He should stop pretending he's a Democrat

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has signed a bill into law banning the use of state funds for embryonic stem cell research.

[...]

Kaine approved the Virginia bill on Monday, according to the governor's office, the same day he enacted legislation that would permit "Choose Life" license plates in the commonwealth — an act that angered state and national abortion rights advocates.

Obama says of Kaine:

"Tim [Kaine] knows that breaking free of the old orthodoxies and reaching across party line isn't just a way to build the Democratic Party but a way to achieve progress for all Americans."

I'm begining to understand what "breaking free" really means.

And the Izzy goes to...

2008 Izzy Award Winners:

AMY GOODMAN and GLENN GREENWALD

The inaugural Izzy Award for work done in 2008 is being shared by two pillars of independent journalism: blogger Glenn Greenwald and Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman.

Yay!

Faith-based bigot wins White House religious council spot

U.S. News & World Report:

The White House has invited recently retired NFL Coach Tony Dungy, whose outspoken Christian faith fueled his 2007 support for a gay marriage ban and has won accolades from evangelical leaders, to join its Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, U.S. News has learned.

With this appointment, "I am not in favor of gay marriage" Obama delivers yet another message to the Right: see, I can be just like you.

Kill Neoliberal Capitalism, Kill It Dead

"We're in the crap."

(h/t Lenin's Tomb)

We're also way behind the U.K. when it comes to protesting our government.

GWOT becomes OCO

'This Administration prefers to avoid using the term "Long War" or "Global War on Terror" [GWOT]. Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"
- Dave Riedel, Office of Security Review

"I haven't gotten any directive about using it or not using it. It's just not being used."
- Hillary Clinton

Obama, Jauary 22, 2009:

We are confronted by extraordinary, complex and interconnected global challenges: war on terror, overseas contingency operations, sectarian division and the spread of deadly technology. We did not ask for the burden that history has asked us to bear, but Americans will bear it. We must bear it."

I think he's doing a lot more than bearing it. He's promoting it.

Jeff Huber:

It’s hard to say where Obama lies on the continuum that ranges from precocious fool to willing conspirator of the warmongery, but it looks more every day like the change we believed in has changed into the neoconservative agenda for everlasting, pointless war.

O'Reilly on Fairness

Straight from the horse's [mouth*]:

"My job is to watch the powerful. A performer has a forum that other people do not, and all we ask is that they be fair. If they believe something and use their TV show, movie or concert to spout off about it, that's fine. But if we have some questions about their beliefs, I think they should answer them -- and not be drive-by people."

*Select appropriate oriface.

Obama's War "a doomed and unnecessary enterprise."

Dennis Perrin:

...the Afghan war is going badly and getting worse, as Obama is about to add another 21,000 warm bodies to the killing fields. How this doesn't make Afghanistan Obama's war I've no fucking clue, but liberals, being smarter than those crazy conservatives, usually find ways to avoid speaking plainly about what stares everyone right in the face. Besides, Obama's already killed civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, so he now runs the slaughterhouse, the cries from which cannot be denied, only ignored, explained away, or laid at the feet of George W. Bush, who like Bill Clinton before him, will serve as a diversion to those devoted to his successor.

Tom Engelhardt (Asia Times):

Graveyard thinking
As Obama's economic team overseeing the various financial bailouts is made up of figures long cozy with Wall Street, so his foreign policy team is made up of figures deeply entrenched in Washington's national security state - former Clintonistas (including the penultimate Clinton herself), military figures like National Security Adviser General James Jones, and that refugee from the George H W Bush era, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. They are classic custodians of empire. Like the economic team, they represent the ancien regime.

They've now done their "stress tests", which, in the world of foreign policy, are called "strategic reviews". They recognize that unexpected forces are pressing in on them. They grasp that the American global system, as it existed since the truncated American century began, is in danger. They're ready to bite the bullet and bail it out. Their goal is to save what they care about in ways that they know.

[...]

The foreign policy team is no more likely to exhibit genuinely outside-the-box thinking than the team of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers has done. Their clear and desperate urge is to operate in the known zone, the one in which the US is always imagined to be part of the solution to any problem on the planet, never part of the problem itself.

Juan Cole:

Pashtun tribes in northwestern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan have a long history of dissidence, feuding and rebellion, which is now being branded Talibanism and configured as a dire menace to the Western way of life. Obama has added yet another domino theory to the history of Washington's justifications for massive military interventions in Asia. When a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise.

USAfghanistan

Democracy Now!

Ex-US Official Predicts US Will Be in Afghanistan Until 2025

Meanwhile, the former top US commander in Afghanistan has projected that US troops will remain in Afghanistan for another sixteen years. Retired Lieutenant General David Barno told a Senate panel last week that it will take until 2025 for the US to hand over control fully to Afghan institutions.

[source]

"The idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan is disastrous, really absurd."

"With his foreign policy, unfortunately, he shows no signs of departing from the traditional militarism of the Democratic and Republican parties. The idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan is disastrous, really absurd. I mean, almost as soon as he came into office he sent missiles into Pakistan. Civilians were killed. The whole tone of foreign policy, adding more soldiers, leaving 50,000 in Iraq even after withdrawing them in 16 months, all of this is very bad. And, therefore, he's going to need a great big push -- protest, really. He's going to need demonstrations and protest and letters and petitions. He's going to have to face the kind of agitation that Roosevelt faced when he came into office." - Howard Zinn

Russ Feingold, October 24, 2008:

We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan? How many troops would be needed and for how long? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives? And – with the lessons of Iraq in mind – will this approach advance our top national security priority, namely defeating Al Qaeda?

We must target Al Qaeda aggressively, and we cannot allow Afghanistan to be used again as a launching pad for attacks on America. It is far from clear, however, that a larger military presence there would advance these goals.

To the contrary, it might only perpetuate a counterproductive game of cat and mouse that has led to a steep erosion in Afghans' support for foreign forces in southwestern Afghanistan, the main Taliban stronghold.

BBC Poll (Feb. 2009): Q8. How much progress do you think …….is making in providing a better life for Afghans in the future?


Q18. Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the presence of the following groups in Afghanistan today?


