FTSOA: No Messiahs Here

For almost six years now, it seems to me, folks have been bemoaning the apparent fact that Prez. Lowbar is NOT the "liberal" messiah the moaners had hoped he'd be: someone with 'the ballz' to stand up to the Owners and Oligarchs, face down the Corporatz, and beard 'em in their own boardrooms: Somebody who would, in the words of one disappointed commentator, "kick ass.

The rampant disappointment among former advocates and acolytes betokens what I think is an error in understanding, both of Prez Lowbar and of the conditions under which he was selected.

In the first place, it is totally and completely LUDICROUS in the extreme to believe the Nation's actual Owners would permit anyone to exert even largely _managerial_ control over their "properties" who wasn't vetted completely reliable in his loyalty to the established order and his fealty to the Corporatz State...

if Prez LowBar had been the kind of guy who'd 'kick ass,' name names and make the Oligarchs quail--and if THAT meant upsetting ANY oligarchic applecarts--or if he had even been thought remotely to BE such a person--he'd never have gotten to where he is.

He himself sees himself as a deal-maker, a broker, a "unifier," a "negotiator" (we could argue that one). With his "Cabinet of Rivals," from BOTH 'parties," he wanted (apparently) to portray himself as a conciliator, a healer of the nation's divisions.

No. really.

That's the "legacy" that America's First Black President was supposed--by Lowbar himself, his retinue, and the "community" he "represents"--to leave: One of unity and healing, and of binding the wounds of 4 Centuries of racism; all that "long arc of justice" stuff they're always quoting.

Which has always seemed kinda, oh, I dunno, "naive" to me; as if they somehow expected (or at least hoped for) some kind of divine intervention to smooth away the resentment and even down-right fear and loathing that his ascent to that position (properly) spawned in the hearts of his opponents, enemies, and detractors.

THEY knew that Lowbar's ascendancy, itself, was both his singular accomplishment, and the most obvious signal of the approaching end of "white supremacy," and of "white privilege," and that no matter how much they objected, with their petty petulance, that ship had, finally, sailed: The South was NOT gonna rise again.

Play "Dixie" like a dirge.

FTSOA: Job Insecurity Is Job One...

This extravagantly lugubriously visaged, perverted old sad-sack is Allen Greenspan, former, long-time chief of the Fed, from 1987 into 2006, under four at least nominally different presidents: Raygoon (appointed him), then Poppi Bush, next the Clenis and finally the Chimperor. It's strong, circumstantial evidence that those who struggle to discern meaningful differences between the GOPhukkks and the Dims may be on to something...but I digress...

Before coming to gummint, Greenspan was Aynal Rand's spiritual and intellectual towel-boy, before he latched onto Andrea Mitchell. (They're into BDSM, I'm sure of it.)

The logic of insecurity represented in the poster is exactly the logic undergirding much so-called 'industrial relations' theory, including what is called "structural unemployment." It is a constant rate of unemployment. The economic analysts and planners build in an unemployment rate into their calculations. A certain level is given.

The problem, for the Bosses, izzat in the event of "full employment," workers could and would move with their skills to other jobs if their current employers were to disappoint them. This is bad for business.

Monetary fluidity is good; labor fluidity--workers being able to up and move--is bad.
So, through various expedients--including recessions, depressions, and the like--capitalism builds a pool of "structurally unemployed" workers with whom to (implicitly and/or explicitly) threaten workers with the loss of their jobs--and concomitant benefits--to keep them in line and compliant, if not docile.

Structural Unemployment used to be about 2%, in the boom times after WW II; then it was about 4%, in the 70s and 80s. Since the Collapse of '08, they're readjusting upwards again to between 6 and 8%.
Interesting to note how the number of "structurally unemployed" has risen as union membership in the private sector has fallen.

Meme Banditry: "Get The MONEY Out!"

Meme Banditry:
 
It's true, enough. Unarguable. Self-evidently TRUE!

The FIRST problem: Removing priovate money fom public poilitical action. Some say: "Power has to be taken away from Wall Street."

In the 30-plus years since the ascent of the bankers to their unchallenged hegemony, w/Raygoon, I have YET to see, read, or hear any practical suggestion as to HOW that is gonna happen?

Realistically, there is ZERO probability that any of the current corpoRatz in Congress will vote to do anything of the sort. It'w what they get the BIG MONEY to prevent.

Realistically, also, there is ZERO probability of displacing enough of them to change the balance in the Congress, since 90-95% of incumbents are re-elected.

All the rest depends on that first point, and that seems to be a will-o-the-wisp, at BEST.

But somebody, somewhere, sometime, is gonna hafta come up with a way to achieve that most desirable goal.

Yes, guillotines and firing squads would be the MOST effective.

But I'm thinking that that day, if it is EVER to come, is still many, many moons--not to say years--in the offing.

In the interim, the rate at which sitting Congress critters are replaced is glacial, with a re-election rate approaching 95%, which precludes the "idea" of voting the bastards out--besides guillotines, the only practicable plan.


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=813212912027682&set=a.176326335716346.47428.125842260764754&type=1

As The Cookie Crumbles: "Binness" as Usual.

Woody'z alwayz been one of Forp Yksmohc' s biggest admirers. In a recent article on F-book he poses the following puzzler: "

“Let’s pose that for some perverse reason that we were interested in ruining an economy and a society.” Now, who would want to go and do a thing like that?... The current economic system in America, he says, is so dysfunctional “that it cannot put eager hands to needed work using the resources that would be readily available if the economy were designed to serve human needs rather than wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a privileged few.”

I think that while it may be perverse, it is NOT an "imaginary situation. We're living it.
The entire telos of the Right--all its components--since at least 1980 has been to destroy the confidence of the "people" in their own political sovereignty. One of the largest contributing factors to this exercise has been to impoverish workers by driving wages down, reducing the Govt's ability to extend services to the neediest victims, and to undermine popular confidence in the economy.

The growing spread between the wealth of the "haves" and the burgeoning poverty of the growing population of "have-nots" is not an accidental artefact of unforeseen and unmanageable series of acts of "God." It began in earnest in 1981, with the ascent of the Raygoons to power. That's when the (extremist, right-wing) Gummint and the national 'binness' lobby, and the Congress colluded to uncouple wages from productivity, and appropriate any and all "surplusses" into executive perqs and generous campaign donations.

To keep the "Consumer" economy alive, even while damming its lifeblood by NOT increasing wages as productivity grew, they hit upon the expedient of easing the requirement for credit. Thi served two purposes: 1) it kept the consumer economy afloat (at least temporarily) and 2) it made permanently indentured servants of the workers, who more and more were entrapped into debtorhood to the Company Store. The official measure of domestic quality of life is the amount of debt any given person carries, and the higher the amount, the "higher" the quality of life.

First, by using tax incentives to encourage the "binness" gunsels and greed-sacks to export American workers' JOBS, and even whole INDUSTRIES, and then by conducting extravagant attacks on organized labor, and later by virtually abandoning the manufacturing base of the USer economy to exploit cheap labor in "emerging" economies, the GOPhukkkers in Raygoons crew ensured that USer workers would be chastened and disciplined and docile. A frightened, nervous, deeply indebted, disorganized worker is--as far as the Bosses care, the PERFECT employee, because they are not likely to complain if they're being exploited and abused, for fear of losing their jobs.

Mission: Accomplished!