.

If you consider yourself progressive on racial issues but the only minorities you interact with on a regular basis are your maid and your coffee barista...you might be an OPWAL.

If you actually think it really matters that the Democrats just lost control of the Senate...you might be an OPWAL.


Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm sure you all could probably come up with plenty of your own. After all, OPWALs are easy targets--almost too easy.


Bonus: "Honey let me introduce you to my redneck friend"

Soviet America (Part 2)

(image: Soviet era bread line)

The Guardian published an interesting article the other day called, "As the Berlin Wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled," the title of which pretty much tells the story:

The immediate cause for the collapse of communism was that Moscow could not keep pace with Washington in the arms race of the 1980s. Higher defence spending put pressure on an ossifying Soviet economy. Consumer goods were scarce. Living standards suffered.

But the problems went deeper. The Soviet Union came to grief because of a lack of trust. The economy delivered only for a small, privileged elite who had access to imported western goods. What started with the best of intentions in 1917 ended tarnished by corruption. The Soviet Union was eaten away from within.

As it turned out, the end of the cold war was not unbridled good news for the citizens of the west. For a large part of the postwar era, the Soviet Union was seen as a real threat and even in the 1980s there was little inkling that it would disappear so quickly. A powerful country with a rival ideology and a strong military acted as a restraint on the west. The fear that workers could “go red” meant they had to be kept happy. The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high.

There was no need to be so generous once the Soviet Union was no more. What was known as neoliberal economics was born in the 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that market forces reigned supreme. The free market spread to poorer parts of the world where it had previously been off limits, expanding the global workforce. That meant cheaper goods but it also put downward pressure on wages.

What’s more, there was no longer any need to be inhibited. Those running companies could take a bigger slice of profits because there was nowhere else for workers to go. If citizens did not like “reform” of welfare states, they just had to lump it.

The whole article is well worth reading, except that in the second half it starts getting into potential "solutions" to counter the now unchecked rapacity of the world's predatory capitalist elites. The only real solution that could possibly change the status quo involves a violent revolution and overthrow of every government worldwide that has bought into the neoliberal economic policies that insist that enriching those at the top benefits everyone instead of the exact opposite being true.

But let's be perfectly clear about this--violent revolution is no more likely to happen in the West, especially in America--than it was to happen in the old Soviet Union. The Soviets kept the clamps tightly fashioned on dissent, just as is happening now in America. The only difference is that advances in technology and the increasing effectiveness of mass media propaganda means that (so far) our elites have generally not had to rely on tactics as heavy handed as those employed by the KGB in order to keep the masses in their place.

When the Soviet system did finally come apart it miraculously happened from the top-down after Premier Mikhail Gorbachev tried to "reform" the sclerotic Soviet command economy and failed miserably. To Gorbachev's undying credit, once he realized he had failed he did not try to cling on to power at the cost of a potential second Russian civil war, but allowed the Soviet Union to more or less peacefully collapse. It was an act almost completely unprecedented in world history, and the average Russian paid a steep price in terms of plunging standards of living as a result.

"Collapse" is also almost certainly the only way the current corrupt American system, which may not have any bread lines but is approaching late Soviet era levels of inequality between the elites and the masses, is ever going to cease to exist. The problem is that there does not seem to be any potential American Gorbachev out there who recognizes that peacefully dismantling the American empire, even at the cost of a huge drop in our own standards of living, would be preferable to maintaining the system until it experiences a violent collapse that will likely suck many millions of people into the maelstrom. In any event, even if an American Gorbachev did exist it is unlikely that he or she would be able, given how hopelessly selfish and entitled a majority of Americans are, to successfully "land this sucker" before it all goes kablooie.


Bonus: "Sweet communist, the communist daughter...standing on the seaweed water"

They Hate You--They REALLY REALLY Hate You

The other day I was scanning online through some old year end "Best of" lists from some newspaper websites looking for books to add to my already substantial reading list. That's when I came upon a review of THIS TOWN -- Two Parties and a Funeral Plus Plenty of Valet Parking! in America’s Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich, which was published last year to some excellent critical acclaim. I haven't yet read Leibovich's book, but some of the blurbs from the New York Times review of it were so interesting that I thought I would share them here:

Not to ruin it for you, but: if you already hate Washington, you’re going to hate it a whole lot more after reading Mark Leibovich’s takedown of the creatures who infest our nation’s capital and rule our destinies. And in case you are deluded enough as to think they care, you’ll learn that they already hate you. He quotes his former Washington Post colleague Henry ­Allen: ­“Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.”