Lenin's Tomb (December 2006), Afghanistan and Liberal Blindness:

Given the bolstered power and prestige of the warlords; given the ongoing exploitation of Afgan people by this class of comprador gangsters; given the mass starvation that has resulted; given the daily violence of the occupiers and their brutal clients; and given the failure of the state to be genuinely representative - given all that, an insurgency has developed and grown, and (as I have pointed out elsewhere) is not delimited to the Taliban and its supporters. NATO forces can only keep the country by becoming even more brutal, killing ever more people, destroying more houses and utilising more of the repressive techniques of the warlords whom they employ. US Special Forces in alliance with mercenary outfits like the Afghan Militia Force have already done their best to turn residents of Afghanistan into insurgents. According to the Senlis Council, the "conflict in the Southern provinces of Afghanistan has shifted from a traditional military opposition to people warfare." That is, it elaborates, an increasing "guerilla war" with deepening roots in local communities.

Boycott the Center for American Progress

Media Mouse:

Last week, the liberal think-tank the Center for American Progress released a new report on the war in Afghanistan. Unlike the major anti-war groups and a growing coalition of bloggers who are organizing opposition to Obama's Afghanistan policy, the Center for American Progress' report came out in support of Obama's policy and U.S. empire generally. Any disagreements with the administration were largely on the tactical level and did not challenge the overall policy.

Think Progress is no longer on my blog list.

Opposing Obama's War

So far, only a few organizations are speaking out. United for Peace & Justice is one of them.

Today, President Barack Obama announced his plans to send another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan: he is girding the nation for a long and costly military occupation there.

While he also made some good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the emphasis is clearly on military operations. Predictably, the Pakistan and Afghan factions of the Taliban are already uniting to oppose our escalation of troops. As the spring fighting season approaches, only one thing is certain -- more death, destruction, and misery in a desperately poor country that has had little respite from war for decades.

Here in the U.S., Obama's escalation in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation of Iraq threaten our nation's urgent economic and domestic agenda. Now is the time for more diplomacy, not more war!

United For Peace and Justice calls for immediate action for peace in Afghanistan.

Peace Action is another.

Anand Gopal (Democracy Now!) predicts more civilian casualties:

...to bring more troops, that’s going to mean more civilian casualties. It’ll mean more of these night raids, which have been deeply unpopular amongst Afghans. And also, there’s a problem where whenever American soldiers go into a village and then leave, the Taliban comes and attacks the village. So a lot of villagers feel that they’re sort of being attacked on all sides here and don’t view the injection of more troops as necessarily a solution to that.

Ben Cohen (HuffPo) calls for more activism in the blogosphere.

James Blight:

We should pay particular attention to Obama's decisions on the war in Afghanistan. On January 17, Obama said in a speech given in Philadelphia (on his whistle-stop tour en route to his inaugural) that Afghanistan is a war "that needs to be waged wisely." Time will tell what sort of "wisdom" Obama was referring to in the speech. If by "wisdom" he means what it came to mean in the Johnson administration, he (and we) are likely to fail. LBJ and his lieutenants tried to carefully, rationally calculate the proper balance between sticks (U.S. troops and bombing) and carrots (the promise of peace negotiations) needed to subdue the Vietnamese communists. They failed utterly. If this is the sort of "wisdom" that the Obama administration will seek to apply in its support of the U.S.-backed regime in Kabul, it is unlikely to prevail against a ruthless, resourceful insurgency whose fighters know the territory as U.S. and allied forces never will. The Johnson administration, which sought in vain to bomb the Vietnamese communists to the conference table, ultimately found itself both humiliated and reviled.

Juan Cole wrote in 2008:

Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S. now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering the tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved beyond their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of the energetic and charismatic Obama.

The "war on terror" continues.

Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan war policy - making a distinction without a difference

You can't be anointed President unless you've demonstrated a willingness to ramp up the war machine. The ramp-up always comes with a plethora of excuses.

Since President Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last week, he and his administration have been careful to distinguish it from President Bush’s surge in Iraq. [source]

Who will be the first troop to die from Obama's "nobler" surge?

Bad Attitudes:

President Barack Obama is adding America to a long list of powerful nations which have tried to conquer or pacify Afghanistan.

If history is any guide he will fail, but not until the blood of United States fighters has run through the rugged hills and valleys of this most treacherous of countries. Treacherous because of terrain, hatred of foreigners, double crosses between Afghan tribes, families and outsiders, and a culture in which boys are trained to be guerrilla fighters from childhood.

Happy Sunday Magnetic Fields Playlist

More Spawn of the Greatest Story Ever Told

Congratulations to Texas, which has just trashed its science education standards. It's hard enough educating kids, now Texas teachers (and textbooks) will likely be forced to cover nutty creationist ideas about evolution. Nutcase Casey Luskin crows:

"The language adapted requires students to have critical thinking about all of science, including evolution, and it urges them to look at all sides of the issue."

April 1st is "Financial Fools Day"

Why can we not have this much fun in the U.S.? The London Financial Fools Day event:

April Fools Day is hereby declared a public holiday!

On 1st April at 11 a.m. parades will join up at four railway stations around the edge of the square mile - Liverpool St, London Bridge, Cannon St and Moorgate - and snake their way though the City to converge at the Bank of England for 12 noon.

Each procession will be headed by one of the Four Horsefolk of the Apocalypse, commanding their forces against:
1) Climate chaos (Green horse, Liverpool St); 2) War (Red horse, Moorgate); 3) Job/savings/pensions losses (Silver horse, London Bridge); and 4) Home repossessions (Black horse, Cannon Street).

G20 Meltdown calls for as many people as possible to join us for Banquet at the Bank, bring food, fun and games to share - a very rare delicacy will be served, bankers brains! If you want to Eat the Bankers join the Silver horse in a zombie block!

The Trial of Capitalism, for crimes against the planet - send’em to the gallows, politicians, war criminals and bankers hanging from every lamppost! If you want to press the charges for war crimes join the Red horse!

The Rainforest arrives in the City, Giant anacondas up the pillars, macaws shitting on the statues, polar bears on melting icebergs. Join the Green horse in animal mask or bring greenery for gorilla invasion of the urban jungle!

The World Turns Full Circle, The 360th anniversary of the Diggers, English Revolutionaries for the Earth, a ‘Common Treasury for All’. Join the Black horse with diggers’ spades to celebrate!

Can we overthrow this corrupt and despised government? Yes, we can! Can we live sustainably and avert climate chaos? Yes, we can! Can we defy the database police state and restore our ancient freedoms? Yes, we can! Can we make capitalism history? Yes, we can!

Nature doesn't do bailouts!

Climate change is yet one more pressing concern that capitalism, left to its own devices, won't solve.

