TURNABOUTS OF TIME: Why Godot Never Comes

We the people shouldn’t take much stock in the prophets of time. Especially Niagara Countians after the recent visit of Dennis Mullen, upstate chairman of Empire State Development Corporation. The Niagara Falls Reporter colorfully captured the essence of that “visit” as “Irish blarney.” According to the NFR, Chairman Blarney, oops I mean Mullen, prophesied that “it” would take “5 or 10 years before beleaguered residents of Niagara Falls could expect to see any sort of an economic turnaround.”

Let me say that surely it takes an insurmountable arrogance, or possibly, a smug certainty with respect to the ignorance of local residents, to make such a preposterous statement. What enables such agents of apodicticity to make these infuriating claims is a kind of mythology of time. Time cures everything or causes everything, of course, in enough time.

The duration of a decade seems to assure the locus of a meaningful epoch. 100 days is a just measure of the successful “beginning” of an American presidency. A few more or less days of school seems to some to make all the difference in academic achievement. And if it doesn’t, add or subtract another day, week, month or year. What exactly is this magic of abstract time? Well, there isn’t any magic though it seems to be a useful delusion, an acceptable form of justifiable delay, expectation, anticipation or even relief from frustration.

But back to Chairman Blarney. Note that he sucks us into the universal psychology of the perennial program of postponement. If we don’t know how to do or explain something just postpone its expectation from whenever to later to sometime. Christianity, or as I prefer to call it, Christianism, postpones heaven and salvation until after death. Troop postponements in Iraq for 2-3 more years. Success in Afghanistan….God knows. But Mullen naturally uses the appropriate procrastinating grammar when he says “it” would take 5 or 10 years to see economic progress. But what is the “it” that it would take. Does he tell us? No, because it will take time, just time and seemingly only time. And of course this blathering latter-day bureaucratic idiot doesn’t know and undoubtedly doesn’t care. He’s simply a delivery boy of bad news from the big bureaucrats in Albany. He is another layer of alienation separating the people from real and effective political self-representation in Western New York.

So time is progress. And progress? “It” takes time. But what we need to know is the content of that “it” and the content of all the “its” that didn’t happen when these same promises were made several times before in the criminally disappointing history of governmental pseudo-concern for and feigned interest in the well-being of Western New York.

Here, then, we have another round in the stultifying edification process in which Western New Yorkers have not yet learned to no longer trust our local professional politicians, state bureaucrats and political party strategists and ideologues.

Change for the Falls and the region requires a radically autochthonous effort of a new order of thinking. Just don’t let anyone tell you it will probably take time. Time can’t do it. Only we can.

ROBERT MOSES REMOVAL ON THE TABLE: Toward a Politics of the People

Tonight the Niagara County Legislature should vote on Renae Kimbles proposal to support removal of 6.2 miles of the Robert Moses Parkway. Niagara Gazette reports that Fall Mayor, Paul Dyster, seems also to have reached his limit with the State Parks crowd, historically oblivious to the interests of our communities, and intends to move forward with parkway removal with or without the ‘blessings’ of the State.

These actions represent an authentic peoples democratic politic. Although Dyster and Kimble may reject the label populist or neo-populist, such actions are clearly in the spirit of Neo-populism. This is not merely a label or an ideological flag to be waved. The notion of neo-populism is descriptive of political actions on the part of and in the interests of the people disenfranchised by over 100 years of progressive centralization and bureaucratization of government. Since just after the Civil War at state and federal levels, progressive centralization of governmental functions has continued in the interests of corporations, partisan party politics and a cancerous obsession with empire via military intervention around the world. Only a peoples’ politics can stop this loss of local control and real self-representation.

Such actions by Kimble and Dyster begin to return power home to the people. Since local representatives such as Thompson, Maziarz and DelMonte, along with the former Clinton and present Schumer regime, are obviously not to be counted on for anything but useless talk when it comes to such significant issues as the loss of benefit of Niagara power, toxic pollution all over the county and removal of an obsolute and obstructive parkway, the people need to move on. These officials do not represent our interests, plain and simple.

It may begin tonight whether the resolution is passed or not. If the people come to consciousness as to what is possible when the reappropriate their own power, it has begun, i.e., a real peoples democracy, participatory, self-determining and just.

