Answers Awaited from Legislature Regarding Homeland Security

This evening, Tuesday, July 22, 2008, I presented and submitted the following statement to the Niagara County Legislature:

“ REGARDING HOMELAND SECURITY

A recent article in the Niagara-Gazette, titled “Homeland security plan needs to evolve,”(May 30, 2008) highlights the continuing vulnerability of the power plant and Lewiston-Queenston bridge to a terrorist attack.

A quick drive up the parkway confirms this threat. Seemingly, an inept terrorist in a mini-van could do the job much like Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Minimally, such an attack surely would seriously at least disrupt commerce if not energy delivery. What an imaginative terrorist who is well supplied and trained might be capable of doing is anyone’s guess. Obviously no one imagined or guessed well enough with respect to the Twin Towers.

My question is this: What does the Legislature intend to do about this seemingly long overlooked dangerous situation?

If something has been done my question is: What is it?

If nothing was done or nothing needs to be done my question is: Why?

I don’t expect an answer to this tonight. However I look forward to some preferably public response to my concern such that an open discussion might occur.

I’ll provide the County Clerk a copy of the Guest View, my home address and the questions to which I hope to receive an answer.

Lastly possibly you could answer this evening whether a member of the Legislature would commit to appear on local media to review and discuss this issue with the public.

Thank you for your time and attention.”

This statement and a copy of the Guest View editorial, “Homeland security plan needs to evolve,” in addition to an article from the Buffalo News by Lou Michels entitled “Boaters on front line against terror threats” was submitted to the Legislature. Hopefully each will receive a copy.

No Legislator this evening came forward to commit to discussing the status of the bridge and power plant security in a public media format. I will be waiting to see if anyone comes forward to answer my questions.

Hopefully there are simple answers to my questions. If there are not and if there are no forthcoming explanations by the Legislature, possibly as stated in the above article, “This is a monumental collective denial that has risen out of irresponsibility, ignorance, indifference and political concerns of (comparatively) little merit.”

I myself will reserve judgement until the Legislature has time to respond.

In the meantime you yourself might take a drive up the Robert Moses and see for yourself. Surely a truck with explosives could stop above the power plant or under the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and in seconds detonate a rather damaging explosion. What would stop it? Is there surveillance with instantaneous response capabilities? Are there well hidden security guards ready to pounce at a seconds notice? Is there some invisible shield that is not visible to the naked eye?

It would be sad to think the only thing stopping such an attack is that the terrorists have for whatever reason chosen not to do it.

POLITICAL PROTEST TO PECK-ERS: From the Sublime to the Absurd

After a long dry spell, last night I did my first political protest since the march in Boston back in 1970. It didn’t have the zest and zeal of the Vietnam protests but it was refreshing. An old black woman with a bullhorn was the spirit of the protest. She sang a song continuously throughout the protest as the crowd of about 7-800 waited for McCain to show up for his tribute. The lyrics were the main point of the protest: “It’s a rich man’s war. What’s the poor man fightin’ for?” I’m sure McCain didn’t hear it. It wouldn’t have affected him anyhow. The agenda of the warmongering empire builders is set in stone kind of like McCain’s face. And American’s have little taste for protest let alone meaningful political self-analysis. Enough for the sublime.

Then, to get right to the absurd, I had to wake up to read Hobbes-alicious to find we are hiring a Public Information Officer. How utterly embarrassing. Do we have to do everything they do in national politics. What a freak show! I hope this guy is brighter than Dana Perrino who didn’t even know what the Bay of Pigs was. Peck used to work for Zombie International, oops excuse me, that’s Zogby International. He has been known to even do “analyses,” statistical of course, and he even writes. I hope he can also walk down the street and chew gum at the same time. If he can’t, he’ll fit right in.

Do we need this? Of course not. I suggest we deep six the PIO and the Homeland Security Czar and hire two more philosophy professors at NCCC.

While we should be on the streets stopping thousand of trucks laden with PCB’s we’re debating whether we are going to hire punk Peck and waste more taxpayers’ much too hard earned money.

Maybe the mafia had it right. Avoid the rich man’s wars. Avoid the rich man’s politics since they’re rigged anyhow. And then just make money anyway you can. Isn’t that what the capitalists and their plethora of toadies and minions do anyhow?

Let the dazed and confused, who fight these capitalist wars that are in no way in their interest, do what they have to do since they haven’t seen the writing on the wall yet. Some day they may, hopefully.