Via Climate Camp 09 (a UK organization):

Carbon trading is aimed at the wrong goal

Carbon trading is aimed at the wrong target. It doesn’t address climate change. Solving climate change means figuring out how to keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground. It means reorganizing industrial societies’ energy, transport and housing systems – starting today – so that they don’t rely on coal, oil and gas. Carbon trading isn’t directed at that goal. Instead, it’s organized around keeping the wheels on the fossil fuel industry as long as possible and making it seem politically excusable to go ahead with new carbon-intensive infrastructure, like the 3rd runway at Heathrow and the proposed new coal-fired power plants, like the one at Kingsnorth. Carbon trading allocates industries a generous short-term numerical emissions budget and then tries – through trading – to make it cheap and easy for them to continue business as usual within those budgets, by buying credits from less economically developed countries and companies. We need climate action, not business schemes.

[...]

Important decisions, discussions and demands about climate change are being swept aside in favour of ‘leaving it to the market,’ despite the fact that it’s a market whose parameters and rules have been largely determined by some of the biggest polluters around, teaming up with the same financiers responsible for the ‘structured investment vehicles’ and ‘credit derivative swaps’ that have brought economies crashing down. They say markets, we say democracy.

Tristan Anderson

[source]

Banks will emerge from crisis more powerful than ever... unless we act

Red Pepper, David Harvey:

What happened in the US was that eight men gave us a three-page document, which pointed a gun at everybody and said ‘give us $700 billion or else’. This to me was like a financial coup against the government and the population of the US. Which means you’re not going to come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you’re going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the capitalist class than there has been in the past. We’re going to end up with four or five major banking institutions in the United States and nothing else.

[...]

Whether we can get out of this crisis in a different way depends very much upon the balance of class forces. It depends upon the degree to which the entire population says ‘enough is enough, let’s change this system’. Right now, when you look at what’s been happening to workers over the last 50 years, they have got almost nothing out of this system. But they haven’t risen up in revolt. In the US over the last seven or eight years, the condition of the working classes in general has deteriorated, but there has been no mass movement against this. Finance capitalism could survive the crisis, but whether it does depends entirely upon the degree to which there is going to be popular revolt against what is happening, and a real push to try to reconfigure how the economy works.

Spain pursuing crimes we should have investigated a long time ago

N.Y. Times (via Mahablog):

Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Torture-touting Six:

* former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
* John Yoo, the Justice Department attorney who authored the infamous “torture memo”
* Jay Bybee, Yoo’s superior at the Office of Legal Counsel, also involved in the creation of torture memos
* David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and legal adviser
* Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy
* William Haynes, the legal counsel at the DoD

Spawn of the Greatest Story Ever Told

Obsessed Bible worshipers are everywhere. Here's one from Illinois, defending the Almighty from climate change science.

"The earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. ... I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect. ... There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet. Not too much carbon." - John Shimkus (R-Il)

Way to go, Illinois.

"So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?"

Basically, John thinks we're not doing enought to pollute the planet. The Bible told him so. Aren't you glad that he's a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials?

Spawn of Limbaugh

Little Limbaughs are everywhere. Here's one from Mississippi.

A Republican black mayoral candidate in Jackson, Mississippi wants to bring back the noose to fight crime.

[...]

“Crime can only be alleviated by a noose and a stout tree limb. I will provide the noose and when the economy improves, I will get the jobs here.”

Despite being the only Republican in the field, the GOP is not backing Lambus because of his explosive views. Since Lambus is the only Republican, he will automatically advance to the run-off against the top Democrat.

The pistol-toting Lambus claimed that the Bible approves executions.

“If we look at the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, it’s driven with blood.”

Lambus may be the first African-American politician advocating the lynching of other African-Americans. [source]

"Economy is subject to public control, and should be wrested from the domination of the ruling class."

John Bellamy Foster:

The first thing to recognise is that we are suddenly in a different historical period. One of my favourite quotes comes from Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1969 film Burn! where the main character, William Walker (played by Marlon Brando), states: “Very often between one historical period and another, ten years suddenly might be enough to reveal the contradictions of an entire century.”

We are living in such a period, not only because of the financial crisis and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now calling a depression in the advanced capitalist economies, but also because of the global ecological crisis that during the last decade has accelerated out of control under business as usual, and due to the reappearance of “naked imperialism”.

What made sense 10 years ago is nonsense now. New dangers and possibilities are opening up. A whole different kind of struggle is emerging.

[...]

The one place in the world where this world historical ferment appears to not be having telling effect at present is the United States.

This can be traced to two reasons. First, the US as the centre of a world empire is a fortress of conservatism. Second, the election of the Barack Obama administration has confused progressive forces, leading to absurd notions that the Democratic Party under Obama is going to create a New New Deal without renewed pressure arising from a revolt from below.

Meanwhile, under Obama’s watch, and with the help of his chosen advisers, vast amounts of state funds are being infused into the financial system to benefit private capital.

What is needed in the US today is a renewal of the classic concept of “political economy” (with its class perspective), whereby it comes to be understood that the economy is subject to public control, and should be wrested from the domination of the ruling class.

[...]

The robbing of public funds to bail out private capital is now on a scale probably never before seen. A politicised, organised working class capable of understanding and reacting to that theft, and choosing thereby to restructure society, to meet real social, egalitarian needs is what is now to be hoped for.

New Way Forward

Pledge to Break Up the Banks

Tell Obama and Congress: "If it's too big to fail, it's too big to exist. Dismantle the power of the financial elite and make policies that keep a new crop from springing up. We want our economy and politics restored for the public." Do something: sign onto the demand and we'll bring this message to Congress on April 11. If there's a rally near you, we'll tell you.

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree on the means -- Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention - no more blank check taxpayer handouts. (see Krugman on nationalization)

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. (see Simon Johnson on reorganizing)

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place-- new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big for a free market to function. (see Mike Lux on decentralization)

[...]

In a basic sense, this is a fight against corruption. Not in the sense of a quid-pro-quo (though that may be there too), but in the sense of a corrupt ideology. For the most part, the world of economists, politicians and financiers is one elite web of influence. At some point, private profit took over as the only value to consider in building an economy, and it has never subsided. This is true of the thinking from both major parties.

For example, Timothy Geithner, Obama's Treasury Secretary and a "liberal," was a key architect of Bush's original bank bailout plan in his former role as Chief of the New York Reserve Bank. Under Obama, Geithner has continued to propose what sounds like more blank-check bailouts (in various disguises) and has specifically ruled out other approaches, such as temporary nationalization, because, he says, "our system will be stronger if it remains in private hands." The necessary solutions to our economic crisis just don't compute in the minds of the financial elite.