POLITICS AND TRUTH

Isn’t much of the three-ring circus of main stream national partisan politics today simply explainable as a function of ignorance? Such ignorance is undoubtedly a matter not only of not knowing much that we need to know historically and economically but as much a matter of deceit and/or distortion of facts and events. Of course such ignorance is also lubricated by greed, racism, elitism, arrogance, opportunism, power-grabbing and sophistry. Yet there is nothing to be gained by moralizing and vilifying. We don’t need any more witch hunts for “evildoers” whether domestically or internationally. But what is it that we are really ignorant of or deceived about?

The initial layer of ignorance that helps generate the circus atmosphere of American ‘politics’ at present, using the present situation of the so-called Republican Party as the best case in point, is a function of the parties not knowing what they really stand for nor even really what they are commited to. This is not just a matter of disagreement between party factions. That kind of disagreement presupposes the factions have some real, effective identity. It is a matter of the factions in contention really knowing who they are and what the party “should” be politically. But such self-knowledge must be more than manipulatively proffering an ad hoc platform in order to wrangle a coalition into the Republican corral.

Surely also, the self-definition of a party politic requires more than falling back on inflammatory cultural conflicts whose solution should be left to individual morality, religious decision or a community consensus with respect to cultural values. The one-issue moralistic or religious solution to party identity confuses the question of the cultural constitution of society with the question of the appropriate regulatory actions of governments. Government is not about using political institutional power to re-constitute how people live their lives culturally, religiously and morally. Government regulates the structure of the public sphere and should keep hands off the private cultural sphere.

So who are the “Republicans” and what are they up to?

Keith Olberman recently reported that John McCain floated an idea to have a 10-point party agenda to unite the party. The first point was: Cut taxes. That’s no big surprise. But it was also no real surprise when they were stumped on what the other 9 points would be.

Bobby Jindall made his play for party unity in his famous 3 minute speech counterpointing Obama’s address to the nation a few weeks ago. He contraposed “the American people” to “government,” BIG GOVERNMENT. That distinction was most likely intended to clear things up and let us all know that the Repubs don’t stand for big government even though they are arguably the worst offenders. And presumably the Republicans are those who really represent “the people,” of course conservative Republicans. Nice try Bobby.

Roger Simon of Politico.com said today he wasn’t certain whether the Republican Party should replace present Chairman, Michael Steele, or whether Steele should find a new party. Steele has blundered again and again in trying to define and mobilize the party. Yesterday he quite clearly stated in an interview he believed in “choice” when it came to abortion. Today he backed off that statement like a hyena realizing it couldn’t drag the carcass away from a flock of vultures. Then Steele appeared on TV confessing the faith that he was an unrepentant pro-lifer, always was, always will be (no matter what he says to the contrary). How much more confused can one leader be. Apparently a lot. Just a week ago Steele also compared homosexuality to race saying that one could no more choose their sexual preference than they could their race. Good job Mr. Conservative Chairman!

Let’s not forget, as most Republicans would prefer to do, that the Bush administration, most recent, proved the poverty of Republican ideas. Possibly the neo-Con aspiration and failure at militaristic world hegemony is the Republican Party come to fruition. The fruit ripened but proved too sour to digest. And why bother fertilizing a tree that yields bad fruit. More accurately the Republicans under Bush had no ideas, except of course those which would assure the absolute sovereignty of the Presidency, the military hegemony of “America,” the disempowerment of the average American and the evisceration of the American justice system.

Continuing with the parade of ignorance if not deceit and disinformation: Rush Limbaugh, who some would like to say is now the only coherent voice of Republicanism, is in the final analysis a blathering fanatical apologist of a self-contradictory conservatism who has no clue what America stands for. His is a ‘least-common-denominator’ demagoguery deluding many people that he actually has a solution to the crisis of late Liberal Democracy. Ann Coulter, in like manner, is simply a lunatic, not to mention being quite the explicit hate mongerer. Sarah Palin flunked Basic Knowledge 101. Joe the Plumber….well, you can finish that sentence any way you want.

