Ideas for a New Conversation about Our Country

The events of the last month and a half have only served to make it clear that we are witnessing a slow motion train wreck in our national politics. Some have called for the creation of a third party, and some for a caucus withing the Democratic Party that would bring it back to the values that many of us believe in, and try to staunch the hemorrhaging of values that the fruitless pursuit of compromise has opened up in the party as a whole.

There's already a "No Labels" movement that has its own Facebook page, but it seems to be too weak-kneed and a bit too protective of the corporatist mentality to suit me. I kind of like Tom Morello (The Nightwatchman) and his new efforts like "Union Town" and his upcoming "World Wide Rebels." My Cranky Wobbly side feels good about it. But what will it accomplish in this day and age? Probably not much more than a few spirited demonstrations that won't get reported in the corporate media, except for a few put-downs on Fox News.

So what do we need? Well, we need to start talking and have some "fierce conversations," as the book that my old boss liked so much described them. So here's my list of fierce conversations that we as a nation of citizens need to have. And we should not invite the politicians, pundits, talk show hosts, journalists, Chambers of Commerce, think tanks, or anyone else who has had a hand in increasing the toxicity of our national conversation. Just us. Just people. The people, left and right, who are angry about politicians being so brazenly bought. The people, left and right, who are saddened by hate and fear. The people who are tired of seeing angry trolls commenting on every news story, no matter how removed from politics it really is, simply to try to prove their rigid political beliefs.

So here is my list of difficult but vital conversations we need to have as citizens:

1. Review our Constitution and our values as a nation. Understand the type of government we have, and how it is supposed to work. Truly understand and explore the implications of the concept that "the government" is no more and no less than us - the voice of the people.

2. Review our social compact, and the human rights that we expect ourselves and all people in the world to honor, and take measure of how we are doing in respect to those basic human rights.

3. Examine our concept of quality of life on more than just an economic or market-based level. Examine the relationship of the economy to the quality of life of citizens. Examine how our economic system fosters and/or hinders opportunity for all of us to participate meaningfully and satisfyingly in our economy. Ask the fierce questions and have the fierce conversations about the ideas of "the free market," and "economic planning" and avoid decisions to support or oppose these ideas in a rigid way. Decide what we want to set the rules to be, to assure equal opportunity, inclusive participation, and fairness, and to avoid exploitation, corruption, and exclusion in our economic life.


4. Decide on what we want our government to do for us. This includes military defense when necessary, governance, order, and justice for citizens, our role in the international community, and our support for the engines of economic operation.

5. Decide how we intend to pay for the things we want government to do. Come to an agreement on how to assure that this is fair and equitable so that hardship and deprivation for some are not the price for success for others.

6. Make a plan for sustainable operation of this process, with the awareness that money is not a fixed reality, but a social contract with myriad implications, and that the natural resources and human resources necessary for that process are finite and, fragile, and must be respected and nurtured.

7. Affirm the idea of balance. Recognize that individuals' rights and interests, and the rights and interests of groups, must stay in balance.

8. Examine power and how it is used and abused in our nation. Develop ways to empower those who lack power, and to curtail the abuse of power by those who would abuse it for their own pleasure or self-aggrandizement.

9. Rethink the idea of corporations, and clearly articulate what we as the public want corporations to be, to do, and to have. Recognize that corporations only exist by the consent of the people, just as governments only exist by the consent of the governed. Re-examine the participatory effectiveness of corporations, especially multinational corporations, and decide how we as a nation want to allow them to exist (not the other way around). Set guidelines to assure that corporations do not have the power to harm our democracy or the public good.Explore and encourage where possible alternative forms of corporate structure and governance, including worker collaboration and employee ownership. Empower shareholders and block speculators from harming shareholders.

Plague of Locusts. General Strike. Barter Economy. Outlaw the Corporations.

While visiting a McDonald's for coffee in the late fall of 2008, I overheard a bunch of retired men grousing about the market crash we were experiencing. One said, "The markets aren't operating on value, the markets are operating on fear." To which another gentleman, without looking up from his cofee, muttered, "Plague of locusts."

I think the plague of locusts never went away. They just waited for the market to get a new season of growth before getting ready to strip it bare again. And I think that's starting now. The money will leave our investments, and end up buying yachts for people who already have Rolex watches.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are driving everything toward a crazy showdown August 2. Absolutely no new revenue. Absolutely must cut all social spending. Absolutely no discussion. And everything is twisted around to where "job creation" really means Reaganomics, and "prosperity and jobs" really means "More money for CEO's."