MORE MUSICAL CHAIRS OR MAYBE MASS ACTION

While the local Republican propaganda machine worries about ousting what little political opposition to Republican domination remains in the county, be it as it may, the real issue of realizing “home rule” in battling hazardous waste disposal slips slowly into a “tax solution.” Then, all those who believe all political concerns come down to taxes and jobs will be fat and happy. Then they can spend all their time trying to remove DelMonte from office. Then the game of government-as-usual musical chairs can continue. And the community of citizens, if we can still call them that, can slide deeper into its depoliticized state of consumerist-intoxicated oblivion.

Although the time is ripe for a mass action actually led by conventional politicians coming together and socially concretizing the power behind “home rule,” you would think that the legally rationalized resistance of upper echelon state bureaucrats were on the order of tablets of stone written by the hand of God. All our legalistic paper tigers seem to be able to do is find reasons why this insult to our local integrity can’t be fought.

Somebody needs to get angry and drop this mild-mannered attitude of pseudo-diplomatic prudence. If the issue of human health, not to mention the status of our so-called “world-class destination” is not enough to passionately move our putative leaders to serious and unprecedented action, then they are equally complicit in sacrificing the well-being of Niagara Countians to business as usual. Once the, now estimated 3000 trucks start rolling into Niagara, everyone can go back into their holes, take a deep breath and sigh of relief: chanting: thank God it’s back to meaningless, ineffective blessed ‘business as usual.’

Burmaster’s “home rule message” as reported this morning in the Buffalo News is just that: a “message.” No one’s going to read the message let alone respond to it. And it’s not about the real issue in the first place. If the plague of local lawyers cannot find some way to fight this at the local level while the local politicos decide if they are going to get off their asses and begin to think outside the box, then all is once again probably lost. Who’s kidding who if we actually believe that it means anything to “ask the state legislator for permission” to do anything.

Possibly this is an issue for the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely there's a legal eagle out there with an IQ above 40 who can make this the rights issue it really is.

So if we get the tax we give it to some health agency and they will do a study to find out just how sick we are going to get in the future. This is impotent and effete thinking and indicative of politicians who forgot that action is the greater part of justice.

The point is that the ideological use of law by the State of NY to justify the sacrifice and abuse of Niagara’s ecological integrity is a politicization of the law in the interests of NY State and BWM but not in the interest of the forgotten people of Niagara County or Western NY. When the fundamental and untranscendable value of health, well-being and values of a people is at stake, those people must and justifiably can politically give themselves the right to say “NO!” to an indifferent and insensitive bureaurcratic state apparatus that has long since stopped listening. Such self-assertion of values is a political declaration of local self-determination that democratically transcends the States presumed “right” to dictate how healthy we should be or what our “rights” are. We can only choose to take this stand as a sovereign “home-rule” Community of communities deciding for local self-empowerment. No one will give it ito us. Moreover politically CWM’s right to do business does not trump our right to lead healthy lives in a clean environment.

If no one has noticed even Erie County is on our side. What do the local bureaucrats pretending to be leaders need, a written invitation? Permission from the big boys? The return of Jesus Christ. Please, Politicans, get off your chicken-asses and do something besides talk and side track this into another tax problem.

THREE LITTLE DITTIES: A Bailout, a Blunder and Bureaucracy

Firstly, how could a life-long conservative activist, advisor to Reagan, Kemp and Dole, with impeccable Republican credentials bail out of the GOP and vote for Barack Obama: Writing in the New York Daily News on Wednesday, “The answer is simple” said Larry Hunter, Ph.D. “Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgement of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies – this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.” Hunter claimed that although he doesn’t take Obama at his word on domestic issues and believes he even says “all the wrong things,” … “the Republicans said all the right things – fiscal responsibility, spending restraint – and it didn’t mean a thing.” Better late than never? But the taxpayer/citizen takes it in the ass!

Secondly, the Small Business Association caught a small oversight they made between 2004 and 2007. After deciding to check more than a token 5% of loans they made to businesses claiming to be in poor neighborhoods, they discovered that only half of the 13,000 such businesses qualified for such loans. Millions of dollars illegally disbursed. In short, the businesses lied. No, they were not in poor neighborhoods. They just said they were. Corruption or business as usual? You decide but the taxpayer again takes it, well, you know where! Not to mention how the poor people take it. It must be great fun to have millions if not billions to throw around without real accountability, no? Actually, it's tragic when such a major multi-million dollar blunder becomes a mere blip on the screen.