It's a conspiracy, all right, if in fact only a loose one among a large group of sociopaths who hate each other almost as much as they hate you and me. The meat of the review, and thus the book, comes with the author's depictions of four major changes that have come to Washington in recent decades:

Lobbying. President Obama’s first year in office was the best year ever for the special interests industry, which earned $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government. Ka-ching — your change, sir. There’s a phrase in journalism-speak called “burying the lede,” which Leibo­vich appears to do by waiting until Page 330 to cite this arresting figure (previously reported by The Atlantic): in 1974, 3 percent of retiring members of Congress became lobbyists. “Now 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of congressmen do.” No one goes home anymore. Cincinnatus, call your office.

There are a number of sanctimonious standout “formers” in Leibovich’s Congressional hall of shame, but just to name a few exemplars who gleefully inhabit ethical no-worry zones and execute brisk 180-­degree switcheroos on any issue, including the Armenian genocide, so long as it pays: Dick Gephardt, Evan Bayh and Tim Pawlenty. (Christopher Dodd, late of Connecticut, is another beauty. Disclosure: he beat my uncle out of a Senate seat, but judge for yourself if he isn’t loathsome for other reasons.) My own modest proposal is that the media stop referring to these scoundrels as “strategic consultants” or their other camouflage titles and call them what they are: influence peddlers. I know — good luck with that.

The other major change took place pari passu with lobbying: the arrival of big money in Washington. “Over the last dozen years,” Leibovich writes, “corporate America (much of it Wall Street) has tripled the amount of money it has spent on lobbying and public affairs consulting in D.C.” Alongside this money comes the tsunami of dollars from presidential campaigns. He reports that during the 2012 contest, the so-called super PACs and megadonors pumped “upwards of $2 billion . . . into the empty-calorie economy of two men destroying each other.” He refers to a datum courtesy of The Huffington Post, which reported in the spring of 2012 that, so far, “the top 150 consulting companies had . . . grossed more than $465 million” during the campaign.

All of which has given rise to another unlovely development: political consultants and their concomitant celebrity. This breed has, Leibovich says, essentially replaced the old-style political bosses. One might ask: is it a bad thing that we now have the omnipresent James Carville and Mary Matalin and their ilk? Aren’t we better off for this “celebrity-industrial complex” instead of the smoke-filled rooms of yore? Over to you, but at least the boys in the smoke-filled rooms didn’t yap at us on TV on the Sabbath and endorse Maker’s Mark bourbon. (Honestly, James and Mary. They’re also doing the safety briefing voice-over for Independence Air. Is this a great country or what? Meanwhile, on “Good Morning America” tomorrow, George Stephanopoulos’s guests are. . . .)

Bringing us to the fourth change: Pandora’s (cable TV) box. The rise of cable television and the 24/7 news cycle, as well as Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media, have provided all these people with heretofore unimaginable influence. “Suddenly,” Leibovich writes, “anyone without facial warts could call themselves a ‘strategist’ and get on TV. Or start an e-mail newsletter, Web site or, later, blog, Facebook page or Twitter following — in other words, become Famous for Washington.”

It has also enabled journalists to turn themselves into pundits, with all the glittery and greasy emoluments of that lower trade. “Punditry,” he writes, “has replaced reporting as journalism’s highest calling, accompanied by a mad dash of ‘self-branding,’ to borrow a term that had now fully infested the city: everyone now hellbent on branding themselves in the marketplace, like Cheetos (Russert was the local Coca-Cola). They gather, all the brands, at . . . self-­reverential festivals, like the April White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, whose buffet of ‘pre-parties’ and ‘after-parties’ now numbers more than two dozen — because a single banquet, it is clear, cannot properly celebrate the full achievements of the People Who Run Your Country.”

