Republicans inside you

I am sorry to say that I refrained from analyzing the utter nonsense coming out of the chauvinist pigs on the right up to now. And honestly, I do not understand the incredible attack on women's rights. I do not like to think of women as a special interest group, and really, in a sane society they would not be. I always felt women were the most genuine representation of "the public interest" you know, that thing that republics are supposed to be about. It makes no sense. Why the full-court press to attack their, republicans', wives, mothers, daughters, etc.? There has been so much traffic of late online covering protests and actions against rape, I did not understand that rape was such an issue. And all the insane rhetoric and bills against all manner of reproductive rights and access to healthcare; those seemed to be far away in backwards-ass southern states. I mean rape is rape, what the world are the 'wingers doing by making women into a special interest to demonize? Are they really so confident in the power of stupid to keep enough women in line and under the spell of patriarchy?

For the umpteenth time, this is not conservatism. The republican party is now made up of PAGANs, People Against Goodness And Normalcy.

Seriously, it is long past time to stop referring to 'wingers, either in office or the rank and file psychopaths, as conservatives. They are authoritarians at the very least, practicing terrorism and intimidation, dividing civil society against itself to conquer and pillage.

Reagan: The Problem

I was hoping for more from the title: A Short Breakdown Of How Reagan Broke Our Economy, Killed Jobs, And Rewarded Greed A little more history perhaps, at least an explanation of how political polarization led to Reagan's election and subsequent policy ransacking. But no, all we get from Sarah Wood is an analysis of the symptoms and effects of monopoly on the American people.

Reagan’s abandonment of antitrust laws and the refusal of policy makers even today to start enforcing them again is what collapsed our economy and rewarded greed.

While this is true, there is much more to it and simply stating that the reaganites gave business the green light to make their greediest dreams come true ignores the context of the times. For example, there were republican presidents before Reagan, why did Nixon or Ford not take their hands off the wheel and allow big business to rip apart the social contract? Events outside the US? Or recent history of that time? History is rarely a simple "A alone causes B." Looking at the 1980s from the perspective of what followed is a fallacy. While you will get no argument from me that non-enforcement of antitrust laws played a great role in the economic polarization of the contemporary US; it is a major source of the vast inequality of wealth and income, the stagnation of the economy as a whole, and ever-growing poverty, one cannot argue that this phenomenon occurred in a vacuum.

What follow in Wood's essay is a fairly standard recitation of the collapse of civil society, the result of economic ruin for the middle class and ever-deepening chasm swallowing working people into poverty.

Here is the salient point of Wood's thesis:

consolidation of industry has stifled our growth. Jobs grow through small business, individual entrepreneurship, and actual competition. However we need laws to allow this to happen which keep markets and wages fair. This doesn’t make me a socialist, this makes me a person in favor of capitalism who appreciates competition, but also appreciates laws that protect the small from being devoured by the large. These laws also protect us from these giant monopolies dictating laws that may potentially harm us (food safety, etc.) so they can increase profits by cutting corners. (Emphasis mine)

 Ahhh, let's not even pretend to understand the difference between socialism and varying forms of capitalism. Make sure you don't think of any white elephants while reading her essay. Funny how inoculation only works one way, when the Children of Light try it they only end up activating the Children of Darkness' frames. However, somehow anytime a progressive CoL brings up Reagan or God help us George w. bush the wailing of trolls begins. "Oh, of course it is all dubya's fault." Those knee-jerk schmuck declarations that dare you to agree, but reflexively we know what is out-of-bounds. It is the same reflex that all but forces liberals to defend small businesses as bastions of goodness.

Indented and italicized for no apparent reason and with no supporting source is this gem:

Industry consolidation also cuts down on workers’ rights. This is why Republicans hate and demonize unions. Workers having a voice cuts down on the ability to be greedy. 

The trouble is, and obviously there are exceptions, but most big business prior to the Reagan "revolution" had made peace with organized labor. Consolidated industries, like steel, or energy, or manufacturing were too vulnerable to workers' resistance in the days before subsidized outsourcing. The treaty of Detroit, where management finally conceded labor's right to bargain, meant high wages but no say in how business was run and compared to the days before the treaty had brought relative labor peace.