And, thirdly, locally, speaking of taking it where the sun don’t shine, Niagara county opts for more Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!, Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oops, I mean lawyers and experts and managers, Oh My!, lawyers and experts and managers! Greg Lewis and company I believe is still looking for a Homeland Security Director. Sweet Jesus! They ought to first do something about protecting the Power Plant, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the other bridges in the county.

I think the county also hired a six-pack or so of Conflict Attorneys. I’ll bet they couldn’t even negotiate an argument with their wife and kids. Seriously, though, there is always a rationale for this kind of bureaucracy building. But do we have any way of reasonably combating such a cancerous proliferation of "remediators" given we live in a world where it's presumed that ordinary people of the communities cannot and should not deal with their own problems independently of the official mechanisms of the professional world such as the courts?

And recently Lockport decided it just might need a Main Street Manager. When you’re done laughing, please finish reading this. If you were listening to the announcement on the Scott Leffler show the other day and were listening closely, you may have noticed that it was not quite clear whether the new manager would be a “manager,” a “promoter” or an “economic development specialist.” My guess is they don’t have to get clear about the job description, because he probably won’t know what he’s doing anyhow. Besides it’s doubtful there will be any objective prior measure of the state of Main Street before he starts such that when they finally do get rid of him/her, or give him/her tenure, they will know whether there’s any real difference in having hired him/her/it in the first place. But the point is when you can get a “grant” (read bureaucratically rationalized tax-money giveaway) why not perform acts of desperation. Let the taxpayers fund the business ventures. If they fail, they’ll just raise taxes again. Bureaucracy rules!

Yes, capitalism under Liberal Democratic regimes whether local or national, whether Republican or Democrat, whether ‘liberal or conservative’ really isn’t working is it. Oh well don’t worry. If the economy goes in the shitter, we can always start another war, find another evil foe to fight and blame our problems on, or, just sell what’s left of the country and move to Switzerland. You can all afford it, can’t you?

Maybe you can find the common thread here better than I can. My guess, however, is that we are in the grips of a philosophical crisis of national and local identity which we cannot face. Why can’t we face it? One reason is because we have monumentally fantastic distractions: the nihilistic and meaningless war on terror being fought in the wrong way. Moreover, we have an endless stream of money in the form of taxes to invest where a sane capitalist would never invest. And we are mystified by the New Class of lawyers, specialists, experts, managers, consultants, professionals, technocrats and administrators, who, given enough time and money, we are deluded will solve all our problems.

Lastly, in America we have an overabundance of cretins whose fundamental inspiration is TV, sports and video games. If they do participate politically it is usually in "party-speak," an Orwellian language spoken ad nauseum especially during political campaigns by pundits, reporters and politicians.

Maybe the common thread here should be called "CLUELESS". That is, it seems most traditional wisdom is clueless as to how to deal with the crisis of American political confusion, confidence and committment to a clear national purpose and the role of local communities in that purpose.

NIAGARA COUNTY: World Class Destination or World Contaminants Destination

Should I be shocked to discover that contaminants dumping has been going on for decades in Niagara County? Well my ignorance and apolitical past is showing. I received a response from Assem. Delmonte to my e-mail requesting she take action on the GE PCB waste coming from cross state. The letter noted that waste has been coming to NC for some time from 30 states, Canada and Puerto Rico! CANADA??? PUERTO RICO???!!!!

Should I be shocked or should I get with it like the county as a whole, stuff the rage and pretend that “that’s just the way it is and you can’t really do anything about it”? Surely some yahoo out there is going to accuse me of being a tree hugging Environmentalist like that’s a bad thing. Or some other shills, more interested in pompously self-righteously moralizing about the so-called hypocritical candidates for office and traditional corruption, will simply ignore this potentially critical moment in our county.

My first impulsive reaction was to put my house up for sale and get the hell out of this cess pool of a county. Even if I were going to fight this, does one stand inside a burning building while trying to put out the fire? Does one treat a patient dying of cancer with aspirin? I’ve been here over 15 years and am as much responsible for our plight as the native residents. But I must ask where they have all been since this devastation started. A very small handful of true citizens are aware and active. I applaud them and apologize to them for my own ignorance and inactivity.