And, most recently, Meaghan McCain, John’s daughter! She appeared on MSNBC seemingly doing nothing but taking a short ride on her father’s coattails, floating her semi-celebrity out there to see if she can get a nibble of party attention. She writes for The Daily Beast dot com. Her latest essay on Ann Coulter rates about a very generous D or D-. McCain’s criterion for party success seems to be “hipness” or at least ‘hipness’ as instrumentally necessary in attracting young voters. For Meghan’s taste (I hesitate to call it judgement) Coulter is too “radical…extreme…confusing … not ‘for real.’” Yet she thinks Coulter could be the “poster woman for the extreme side of the Republican party.” Oh yeh, by the way, Meaghan says she herself could be the poster for “the opposite.” So if Coulter is extreme conservative, that would make Miss Meghan extreme liberal. Would that make her a democrat?

In short, Meghan McCain represents more non-sensical blather from the Repub’s attempting to reinvent themselves.

Like the “reasoning” of Meghan McCain, the Republican discourse vascillates between the sadly silly and the tragically absurd.

Moreover, wishing for Obama’s failure, as did Rush Limbaugh and former Texas Congressman Tom Delay, also does not make a party, establish a platform, qualify as American or move the conversation forward. In the spirit of such wishing, several Repub governors and Congressional legislators recently attacked the supposedly exorbitant spending by Obama. But in the 8 years of Bush we didn’t hear much about his exorbitant spending even though he wasted @ 3.2 trillion on an ill-advised war, to say the absolute very least. Even the 15 or 20 Conservative Repub representatives who originally held out against the exorbitant spending of the TARP themselves caved in when the ear mark pie was sweetened and fattened a bit.

Principle for the Repub’s is an instrumentality of leverage to milk the budget for local benefit. Prior to the economic bubble bursting, the same Repub governors who we didn’t hear a peep from during the Bush administration regarding ear marks now want to refuse the stimulus plan’s allotted state monies because it has too many Dem ear marks. So even though the unemployment rate soars in places like Louisiana, Texas and S. Carolina, the governors there feel it’s all right to deny the poor and unemployed help because of the “principle” involved. What principle? Is it the one they didn’t mention and wouldn’t promote during the Bush Administration, whatever it might be?

As we see there is little truth in the Repub party, be it as it may, let alone honesty, integrity, compassion, intelligence or even authentic American loyalty. But what is really at stake with respect to any truth to be had here is the truth hidden behind the “debate” within the Repub party and between the Repubs and Dems. The only real reason this debate or discourse can become so ridiculously meaningless and unproductive is that what is at stake ultimately is preserving the illusion of a real difference between the two parties. They must preserve the illusion because there is no real difference between the two parties politically. Apparently the illusion of difference may best be conjured up by stirring up the lunatic fringe, keeping them sufficiently ignorant and irrational and assuring their readiness for mobilization in the next pseudo-election to make it appear as if there are real differences in this virtual mob to be represented by the pseudo-parties of the hegemonous duopoly.

The Republi-crat duopoly of which Obama is now the leader exists to control the mechanisms of power and domination of the New Class, i.e., the new political/financial class, that rules international capital and related policy. The real conflict and tension, as of yet insufficiently thematized theoretically, is between the Republi-crats and the Client Class, i.e., the rest of us who are not in contention to get our hands on the reins of power and domination. The real political conflict is not that within the so-called Republican party nor that between the so-called Democrats and Republicans. It is between the capitalist interests of the New Class and the Client Class consumers who have fallen victim to the philosophical confusion, the confusion as to the role of government in a democracy and the nature of a Federalism which would return us to the kind of regional autonomy that would permit sending representatives to Congress who actually represent the people as opposed to corporations and transnational capital.

Moreover the possible neo-populist identity and cultural autonomy which remains hidden and unarticulated (or at best irrationally and hysterically articulated) within the margins of communities, religion and the “lunatic fringe” is best understandable as a symptomatic cry for proper expression of a real politic representing their interests and needs. Unfortunately what they get is the Neanderthal ranting of Limbaugh, Coulter, the clowns at Fox News and the professional politicians who seem to know little and care less about our history, philosophy and possiblities as America. The professional politicians are confused, ignorant and tending toward authoritarian solutions to an obviously pronounced Liberal Democracy in crisis. Sarah Palin, identical twin sister of Michelle Bachman (Republican representative from Minnesota) case in point. How in God’s name could such persons be taken seriously by anyone with a college education or even an IQ above, let’s say, 30. She is, at best, laughable as Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey demonstrated quite nicely and easily.