I spent most of my career prior to my recent retirement inside the Beltway, but I was as far away (metaphorically if not literally) from the glitz and glamour of "official" (read: "political") Washington as I'd been when I was still growing up in Illinois. You're either in what the late George Carlin described as "The Big Club" or you're not, and I most decidedly was not.

Nevertheless, what I've witnessed since arriving in the DC area a month before Bill Clinton won his first term in office is how the money pump, which has always propped up the world's largest "company town," has in the years since the start of the War on Terror and particularly since the insane federal borrowing and spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, almost literally paved the streets of the city and its immediate suburbs with gold. This incredible surge of wealth, most of it going to the lobbyists, lawyers and "Beltway Bandit" contractors, can be seen everywhere from the countless new suburban McMansions and upscale shopping malls to the many regentrified DC neighborhoods that have changed the demographic makeup of the so-called "Chocolate City" so dramatically that it no longer has a black majority population. Washington as a workplace is no longer a locale for citizens who really believe in public service (as I once did), but has instead become a gold rush city where the greedy and power hungry come to strike it rich.

And all of this, of course, is enabled by Americans who are either ignorant, stupid or willfully blind enough to believe it still matters what party label the sociopathic social climbers who come to Washington to make their fortune wear. The real truth is personified by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who after his recent "stunning" primary defeat almost immediately signed on as a lobbyist making 26 times the average annual household income of his former Virginia district.

Of course, for all of their bluster and preening these people are still just puppets dancing on the ends of strings held by the billionaires who pay the bills. And the system that supports both them and their paymasters is getting more brittle and creakier by the year. Someday, the whole (ahem) house of cards is going to come crashing down, and those who have so come to disdain their fellow citizens are going to get a rude awakening in just what it means to be the objects of their collective hatred.


Bonus: "They still call it The White House, but that's a temporary condition"

America's Middle Class Knows it Faces a Grim Retirement

Per yesterday's post, I guess it isn't just the young'uns who know they're screwed. From the L.A. Times:

More than a third of middle-class families aren't saving anything in a 401(k), IRA or other vehicle, the survey found. For those 50 to 59 years old, it's 41%.

"Nearly a third (31%) of all respondents say they will not have enough money to 'survive' on in retirement," the bank says. "This increases to nearly half (48%) of middle-class Americans in their 50s."

Ahh...that younger segment of the Baby Boomer generation. Guess it really is better to die before you get old.

There was another quote from this article that I found particularly horrifying:

There's little new in these findings. They echo the findings of last year's installment in the Wells Fargo series, when more than a third of respondents said they expected to work at least until 80 to have enough to retire on.

Yikes! That's not "retiring," that's called "dying in the saddle."

I had a discussion recently with my brother-in-law. He hasn't made the best decisions in life. He failed to use his bachelor's degree to get a good paying white collar job despite residing in the high cost of living New York City area. After having four kids he dumped his wife for a fellow divorcee who has a young child of her own, and then they had yet another child before the two of them even got married. Now his oldest are reaching college age and are enlisting in the military partly to escape what has become a depressing family situation, but also for the tuition benefits. BIL was reflecting on the fact that I was able to take early retirement (due in large part to the cancer) because, among other things, my wife and I lived frugally and paid off our house even before I got sick.

"I'll retire on the day I die," he stated to me rather matter-of-factly. Problem is, he works a blue collar job that takes a fair bit of physical effort, so I wonder if he won't begin to physically break down long before it is time for him to shuffle off this mortal coil.

As for me, even if I hadn't gotten sick the idea of working until I'm 80 fills me with horror and dread. It's not that there aren't plenty of things that I could do until I'm that old (especially writing), it's just that none of those I enjoy doing are likely to pay me anything resembling a living wage. I'm very grateful to have been able to leave the rat race at a relatively young age, but in my case it remains to be seen if the hangover effects of my cancer battle will prevent me from doing many of the things I had hoped to do in retirement.

But enough about me. Let's finish the discussion of this article with another interesting tidbit:

All this points ever more strongly to an inescapable solution to Americans' retirement quandary: expanding Social Security. The program is immune from market influences, operates with rock-bottom administrative costs, and forces workers to place saving for retirement front and center.

Those who claim that increasing benefits is unnecessary because America's retirees are secretly rich -- a notion recently bandied about by independent benefits consultant Sylvester Schieber and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute -- may need to get out and meet middle-class workers more. They would learn very quickly that middle-class Americans aren't laboring under the same misconceptions about their retirement prospects.