But how do we explain this popular malaise and capitulation to such egregeious State exploitation and domination of our county. One caller to the Scott Leffler show quipped, “Hey, wasn’t Tony Soprano in the waste management business?” Funny and insightful. Possibly a “criminal element” has been behind the prostitution of our land for decades for the sake of profit. But it does not really matter because what is being done is criminal in and of itself whether mob criminals or the State. They are two sides of the same coin if either are complicit in this immoral and sordid sacrifice of our land and image.

However let’s not pass the political buck. In the end only the people are responsible. This includes our supposed representatives. Letter writing is not enough. Undoubtedly, apparently trucks are coming into NC as we speak. If as Delmonte points out, “Even higher levels of hazardous waste imports in New York will occur if more land disposal capacity is permitted by the DEC,” then we had better put up a sign (which is really already on our backs): NIAGARA COUNTY: Open for Business/We’ll take anything you have to dispose. Give us your PCBs, your dioxins, your radioactive waste, your sludge and anything else that no self-respecting community would allow to rest in their front yards. But we’ll take it because we don’t give a shit. We accept it. In fact we seem to find it acceptable because we don’t have any self-respect.

Or is part of the explanation as to why this goes on for decades the obvious fact that somebody is making money from this or saving money. And is it that some politicians are getting contributions because of their failure, that is their silence, passivity and complicity, in failing to end this practice. I have reports that Maziarz takes money from CWM. Another respondent to this blog says it’s not true. What’s the story here? Has anybody out there traced the money trail here? Does any other politician take money from the waste management industry? I’d love to know if you have information.

How long can NC sustain such hypocrisy and self-contradictory behavior? How long can we pretend to be one of the wonders of the world and a World Class Destination when we are actually the “world contaminants destination,” one of 17 in the country and the only one in the northeast. We are also, don’t forget, the radioactive burial ground of the Manhattan Project. Lou Riciutti has been trying to drive this home for a decade or more. If even 1/10 of what he claims is true it is understandable why we have the level of disease we do have.

However even the activists in this county and in western NY are divided. No one works together. Should the various activist groups and individuals ever come together in the interest of the natural integrity of our communities nothing could stop us. But the “bureaucratic agencies mindset” seems to predominate. Do these groups know that if they don’t get serious some bureaucratic agency will throw some hush money their way? Isn’t it happening already? Does everyone think they are the Lone Ranger? Why don’t the politicians act as leaders as opposed to letter writers, career politicans and parliamentary conformists.

Niagara County is without effective and meaningful leadership. Surely the time is ripe and if not now when. Do we wait until no one takes us seriously at all. Or is that time come already.

This is a time for political revolt starting with taking a stand that Niagara County finds our present environmental state of affairs and anticipated exploitation on the State DEC slate as absolutely and unequivocally unacceptable. That means that we must officially and popularly start from the committed stand that we will not accept this waste or any part of it in our county under any condition.

We have a choice of being a diminished, defeated and humiliated humanity or revolting against NC being the designated sacrifice of NYS and the USA and even Canada. This is not about being “against the State.” It’s about being for ourselves and the values and way of life we stand for and are willing to fight for. Let’s not allow special interests and exploiters desecrate and destroy this beautiful county.

Finally this all reminded me of the image of impoverished slumdwellers in the garbage heaps of Rio de Janiero trying to find salvageable food and goods. Some day that may be us, scavenging thru the wasteland of Niagara County trying to find some uncontaminated soil to build a house on. Or trying to find some clean water to drink. Or possibly even some clean air to breath.

This is a choice. A moral and political choice. Nothing is destined to happen here. We make it happen or allow it to happen. These choices determine what will be considered as right and eventually legal and legitimate. There are no necessities or inevitabilities. There is only what we create. We speak and act for ourselves or we will be used. As simple as that.

NIAGARA EMPOWERED: A Time to Reclaim our Heritage and Local Sovereignty

I hope you were listening to the Scott Leffler show on WLVL this morning. He may be the new political voice of Niagara County. The management of WLVL should give him another hour if he continues to have shows like today’s.

It became clear this morning that Niagara County does have a political consciousness and a sense of what we have at stake as a Community of communities. The event, the issue, is whether we are going to continue to be the garbage dump of NYS or whether we are going to define ourselves, empower ourselves, according to what we value and declare anything else absolutely and irrevocably unacceptable. The days of Niagara Garbage Dump are over if we so choose and decide.