If our government is to take decisive action to rebuild the economy in a way that protects the public, it will require Americans to fight back against this corruption. We must come out in mass to demand a new way forward or things simply will not change.

It's not enough to patch up the current system. We need to restrict the ways that bankers can lobby and serve in the government. We need to prohibit compensation plans that encourages huge short-term risk. We have to break up any bank that's "too big to fail" so that we can have a functional free market. We need serious reform that fixes the root causes in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation that does nothing to serve the public interest.

A piker by comparison

[source]

Michael Winship:

A famous New Deal-era cartoon in The New Yorker shows Manhattan swells in black tie urging neighbors to “Come along. We’re going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt.” And as financial historian Charles Geisst told the Times, “To hear [FDR] referred to as Comrade Roosevelt during that period was not unusual.”

But although Obama embraces FDR analogies, in some respects he’s a piker by comparison. The Columbia Journalism Review linked to a chart from the National Taxpayers Union and noted, “The top marginal rate of 39.6 percent that Obama is proposing is actually low by historical standards -- he may be adopting FDR-style rhetoric, but his tax plan isn’t in the same ballpark. And it wasn’t only Roosevelt. Throughout the Eisenhower administration, top tax rates exceeded 90 percent. Under Nixon, they never dropped below 70 percent. Even for most of Ronald Reagan’s term, they were at 50 percent. Those presidents aren’t often thought of as ‘class warriors.’”

Nor did Democrats or progressives fire the first shots in any so-called class war. As the recently poorer multibillionaire Warren Buffet said a couple of years ago, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

America wasn’t founded as a nation where winner takes all but over the last couple of decades, that’s the way it has turned out. The central vision of “We, the people” has been distorted and manipulated by the powerful and privileged doing their damnedest as they wage class war to sustain their way of life at the expense of everybody else, even in this current crisis.

An Ugly Measure of American Education

From the Measure of America report:

By the end of fourth grade, African American and Latino children, and children of all races who are living in poverty, are two years behind their more affluent, predominantly white peers in reading and math. They have fallen three years behind by eighth grade, and four years behind by twelfth grade.

By 2050, Hispanics will make up almost 25% of the population. By 2050, African Americans will make up 15% of the population. Will we still be depriving children of these groups the education they deserve?

Salaries rising at bailed-out B of A

More sickening news.

Bloomberg (h/t Clusterstock):

Bank of America, which has received $45 billion of taxpayers’ money, may raise the annual base pay for some managing directors to about $300,000 from $180,000, said the people, who declined to be identified because the final numbers are still under discussion. Salaries for less-senior directors would climb to about $250,000 from $150,000, and vice presidents would get $200,000, up from about $125,000, the people said.

"If you don't make demands you will not only not be heard, you will get screwed."

[source]

Oleeb (TPM):

Don't shy away from making the wishes and desires of the common people heard in the halls of government! Don't listen to the voices that counsel docility masquerading as restraint or "giving them a chance." The more time we give without demanding our voice be heard the more time we hand to the special interests to cut us out of the deal entirely. If you don't think that's true look at the debate over health care or even the banking bailout where the lobbyists representing predatory wealth swarm daily like vultures. The clear lesson of history and in modern politics is that if you don't make demands you will not only not be heard, you will get screwed. The common people won't be heard at all if we are not shouting at the top of our lungs, making those who say they represent us uncomfortable (as they are now while trying to squirm away from responsibility for the AIG bonuses, etc...), and demanding we get for the common people of this country the things they have deserved for so long but have been denied. Now is the time for people power. It's unlikely to come again in our lifetimes, so let's act on behalf of our children, grandchildren and posterity before it is too late.

Silence = Complicity

Happy Weepies Saturday

[source]

"We are not simply an economy structured by market incentives—we are a democratic society of human beings."

"Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness."
- Karl Polanyi

Rudi Batzell:

With market-fundamentalism discredited, and with growing inequality, from what directions can we hope to find our intellectual bearings? One of the most penetrating and least known students of market societies was Karl Polanyi. For Polanyi, society and the market could only have an uneasy coexistence. He recognized the immense creative power of market institutions, but he also understood their instability. The market had to be harnessed and restrained by society, according to Polanyi, otherwise it would annihilate the very social fabric of human life. Yet capitalist societies have persistently thrown up world-views that insist that society should be run as an adjunct of the market. Stability, predictability, and basic protections are necessities of human life, but not of markets. And thus we have the capitalists crying for welfare, too, because they, as Polanyi understood, “are too big to fail.”

If human beings were commodities like any other, the models of the market fundamentalists might function within certain limits. The problem, Polanyi understood, was that capitalism rested on the “fictitious” commodity of labor: human beings (and their labor) could not be sold, traded, exchanged, warehoused, shipped and disposed of as other commodities could. Human beings have moral worth, and we share collective ethical responsibilities.

Exposing and fighting inequality must be part of our response to the current crisis, and giving organized labor more power is crucial to breathing life into our democracy, curbing inequality, and fighting the commodification of human labor. With Walmart announcing an increased dividend from bonanza recession profits, now should be the time to organize the big retailers. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is valuable, and the lines of conflict are already being drawn with Warren Buffett’s recent denunciation of this effort to give working people more dignity and power on the job. Yet a commitment beyond legislation is necessary. We must remember that we are not simply an economy structured by market incentives—we are a democratic society of human beings.

Put People First

Londoners are marching today.

On 28th March thousands will march through London as part of a global campaign to challenge the G20, ahead of their 2nd April summit on the global financial crisis.

Even before the banking collapse, the world suffered poverty, inequality and the threat of climate chaos. The world has followed a financial model that has created an economy fuelled by ever-increasing debt, both financial and environmental.

Our future depends on creating an economy based on fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future.

There can be no going back to business as usual.

Think Tank Declares Class Warfare Off Limits

Minnesota Public Radio:

"Americans have traditionally been against engaging in class warfare," says Morton, managing director of Economic Policy at The Pew Charitable Trusts. "They have been against supporting policies that are seen as attacking those who are successful and wealthy because there is this view that it might be us one day."

As in, one day we'll be the rich ones. And we're certainly not going to change the rules before we get our chance to reap the rewards.

Morton directs the Pew's Economic Mobility Project. He says Americans are well aware of the ever-widening economic gap between the rich and the poor. How they'd prefer to address this gap was something Morton and his colleagues decided to research.

In a recent survey, they asked people if more focus should be placed on reducing economic inequality or on leveling the playing field for all. Seventy-one percent chose leveling the playing field.