So I had two thoughts...

• A general strike. Just because. We need to make them hurt.
• Barter economy. So what if the IRS taxes it, I'll pay my fair share to the IRS. Just not to the banks and Wall Street. Starve the Beast, indeed.

What the hell, can't work any worse than the system we have now. I said it before and I'll say it again. Corporations exist by the permission of the people, not the other way around. Workers of the world need to get together and put the multinational corporations on notice that they exist only if we let them. If they behave like outlaws, the civilized people of the world will declare them illegal and make them outlaws.

So I sound like a 1930 Communist. Well, I guess I'm being radicalized every time my 401(k) loses another month's worth of the hard earned money I put into it, I hear about another environmental law being flouted by moneyed interests, and I read about people who can't afford medical care.

Idolatry?

I was thinking today about the way that anarcho-capitalists, Adam Smith fans, Cato Institute libertarians, and other assorted “free market” types might be guilty of idolatry, at least according to a careful reading of the Bible.


These people have an absolutely unshakeable faith in the so-called “free” markets, which they imagine as a force that will ultimately create jobs, reward hard work and punish sloth, protect true believers against the loss of any wealth that they have earned by their own inventiveness and cleverness, and guard against creeping socialism. And all we have to do is worship it, say only nice things about it, venerate it at every gathering of men, and smite down any big-gummint meddlers who want to restrict or hinder its wonderfulness.

They remind me of the rats who used to fawn around the Trash Heap in “Fraggle Rock.”

Wikipedia has a lot to say about “idolatry,” but this section seems to sum it up best:

“In addition, theologians have extended the concept to include giving undue importance to aspects of religion other than God, or to non-religious aspects of life in general, with no involvement of images specifically. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship...Man commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money etc."

Or the Invisible Hand of the free market. Am I right or am I wrong, Dude?

Now I realize that many of the same Bible belt types (who like to ridicule Democrats, progressives, and liberals as Muslim terrorist Communist Nazis) would say that Catholics are idolaters anyway, because we have statues in our churches. Or just because they don’t like Catholics. But the Catholic definition seems pretty close to the one that Jews use. So it’s good enough for me, since the Bible Belters like to take their versions of Old Testament interpretations on subjects like homosexuality (but not adultery, apparently, so relax, Newt).

Anyway, I think it’s kind of funny that it’s OK to worship the great and powerful Hand, and never OK to doubt it, but this doesn’t strike any of these guys as idolatry.

School Lunches and Hulk Hogan

I was reading about the book recently published by David Sirota, Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now. I heard him being interviewed on the radio and a lot of what he said rang true. My sad realization was that while a lot of this cultural programming was going on, I was busy (as I put it) working nights and washing diapers.

Recent events have started to solidify a perception in my mind, much in the manner of David Brooks’s pieces in the New York Times and his books (which take brilliant insights on his part – at least he thinks they’re brilliant insights - and attempt to turn them into universal truths, when it’s really just kind of his opinion). So I express this so-called brilliant insight with the caveat that it’s just my perception. So take it with a grain of salt.

What got me started was reading a story in today’s Chicago Tribune about a principal at a Chicago public school who made a rule that children may not bring their own lunches (unless they pass nutritional muster, but it wasn’t clear exactly how willing the principal would be to allow that). Instead, the children would eat the lunches provided by the school, which are provided by a company called Chartwells-Thompson. It mentioned that the school has more lunches provided by the Federal government because it does not allow the children to bring lunches. The section that caught my eye was:

“Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.”

Hmm.

The comments section following the story was filled with the usual right-wing rants about “big government” and the “nanny state” telling people what to eat. Instead of reacting, I Googled Chartwells-Thompson and found that they are part of the biggest foodservice conglomerate in the country (Compass Group). They popped up in another story in which healthy produce grown in the gardens tended by Chicago Public School students could not be served in the lunchrooms because of the contract with Chartwells- Thompson. So is this about stopping kids from bringing unhealthy lunches, or is it a food service monopoly issue?