It was small businessmen who irrationally feared and loathed anything that smacked of bargaining with "the help." It was the NFIB that freaked out so hard about the Clinton administration's healthcare reform proposals in 1993, over a portion that required providing bare bones insurance for all employees at a cost of about 10 cents an hour. Twenty years later the fight is still joined at that level. The so-called tea party, if it has any real existence beyond Astroturf, is a rogue's gallery of small business types so it does not matter how dead unions really are this merry band of idiots and racists are frightened beyond belief that their busboys and stockers are just waiting for their fellow minority in the White House to give the word to agitate for fair treatment. This of course will cause utter chaos, the ruin of tea partiers' cult of self-importance, and possibly the violation of our white women.

Sorry folks, but race is, was, and probably will ever be America's original sin. Reagan did not kick off his campaign by memorializing and standing by 'states' rights' in a southern town that murdered several civil rights' activists during the 1960s because he himself had Klansman hoods in his closet, but he knew how to play the game for those that did. Reagan did not let loose his many counterfactual descriptions of "welfare queens" without the certainty of what images these fairy tales would conjure up in the minds of his supporters.

There is so much more to the wrecking of the relatively stable, fair, and equal America built by the Greatest Generation and refined by well-meaning Americans for a half century. But that will have to wait... because dang, that is a big, big story. Historians and lots of very smart people are still in shock that America unraveled this quickly and how far we will continue to fall. I don't mean to knock Sarah Wood or Political Shake for printing her piece, monopoly is a huge problem, but to pretend that there is a silver bullet which can undo all the damage of the last three decades is just naïve.

Read. Now!

If I ever go back for an MA in library and information science, this poster will adorn my office wall.

From the mouths of rascals

"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." -Misattributed to Winston Churchill.

We deal with much that is myth-making and fairy tales on this blog, especially when it comes to the "conservative movement" at its fantasyland or fever swamp. What happens when reality, discernible, objective reality smacks conservatives in the face? As it turns out, the liars simply wave it away and attempt to make their fairy tales a little more palatable. If you spend any time around older conservatives, you are bound to hear Churchill's supposed wisdom in one form or another. The sentiment is always the same, "young people are too stupid, uninformed, or idealistic to understand how the world works and therefore should not vote because... they vote the wrong way." And of course, the old keep aging, so you will never "catch up," or find the slightest respect for your beliefs if they contradict "common sense." Whatever bill o'reilly says common sense is at that moment.

Is it surprising then when the college republicans find (shock! horror!) that young people have no love for or respect for the aging, angry elder beliefs? Other commentators like Alex Pareene have already put the "duh?" into the CRs findings, and simply reiterating that young people are not that into fucking over their neighbors, scapegoating people a little different than them, or any of the other myriad implications of a party seen by them as "closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and] old-fashioned."

ThinkProgress summarized the CR report with 11 points:

1. GOP economic polices are to blame for the recession. “Although ‘Republican economic policies’ is the factor least likely to be viewed as playing a major role in causing the crisis, this is mostly due to young Republicans in the sample hesitating to pin blame directly on their own party, and an outright majority of young people still think those Republican policies are to blame – hardly an encouraging finding.”
2. Lower taxes will not create jobs.” In the August 2012 XG survey, there was not a strong consensus around the virtues of lowering taxes and regulations on business. Only 34% of respondents in that survey thought they’d be better off if the corporate tax rate were lowered, and only 36% thought such a move would make it easier for young people to get jobs.”
3. Increase taxes on the wealthy. “Perhaps most troubling for Republicans is the finding from the March 2013 CRNC survey that showed 54% of young voters saying ‘taxes should go up on the wealthy,’ versus 31% who say “taxes should be cut for everyone.”
4. End the attacks on women’s reproductive health. “[T]he issue of protecting life has been conflated with issues around the definition of rape, funding for Planned Parenthood, and even contraception. In the words of one female participant in our Hispanic voter focus group in Orlando, “I think Romney wanted to cut Planned Parenthood. And he supports policies where it would make it harder for a woman to get an abortion should she choose, even if it were medically necessary. That goes head in hand with redefining rape.”
5. Expand universal health care coverage. “Many of the young people in our focus groups noted that they thought everyone in America should have access to health coverage. In the Spring 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics survey of young voters, 44% said that “basic health insurance is a right for all people, and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide it.” … As one participant in our focus group of young men in Columbus put it, “at least Obama was making strides to start the process of reforming health care.”
6. Provide comprehensive immigration reform. “The position taken most frequently by young voters was that “illegal immigrants should have a path to earn citizenship,” chosen by 35% of respondents… Some 19% chose “illegal immigrants should be deported or put in jail for breaking the law,” while another 17% took the position that “illegal immigrants should have a path to legal status but not citizenship.”
7. Cut the defense budget first. “Indeed, a large number of respondents pointed to the defense budget as the place where cuts should start. In the survey, 35% of respondents thought that “we should have a smaller defense budget and leaner military,” including 49% of young independents.”
8. Democrats are more responsive on student loans. “Many focus group members did think that Democrats were responding to the student loan crisis. “I think they’re more in tune to what we need right now with student loans, getting a job, fixing the housing market and the environment,” observed one participant from Orlando, with another adding that he had “heard Obama once say, oh, he has student loans, he went to school, he knows what we’re going through.”
9. Climate change is real. “Ultimately, while voters may say they are concerned about climate change, they rarely list it among the issues on the top of their minds.”
10. Bush’s wars blew up the deficit. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan themselves, however, were largely viewed as having been a net negative for the U.S. In fact, during focus group discussions about the recession, one respondent said she felt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had contributed in part to the economic crisis.”
11. Marriage equality for all. “Surveys have consistently shown that gay marriage is not as important an issue as jobs and the economy to young voters. Yet it was unmistakable in the focus groups that gay marriage was a reason many of these young voters disliked the GOP.”