Forgetting for a moment that the Social Security program has its own long term financing problems, note the sheer fucking arrogance of these two assholes from the American Enterprise Institute. Do YOU know anyone in your social circle who is "secretly rich?" No, I don't either despite having a number of friends and acquaintances who are solidly upper middle class. The fact that these these two billionaire mouthpieces can get away with publicly saying such utter shit and not be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail is a big part of the problem in this country.


Bonus: "All your hope is gone...and it's not that funny, is it?"

Shockingly, Millennials Are The Most Cynical Generation Ever

Tying into to yesterday's post about the plummeting popularity of President Hopey-Changey, who would have thought that America's coming-of-age generation could get so cynical? Don't take my word for it, here's the scoop from MTV News:

Generation Y grew up in the shadow of a decade-long war and an economic crash both caused by authority figures’ filthy lies faulty assumptions, so it’s no surprise that skepticism of government and corporations is running high — but researchers are now warning that young people’s cynicism toward social institutions and even fellow citizens is at unsustainable levels.

A new study from the University of Georgia compared 140,000 millennials’ responses to previous generations’ attitudes. Between 2000 and 2012, millennial approval of Congress plummeted from 49% to 22%. (Compare that to the 30% of baby boomers happy with Congress during the Vietnam years.) In the same timespan, millennial approval of corporations dropped from 54% to 33% — and the results are similar for organized religion, upper education, police departments, the media and…hmm, that about covers it?

I have to admit, I made it to almost 40 before I got to the point where I started to assume that just about EVERYONE in some position of authority was completely full of shit. Who says kids these days are just mindless consumers who are out of touch with what's really going on? But it gets even worse:

Just as troublingly, the Associated Press reports, only 16% of millennials believe that “most people can be trusted” today, versus half of Americans back in the 1970s. All age groups feel more cynical than they did 10 years ago, but the under-35 crowd is the most pissed off and paranoid.

Now those are numbers of a society that is splitting apart at the seams. There's no way any sense of "community" can be built in a country where nobody trusts ANYBODY. Now, we're just 318,000,000 isolated little islands out here...and that's EXACTLY the way those in charge want us to be.


Bonus: "You ask me what you need...hate is all you need"

Two-Thirds Of America's Biggest Retailers Are Worried About Flat Wages

(editor's note: I currently have a small backlog of posts and aim to have one up every day this week--so be sure to check back frequently!)

You really have to laugh about this one, lest you not begin to cry. It seems the same asshole American retail companies who pay their employees shit wages are now quite concerned that their bottom lines are being negatively affected by employees being paid shit wages. Here's Huffington Post with the story:

Sixty-eight percent of the top 100 retail companies in the U.S. -- a group that includes, Walmart, Apple, McDonald's and J.C. Penney -- say the country's stagnant wages pose a major threat to their bottom lines, according to a new report by the Center For American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Researchers analyzed the most recent SEC 10-K filings of the largest 100 retailers in the country and found that more than two-thirds of these corporations issued warnings to investors that profits could be hampered by flat wages, high unemployment and low consumer spending. The trend is hammering companies that target high-income customers, like Whole Foods and Dillard's, and those that market to low-income shoppers, like Dollar General and T.J. Maxx, according to the report.

So, do you suppose this concern is enough to get these companies to actually raise their employees' salaries to a decent living wage? Of course not. Apparently, all the other companies BUT them are supposed to do it:

But even as two-thirds of the companies in the study pointed to stagnating wages as a source of their problems, many of them have opposed or stayed silent on any proposed wage increases. There are a few notable exceptions. Gap promised to institute a $10 per hour minimum wage by next year, and Costco's starting pay is already $11.50.

Oooh, those Gap and Costco employees are living large aren't they? Just for the record, $10 bucks an hour equals a full time annual wage of just $20,800--assuming they are allowed to work full time. How much disposable income do you suppose a head of a household is going to have on that kind of miserly salary? The article goes on, but you get the idea.