By all accounts it seems we ought to take Voltaire’s warning a little more seriously: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

And lastly allow me to add a little from political theorist Hannah Arendt: “Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politicians but also of the demagogue’s and the statesman’s trade. Why is that so? And what does it mean for the nature and dignity of the political realm, on the one side, and for the nature and the dignity of truth and truthfulness, on the other? Is it of the very essence of truth to be impotent and of the very essence of power to be deceitful? And what kind of reality does truth possess if it is powerless in the public realm, which more than any other sphere of human life guarantees the reality of existence to mortal men?”

GETTING IT FREE AT THE "FREE MARKET"

The ‘free market’ seems to be taking on new meaning. The sub-prime suckers who took the mortgages they would never be able to afford are the patsys who enabled a swarm of inexorably unscrupulous mortgage brokers to make a profit ultimately at taxpayers expense. These brokers, for all practical purposes, did get it free. The mortgage loan profits were in fact free once they unloaded the packaged mortgages as securities on the banks. Then the mortgage brokers wouldn’t have to cover any losses when the interest on the bad mortgages went up, consequently became unaffordable and stopped being paid. The brokers no longer owned the mortgages. The banks did. What unscrupulous business sociopath wouldn’t sell worthless mortgages to effectively clueless and hapless members of the lower middle and middle class, knowing they would never have to suffer the losses. The banks would suffer the loss. And they did.

Now the banks who greedily and voraciously ate up the securitized mortgages got AIG to insure their investments. AIG, being the apparently crack institution it is, just knew such investments were beyond reproach. So they sold the coverage to the banks and pocketed the premiums as profit, dividends, bonuses and other loans. When the bottom fell out of the mortgage market and the banks ran to the insurance giant to collect, no one was home, so to speak. Apparently there is no law requiring the insurer to have the capital available to cover such losses.

So it seems various players on the market got theirs free at the free market, free for everyone but the taxpayers. The naïve and/or ignorant buyers got to live in their defaulted homes for free at least for a while until the Sheriff showed up; the brokers, who knew they couldn’t lose, (and therefore didn’t bother qualifying homebuyers) got theirs “free” once they dumped the mortgages on the banks; the megabanks who now know they are too big to lose are continuing to get theirs free (there’s just fewer of them, though they are even bigger); and the insurance giant, felled by carelessness and/or ignorance, or possibly ‘business as usual,’ also got theirs free on the “free market,” the same insurance giant who now has an insurer of its own called the American government, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

So it seems a lot of people are “getting it free” at the “free market.” They are getting it “free” on the backs of the “mortgaged” future of the children of the poor and middle class. The once charming and promising American Camelot is unraveling, if not intentionally being dismantled, on the ruins of the mythic “free market.” Apparently there are few crumbs left to fall off the table of the rich and superrich. Only the debt trickles down and settles on the disempowered and disenfranchised backs of the Client Class who can no longer pay the bill. The new international capitalist political class (call it the New Class) has sucked the blood and marrow out of the carcass and bones of the cadaver.

Alan Greenspan has since rode off into the sunset where rich capitalists go, returning to the scene of the ‘free market’ crime recently only to declare mea culpa, mea culpa. Ayn Rand giggles in her grave. Bill Clinton denies he had anything to do with unleashing the pitbulls of profit. And the neo-Reaganites inexplicably keep the faith, relying upon the short memory and myopia of the infinitely manipulable American electorate.

The government, capital, media and, of course, power become more and more centralized. The polity becomes more bureaucratized as the technocrats rule over all. The American people become essentially more ignorant of the fact and indifferent to the reality of the death throes of a participatory peoples’ democracy, a viable public sphere and a productive economy that makes self-determination possible.

Long live the once and great American dream.

REGULATION--SCHMEGULATION!

Damn those Liberal big-government regulators! Or so say our latter day Reaganites who never saw a regulation they didn’t hate. Regulation, schmegulation!

Is it possible to restore any reasonable discourse about the role of government regulation—regulation in the interest of the public sphere? For those who would consider that the public sphere and the common interests of the people in general is merely a lovely fable, the answer is no. For such Conservatives, Republicans and Free Marketers, there is no need for a public sphere of common interests and concerted action. Regulation of business, industry and finance is unfreedom to the neo-Reaganites. Regulation is repression, a suffocating restriction on initiative, productivity and efficiency.