Turns out that the purveyors of school lunches, such as Chartwells-Thompson, are heavy users of government-subsidized foods (what we used to call “government surplus.”) This means that farmers are paid by the government to grow and produce these foods, which are promptly bought by the USDA in order to keep from driving the market prices of these commodities downward. This was originally set up as a way to help the small family farmer stay in business when commodity markets became so institutionalized. But nowadays, these farm subsidies go overwhelmingly to support large agribusiness. So the school lunch businesses buy this cheap food and serve it to kids while pocketing the profits, while the people who produce the food are being paid by the government to produce it. By my reckoning, the taxpayers are paying for these “free” school lunches three times: First, in farm subsidies, second, in “surplus” food discounts to the purveyors, and third, in tax money to pay for preparing and serving the actual lunches. And where does most of this money wind up? In the pockets of business. And what do the kids get? Menus based on whatever food is available and cheap, rather than on nutritional guidelines. Lots of ground beef and cheese. Lots of cholesterol. And (allegedly) a few dozen cases of food poisoning thrown in for good measure.

So how does a reader of the original story get “big government” out of this, and feel entitled to vent rage against the Democrats? Well, I’ll tell you how. By being trained by the WWF. No, not the World Wildlife Fund. The World Wrestling Federation. Now known as the “WWE.” Let’s go back to those 1980’s that spawned Gordon Gekko and Top Gun. Remember Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin? (Actually, I guess they spilled over into the 1990’s as well). But one hallmark of being a watcher of WWF television was that you learned to get really emotionally worked up about rivalries and narratives that were completely phony. Everyone knew that the whole thing was phony, from the issue of who were good guys and who were bad guys to the issue of where Hulk Hogan got those pecs. Everything was phony. Crowds learned to yell and scream while wrestlers hit each other with chairs and threw each other onto folding tables. We all knew it was fake, even the kids. But the kids learned to get all worked up and yell and scream as well. Sometimes we had to tell the kids not to try it at home (“…all you little Hulkamaniacs.”) But mostly the kids were able to hold these two opposing beliefs in mind at the same time: (1) Someone set this up for their own reasons and controls the whole story. (2) In spite of point 1, you have permission to get really worked up about it and scream and yell at anyone who disagrees with you.

Fast forward to 2011. A group of Dodger fans beat a Giants fan into a coma outside the ballpark. Or was it a group of Giants fans who beat a Dodger fan into a coma? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have been trained and conditioned to react to manufactured loyalties and manufactured threats as if they were real loyalties and threats. Our fight or flight instincts, developed when human beings lived in tribes and had to defend their tribe against the one down the road, are ready to kick in and drive us to passionately defend our own position (or the one that we’ve identified with) and to attack anyone who doesn’t take our own position.

David Brooks actually addressed this in his recent book about emotion. He came up with the conclusion that emotional reactions are necessary to keep us from getting perpetually stuck at top dead center and therefore to get anything accomplished. At least that’s what I gather from hearing him talk about his book. I haven’t read it, and I don’t think I want to. Because it sounds like he’s weaving in a strand of the same narrative that allows the Tea Partiers to control our national dialogue. People like what they hear, label themselves as being on board with it, and denounce anyone who doesn’t swallow the same narrative hook, line, and sinker. Emotion rules over reason and pragmatic solutions are swept aside. The best that someone like Obama can do is act as if he’s not engaging in the same game, which renders him completely helpless in the face of the onslaught of demands that we rig the system to favor those who control the narrative.

Performance-based

The Chicago Tribune had an editorial yesterday or today (I don't know anymore, since I stopped subscribing) praising the new law in Florida that ties teachers' job security and pay to test scores. Of course the Trib, true to their traditional Colonel McCormick stance on such matters, thinks Illinois should do the same thing. They don't quite come out and say that teachers' unions are making our kids suffer so they can get rich, but they mention the unions in the last sentence as being among those who would oppose such "reasonable" measures to improve our educational system. The Tribune is good at sounding "reasonable." Collective bargaining is so 1950's. It's outlived its usefulness.

A blog called "Crooks and Liars" featured this story and pointed out that a job where your performance is judged on factors outside of your control is a recipe for burnout and failure. (That's why I always identified myself as an "angry operations guy" whose life was being made impossible by those people in marketing!) In this case, some tiny little things like poverty, hunger, and lack of community stability might be considered to be outside the teachers' control. Not to mention things like school boards making them teach creationism and other crap.