It's too bad so few Americans know anything about their own history. If they did they might recall that Henry Ford, when he was in the process building one of the world's largest automobile companies, recognized that there wouldn't be anyone able to afford to buy his product unless he paid his own employees a decent wage. Other companies followed suit, and it was these actions that were businesses' historical contribution to creation of the American middle class.

So what happened? Well, it seems that builders like Ford who knew their every little facet of how their companies operated were eventually replaced by greedy MBA assholes who'd never spent a day actually doing the work of those companies, and didn't give a shit about anything but the short term bottom line and their own pay, stock options and golden parachutes.

We've been told over and over and over again that "the consumer is the driver of the American economy." But when the consumer gets squeezed to the point that they no longer have any discretionary income, sooner or later the big corporations will have succeeded in killing the geese that lays their golden eggs. For nearly two generations now, American business has been operating under the mantra that "greed is good," and as a result now it isn't geese but chickens that are coming home to roost. And those are some sorry-ass, scrawny-looking chickens at that.


Bonus: "Got an 'L' on my forehead...and a stupid uniform."

The Irish are Revolting

You can say THAT again...(bada BING!).

I wanted to highlight this story from Vice.com because it has a little bit of everything. Let's start with massive protests over IMF-inflicted austerity measures forcing people to pay through the nose for a commodity they literally cannot live without:

After years of passivity in the face of austerity, anger in Ireland has finally spilled over into public protest because people are going to have to start paying for their water.

Yes, Ireland is set to become one of the few countries in the world with mandatory water meters. This means its residents will be paying more than most Europeans do for water, whereas before it was paid for by taxes. It wouldn't be quite so outrageous, people say, if Ireland's water didn't routinely fail testing by the country’s environmental watchdog, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In some places, the water is so unsafe that drinking it will see you expelling it out of one of your orifices at high velocity for days. So people aren't too keen to pay for the privilege. Demonstrations are being attended by crowds who park their cars and bikes in front of proposed sites for water meters, and the police have been guarding workers who are installing the hated things.

Workers who are watching as their prosperity slowly slips away who can't afford to pay:

The charges—which will average out to an annual charge of €278 ($355) for a family of four—were a condition of the EU-IMF bailout to Ireland in 2010...The "What’s Left" tracker carried out by the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 1.8 million people in Ireland—close to half the population—have less than €100 ($127) left every month after paying their bills.

Oh, and you can toss in a little enriching the oligarchy at the expense of everyone else:

The contract to provide the expensive and mandatory process of metering was given to a company called Siteserv, despite Siemens offering to do the job for free. Everyone found this pretty baffling. Siteserv is owned by Irish media mogul Denis O’Brien, Ireland’s third-richest man. He has a history of dodgy dealings—a tribunal found "beyond doubt" that he had made payments to a former communications minister, who then influenced the bidding process for mobile phone licenses that O’Brien’s company, Esat Digifone, then purchased. So he's also pretty unpopular, and the assumption is that the meters will further enrich him.

And finally, like a cherry on a shit sundae, the slow collapse of aging infrastructure:

Many Irish people have to boil their water before they drink it so it doesn't make them ill. For those, Irish Water has promised a whopping 50 percent discount for the first three months, which obviously hasn't done much to silence the outrage.

Oh, and almost half of water in Ireland is wasted in transit as it leaks out of pipes.

Goddam, Ireland, sounds like you've got a Downward Spiral perfect storm on your hands.


Bonus: "No mercy, no quarter...they'll pay for their sins"

What Happens When Big Corporations Become Immune to Bad Publicity?

Poor Tracy Morgan. Many working class people in America have already been figuratively run over by the predatory practices of big corporations like Walmart, that ever since the go-go 1980s have been driving down their wages and offshoring good paying jobs even while conning them with "low prices" they have had to pay for in so many ways they are unable to see. Morgan, however, had the misfortune of getting literally run over by a Walmart, specifically by an 18-wheeler piloted by a company driver who'd apparently been no-dosing it for about 24 hours.

Given that Morgan is a popular entertainer with a large fan base, you'd have thought that the smart thing for Walmart to do would be to quietly settle the civil suit filed by Morgan and the family of his companion who was killed in the crash. Well, you thought wrong, Natch:

Walmart's attorneys said yesterday in a court filing that it doesn't owe Morgan and his fellow passengers anything because they should have protected themselves by buckling up. The company further denied any responsibility for how long the truck driver, who Morgan's lawyers claim was sleep-deprived at the time of the accident, had been awake.