Rather than having wealth more evenly distributed or pulling the rich closer in line with the middle class, most said they preferred everyone be given equal shot at success.

[...]

Forty-five percent of us are convinced that, one day, we'll be counted among the country's wealthiest. In reality, just five percent of us will ever achieve such a feat. Still, the idea what we could strike it rich is what tends to guide us.

Jim Hightower addressed class warfare blindness in a recent column, in response to David Brooks' comment: "The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment."

America's history is replete with class rebellions against various moneyed elites who act as though they're the top dogs and ordinary folks are just a bunch of fire hydrants.

Check out the Tenant Uprisings of 1766, Shay's Rebellion in the 1780s, the Workingmen's Movement of the 1830s ... on into the post-Civil War populist movement that confronted the robber barons, the bloody labor battles at Haymarket and Homestead in the late 1800s, Coxey's Army in 1894, the Bonus March of 1932, the Penny Auctions by farmers in the 1920s and '30s, the rise of the CIO in the Depression years ...and right into modern-day fights involving environmental justice, fair trade, women's pay, workplace safety, tenant rights, janitors, farmworkers, union-busting, bank redlining, consumer gouging, clean elections and so forth.

If Brooks & Co. are so isolated as to imagine that our citizenry harbors no class resentment, they should go to any Chat & Chew Cafe across the land and listen to the locals express their innermost feelings about today's greedheaded Wall Streeters who wrecked our economy for their own enrichment. There is a fury in the countryside toward these plutocratic purse-snatchers who are being allowed to keep their exalted executive positions, draw fat paychecks and get trillions of dollars in bailout money from common taxpayers. People don't merely resent them, they yearn for the legalization of tar-and-feathering!

Robert Reich: How Unequal Can America Get?

"The Democrats have to do better."

"When you hear people accusing people like me of being class warriors, what I want you to understand is, the failure to act on these trends invites real class warfare."

Reich's rubber band analogy also is used by Fred Block in his intro to Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation:

But as the consequences of unrestrained markets become apparent, people resist; they refuse to act like lemmings marching over a cliff to their own destruction. Instead, they retreat from the tenets of market self-regulation in order to save society and nature from destruction. In this sense, one might say that disembedding the market is similar to stretching a giant elastic band. Efforts to bring about greater autonomy of the market increase the level of tension. With further stretching, either the band will snap - representing social disintegration - or the economy will revert to a more embedded position.

The wages of poverty wages is heart disease and death

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The longer a person remains in poverty, the more likely he or she is to develop heart disease, a new study suggests.

Studies in developed countries have consistently shown that people with low incomes and less education generally have higher rates of heart disease than their more-educated, higher-income counterparts.

In this latest study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that lifelong disadvantage may translate into an "accumulation of risk" for heart disease.

They found that among more than 1,800 U.S. adults in a long-term heart- health study, greater lifetime exposure to poverty was related to increasing heart disease risks. Those who were disadvantaged as children and adults were 82 percent more likely to develop heart disease than those who were comparatively well off in childhood and adulthood.

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence."

Frankin Delano Roosevelt:

We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure....

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security.

"The problem is income disparity."

[source]

Today:

To the Editor:

Like Jake DeSantis, I come from a solidly working-class background. I am a professional for whom a 10-plus-hour day away from my family is not unusual. Unlike Mr. DeSantis, I earn in the mid-$40s.

The $742,000 “retention payment” Mr. DeSantis received for one year’s work is more than I have earned in my working life. I also worked hard during the economic boom. Somehow, I cannot afford to write a showy resignation like his; I must keep working.

A.I.G. is not our economic problem. It is a symbol, as Mr. DeSantis now is a symbol. While most Americans dread unemployment, his ability to choose unemployment freely seems perverse. The problem is not Mr. DeSantis’s bonus, or A.I.G., but the stagnancy of most Americans’ wages over decades while compensation for people like Mr. DeSantis has surged. The problem is income disparity.

Steven P. Millies
Aiken, S.C., March 25, 2009

Holly Sklar, 2008:

The minimum wage in 1968, if you adjust it for inflation, was $9.88. Why does that matter? Well, today, if you're an entry-level worker at, you know, our two biggest employers, Wal-Mart and McDonalds, you're not making $9.88 to start, you're making well below that. ... $5.85.

[...]

So, the question is what are you gonna do as Americans wake up to the fact that really, we have this growing workforce of poverty wage workers, you can't even pretend to have the illusion that we're really a middle class country.

N. Y. Times, Spetember 4, 2005:

The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make - $365,826 compared with $7,047 - which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia, according to the Times analysis of 2000 census data. Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents.

Holly Sklar, 1995:

One out of four children is born into poverty in this, the world's wealthiest nation. That's according to the government's own undercounting measure. Wealth is not trickling down. It is flooding upward. The richest one percent of American families have nearly as much wealth as the entire bottom 95 percent. Such obscene inequality befits an oligarchy, not a democracy. Manhattan's income gap is worse than Guatemala's.

[...]

In 1967, a full-time, year-round worker paid minimum wage earned above the official poverty line for a family of three. Today, these workers (mostly women) are way below the poverty line for a family of two.

For corporate executives, meanwhile, compensation has skyrocketed. The average CEO of a major corporation "earned" as much as 41 factory workers in 1960, and 149 factory workers in 1993.

Where will we be in 2015? Where will Obama take us? Towards even greater income disparities? It's time to end the obscene income inequality that exists in this country.

The New Economy of Lawrence Summers

N.Y. Times, November 5, 1999:

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

[...]

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

[...]

One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone.

The French have a hard time loving business

"A left that is not afraid to face down the attacks from the right.... A new political representation for the world of work, young people and victims of various oppressions. A left that does not confine its ambitions to limiting the damage of capitalist globalization, but which still wants to do away with the system and radically change society. And, indeed, change society!" - Olivier Besancenot

AFP:

>There is a growing sentiment, here as elsewhere, that the business elite caused the crisis but it is the workers who are paying.

"Basically we (the French) have a hard time loving business and not thinking that employers are exploiters," said Francis Kramarz, an economics professor at the elite Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

That explains, he said, the impressive performance of Olivier Besancenot, the 34-year-old leader of the newly-founded New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA).

A recent poll said an almost equal number of French thought his policies were as credible as Sarkozy's.

Besancenot, a part-time postman who wants to abolish the stock market and nationalise much of French industry, regularly takes part in occupations of post offices as part of his negotiating tactics with the management of the state-run postal service.

