Debating the Legal Start of Life
A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi
would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person,
effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth
control as murder. (NYT 10/26/11)
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The 99% Solution
by Michael K. Smith
The sudden return of mass protest around the theme of class warfare is the best news we've had in a long time. While a clueless alliance of Blue Dog reactionaries, Tea Party Know Nothings and "traditional" cement-head Republicans waxes rhetorical about "unfunded mandates," the deranged killing machine known as U.S. foreign policy continues to run amok on a limitless credit card without a peep of protest from the political class. Fortunately, the people in the streets know self-serving hypocrisy when they see it.
Calling themselves "the 99%," the Occupy Wall Street campaign has loudly rejected the notion that the U.S. operates with the consent of the governed, and in just a few weeks has mushroomed from a local protest into a global movement against unrestrained greed.
Calls for the movement to provide instant solutions and precise demands badly miss the point. In the initial stages protest is its own message, and need not sign its name to a laundry list of grievances. With time those grievances can't help but become well known, but for now, "Make the Banks Pay," should be a clear enough message to those who have lost their jobs, homes, and pensions to the Wall Street swindlers.
As always, dangers abound, and the Pelosi narcotizers are already at work trying to co-opt the movement. But it appears they will have no easy time of it. Something more than a cosmetic jobs bill (offering employment to perhaps four percent of the workers who need it) and Obamacare administered by HMO profiteers will be necessary if protesters are to be enticed away from their anti-corporate rebellion. But there is no sign the Democrats are prepared to abandon their GOP Lite dogma, which means that the protests can only grow, as they are doing.
Popular rebellion has re-emerged because of longstanding elite contempt for the common people and the commons. Wages and benefits have been cut, jobs exported, government services slashed. Pensions have been looted, the environment and the Bill of Rights trashed, millions of homes foreclosed. And six countries have been attacked by Obama in less than three years, with attendant destruction on an appalling scale, while Obama indulges political rhetoric appropriate to a juvenile gang leader. And through it all the two major candidate producing organizations, the Democrats and Republicans, have continued to proclaim the U.S. the land of democracy, prosperity and freedom. All of these values still exist in America, of course, but increasingly only for the favored few who own the private economy and run the national security state. For the rest, life is a mad scramble to catch the crumbs falling off their plates.
The banks cannot be forced to pay by re-electing Obama, who came to the White House on an avalanche of Wall Street contributions and returned the favor with the most generous bail-out package in financial history. Obama is what Malcolm X termed a "House Negro," so identified with his owner that he uses the pronoun "we" to inquire after the master's failing health. "What's the matter boss - we sick?" One can easily imagine Obama asking George Soros the same question about the ailing U.S. economy.
Political scientist Michael Parenti has helpfully outlined the one percent of the population that the Wall Street protesters are demonstrating against as follows:
"You are a member of the owning class when your income is very large and comes mostly from the labor of other people - that is, when others work for you, either in a company you own or by creating the wealth that allows your investments to increase in value." Parenti notes that this has little or nothing to do with engaging in hard work. "Hard work seldom makes anyone rich. The secret to wealth is to have others work hard for you. This explains why workers who spend their lives toiling in factories or offices retire with little or no wealth to speak of, while the stockholding owners of these businesses, who do not work in them and usually have never visited them, can amass considerable fortunes."
And amass fortunes they have. According to PBS, the top twenty percent of Americans own 84 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom forty percent have only 0.3 percent, that is, virtually nothing. But as the Tea Party reminds us, that's OK, because poor people have "never given anyone a job," while the rich always allow us to prostitute ourselves to their demand for limitless profit.
What is it about elite generosity we don't understand?
Sources:
Street, Paul, "The Filthy Rich," Z Magazine, October 2011
Rasmus, Jack, "Emerging Labor Responses to the Economic Crisis," Z Magazine, September 2011
Parenti, Michael, Democracy For The Few, Seventh Edition, p. 7
The sudden return of mass protest around the theme of class warfare is the best news we've had in a long time. While a clueless alliance of Blue Dog reactionaries, Tea Party Know Nothings and "traditional" cement-head Republicans waxes rhetorical about "unfunded mandates," the deranged killing machine known as U.S. foreign policy continues to run amok on a limitless credit card without a peep of protest from the political class. Fortunately, the people in the streets know self-serving hypocrisy when they see it.
Calling themselves "the 99%," the Occupy Wall Street campaign has loudly rejected the notion that the U.S. operates with the consent of the governed, and in just a few weeks has mushroomed from a local protest into a global movement against unrestrained greed.