Understandably outraged, as any right-thinking person should be, Morgan responded:

"After I heard what Walmart said in court, I felt I had to speak out. I can't believe Walmart is blaming me for an accident that they caused. My friends and I were doing nothing wrong. I want to thank my fans for sticking with me during this difficult time."

Morgan didn't call for his fans to boycott Walmart, but it's probably just as well that he didn't. Citizens Consumers Idiots in this country have become so inured to corporate malfeasance that even having one of their favorite entertainers struck down like road kill likely wouldn't be enough to get them to change their shopping habits. Then you have the morons who, every time someone calls for a boycott in a situation like this, immediately rally to the company's side and call for an anti-boycott.

There was a time not all that long ago when America had a fairly aggressive Fourth Estate which investigated corporate malfeasance, and when caught the companies in question instantly scrambled to do everything they could to at least give the appearance that they were setting things right. In recent years, of course, the so-called "free press" has been taken over by a few giant conglomerates, so it takes some really spectacular fuckups like poisoning half the Gulf of Mexico or having a speed-addicted truck driver crush a teevee star under his wheels to get the media to pay any attention at all.

And yet...British Petroleum continues to do business in the United States as if nothing ever happened off the coast of Louisiana, and Walmart continues to rake in massive profits despite suffering one public relations black eye after another. Truly, we have reached the point where there is no longer any real incentive for big corporations--who have had their so-called "personhood" etched in stone by the Supreme Court--to act as "good citizens."

The Ayn Rand-following, knucklehead libertarians have expended so much energy convincing their fellow citizens consumers idiots that big government is a threat to them. It isn't until they end up like Tracy Morgan, roadkill splattered all over the pavement, that they begin to realize that big business is every bit as responsible for creating our onrushing 21st century dystopia as any NSA spook.

And by then it's too damn late.


Bonus: A very special tune dedicated to Walmart

The Two Americas

Here's a metaphorical news story. What happens when a young American woman driving a BMW meets a young American fast food worker riding her bicycle? One ends up dead and the other tries to avoid responsibility. Here is NECN.com with the story:

A 23-year-old woman is under investigation, charged in a deadly hit-and-run accident in Massachusetts.

The woman told police she thought she had hit an animal.

Barnstable police responded to the intersection of Route 28 and Pitchers Way just after 2 a.m. Thursday where they found a bicyclist down.

The victim was taken to Cape Cod hospital and pronounced dead.

The victim is 20-year-old Sheila Moreta who had just finished her first shift at Wendy’s. She was biking home when a gray BMW, driven by 23-year-old Angelica Barroso, hit Moreta, dragging her body into the corner of the road, before taking off.

While Moreta’s friend frantically tried to flag down help, Moreta was hit by a second car.

The BMW’s license plates fell off the car at the scene and police were able to track Barroso down. They found her an hour-and-a-half later.

Sgt. David Myett of Barnstable Police said it’s suspicious Barroso left the scene.

Barroso is charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

What’s interesting further is Barroso is a home health care aid and she was supposed to be spending the night at her patient’s home but she left the patient to pick up her sister at a bar.

Barroso also has a spotty driving record. She was ordered to take a retraining test but she had until August to complete that.

She pleaded not guilty and is being held on $2500 cash bail.

And with that, I am out of here.

Saturday Night Music Video: "Kill The Poor" By Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear

Matthew Grimm is the former lead singer of The Hangdogs, whose Bonus Army anthem, "Anacostia," I featured here a few weeks ago. Grimm has since moved on with a new outfit whose name I absolutely love. The Red Smear's best song is this little ditty, "Kill the Poor," from the album, Dawn's Early Apocalypse (really!), which rather wears its sentiment on it's sleeve--but is still a catchy tune (and is NOT a cover of the Dead Kennedys song of the same name). The song sounds like it was recorded just for the Occupy Movement, but was actually released in 2005, right at the height of the bubble years.

Enjoy!