Are we going to permit another 75, 0000 tons of contaminants to desecrate our land or are we going to fight this. Are we going to let the politicians pussyfoot around with this in Albany or take a stand here and now.

No, it is not a question of whether George Maziarz is going to fight this. It certainly is not a question whether Francine Delmonte is going to fight this because I’m not even sure if she is aware of it or cares about it. At least Maziarz seems to be provisionally aware and at least symbolically “on top” of this.

However, we have to understand what is going on here. As Legislator Cerreto said when he called in to the Leffler show, ‘this is not a Republican-Democrat issue.” This is an issue of the communities. As a few other callers had the wherewithal to note: the party division is irrelevant. The good of the whole is coming to light and we should be aware that it is in such consiousness on this issues and others that our true political power and embodiment lay.

Moreover to also get sidetracked by whether the issue of the contaminant dumping is a strategy to get Maziarz re-elected is irrelevant. Let’s not succumb to the political paranoia here and blow the moment. Those who have interests in either having the contaminants dumped here or in retaining the obsolete power struggle of the party system would love to have us wasting our time “debating” whether this is a real issue or just a “strategy” on the Republicans part. Such thinking is absolute non-sense.

Also whether we should be only fighting for lower taxes as opposed to a clean Niagara is also a red herring, a rodeo clown, a strategic, self-defeating DIVISIVE distraction. Contamination, PCB’s AND RADIOACTIVE WASTE, and taxes are all of our issues. We cannot allow the weight of the issues to destroy the unity and integrity of our sovereignty as a community political force.

Big Daddy Politician alone is not going to do what needs to be done politically in Niagara County. If the politicians of this county can recover their moral sensibility and responsibility to the good of the community as a whole, they will not turn this into an opportunity to gain power, prestige or leverage in the next election. They must transcend the professional politician, party bureaucrat, political machine mentality and restore sovereignty to the people. Professional politicians can become People’s politicians. This however for them is not only a political decision but a philosophical one.

This issue is a critical moment in the re-politicization of Niagara County in taking control of its own life, heritage and future. If in fact Maziarz does not take further action to mobilize the people now at the grass roots level, this may be a sign that he may exploit this to increase his hold on power. That would be tragic for the democratic and political awakening of Niagara County.

It is good that people are reacting to this situation and demanding that the politicians should act. But bureaucratic action in the backrooms of the state administrative apparatus is not enough. If Maziarz is a true politician he should be out there responding to and further mobilizing and inspiring the people to organize and see to it that the state bureaucrats realize that we are not the fools we have been up until this moment. If Maziarz can transcend partisanship, who knows, he may well achieve an even greater power that would actually be clearly and wholly legitimate and not just legal. Moreover to powerfully mobilize the county would undoubtedly enhance his power in Albany.

Hopefully also the Legislature will resolve to act for our empowerment. If they can pass a resolution in absolute opposition to this exploitation of NC at the next meeting on July 22nd, at which the entire county should be in attendance, this will not be merely a temporary consensus. This can be an acclamation of local political self-transformation and self-assertion. A unified county for the good of the county.

MAZIARZ CHOICE: Party Machine Bureaucrat or Political Leader

In the world of institutionalized or bureaucratic “democracy” Senator Maziarz’s letter to Commissioner Grannis is an obligatory first step. I was happy to see the letter. I wasn’t happy to hear that the Senator found out about this through a newspaper article. Why was that? Is such a decision of such little significance to Grannis that he wouldn’t let Maziarz know personally that Niagara County is about to get dumped on again, literally and figuratively? Is Maziarz so insignificant in such a matter that he need not be told, even as a courtesy?

Nevertheless, Senator Maziarz has said in seemingly no uncertain terms the following:
“Let me be clear that I have no interest in allowing any toxic waste from the Queensbury site to be imported into Niagara County, and I plan on seeking every remedy possible to prevent it.” …
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure this does not happen.” …
“This is absolutely not right.”

Hopefully Grannis will work with Maziarz. Hopefully this will be settled in a conversation. However the Senator should draw the line at zero tolerance for anymore waste whatsoever coming into Niagara County. He has chosen the bureaucratic path. No big surprise nor however is it unwise to start there. In that world it’s probably quite wise since there is probably nothing stopping Grannis from doing whatever he wants for whatever reason. And a good reason would be to defiantly assert his power if Maziarz pushed to hard. Diplomacy is good for sure.