[...]

Each time workers see their employers treating them in an "unjust, immoral, unacceptable way, faced with these decisions that offer them no future, there is the risk of anger, of more or less radical attitudes," he said.

A comedy movie playing in cinemas at the moment has struck a chord with many French. "Louise-Michel" tells the tale of women workers who hire a hitman to kill their boss after he closes their factory without giving them any warning.

The Nutty Professor

Alarm bells are ringing for the neocons. Loudly. A joy to behold!

Donald Douglas, Associate Professor of Political Science, somewhere in Southern California:

The funny thing is that I just went out to lunch with a former student of mine and we were discussing this exact same thing.

I mentioned what I saw as frightening left-wing craziness and moral breakdown across the land, and I said off-hand that we needed to dig in our heels and fight the Obama hordes who are nationalizing everything. I suggested that we could have Democrats in power for two terms or more, and the total breakdown of society wasn't that far-fetched. Oh sure, we'd still have constitutional democracy, but America would be different: Abortion on demand, marriage abolished in favor of a civil-union smorgasbord, our military downsized and hollowed out, backed by unconditional diplomacy with our enemies from Caracas to Southern Lebanon to Tehran. Multiculturalism takes over the schools with conservatism and traditional speech prohibited under a new regime of "hate crimes" legislation (which is starting to happen now, for example, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, "Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio").

Crybaby Capitalism

Whaaaaaaaaa!

"After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials." [source]

Whaaaaaaaaa! Just to show us who's boss, he's giving away his 1.25 million dollar bonus.

Whaaaaaaaaa! Angry mobs are threatening to bring down America!

This debacle has created the monster of angry mobs chasing bonuses recipients, with the distracting appeasement of vigilantism becoming the greatest current threat to our economic crisis.

[...]

Hendrik Ibsen, an advocate of early European democratization, became discouraged over what he termed “mobocracy” in which sluggish leaders allowed mass stampedes over individual rights. The close of his play “Enemy of the People” celebrates those who challenge the mob, stating, “The strongest man in the world is the man who can stand alone.” [source]

Whaaaaaaaaa! Here's a nasty little letter from Henrik Ibsen, the man whom clearly clueless Jeffrey Sonnenfeld admires so much:

4 April 1872

"My dear friend, the liberals are the worst enemies of Freedom. Spirtiual and intellectual freedom flourish best under absolutism; that was proved in France, then in Germany and it is now being proved in Russia...

[...]

"Do not rely implicitly on everyone who joins you; what matters is whether they do so for the right reason... my own conviction is that the strongest man is he who stands most alone. But I sit here outside it all while you stand there in the midst of the storm; that makes a big difference."

Sonnenfeld, Dean of Yale's School of Management, also doesn't seem to realize that it's the town's business interests that mob the Doctor to prevent the town's water pollution issue from becoming public.

DO THE MATH

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set out for Mexico Wednesday to pursue a broad diplomatic agenda that will be overshadowed by spiraling drug violence and fears of greater cross-border spillover.

A day after the Obama administration announced it would send more money, technology and manpower to secure the United States' Southwestern frontier and help Mexican authorities in their battle against drug cartels, Clinton was to depart on a two-day trip to Mexico City and Monterrey aimed at bolstering anti-narcotics cooperation....

In addition, officials said they will increase the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and antigun-trafficking agents operating along the border. The government also will allow federal funds to be used to pay for local law enforcement involved in Southwestern border operations and send more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.

At the same time, U.S. prosecutors say they will boost efforts to go after those smuggling guns and drug profits from the U.S. into Mexico, and allowed that the problem was not only one of supply, but of demand for illicit narcotics in America. [my emphasis]

Those steps come in addition to a three-year, $1.4-billion-dollar Bush administration-era program known as the Merida Initiative through which Congress already has approved $700 million to support Mexico's efforts to fight the cartels. Obama has said he wants to revamp the initiative.[Source]

USA = DEMAND
+ MEXICO = SUPPLY
------------------
= THE WAR ON DRUGS DOES NOT ADD UP

America the Austere

We will weather this crisis but are we truly screwed for the long term? Crippling deficits will bring austerity to Washington, D.C., and stagnant wages and an end of easy credit are already bringing austerity to middle class America.

Doug Henwood:

It looks like the intention of the Geithner scheme is to try to restore the status quo ante bustum, with private equity and hedge fund guys running around remaking the economic landscape with big gobs of borrowed money. Is the ultimate point of this plan to bring back the world of 1999 or 2005, when easy credit fueled speculative bubbles and overconsumption? That doesn’t seem like a live option.

There’s a more sinister possibility: the bailout will be funded by an austerity program. That is, all the trillions being borrowed to spend on bailouts and stimuli will save the financial elite, but at the costs of a fiscal crippling, and instead of raising taxes on the very rich to pay down the debt, there will be deep cuts in civilian spending.

[...]

U.S. workers are certainly used to long-term declines in real wages: the average hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, is almost 10% lower than it was 36 years ago. But the blow of that fall was significantly softened by the availability of easy credit, which allowed people to maintain the semblance of a middle-class standard of living. What would wage cuts without easy credit look like? What kind of retooling would be necessary for an economy now dependent on high levels of consumption, and a society dependent for legitimation on the same? Hard to say, but we should start talking about it.

Usury is alive and well and driving the economy into the ground

[source]

Jerry Budrick:

With sophisticated software capable of tracking every transaction by every cardholder, credit card companies are able to decipher people's financial situations with nearly X-ray vision. Inactivity is as much of a clue as excess use. Cardholders with high balances, who stop using their cards, are thought to be easy marks for the companies.

The company can also decipher from the data whether the cardholder is using another card with a lower interest rate. From this, the company can choose to assume that the consumer is strapped for cash and still in need of the credit he/she contracted for in the first place.

"So," Ulzheimer writes, "they are either going to close your account, reduce your credit limit, increase your interest rate or a do a variety of the other nasty things like lower your grace period, start aggressively calling you if you're over a day or two late."

The reasons for this are: If you are not actively using their card, they don't really want you hanging onto it; or, if you are trying to keep your rates down on what you already owe, they can assume your inability to immediately pay it off and simultaneously assume that you are defenseless against the imposition of a higher rate.


[...]

In a society where credit has become a necessity rather than a luxury, many people who can ill afford it are now paying high rates on debt swollen with penalty fees.

A 1996 Supreme Court ruling removed the cap from penalty fees, which can be charged for any of numerous transgressions, including late payment, over-the-limit charges and returned checks.