Class Warfare for Dummies: Florida Bill Would Reduce Tipped Workers' Minimum Salary to $2.13 an Hour

Here's a proposed law that Willard Romney would absolutely love...until some aggrieved waitress spit on his filet mignon before serving it to him. The Orlando Sentinel has the gruesome details:

A bill that would cut the hourly wages of many waiters and waitresses was unveiled Tuesday by a Florida Senate committee in Tallahassee.

The bill would slash Florida's minimum wage for tipped workers — now $4.65 an hour — to the federal tipped minimum of $2.13 for companies that agree to guarantee that with wages and tips their employees will make at least $9.98 an hour.

The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association is urging legislators to pass the bill. The trade group says Florida's tipped minimum is crippling eateries financially, causing companies to cut back workforces and open fewer restaurants in Florida.

Combined with rising costs of food, insurance and implementing the new federal health-care law, "it's going to be a matter of time before the back of this industry breaks," said Carol Dover, chief executive officer of the trade group. "Minimum wage is killing them."

First of all, if these companies really do have to "guarantee" their employees will make $9.98 an hour with tips, then what is the point of reducing the base salary in the first place? You don't suppose there would be massive fudging on that amount do you? No...perish the thought. Secondly, if these restaurants can't afford to pay their wait staff a measly base salary of $4.65 an hour, then they a likely not going to last a whole lot longer anyway.

Call this what it is: yet another attack on low wage service workers by scumbag corporations at a time when these kinds of menial jobs represent a large portion of what is still available out there for workers. It's appalling that these companies want to be able to pay an employee less per hour than the cost of a gallon of gasoline. This is class warfare at its finest, a perfect metaphor at a time in which the front runner for the presidential nomination of one of the two major parties is a multimillionaire vulture capitalist who has openly professed that he doesn't care about poor people.

In case you want to know the identity of one of the major companies supporting this hideous bill...you know, so maybe you can extend a big ol' middle digit in their direction the next time you drive past one of their locations, I'm here to serve, so to speak:

Tampa-based OSI Restaurant Partners, supports the bill, Dover said. The company, which owns Outback Steakhouse, did not respond to a request for comment.

In that case I have a comment for Outback Steakhouse: shove your horrible bloomin' onions where the sun don't shine.


Bonus: Here's a little number that is GENUINELY Australian, unlike the Outback Steakhouse

One Percenter Madonna Advises Fans to "Save Their Pennies" to Buy Her $300 Concert Tickets

I read an article the other day about the political troubles Willard Mitt Romney is having because of his wealth that included the usual admonishment that people shouldn't hate him just because he's rich. Okay, I won't hate him for being born with a silver spoon shoved up his ass, but how about if I hate him because he's rich and he's an asshole about it? Because "asshole" is really the only way to describe a filthy rich fucker who comes right out and says he doesn't care about poor people.

In that vein, perhaps washed up popular "music" icon Madonna should record a campaign song for Willard. After all, she has the same "let 'em eat cake," attitude as The Mittster, according to this story from Star Pulse.com:

Madonna refuses to sympathize with fans who grumble about the escalating price of her concert tickets - insisting they should "start saving" their money because she's "worth it."

Tickets for the singer's live shows are always in high demand, allowing promoters to list them at premium prices, despite some complaints from devotees about having to dig deep to afford mediocre seats.

But Madonna, who is planning to hit the road later this year, is unconcerned - because she guarantees ticketholders will have a good time at her gigs.

She tells Newsweek magazine, "Start saving your pennies now. People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I'm worth it."

Actually, Ms. Ciccone, I wouldn't pay three fucking cents for a front row seat at one of your horrible shows, even if you threw in a free pair of ear plugs. You should just count your self lucky that we live in a society in which tens of millions of people have more money than brains (or taste), because otherwise you'd be standing outside a subway station somewhere, busking for enough money to buy a fifth of vodka to drown out the pain stemming from the realization of what a talentless piece of shit you are.


Bonus: Bill almost certainly was not a big fan of Madonna - "When did mediocrity and banality become a good role model for your children?"