It seems to me, however, that Senator Maziarz language is far from firm and in fact is a little hesitant if not weak. What does he mean by having “no interest in allowing any toxic waste” enter Niagara County? That sounds absolute enough. He’s going to “do everything I can,” …”seeking every remedy possible to prevent it.” This is good and encouraging as far as it goes.

I would like to suggest that it is however a rather weak ending to conclude that this “is absolutely not right.” Why is this weak? Because this situation at this point is no longer a matter of right and wrong, legal or illegal. This is not even a moral matter. It will however be addressed undoubtedly in administrative-legal language and terms. If for whatever reason Grannis goes through with this plan we have little recourse in the administrative labyrinthe of bureaucracies and legalities. His reasons are likely to not be determined in the field of reason and open rational discussion. It will as usual be the forces of interest and power that will decide.

That is why Senator Maziarz should now make this clearly a political issue. How? He does this by simply stating up front that dumping thousands of tons of waste in Niagara County is absolutely unacceptable and is not an option. It’s not that it is just wrong and we have ‘no interest’ in this. It is that we will never accept any such further violation of our environmental and sovereign integrity. This language is a political decision, the language of decisionism, in the face of laws and a value system that has no interest in the welfare of our county obviously. Such language is to take back local political power. What is reasonable and what is condsidered factual will first be determined by a political decision. Without this decision we are subject to the irrational self-interested rationalism, bureaucratism and administrative fiat of the balance of powers in NYS. As of now the balance is not in our favor. To decisionistically take a stand is to make what we value beyond compromise.

Once that decision is made as a political commitment and led by Maziarz we take a stand for it, then the Senator can still in all good faith work with the Commissioner to deal with the waste issue. If in fact the Senator plans to do everything he can hopefully that means he will not take “no” for an answer. However, one can do “everything he can” and still fail.

At this point in our history Maziarz cannot for our sake be allowed to fail. This community is much too demoralized to be further insulted and suffer such political and environmental desecration. He must do what must be done: Declare Niagara County a Pollution Free Zone. Declare the county Clean Niagara. Declare Niagara a clean county. Then fight for it. As I suggested in my last essay, Senator Maziarz must be the political leader that he is and mobilize this county as if it were a revolution. And it is. It is a declaration for absolute change. It is fighting for the conditions of life that make life in Niagara worth living. Enough is enough and the possibility which he seems to have committed himself to if it is to be unambiguously political begins with the declaration that he will be a living and breathing stand for this possibility: the possibility that Niagara define itself and stand for itself as a world class destination, clean, safe and populated by people who have taken passionate pride in who they are. This is an act of autonomy, self-responsibility and self-determination: a democratic and political act.

I hope I am dead wrong. I hope this matter is already solved. But I fear that anything else than what I've suggested will be business as usual and will result in a bureaucratic brush off after which the Senator will have to save face and end up using the present weak language of his letter and interview as a way out the back door.

MAZIARZ'S CHANCE TO LEAD

Aaron Besecker reported this afternoon the state DEC plans to dump 75,000 tons of PCB contaminated waste at CWM in Niagara County.

I don’t know what Maziarz plans to do. He says, “….everything I can to make sure this does not happen.” How about everything he should do. Possibly what he should do is go beyond what is likely to be failed institutional bureaucratic appeals to stop any further abuse of the Niagara region.

Why not appeal to the people to write in, make calls and even especially get out on the street and stop these trucks carrying the contaminated waste from entering Niagara County and further devastation of our “world class destination.”

If Maziarz has the clout I keep hearing about why not mobilize the people. Use the community as it should be used. Invoke a populist appeal and let it be known that we’re not going to take it anymore.

If we don’t respect ourselves, who will respect us? This protest could be a national spectacle to show what is possible when a conventional politician gets out from behind the desk and the TV cameras and takes to the streets. This would be true leadership and not the ritual “representation” that we’ve all seen too much of and no longer trust.

If Maziarz can pull this off (and there’s no reason he can’t) he’s got my vote. And as far as the protest goes I’ll be on the street with George and would proudly go to jail if need be to get this done.

If whatever Maziarz has in mind works, short of what I propose, God bless him and more power to him. But I’m not holding my breath.