On the contrary,freedom(from regulation)so loosely conceived is really license, license to do anything to maximize profit by cutting costs—at any cost. What the elimination of regulation means to such profiteers is this: what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. No regulators, then no transparency in production. Then anything goes! Contaminated foods, unqualified mortgage loans, unsafe automobiles, etc.! An unregulated financial sector has given us Bernie Madoff, financial instruments that few understand and that have nothing to do wtih real productive economy. If there are no watchdogs doing the relevant inspections, and thus no regulation of standards of production and processing, for example: of credit and insurance; of pharmaceutical claims for drugs; of manufacturers claims for toy safety for children, then no one is the wiser. The public is exposed to unhealthy food, unsafe products, misrepresentation of quality and quantity of goods and services, etc., etc. In the fanancial sector socially irresponsible money uses money only to make money. Sacrificing the quality of life and social conscience becomes the cost of doing business and finally becomes normalized.

Everyday mythologies would then rationalize the disastrous consequences with excuses such as “nothing is perfect.” “Sometimes it (food contamination, etc.) just happens.” These and innumerable other variations on the “this is the best of all possible worlds” logic would prevail. Scientific and ethical standards of health and hygiene, public interest and the common good would be scoffed at and laughed out of town.

Private interests in business and industry unabashedly suggests we privatize the inspectors and regulators. Such audacity is nothing but the continuing attempt to wipe out the necessity and reality of the public sphere. Even more so this is an attempt to wipe out memory of the public sphere.

But in the interest of public welfare and the good of the whole, regulation in general is an attempt to bring a moral order to society. Regulation is the effort to restore an ethical standard to the production of social goods which the perversion of the profit motive has destroyed. Business, industry and finance have proven historically that they cannot police and regulate themselves. The public—unfortunately more and more synonymous with the poor—pays the price of and for the ‘free marketers’ unlimited profit and accumulation thereof. Unfortunately the public most be protected from the irresponsibility of all too many privatized concerns who do not care how their carelessness affects consumers and the country

Regulation and inspection of the “free marketers” is the social conscience enforcing the public good. There is no such thing as self-regulating markets. That is a euphemism for unregulated selfish self-interest. De-regulation has unleashed an anarchy of self-defeating economic chaos. The ‘free-marketer’ wishes to distort the meaning of regulation insisting that it implies virtual constitutive activity on the part of government in relation to business. But regulation is not constitutive control of productive activity. It simply insures the self-reflective dimension in which narrow self-interests are forced to take responsibility for how their actions affect the integrity of the whole.

The cost of doing business should not be paid for by compromising the quality of life in America. Regulation from without would not be required if we could trust private enterprise to practice self-control from within. Unfortunately business, industry and finance have proven over and over again that essentially and as a whole they cannot be trusted to do so from the standpoint of the general interest in the public good.

So, for example, Barney Frank’s recent suggestion that the mortgage brokers be required by law to retain some responsibility for the quality of the loans they make is inevitable and good in our world. Without such external regulatory motivation the brokers, as a case in point, have proven they have no internal motivation to regulate the qualifying of customers as a matter of conscience and common business sense.

Short of a radical reconstitution of ethical community and the ability to act also as well in the interest of others while we help ourselves, regulation of social goods privately produced is here to stay.

ANALYZE THIS!

We’ve heard much talk recently—I wouldn’t call it discussion—regarding the virtues and effectivity of the “free market.” I’m curious to know if this so-called free market concept has historically referred only to the ‘real productive economy,’ i,e., the industrial and concomitant business sector. Or has it also referred simultaneously to the financialized economy, at least as we now know it? It seems to me that we might fairly discuss the virtues of the free market if we could factor out the financialized sector which seems to have turned part of the credit and investment system into a casino at best. But is the seemingly cancerous financial sector a legitimate let alone trustworthy partner in the market? Surely we have evidence now that it is not.

This splitting off of finance as a parasitic result of the over-extension of ‘free market logic’ seems to vulgarize the concept and value of the free market. Furthermore, it confuses a possibly meaningful and productive political discussion. That is, carrying out the political discussion on the basis of the political economy as, on the one hand, homogeneous, "free market capitalism" versus, on the other hand,"proto-socialist big government interventionists" seems to not quite represent what is happening nor what is possible in attempting to bring about a more auspicious reform in America today.