Calls for the movement to provide instant solutions and precise demands badly miss the point. In the initial stages protest is its own message, and need not sign its name to a laundry list of grievances. With time those grievances can't help but become well known, but for now, "Make the Banks Pay," should be a clear enough message to those who have lost their jobs, homes, and pensions to the Wall Street swindlers.
As always, dangers abound, and the Pelosi narcotizers are already at work trying to co-opt the movement. But it appears they will have no easy time of it. Something more than a cosmetic jobs bill (offering employment to perhaps four percent of the workers who need it) and Obamacare administered by HMO profiteers will be necessary if protesters are to be enticed away from their anti-corporate rebellion. But there is no sign the Democrats are prepared to abandon their GOP Lite dogma, which means that the protests can only grow, as they are doing.
Popular rebellion has re-emerged because of longstanding elite contempt for the common people and the commons. Wages and benefits have been cut, jobs exported, government services slashed. Pensions have been looted, the environment and the Bill of Rights trashed, millions of homes foreclosed. And six countries have been attacked by Obama in less than three years, with attendant destruction on an appalling scale, while Obama indulges political rhetoric appropriate to a juvenile gang leader. And through it all the two major candidate producing organizations, the Democrats and Republicans, have continued to proclaim the U.S. the land of democracy, prosperity and freedom. All of these values still exist in America, of course, but increasingly only for the favored few who own the private economy and run the national security state. For the rest, life is a mad scramble to catch the crumbs falling off their plates.
The banks cannot be forced to pay by re-electing Obama, who came to the White House on an avalanche of Wall Street contributions and returned the favor with the most generous bail-out package in financial history. Obama is what Malcolm X termed a "House Negro," so identified with his owner that he uses the pronoun "we" to inquire after the master's failing health. "What's the matter boss - we sick?" One can easily imagine Obama asking George Soros the same question about the ailing U.S. economy.
Political scientist Michael Parenti has helpfully outlined the one percent of the population that the Wall Street protesters are demonstrating against as follows:
"You are a member of the owning class when your income is very large and comes mostly from the labor of other people - that is, when others work for you, either in a company you own or by creating the wealth that allows your investments to increase in value." Parenti notes that this has little or nothing to do with engaging in hard work. "Hard work seldom makes anyone rich. The secret to wealth is to have others work hard for you. This explains why workers who spend their lives toiling in factories or offices retire with little or no wealth to speak of, while the stockholding owners of these businesses, who do not work in them and usually have never visited them, can amass considerable fortunes."
And amass fortunes they have. According to PBS, the top twenty percent of Americans own 84 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom forty percent have only 0.3 percent, that is, virtually nothing. But as the Tea Party reminds us, that's OK, because poor people have "never given anyone a job," while the rich always allow us to prostitute ourselves to their demand for limitless profit.
What is it about elite generosity we don't understand?
Sources:
Street, Paul, "The Filthy Rich," Z Magazine, October 2011
Rasmus, Jack, "Emerging Labor Responses to the Economic Crisis," Z Magazine, September 2011
Parenti, Michael, Democracy For The Few, Seventh Edition, p. 7
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Class War : It’s About Time
Whenever murmurs among the people indicate growing awareness that they are paying an exorbitant price in order to enrich a tiny minority, the terrified cry of “class war” is raised by the poor huddled masses of billionaires, millionaires and their corporate servants in politics and media. This contradicts the fictional notion that there are no classes in American society, that we are all “middle class” and oh, a few unfortunates are poor but that’s only temporary. As soon as their investments pay off they too will arrive at the exalted status of “middle”. That would be right after the Easter bunny delivers chocolate covered Tooth Fairies to all the little boys and girls.
In truth, this nation has been a stratified class society since its origins under the rule of rich Europeans who drafted a constitution ensuring their rights of property and assuring that the majority rabble would not threaten those sacred scriptures. It was Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising of the common people incensed over debts and foreclosures – sound familiar? - that brought about the first ten amendments to that document and saw to it that human beings and not just their property owning masters had some rights. Unfortunately, you still need lots of money to establish that equality in court but corporate mind management has done a great job creating illusions among a great mass of Americans that they are somehow equal to a very small group which earns (?)millions and even billions a year. In fact, while demonstrators at Wall Street and in other cities representing the 99% of us who live below the top 1% strive to create real democracy, it should be understood that only a fraction of that 1% are rich beyond the imaginations of ancient rulers who were seen as deities by the peasants of their times. That these modern god-like creatures can manipulate citizens of an alleged democracy into thinking they are just like common working people is indication of how successful their faithful servants in media and politics have been at warping the collective mind. But those days are nearing an end.