[...]

Even as the economy worsens, Americans continue to be inundated with offers of credit. In 2008, issuers sent 4.2 billion credit card offers in the mail. This number is down from the peak of 6.1 billion in 2005, but still nearly four times as many as the 1.1 billion sent in 1990.

As securitization took off in the 1990s and boomed earlier this decade, banks' card mailings to households with less than $50,000 in income also surged, peaking in 2001 at a record 2.1 billion offers, compared with 1.2 billion offers five years before, according to Synovate Mail Monitor.

Have a cow and die

You can pay attention to morons like this:

Face it: When it comes to food, meat's the treat to eat that can't be beat. Show me someone who doesn't eat meat and I'll show you me eating that person's pork chop. And please, spare me your vegetarian moralisms -- if we weren't meant to eat animals, how come they're all made out of meat?

Or studies like this:

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute studied a decade’s worth of data on the eating habits of 545,563 men and women who took part in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. Participants filled out a diet history questionnaire that asked about 124 different foods, and the researchers used the responses to group people into categories based on how much red meat, white meat and processed meat they ate. Over the course of the study, 71,252 people died.

[...]

Men who were big meat eaters had a 22% increased risk of death from cancer and a 27% higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared with men who ate the least. For women, high red meat consumption raised the risk of death from cancer by 20% and the risk of heart disease by 50%, according to the study, to be published in Tuesday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Usury undid the economy

It's simple: no unions --> low wages --> exploding use of credit --> exploding financial sector --> financial meltdown

Also available: parts one and three.
Thomas Geoghegan (Harper's):

Here’s what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing. Sure, GM is awful. Sure, it doesn’t innovate. But the people who could have saved GM and Ford went off to work at AIG, or Merrill Lynch, or even Goldman Sachs. All of this used to be so obvious as not to merit comment. What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor, and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it’s just the banks.

[...]

Yes, we should have more regulators, many more; but as long as capital gushes into the financial sector, the speculators, the gamblers, will continue to outnumber the regulators who can watch them. In 2002 and 2003, financial firms took more than 40 percent of the profits that accrued to U.S. corporations—that’s according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Anyway, the point is that 40 percent is more than double the share the financial industry was taking—about 18 percent—when Ronald Reagan left office and interest rates were just beginning to really climb.

And the Bureau of Economic Analysis may be understating how much of the economy is now based on finance. Think of the growth of the health-insurance industry, for example. Or think of GM, which, like GE, really makes its money by running a bank on the side. “After a while,” said a friend from Detroit, “the only reason they were making cars was so they could make loans.”

[...]

Who helped the financial sector make too much? We did. In a sense, we use our credit cards to help liquidate our own jobs, the kind we used to have in Michigan and Ohio. By little teaspoons, the people who go into debt for kitty litter pull a bit more capital out of one sector and pour it into another.

Crazy California Real Estate

There is no hope that affordability will ever return to the market for real estate in California.

CA Housing Forecast (for San Diego):

We have only 2.2 months supply for homes priced under $650K. Bidding wars.

We have a 12 month supply of homes over $650K. Sellers crying in their beer.

This is all because of a shortage of houses for sale. In March 2008, the inventory was 19,293 homes (2808 pendings). Now it's only 14,135 homes and we're on track for over 3500 pendings. We moved from 6.8 months supply to 4 months supply. This is skewed though, to the lower priced homes.

In April 2008, the inventory of homes under 1000 sq ft, was 4193, and pendings were 558 (9 month supply). In February, the last month for which I have data, the numbers are 2342 and 543 (4.3 month supply), which is half the months supply. The sales are almost the same, but the inventory dropped by 50%.

Until we get more inventory, I expect sellers to have the upper hand in the sub-$600K market in the prime neighborhoods, and for price rises to begin.

For homes over $650K, the biggest price drops should occur this year.

People tell better stories than punditrons

[source]

A Bo of A employee tells of a visit to an art museum.

Via Esquire:

The Tate Britain, not to be confused with the Tate Modern, sits down river from all the tourist attractions along the Thames. It's historic-looking with steep stairs leading up to columns. Beyond the entrance was a very long concourse lined with columns. Lights were dim and neon lights — in red, white and blue, the BofA colours — lit up perfect floral arrangements. There was a five-piece band of really young hip cute men playing haunting renditions of classics. Past the band was the reception area with a large central bar serving wine and beer, waiters serving unidentifiable-but-delicious finger foods, and beyond that a stage with a neon blue screen with 'Bank of America' floating over it — very futuristic.

[...]

Then we went to view the art. Do you know Francis Bacon? I didn't. We began staring at his painting of the Pope, which is a scary depiction of a ghost face screaming in horror. My companions were instantly in due diligence mode and intent on reading every blurb, so I returned to the entrance to read the introduction: Bacon was an atheist seeking to express the life of man in a world without God.

[...]

Then it occurs to me — we are all soulless bankers. Not that we are soulless people, but that we are soulless when we are doing our jobs. This is something I've contemplated quite a bit of late. Mother Theresa says your work must be about love, but an academic explained to me once how corporations are soulless for a reason, like for organizational management purposes or whatever. Banking is just a ... utilitarian job, for lack of a better description. It's not meant to bring fulfillment. There are the rare few who really love it, who genuinely thrive on the challenge of the deal, but the reason we are in finance is to generate income. Most of us come from some sort of fascinating place of uncertainty that drove us to seek the money as some sort of solution to a problem that could never be so easily solved. So we spend our days with numbers, eking out as much profit as possible. We wear suits and we work in cubes. We are privileged and busy. Everyone travels. Houses, cars, all the trappings. We do our soulless number crunching and get our deals done and assess risk and analyze profit, and so goes life. Our despair is so foreign to us that we don't even recognize it. And here we are, fretting through this social meditation in a giant art gallery with the most horrific and angst-ridden depictions of despair one could possibly imagine — and no one gets that it's us. The art is us. If the more abstract pieces weren't yelling directly at us, there was no escaping the ones with the faceless men in suits chained to metal cells. So I watched the men in dark jackets and ties standing and looking at the paintings of the scary creatures in dark jackets and ties, and suddenly it became so funny to me I had to bite my lip and contort my face to keep from laughing. It was so funny!

[...]

I asked anyone if they saw the humour, that the works represented us and our existential dilemma, wearing suits, working in cubes, identities melting into faceless zombies, but nobody really grasped it and they definitely didn't find it hilarious. I thought it was hilarious. I'm not sure Bacon was trying to be funny, but BofA sponsoring this exhibit and having the opening on the day we acquired Merrill for $40-$50 billion, and having us all mill about trying to make sense of something that couldn't possibly make more sense — totally fucking hilarious.