But one of the commenters who calls himself "cafeenman" made an even better point, saying that he works in mental health, and wonders if the next step will be to base his salary and job security on whether the mentally ill people he works with get better. He then adds, why not pay police based on the incidence of crime? But his last rhetorical question was the best: "And politicians don't get paid until the country has a booming economy and there is no war."

Why not? Let's propose to all the newly minted angry young Tea Partiers that their job security and pay should depend on whether most people in their district are actually better off in terms of quality of life, freedom from fear, and other real measures. Not, mind you, whether they're "better off than four years ago," because that really means whether Joe can buy a new flat screen TV, which the early 2000's showed us is fairly easy to manipulate by making EZ credit and Chinese goods available. We need to measure quality of life in the community by factors that make sense: freedom from anxiety, hopelessness, incivility, violence, fear, hatred, and ignorance. While we're at it, let's reward those elected representatives that have demonstrated a track record that shows they respect human rights (which, as of 1948 and the UN statement on Human Rights, included the right to organize for better working conditions).

Let's show them some of that "performance based pay and promotion" instead of letting our elections be dominated by who can smear their opponents the loudest, the most often, and the most brainlessly.

Well, guess what? We can already do that. All we have to do is, as John Prine said, "Blow up your TV, throw away your paper," and stop listening to campaign ads and editorials. Instead, look online or in your library and see what you can learn about what the issues really mean and what the candidates actually stand for. League of Women Voters is a good start. WorkingAmerica is good. Don't forget FactCheck.org.

I used to trust the Tribune to be fairly impartial, but as they get broker, they seem to get stupider. Maybe they, like the politicians, have concluded that the way to succeed in 21st century America is to cater to the lowest common denominator.

We need people to point out when politicians are gaming the system so democracy is actually impossible Lke the trick of counting a lack of a vote as a "no" vote, as Delta Airlines wants to do, or the shenanigans of the Wisconsin Tea Party crew last month. Which they are now following up on by trying to stack the state Supreme Court. I love how conservatives can hijack a narrative. Aren't they the ones who railed against "Activist judges"?  Well, I guess they think that no one will notice.

We need to retrain our politcal candidates to actually think for themselves and not be afraid to depart from the party lines. We need to reward problem-solving and pragmatism, and punish ideological rigidity. We need to shame blaming, and blow the whistle at ad hominem attacks. We need to dust off our logic books, and take a refresher course in critical thinking. I believe we can do this. I don't think society is sliding down a greased chute to oblivion. There are plenty of caring, thinking people out there. We can do something.

Something's not right...

The earthquake and tsunami that devastated large areas of Japan and killed thousands are terrible events. They're still unfolding, and the situation in Japan's financial markets is understandably chaotic, I'm sure.

But what is going on in the United States? The markets have now lost everything that they gained in the year so far - in less than a week. The experts blame the usual suspects in addition to Japan's markets: the crisis in Libya which threatens the oil supply, the stubborn rate of unemployment, the fact that housing prices are still not coming back (gee, do ya think it might be because the banks are sitting on tons of that cash we had to give them, instead of lending?). Blah blah, woof woof, as Jimi said.

But one line in the story yesterday about the stock market caught my eye and kind of got me a tiny bit upset. They said that the traders were "taking profits" while they could, driving the market down further.

Now, I'm not an economic expert. I tend to think of money in terms of the checkbook, where you either have it or you don't. I don't get derivatives, and hedges, and credit default swaps, and all that stuff. To me, those are bets. And currency trading and all that stuff - Treasury bonds and all - is like vapor. It seems to be at least half illusion, as things vary and drive other things up or down. I'm sure it's a lot of fun for those guys with sixteen computer monitors on their desk and a nose full of cocaine, but for me, it's not real.

But I come back to one thing. A lot of the hard-earned money I made over the past ten years went into a 401(k) and a 403(b). That was real money. I worked an hour for each hour's pay. So when the stock market goes down, it isn't like I can see it as "unrealized gains or losses." That money disappears as far as I'm concerned. My money. Gone.

And someone took it. Anyone who "took profits" yesterday and in any way helped the stock market fall is a thief, as far as me and my retirement savings are concerned. Same for the guys who bet on the decline, And the guys who bet on the volatility of the market and happened to profit on the decline. The short-sellers. The option putters. All those guys. You know why?