Even though the “class war” label still draws negative response from subjects who have been on their knees for so long they may never be able to stand up, a majority of citizens who refuse minority masters ruling their world into what could be a terminal state are indeed on their feet loudly saying, no way. That scares the hell out of rich owners of a fiction they have been calling democracy. It’s threatening to become just that and they and their minions are in desperation that the majority rule they fear may soon become reality.
In defense of inequality, hand wringing pleaders for the opulent weep about their enormous tax bills, leaving out the massive amount of dollars they maintain after taxes. Even with the old 90% top tax brackets of the 1950s republican Eisenhower administration, a poor soul with a billion dollars would be left with a measly 100 million. Oh dear! And rest assured that after their well compensated accountants took massive deductions and did other book juggling, nobody ever paid anything remotely close to 90%. And now we have tax rates on the wealthy that are so low even some of them are embarrassed .
When the 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million Americans - about half the population – and use that wealth to buy politicians and government power , only corporate mind management and slack jawed imbeciles can call that a democratic system. Our income disparity is greater than at any time since 1928. As evidence, over the past twenty five years 80 percent of increased income in America went to the top 5 percent, while the bottom 60 percent lost 7.5 percent. The US has the most billionaires in the world (413), and among those global deities with $5 billion or more there are 57 from the US. If you’re not weeping in pity but in rage, you’re part of the 99%.
The last major crisis of capitalism, the Great Depression, ended with what was called the New Deal. It simply replaced private investment with public investment in order to create jobs, avoid social revolution and save the capitalist profit system for the wealthy minority. This time the crisis is even more serious and it calls for something greater than a New Deal. In fact, we need a whole New Deck.
The increased problems of warfare, environmental destruction, unemployment, poverty and a besieged public sector cannot be solved by relying on the market lust for private profit which created them in the first place. These universal crises call for radical transformation of the political economics at their core. It does seem that more people the world over are demanding change but the forces of reaction will try to channel those demands into further acceptance of a status quo. We need a party that stands against the one percent capitalism that rules, and for the 99% democracy that should. Republicans boldly stride toward soft-core fascism while Democrats mince closer to hard core neo-liberalism. Not just America but humanity cannot accept anything less than wholesale, radical restructuring of the system that threatens all into one that benefits everyone.
Class war? It may be an idea whose time has finally come.
Market Schizophrenia : Wall Street Hears Voices Inside and Out!
- TOP NEWS -
Goldman Loss Offers a Bad Omen for Wall
Street
The first loss at Goldman Sachs since the financial crisis
points to what could be a more lasting shift in the
financial industry.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20
Bank Shares Lift Wall Street in a Turnaround
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10
Goldman Loss Offers a Bad Omen for Wall
Street
The first loss at Goldman Sachs since the financial crisis
points to what could be a more lasting shift in the
financial industry.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20
Bank Shares Lift Wall Street in a Turnaround
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10
Friday, October 14, 2011
U.S. Reveals Evidence of Past Iranian Genital Terror !
After the shocking news of an Iranian-Mexican plot to murder a Saudi Arabian diplomat, the U.S. State department revealed even more shocking revelations concerning a past crime that rocked the nation and almost caused impeachment of a great leader.
The Secretary of State and her feminist staff claim that the terrorist woman who conducted a vicious oral attack on president Clinton's innocent genitals was actually an Iranian agent sent to work at the White House in order to destroy the government by making Al Gore president after Clinton was impeached.
Corporate media was shocked, as were politicians from both parties .The Israeli lobby called for immediate nuclear attacks on Iran. Actually they've been demanding those attacks for years now, but this astounding charge may well tip the precarious balance toward total insanity.
Stay tuned, take cover, say your prayers and check out Legalienate for all the news that causes fits.
The Secretary of State and her feminist staff claim that the terrorist woman who conducted a vicious oral attack on president Clinton's innocent genitals was actually an Iranian agent sent to work at the White House in order to destroy the government by making Al Gore president after Clinton was impeached.
Corporate media was shocked, as were politicians from both parties .The Israeli lobby called for immediate nuclear attacks on Iran. Actually they've been demanding those attacks for years now, but this astounding charge may well tip the precarious balance toward total insanity.
Stay tuned, take cover, say your prayers and check out Legalienate for all the news that causes fits.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Netanyahu Heals Partisan Divide in Washington
Fiery Address Unites Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party Idealists Behind "Jews For Genocide"
Michael K. Smith
Legalienation News Bureau
Washington, D.C.