"The art is us. ... It was so funny!"

"Greed has poisoned men's souls."

"The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed."

"The power they took from the people will return to the people."

"You, the people, have the power, to make this life free and beautiful."

"Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness."

Simpler, smaller, and much less dangerous

Simon Johnson (via Hullabaloo):

We cannot afford to have the same problem again. We must break the power of banks before they break us all. And if you don’t think banks can do that much damage to economies, just look around outside the United States - the world is full of countries where growth is slowed or distorted by a financial system that becomes too powerful. This is not about tweaking the existing U.S. regulatory system; it is about complete change and - in many senses - turning back the clock to a financial system that was simpler, smaller, and much less dangerous.

The Real State of the Economy

[source]

It's really too bad that Studs Terkel is no longer with us. The news is filled with coverage of Treasury officials and Wall Street assholes and not enough is being reported about how ordinary people are getting along. It's time to turn off the professional talking heads, ignore the pontificating economic experts, and give the people the attention they deserve.

The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like Hustler. [source]

Nurses are talking about the rise in patient suicides and the downturn in our economy. [source]

Plenty of people dream of leaving their jobs to become teachers. Today, more people are actually doing it. [source]

Nationally, Craigslist’s bartering postings were up almost 100 percent between January 2008 and January 2009... [source]

Across the country, people are taking on chores that only a year ago were hired out to someone else. They're dyeing their own hair, shoveling their own snow, washing their own cars and taking up paint brushes to brighten their living room walls. [source]

Therapists are seeing the fallout in new patients or existing patients reporting feeling more stressed than ever. Those who operate crisis hot lines describe a surge in calls.... [source]

A North Carolina utility has increased the number of shut-offs of natural gas service for customers who can't pay in the cold weather, a newspaper reported Monday. [source]

Shoe repair shops see boom in business due to economy [source]

...the economic downturn is prompting more cash-strapped people to risk driving without insurance. The prediction is that uninsured motorists nationwide will reach 16.1 percent by 2010. [source]

With their relatively low costs and solid academic reputations, State University of New York campuses appear poised to enroll many students who in better times would have gone to more expensive private schools. [source]

Hard economic times are good news for instant noodle makers. "Our business grows when the economy is in recession," said Koki Ando, CEO of Japan's Nissin Foods, maker of Cup Noodles. [source]

The housing bust and resulting drop in home values, along with stock market declines affecting savings and retirement accounts, have made it difficult for residents nationwide to sell their homes and move to Florida... [source]

Since the economy began its dive, board game sales have been rising, according to marketing research from NPD Group Inc. [source]

As the economic downturn deepens, officials report that fewer fans are turning out at ballparks to watch training games... [source]

Art slips from need to want [source]

Some central Indiana school districts are seeing at least one bright spot from the economic downturn -- applications are flooding in for substitute teaching positions. [source]

Library use up as economy dives [source]

In Massachusetts and across America, the recent surge in gun buying has been fueled by ... creeping anxiety about crime and the economy. [source]

...the number of couples living apart for economic reasons is on the rise. [source]

The concept of an entire hotel room the size of a suburban bathroom has spread across Europe in recent years. ... U.S. interest in the micro-hotel model has intensified as the economy weakens.... [source]

Karen Koenig, community relations director for the Kentucky Humane Society, said they are seeing the signs of tough times. "We have seen an increase in dogs and cats being surrendered due to the economy," said Koenig. [source]

Tampa trash officials say the economy is making residents less likely to part with things they once considered waste. [source]

If there's one bright spot out there in the midst of all the economic agonizing, it's this: snowboarding. [source]

With the sickly economy and rampant layoffs idling workers and some businesses, the ranks of those now turning to cashless commerce, with varied levels of sophistication and success, is on the rise. [source]

With spring break about two weeks away, it appears that the economic recession will be placing a hold on some college students spring break plans for beaches and other exotic locations this year. [source]

The unemployment rate in Metropolitan Orlando is at a 32-year high and almost double what it was just a year ago, yet the region continues to face a labor shortage in a key health-care profession: nursing. [source]

A weak economy is likely the culprit behind a drop in Girl Scout cookie sales, say Scout leaders. [source]

The Andersons, African-Americans who rose from humble means, are attempting to spend their money for one year exclusively with black-owned businesses and are encouraging other African-Americans to do the same. ... They call it the "Ebony Experiment." [source]

...many Pine Belt residents are forced to give up pets during a strapped economy. ... The shelter, which accepts all animals, has taken in more than 1,400 animals since January. Of those, 893 have been euthanized. [source]

"Times of economic stress lead to increased rates of depression," says Dr. Christopher Palmer, director of continuing education at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. "It exacerbates illness in people who have been chronically depressed. But it also causes new cases of depression. Just the fear of losing one's job can put people over the edge." [source]

In the Army, there's no recession [source]

Throughout the Treasure Coast, alcohol still sells well compared with other luxury items. Yet, receipts have fallen off substantially, managers say. Bar stools are empty more often, the cheapest items are always gone first and residents are pouring alcohol on their misery within the privacy of their own homes. [source]

With unemployment in Jackson County at 12.1 percent and the state rate at 11.6 percent, it's easy to see why young couples, like Marla and Aaron Sanford, both 23, are opting to wait before starting a family. [source]

...the economy has influenced their cleaning habits, with many of them -- 60 percent -- forgoing cleaning services to do it themselves. Four in 10 are buying cheaper cleaning products and a third are buying fewer of them... [source]

Demand for blood has dropped slightly because the bad economy has caused some people to delay elective surgeries, the Red Cross says. [source]

Since the economy went south, consumers have cut back on drinking in restaurants and bars but are spending more on alcohol to drink at home, according to Mintel International, a Chicago-based market analysis firm. [source]

The odds of violent behavior are nearly six times higher for people who lose their jobs. [source]

During these tough economic times, some people are turning to growing their own vegetables instead of buying from the supermarket. [source]

With cases of horse neglect, cruelty and abandonment rising as the economy weakens, "I would like Congress to back off of this and let market forces take effect the way they always were," said Rep. Thomas Loertscher, R-Iona. Loertscher has drafted a nonbinding memorial calling on Congress to remove any prohibitions on horse slaughterhouses "so that horses that are no longer useful or people just can't afford them, that there is a market out there for them to be processed." [source]