Let Maziarz do his job and lead us into action.

CENSORED AGAIN AT NIAGARA TIMES BLOGSPOT

Well I guess I got my dis-invitation at Hobbes’ Niagara Times blog spot. They will be happy to know I won’t be returning. It was quite an experience trying to have a reasonable discussion with people who prefer to define politics as war in which anything goes just in order to win and gain power.

After being censored a second time the message is clear. Apparently in the name of “sticking to the point” Hobbes justifies censoring free speech and keeping the level and quality of “discourse” on the reservation. They obviously aren’t interested in raising the level of discourse. Some of the fragile souls that frequent the site think I’m talking down to them when I really presume a much higher intelligence on their part than they do.

It undoubtedly was very naïve of me and a sign of my inexperience in local “politics” to expect anything more. But that is really a kind of experience I don’t need and can only learn so much from. It is an experience in which one can learn what politics should not be. But for such people their one-dimensional existence doesn’t admit what “ought to be” or “can be” as a determinative force in their considerably violent, irrational, hysterical, paranoid and moralistic world.

But if you want the down and dirty inside scuttlebutt, Hobbes’ site is the place to go. I’ll keep reading his/her site. It’s good to know what’s happening in “the real world.” But I won’t be inhaling nor exhaling while I’m there. I thank him for sharing the information, distorted interpretations and self-serving manipulation not withstanding.

There is a German legal scholar by the name of Carl Schmitt. He uses the basic category of “friend-enemy” to define the political realm. But I don’t think he had in mind the psychological warfare that distorts community relations and alienates people who have everything to gain by highlighting and nurturing the values they have in common. The abusiveness that goes on at Niagara Times indicates that the Niagara County leadership must at least tolerate if not condone or even encourage this viciousness and manipulation of community relations, issues and problems. This is instituted demagoguery and Orwellian doublespeak. The political “enemy” is in the best and most authentic sense your best friend, that is, a noble enemy. Such an “enemy” is an honored opponent from whom one can hope first and foremost to learn about the right, the true and the good if not the beautiful in life. But in Niagara County, as far as I can see, ill will and destructive hostility prevail. They treat the enemy as the absolute foe, such as we would a terrorist who doesn't want to do anything but kill you. But to Schmitt the enemy is not a foe. That distinction has to be kept clear to get the point and the productive insight.

The political realm can be stipulated as a space of new beginnings and openness. It is a place of creative contention not destructive witchhunting, human derogation by one’s virtual neighbor. It can be a place of forgiveness and rebirth. It is surprising that so much sordid vindictiveness in local political pseudo-discourse comes from Christians who should be the first to practice such very Christian ideas. This might actually be why Nietzsche is still vindicated in having said that it looks like Jesus may well have been the first and last Christian.

CENSORED AT NIAGARATIMES BLOG

I don't know if I should have expected this from a 'business as usual' Republican political blog in Niagara County. But during yesterdays blog attacking Dan Rivera and stirring the pot for another witchhunt, I commented on the political futility of such low level thinking and character assassination. Apparently Hobbes, the blog Administrator, has had enough with my trying to reinterpret the context of discussion. He deleted my piece. So far he hasn't answered my letter as to why. I don't expect an answer. This has been the style of the Republicans on blogs and in the Niagara County Legislature. They don't condescend to talk to you unless you agree with them, speak on their terms, making their assumptions on the turf of their controlled situation. So now the witchhunt for Rivera when the leaders of the Democratic Party have chosen to deal with the Rivera-Roberts matter as a personal issue between them alone. But when there's dirt to dredge up the pseudo-political machine of the local moral police goes into action. So here's my piece that will be dismissed as being "off topic."

"My, my, oh my and dear me! Party partisanism gone wild. What a wonderful side show! Don’t you all get it yet? This is a self-corrupting, self-demeaning power struggle to see who stays on the food chain of power and privilege. Is this politics? Parties are historically obsolete my dear Republicrats. Why are you wasting your time mimicking national party-politics rituals? The Liberal Democratic center doesn’t hold and things are falling apart. This is the moment of community and regional populist revolt. And you’re arguing about Dan Rivera’s temper tantrum to score political points for your witchhunt? Why fund a 3 trillion dollar irrational, unjustifiable, meaningless war? Why allow big banking to prosper while the American dream of home ownership goes down the shitter? Why get your rocks off name-calling while the Middle Class is being dismantled and America is being sold off piecemeal to trans-national Capital? Oh yeh, political correctness above all objective and critical thinking? Thanks for listening and now you can go back to your pubescent pissing contest."