Because they have a lot of money to begin with, and they are doing this because they choose to. I put my money into a 401(k) and a 403(b) because I had to. It was either that or pay taxes on it. Savings? You can't get a frickin' toaster these days, much less keep up with inflation. The banks forgot what their job used to be in the 1950's and 60's: Keep my money safe and have the benefit of using it to loan to other people who need it, for a price, which they'd split with me. Now they want to charge me ten dollars a month just to keep my savings that earns a few pennies a year.

And pensions, which were supposed to be our reward and security for a lifetime of hard work, and which our government vowed to keep safe, became ridiculous antiques, like black-and-white tube TV's. That was part of the plan, see? They brainwashed us into believing that defined-contribution plans would be better for us in the long run, because we could control our investments! And they would benefit from the booming markets! Why settle for a lousy 3% on a CD when you could make 30, 40, or even 200%, especially if you were a savvy playah?!

And we frickin' fell for it! We sat there and picked out those stupid funds from the little charts and graphs while the guy from MetLife or the Hartford sat and nodded wisely and showed us our nifty "risk tolerance" profiles. Well, guess what? We shouldn't have been doing that! ZERO risk is the only risk that's acceptable when you're talking about your old age!! So what did we get to "control?" We got to "control" whether we got cheap lousy aluminum siding or cheap lousy vinyl siding! Whatever we chose, we got cheap lousy siding!! The only reason we took 401(k)'s was because that's the only way we could do ANYTHING to save for our retirments without getting screwed on taxes and fees.

So we had this little recession thing in 2008 when the house of cards the big boys built collapsed like most people knew it had to. And suddenly our money was GONE. Not just "lessening its return." Fuckin' disappeared. Two-thirds of it. WE watched and hoped and started to feel a little bettwe when it clawed its way back, even though the value of our houses kept free-falling until even those of us who'd been paying for 25 years on our houses were heading underwater. Everything that they told us to feel good about - our "net worth" - was revealed to be so much particle board furniture.

So now when we hear about a teacher or cop who still has a defined benefit plan - especially one that wasn't properly and lawfully funded by politicians who loved to play "turn out the lights and scream" every election - now we're all supposed to feel like they're on "the gravy train," or they're "freeloaders."

This is unethical, sinful, and if you want my opinion, a violation of human rights. Just because I get a statement every quarter doesn't mean I'm not being economically exploited, just as surely as some poor guy in Bahrain who has to live in a cardboard house while the big boys have gold toilets.

So now they want to do the same thing with Social Security. It's been coming for years. Now the politicians will play another round of "turn out the lights and scream" so they can scare people or con people or just wear people down into agreeing to this scam too. The Charles Krauthammers of the world; the guys who suck up to the Rupert Murdochs and David Kochs of the world. They keep screaming that "We're broke!" and "We have no other choice!"

Listen, assholes. That is MY MONEY just as much as the hard-earned money I paid into these tinshit 401(k)s was MY MONEY. You take it from me to play with AT YOUR PERIL. (I am talking about at the voting booth, lest you think I'm threatening someone.)

The system was set up to work properly, and if the politicians hadn't played games with it, it would be just fine. So instead of scrapping the system or squeezing retirees into working longer and getting less, they should CORRECT THE PROBLEMS they caused by using the Social Security fund as a cookie jar for their friends. They need to do what they should have done with the pensions: FIX IT and LEAVE IT ALONE. Play by the rules. Go gamble with your own money.

The only consolation I have is that not too many people these days are likely to fall for the pitch that they'll be better off putting their Social Security into the markets. The big boys pretty much killed that illusion. But I fear that they're going to operate on fear instead of greed.

"Solidarity Forever" - Read it and think about it.

I looked up the Wikipedia article about the song. "Solidarity Forever" which was written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915 and sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." I expected that it would be a dated, embarrassing bit of historical anachronism with little application to our modern situation. Well, guess what. It's pretty damn timely. Especially the line, "They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn / But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn."

Kind of makes you think about the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer... about derivatives, subprime mortgages, bailouts, and broken promises to help distressed homeowners in the midst of a staggering unemployment rate caused by Wall Street greed and maintained by browbeating our lawmakers to avoid reform.

Reform is Big Government. We can't have that. That's Communism, you know. It "kills jobs" (as if making thousands of federal and state employees lose their jobs is all right).

Meanwhile the consumer is blamed for the sluggish economy. We need to get our "confidence" back. Well, recall that "confidence" is the basis of the word "con."