So, is it any wonder that the strategy so far by the gop has been to disenfranchise young people? These attitudes existed before this report was even some bow-tied wet dream. Cynicism reaches the peak when contrasted with the diseased idealism sold by the AstroTurf tea party. "Capitalism now, capitalism next week, capitalism forever!" Hard times conservatism as analyzed by Thomas Frank; angry, confused old people raging against the government and imaginary threats while ignoring real ones. Coincidentally, Dr. Frank does an excellent write-up of the college republicans in The Wrecking Crew that shows the CRs as not just some silly auxiliary to the "conservative movement" but the leading edge of radicalism on campus. Abramoff, Reed, Rove, Ryan, and countless others wiled away their college years disrupting meetings, starting bestiality clubs, and shaking down businesses to do dirty work such as destroying PiRGs and other activist groups.

Those professional conservative entrepreneurs started on the radical right, and stayed there. Thus leaving the Old Lion's legacy intact but whomever actually uttered that quote was slightly mistaken.

Who needs them?

I took the Kraken Hatchling to the Shrine Circus the other night. We had a great time seeing the acrobats, the tigers, the elephants, the clown, and his baby elephant/puppy. We ate popcorn, cotton candy, had a snow cone that has left my entrails green, and even got to ride on an elephant. Well the Hatchling did, I took pictures. A friend came along too, and despite being half my age I think he had an alright time. Mrs. Kraken was working so she couldn't make it but was glad we went.

So my friend, let's call him Rakdos, is a young man with a good heart who really wants to make a difference in the world. We were chatting quite extensively about "direct action," considering the chaos going on around us, and the ever present possibility of right-wing vigilantes within earshot I was a little apprehensive about it. The word "sabotage" even came up. Personally, I'm not a fan of that word, and even less for the frames it evokes. Maybe I'm just too old now to believe that any sort of violence will help our situation. In fact, I'm very worried that any destruction of property carrying even a whiff of leftist action will set off the powder keg of right-wing vigilantism and cause the random mass murders of innocents by psychopaths to focus into a directed effort of posses, hunting down any young radicals they feel like. Ergo, direct action of the Weathermen style is to be condemned and discouraged. Utterly futile I know, but until it is absolutely and irredeemably certain that our democratic system is irretrievably broken there is still a chance to make it work for the public good. Eeek! Is that a sliver of optimism showing? Quick! Get the net!

The other topic we discussed, briefly though it was far more interesting from my perspective, was intellectuals. Hence the title of this post. Obviously disdain for thinkers by right-wingers and especially authoritarians runs very high, but our exchange was on different grounds. Rakdos brought up a rap song called "You can't be neutral on a moving train" and was actually surprised when I told him that is something of a classic of dissident literature by the late historian/activist Howard Zinn. I cannot remember the exact exchange from then on and I want to be fair to Rakdos but his argument seemed to sum up as "what have they ever actually done?" Specifically he was referring to Noam Chomsky. Now, putting aside that Professor Chomsky actually did march, demonstrate and work vociferously toward ending the war in Vietnam, yes, his main contribution has been intellectual and theoretical. "What has he done?" In the abstract I suppose this is a good question. I rarely venture beyond the idea of spreading the knowledge of problems. Pick and rank issues, joust with individuals and try to change their minds through persuasion or at least debunk the incredible misinformation out there.