MSNBC Shocked, SHOCKED to Learn that CEOs Rake in Huge Sums When Their Companies Go Bankrupt

In a properly functioning market economy, when a corporation is forced into bankruptcy the top management of said corporation would pay a very large financial penalty in terms of their pay and benefits. That is the whole foundation of our supposedly risk-reward capitalist system. Not in modern day America, however. Instead, we have evolved into a crony capitalist system in which it has become virtually impossible for those at the top to fail, however bad their decisions may be. What's more, this is true even in industries that don't receive massive government bailouts.

But wait, Bill, I hear you asking. Isn't that the case only in the Too Big To Fail sectors?

Sadly not, as reported this past weekend by MSNBC:

When companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared among many: Bond holders are wiped out, retirees see their pensions and benefits vanish, and employees lose their jobs.

But some feel no pain at all: CEOs and other top executives of companies that go through Chapter 11 receive robust compensation in the form of salary, stock grants and other benefits.

In some cases, they earn even more money than they did before the filing, even while other stakeholders suffer. It's the most unlikely fast-track to a fat payout ever, and it goes on in spite of federal legislation meant to crack down on corporate honchos feasting while everyone else fights over crumbs.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. In the wake of corporate catastrophes such as Enron, Congress passed legislation aimed at preventing companies from paying retention bonuses to executives at firms going through Chapter 11.

"You can't pay someone for just staying at a bankrupt company," said Robert Jackson, an associate professor at Columbia Law School at Columbia University, and former advisory to senior Treasury officials on executive compensation during the financial crisis. "But that's different from paying them from doing well at a bankrupt company," he said.

That distinction has become a loophole. Since the law allows performance-based incentives, huge executive payouts have morphed over the years to be little more than retention bonuses by another name, according to critics who say executives net outsized payouts even when they negotiate agreements that leave stakeholders out in the cold.

"There seems to be no sense of accountability at this level," said Steven Kropp, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. "In most of these cases, the unsecured creditors aren't being paid back in full, employees are being laid off, and in addition, they're finding their health insurance and pensions diminished." An investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that median compensation of CEOs at 21 companies that filed for bankruptcy was $8.7 million, just $400,000 less than the median compensation earned by CEOs at healthy companies.

Taking off my shoes and socks to do the math on that last data point reveals that the CEOs of bankrupt companies on average are paid just 4.5% less than those at non-bankrupt firms. Obviously, driving your company into the ground, usually in pursuit of a short term boost in revenue that can be used to pack your golden parachute, has virtually no negative ramifications to CEO pay anymore.

So how does this shit happen?

Companies are required to go to court and argue their case for big bonuses with the bankruptcy judge, explaining why the CEO deserves the set level of compensation and what targets they must meet in order to earn their bonus. The problem is that often the bar is set so low that even lackluster performance will be measured as success.

"It's all fine and well to say you're going to pay people for performance, but the key is what kind of performance," Jackson said. "It's very hard for a judge to know if an earnings target is easy or hard to hit. Are they just window dressings?" To make this determination, the court has to rely on evidence from the company's executives and lawyers, who may have an incentive to give themselves easy assignments.

Judges also have to rely on the input of compensation experts — also hired by the company — to know if the bonuses being proposed are appropriate for the industry and the task at hand, which also raises the prospect of manipulation.

In other words, it is a completely incestuous system from top to bottom. But wait, I hear you protesting. Why don't the shareholders object? After all, aren't they the ones being most negatively affected?

He said key stakeholders want a "bankruptcy guru," and they're willing to shell out enormous sums for the services of a CEO they think can pull the most money out of a troubled company. The catch is that this slate of decision-makers increasingly includes big creditors, negotiating with the kind of clout once limited to shareholders. What a creditor sees as the best return on its investment may very well be a bloodbath for the company's rank-and-file.

In other words, once again we see the "heads they win, tails you lose" dynamic at work. The system has become so totally gamed by the elites that it no longer matters to them whether a troubled company survives as an ongoing concern. If the company ultimately fails due to impossible market conditions created by peak oil, or the relentless off-shoring of decent paying jobs by corporate America, or because the CEO has never worked in that particular industry and has no fucking clue as to what they are doing, it doesn't matter at all to the big money boys. They'll just strip away the assets and leave a hollowed out husk...and then move on to the next ripe, juicy target. So while it was nice of MSNBC to treat this as a news story, it really shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone.


Bonus: "You get your money for nothing...and your chicks for free"