Moses parted the Red Sea. Jesus walked on water. And now Benjamin Netanyahu has healed the partisan divide in Washington D.C., the greatest miracle of all time, according to this morning's editorial in the New York Times.
In a forty-five minute address before a Joint Session of Congress the tough-talking Israeli Prime Minister convinced a heretofore bitterly divided U.S. political class to lay aside its budget battles and concentrate on America's transcendent purpose: to resettle Palestinian Arabs in outer Mongolia so Israel need no longer face the Arab "demographic threat" to Jewish democracy.
The nuance-laden speech, entitled "They Must Go!" was interrupted 637 times by standing ovations, which left many Congress members afflicted with repetitive motion disorders. "He makes it all so clear," gushed California Senator Barbara Boxer, rubbing an elbow dislocated by continuous applause. "Why should we be at each others' throats over budget matters when Israel faces extinction at the hands of HAMAS (Horrible Arab Mothers Affirming Sexuality)?"
"If they are not stopped from having babies on Jewish land," said California's other Senator Diane Feinstein, Jews will soon be a minority in their own country. In other words, it will be the Holocaust all over again."
"And that would undermine the free market," added Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, "because God gave the land to the Jews, and no one has the right to tell a landlord what to do with his land."
"It would also be a defeat for immigrants' rights," said Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) a leading spokesman for comprehensive immigration reform, "because Israel is a nation of immigrants continually made subject to terrorist attacks by Arab nativists refusing to recognize that unlimited immigration is good for everyone. They'll find that out once we relocate them to Mongolia."
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) agreed that violent expulsion was the best solution, but added that Fidel Castro should be included in the forced march to Mongolia. "The Arabs are radical Communists like Fidel. I mean, what's more Communist than one person, one vote? They're birds of a feather that should flock together."
Michele Bachmann (D-Minn.) offered to switch her party affiliation to Likud " if that would help God win in 2012." President Obama praised her spirit of conciliation and said he would consider her as a running mate if she didn't get the GOP nomination.
"She's on my short list," said Obama. "It's either her or Palin or Joe Lieberman," he added." "Bibi has promised to let me know soon."
The president pooh-poohed talk of Bachmann lacking qualifications to serve as president. "She loves God and Israel, and what other qualifications are there?"
Michael K. Smith
Legalienation News Bureau
Washington, D.C.
Moses parted the Red Sea. Jesus walked on water. And now Benjamin Netanyahu has healed the partisan divide in Washington D.C., the greatest miracle of all time, according to this morning's editorial in the New York Times.
In a forty-five minute address before a Joint Session of Congress the tough-talking Israeli Prime Minister convinced a heretofore bitterly divided U.S. political class to lay aside its budget battles and concentrate on America's transcendent purpose: to resettle Palestinian Arabs in outer Mongolia so Israel need no longer face the Arab "demographic threat" to Jewish democracy.
The nuance-laden speech, entitled "They Must Go!" was interrupted 637 times by standing ovations, which left many Congress members afflicted with repetitive motion disorders. "He makes it all so clear," gushed California Senator Barbara Boxer, rubbing an elbow dislocated by continuous applause. "Why should we be at each others' throats over budget matters when Israel faces extinction at the hands of HAMAS (Horrible Arab Mothers Affirming Sexuality)?"
"If they are not stopped from having babies on Jewish land," said California's other Senator Diane Feinstein, Jews will soon be a minority in their own country. In other words, it will be the Holocaust all over again."
"And that would undermine the free market," added Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, "because God gave the land to the Jews, and no one has the right to tell a landlord what to do with his land."
"It would also be a defeat for immigrants' rights," said Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) a leading spokesman for comprehensive immigration reform, "because Israel is a nation of immigrants continually made subject to terrorist attacks by Arab nativists refusing to recognize that unlimited immigration is good for everyone. They'll find that out once we relocate them to Mongolia."
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) agreed that violent expulsion was the best solution, but added that Fidel Castro should be included in the forced march to Mongolia. "The Arabs are radical Communists like Fidel. I mean, what's more Communist than one person, one vote? They're birds of a feather that should flock together."
Michele Bachmann (D-Minn.) offered to switch her party affiliation to Likud " if that would help God win in 2012." President Obama praised her spirit of conciliation and said he would consider her as a running mate if she didn't get the GOP nomination.
"She's on my short list," said Obama. "It's either her or Palin or Joe Lieberman," he added." "Bibi has promised to let me know soon."
The president pooh-poohed talk of Bachmann lacking qualifications to serve as president. "She loves God and Israel, and what other qualifications are there?"