Maybe we ought to add a few more verses to cover our current situation. I'll suggest a line: "They tell us it's our job to spend to keep us all afloat, while they take the wealth to buy themselves another fancy boat."

Bradley Manning...

Much digital ink is being spent on the topic of Bradley Manning, but let me just put in my two cents.

1. Bradley Manning is a political prisoner, that much is pretty clear to me. Of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man.
2. From what we've been told, he did not give any help to the "enemy," except to the extent that the enemy is us. Let's assume he did give classified military information to Wikileaks. The stated mission of Wikileaks is to expose the truth, not to give anyone a military advantage. (in fact, quite the opposite. They believe that information needs to be shared in order to prevent abuses). It may be that someone in the military was put at increased risk by some of the information that Manning transferred. Then again, that may be purely guesswork. The most striking thing we did learn was that the US military was revealed to be killing civilans and laughing about it.
3. Any assumption that Manning's actions gave someone (some "enemy", which we haven't yet defined in a way that satisfactorily justifies all the loss of life and expense of two wars) a military advantage over us therefore contains the further assumption that the US military should be able to kill civilians and keep it hidden. What that says to me is that he mainly embarrassed the brass and let the American people know that we're not always noble, ethical, humane, or right. As if Abu Ghraib didn't tell us that already.
4. His treatment in detention had better conform to the Geneva Conventions, or else we're sending a pretty bad message to the rest of the world.
5. His reported treatment in detention sounds like torture to me. At least psychologically. If he was suicidal, this kind of treatment certainly doesn't appear to serve the purpose of making him less so.
6. Obama's acquiescence on this is instructive, in that it indicates the extent to which the military still wields a big stick in this government.
7. All of this is extremely unsettling when it comes to our country and its conduct. And it should make us extremely ashamed. Especially when a State Department official has the courage to call it what it is, and then has to be fired for it. Although I suppose we should be glad he wasn't "disappeared" instead.

All of this is just my armchair opinionating. But I would like to think I'm not stupid, and I've seen enough in my years on this planet to think I'm not likely to be too far off the mark.

A comment I placed on a Mother Jones article

I was reading a great piece by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones online, about the long and dreary rise of the plutocracy (and the decline of the labor movement) in America. It draws from another piece ("It's the Inequality, Stupid") about the growing and almost ludicrous disparity between the ever-smaller few people controlling the ever-larger share of wealth in America.

So I was prompted to write the following comment, which I feel bears repeating on its own:
Old doc 15 minutes ago


The funny thing is how the conservatives use a false fear of "government" to influence people to allow them to have their way with us. But hey... Government is us. Didn't they teach us that in grammar school?

People in this country have the numbers. The AARP showed how a group with a huge footprint can exert huge influence, whether you always agree with their positions or not. We need something similar for working Americans. The AFL-CIO affilaited group (workingamerica.org) that's set out to do that doesn't seem to have gained any steam, possibly because it's so tarnished by its connection with organized labor. But we need to give people hope that the system is NOT rigged for evermore against them.

Sure. The hippie movement didn't play well with organized labor, and that's too bad in hindsight, but now those people are grown up and the old union folks are retired. Let's pool our wisdom, figure out our goals, and start to build some unshakeable alliances that can stand up to lies and pessimism. We're smart people, and our kids and grandkids expect and deserve better from us than sitting passively while the wealth stagnates like bad blood, the power is left to the people with personality disorders, and we watch "Survivor."

We need to reform the way we elect our politicians at all levels, and to stop accepting the excuse that we can't change anything, because it's politics as usual and they're all the same. We had a false populism with the Tea Party; how about a real populism? A decent fair shake for working people would be a very attainable goal. We must get people to feel a sense of self-efficacy again, and we can do that, if we can start to let the wealthy know that we will hold them to their side of the social contract of a civilized society. And we need to mean it, and we need to make it clear that won't be intimidated, lied to, pacified with big screen TV's and Angry Birds, or turned against each other. Esepcially not turned against each other.

Head Start revealed as hotbed of socialist indoctrination: Conservative activist

March 11, 2011 (New York): In the midst of a debate on continued federal funding of the Head Start program, conservative activist muckraker James O'Keefe has released an undercover video shot at a Head Start program in New York, in which teachers are heard allegedly teaching children "radical leftist thinking" and, in the words of former Rep. Newt Gingrich, "Running a socialist boot camp for preschoolers."