The question I pose is often framed as "what can we do?" Hence where Rakdos and I started talking, he missed going to a camp out in the woods to learn about and practice this elusive concept of "direct action" and fretted about the lost opportunity. The answer to my question is to withhold, boycott, or avoid elements of corporate power as much as possible. Turning off the spigot of money, labor, and attention to these totalitarian institutions seems the safest way to reduce their power and the power of their owners/managers. The economic elite is the wellspring of most of the problems in our world and it takes an incredible amount of money to keep their little game going. Perhaps that is wishful thinking.

How I was first exposed to leftist activism was through the works of Jello Biafra, former lead singer of Dead Kennedys. His spoken word albums held a great deal of content and led me to like-minded individuals, helping to end some of the alienation and apathy I felt as a young crustacean. Biafra also referenced Chomsky, Zinn, and "the guy who runs The Baffler magazine." That of course was Thomas Frank, an historian and great chronicler of both ends of the right-wing "conservative" movement. I put that word in quotation marks because there is really very little this movement is trying to conserve, a better word is the authoritarian movement but no one wants to think of themselves that way in the same way that racists get quite annoyed when you call out their racism. Fifteen years later and I have moved from listening to punk rock to audiobooks of serious issues by real scholars. Perhaps I am an anomaly. Perhaps we really do need more direct action and less intellectualism. If a loud minority of authoritarians can catapult their leaders into positions to really wreck things, maybe what the larger society needs is a few dedicated miscreants to wreck the twisted desires of the corporate elite; democracy be damned.

Then again, maybe not. I just hope my friend Rakdos and others whose youth clouds the larger picture or makes problems old-schoolers like Zinn or Chomsky have been dealing with for decades seem so urgent do not do something they will regret. To be continued, I hope.

Police and fire unions

Is this really the best "we" can do?

Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, this week announced he is drafting “Act 10 Equity” legislation which would “remove the undue preferential treatment police and firefighter unions have received” under the law that governs collective bargaining.

It should be self-evident that any working person "standing with walker" is a sheep hoping to be sheared instead of skinned.

the police association stood with Act 10 opponents at the time, calling for a public boycott of businesses that didn’t support collective bargaining for public employees.

Still, when you agree to support a hunter because he promises to shoot you last there is something wrong with your strategy.

Just because

The "I'm rubber, you're glue" school of political discourse.



Now, I worry far more about the freedom from starvation than the right of LGBT marriage but dang... This was a new meme on me, the guy using it as his profile picture shared a last name with a certain right-wing radio personality and when I observed it he was defending the right of Apple computers to pay no taxes. These kind of brain-damaged people vote and influence others. They also often work in businesses where their ignorance and impaired cognitive functions can harm others.

And, not to conflate stupidity with bloodlust, but here is another favorite that "excrement and cranium" has as his cover photo:


"Responsible gun owner" translates to "I lie in wait for dark-skinned males to invade my space so I can kill them" in this case.

In any case, the equality symbol coopted to showcase military grade weapons with no other purpose than to kill as rapidly as possible, just because you can makes a strong case for keeping such weapons away from any individual coveting them. Yes folks, freedom to marry trumps freedom to kill despite the huffing and puffing of cretins.

Speaking of cretins,



DERP! And the summer before that gas was $4.19/gal. You know, when hewhomustnotbenamed was in office.

Again, just because. Make the same claim in any case, just because the other side made it. Call your book "culture of corruption" just because Nancy Polosi uselessly labeled the republican majority as operating within a culture of corruption in the house of representatives. Cry bloody murder over an attack on American diplomats in Libya because liberals opposed war with Iraq based on lies. And wallow, just wallow, in self-pity over the horrendous persecution visited upon anti-government fanatic organizations by the toothless IRS. Oh the humanity of having to wait a little bit for tax-exempt status from the government you hate with every fiber of your being.

Just because.