Gingrich added, "I can't see how the American people would sit still if they knew that their tax dollars were going to train kids in Un-American ways of thinking and acting. This is just another example of the nanny state run amok."

Added Speaker John Boehner, "You know what this is about... This is how they plan to get their voter base for 2028 - by starting when the kids are too young to know when they're being radicalized against the American Way."

In the video, a preschool teacher can be heard talking about how Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted all people treated as equals, leading the children in singing "This Land is Your Land," and talking about "Community helpers" like the mailman and the policeman.

"Have you read those verses to that song?!" demanded Gingrich. "They sang ALL the verses! It's all about disparaging free enterprise and private property, and leading kids to believe in redistribution of wealth." Added Boehner, "The mailman and the policeman - you can see where THAT's going, can't you? They're grooming their future public union base, and taking money from the rest of us to do it, when this country is BROKE!"

In response, President Obama has accepted the resignation of the national director of the Head Start program. A vote on defunding the program completely is expected in the House this week.

Death threats? Do you believe that? Never mind, just give 'em The Hook.

Spotted a story after Walker and his boys pulled their little frat prank on Wisconsin today; it says that now the Republicans are reporting getting "death threats."

Oh, and did that light up the rantosphere!! "Union thugocracy," "Obamites issue death threats," blah blah blah. Google "Death Threats Wisconsin" today, and you'll get at least 500 hits of right-wing news stories, punditry, posts and blogs by gleefully crowing righties and assorted fonkies sitting at home with nothing better to do than watch Fox News, drink beer, and post hate speech saying essentially, "See? We were right about these union thugs! They want to destroy our Gawd-given standard of living and our flat screen TV-lovin' lives. They're probably Muslim terrorists, too. And that Hussein Obama is behind it all."

First of all, these Republicans in Wisconsin lie, as they demonstrated when they claimed they were in "discussions" with Democrats while they plotted their closed-door trickery. So I wouldn't be surprised if they're either making this up, or (more likely knowing their high school bully tactics) found some poor mentally ill person and had one of their James O'Keefe types play-act righteous indignation to egg him (or her) on until they got something that sounded like a "death threat." Oh, must be those "Union thugs" again. You know. foreign agitators... like the ones that caused all the trouble in Libya and Egypt. According to the dictators, anyway.

But whatever the credibility of these reports (or lack of it), this story raises the larger question of how to frame the conversation about recalling those Republican state legislators who voted for this.

My advice: Be very careful to talk peacefully. No talk of "targeting" those officials or their districts. No bulls-eyes. No wartime metaphors or battle language.

Instead, let's treat this as the vaudeville show it is.

Give 'em "The Hook."

Another one comes crashing down...

NPR starts to implode. Well, it’s becoming another predictable sequence of events. All you need to do is read the headlines. First, Republican politicians demand that NPR lose its federal funding, on the basis that the government has no business subsidizing (left-wing socialist liberal) broadcasting (when Rupert Murdoch is doing such a great job of providing fair and balanced journalism to the citizens of this fine country).

Next, NPR pleads not to have the finding cut, arguing that if they were gone, Americans would not be able to freely support factual, intelligent journalism; and arguing that citizens need some help (a nanny state) to help protect their ability to really have a choice (yeah, like Michelle Obama wants to tell you what to eat).

Next, you know who shows up... That guy James O’Keefe, the anti-Michael Moore, the guy with the timeworn tactics of Allan Funt and the ethics of Bernie Madoff. He proceeds to set up another one of those absurdly improbable stings, in which some flunky of the target organization is cajoled (or "creatively" edited, as we found out later)into making embarrassing secretly recorded statements that allow the right-wing pundits to absolutely vilify the entire organization, thereby initiating the destruct sequence. They can fire the people involved, the CEO can resign, but you and I know when the writing is on the wall.

These guys do have talent, you have to admit. They seem to know exactly whom to pick on and when, to insure that the air is completely let out of an organization. They aren’t happy just pulling the funding plug. They are scorched earth warriors. They will disappear that organization.

And so another worthy but troubled public service organization bites the dust. Well, pledge drives can be so annoying anyway, right? At least Glenn Beck and “Celebrity Apprentice” should keep our thirst for enlightenment and diversion satisfied.

Next target, by my prediction: The AFL-CIO. Yeah! Americans don’t need some union thugs interfering with their Gawd-given right to spend their lives driving 60 miles each way on $5.00 gas, getting those great below-minimum-wage piecework jobs in the Wal-Mart warehouses in the far-flung suburbs.

These guys wouldn’t go after something like AFSCME; nah, that’s too small a target; and anyway Scott Walker is doing pretty well demonizing them without the Big Sting. These guys have bigger goals, like destroying the entire union presence in this country.

After that, privatizing Social Security will be a snap.

The Brawny Man and his friends

Let's take a break from killing the environment, and

Let's Go Bust Some Unions!!

That's the Ticket!

Well, the latest bit of Republispeak was neatly slipped in on “Meet the Press” this morning. In the context of talking about the full-court attempt to strip public employees in Wisconsin of most of their collective bargaining rights, one of the Republican shills came out with this little masterpiece, when he referred to how they want to force public employees to vote every year on whether to keep the union and whether their dues should be collected: “That’s true democracy.”

Nice reframe. I can just picture Jon Lovitz coming up with this one and saying “Yeah… that’s the ticket!” Of course, this is a strategy similar to the “Secret ballot” tactic when they fought against card check, so they’re really just recycling a similar turd in fancy wrapping paper here. They love the idea of forcing union members to jump through as many hoops as possible in order to organize and stay organized, because this gives the anti-union people more opportunities to exert pressure, spew propaganda and scare stories, and otherwise hassle and harass people.

Actually, this is an almost perfect example of what we used to call "Doublespeak," after the George Orwell concept "Doublethink," described in 1984. The Wikipedia article on Doublespeak describes it thus: "Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs), making the truth less unpleasant, without denying its nature. It may also be deployed as intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning (for example, naming a state of war "peace"). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth, producing a communication bypass."

Calling this assault “true democracy” is kinda like forcing women seeking abortions to look at pictures of aborted fetuses, and calling it “promoting choice.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I think most people who truly see the value of organizing would be glad to go along with this bit of extra hassle, but these corporate-backed storm troopers are counting on being able to spew enough untruths and scare stories to deter enough workers so that they can pick off collective bargaining units one by one. it's been shown to have happened again and again when employees at staunchly anti-union companies have tried to organize.

I have two suggestions. One is to ask these Republican Tea Partiers to agree that they must be reconfirmed each year by a vote equal to a majority of those who voted in the last elections. And while we’re at it, let’s make available at the polling place a list of the actual campaign contributors from whom they have accepted money, and how much. That means the real contributors and their corporate connections, not those vague sounding organizations that front for them. If not enough people give them a vote of confidence, they’ll be automatically subjected to a recall vote. No petition required.

The second suggestion is to find some legal experts who would donate their time and expertise to look for ways that these state-by-state union-busting efforts may violate existing federal laws and/or the state's individual laws and constitutions. State and local public workers don't have much Federal labor protection (read the Wikipedia article on "United States Labor Law" for the sad facts), but tossing what amounts to a repeal of the entire state's public workforce's right to bargain into a ginned-up crisis-driven budget bill may not pass muster in the individual states. At least the challenges would slow down this frontal assault on workers.

I don’t always respect the people running the unions, and I've disagreed at times with some of their strategies and positions, but I sure don’t think the solution is to go back to the days when employers could force people (including children) to work 60 hour weeks in unsafe and inhumane conditions, and when anyone who tried to carry out work actions could be arrested or shot. The “reasonable” people (like the editorial writers at the Chicago Tribune) who say that unions have outlived their usefulness tend to forget those bits of history. One of those easily overlooked pieces of labor history took place in Wisconsin, as a matter of fact. A good reminder is the story of the Bay View Massacre.

Right now, I think the public employees who have offered to give the state legislature everything they say they need are the truly reasonable, ethical, and respectable human beings. The governor and his backers obviously represent something else altogether. I'm kinda thinkin' of another one of Jon Lovitz's characters. The one with horns and a tail.

So while you wait to see how long the good people of Wisconsin can hold out against this corporate coup, kick back and listen to some good old union organizing songs, of which there are plenty, both old and new. One particular favorite of mine, writted by a couple of Australian folksingers, is especially appropriate because it describes the current siutation to a T... "They say we've got problems, and the unions they blame; Well, Franco and Pinochet, they said the same..."

The link to the song (including an mp3 sound file) is here. And the website of one of the authors, Peter Hicks, which includes his CD's on topical issues (like the market crash), is here. Break out the guitar and let's sing some organizing songs.