So as you can see if you step outside the Republican one-dimesional powermongering mindset, this is not "off topic." It's an attempt to get the provincial powerbrokers to wake up and see that Niagara County doesn't stop at the lines on the map. This witchhunt is a matter of the fake leaders of this county, like the miserable national leaders of the Republican party, pretending they are morally superior to everyone else. And as long as we can talk about pseudo-moral and pseudo-rights issues we don't have to talk about the fact that our county and country are falling apart and we don't know what to do about it. Republicans or whomever prove they are impotent to bring about change or prove they don't care to bring about real change when they reduce political discussion to political correctness and character assassination.

The supposed "women's rights" issue is no rights issue at all. Women legally have all the rights they need. The problems they have are a cultural matter to be dealt with by the various cultures such as business, family, community, education, etc. Women's Liberation is an obsolete movement that does women a disservice at this point.

CIVILITY ANYONE? Academic Project or Communally Constituted Moral Character

The brutal decay of communal moral character, characteristic American incivility, was brazenly displayed last week on CNN which reported on an emergency room patient who sat in an emergency room for 24 hours, finally fell off her chair to lay on the floor for over an hour and then died. During her ordeal several people witnessed her condition including 2 security guards. None did anything until finally a security guard had her checked out only to discover she was dead.

The crisis of Liberalism, beyond its destruction of political democracy, manifests in many such social symptoms of abusive interpersonal conflict, communal intolerance, criminal violence and social disintegration. At the root of this decay is the loss of local democratic social self-control and cultural self-determination to the incursions of statist bureaucrats and technocrats, professional politicians and the ideologues of therapeutic salvation. Over the past century from the Progessive Era through Reaganism, the organic communities-- held together by autochthonous traditions and customs, indigenous identities and relationships-- gave way continuously and systematically to the external mediation of the needs of modernizing capitalism. As a consequence America is becoming more and more socially and morally crude and spiritually unconsoling. Yet incivility is only the veneer of a failing Liberalist ideology of social reproduction that has lost the plot of the human condition. It reproduces the conditions of profitability and thereby destroys the life-world of the people who make it possible.

The American masses, homogenized and alienated from themselves as communal beings are “individualized.” That is, they are socially uprooted and instrumentalized as workers in industrial collectivities, abstracted from a world of belonging and placed through social engineering at the hands of industrial capital. As a result of this expropriation of autonomy, social self-responsibility and political self-determination, “civility” as such deteriorates morally and politically, and the de-socialized remainder manifests as the mass American Client Class, the disempowered masses politically at the hands of mass mediatized, pseudo-political manipulation and the cretinizing commodities and activities of the culture industry.

The brutality of culture underlying such “incivility,” as the emergency room scene on CNN illustrates, can be read ironically enough between the lines of the routinized indifference and lack of simple human concern and caring. This is not the first time such mundane barbarity has been witnessed in our country. Trust that it will not be the last. Possibly in NYC alone hundreds if not thousands lay on the street each night and day as busy Manhattanites go about their business. Normalized insensitivity leaves most unmoved by the 2.2 million homeowners who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis over the past 24 months. 42,000 killed on American highways each year, many if not most by drunk drivers or at least involving alcohol. Murder, rape, homelessness, drug addiction, drug wars at the Texas border and inner cities, etc, etc, etc. Of course each of these bureaucratically construed statistical categories has its own history and tragedy. Too much to tell here. But if their stories were told, possibly we would still go on unmoved, undaunted and forgetful, failing to see the roots of this callousness in a way of life brought into existence over the last century or so.

Yet, after all, what can we do? Why should the Security Guard at the NYC hospital do anything when those who are assigned the task of acting do not. Why should they do anything when such neglect is easily rationalized within pragmatic and utilitarian norms of American pseudo-community and culture? Why act, when every crisis, the bigger the better, is an opportunity for profit and for streamlining the bureaucratically managed welfare society? Why be concerned when the community of caring and concern is a distant memory and the integrated personality, that is the person of social integrity, is one that must narcissistically “look out for # 1.”

Taking note of this dilemma of modern American society in its incivility if not barbarity, is a professor of social policy at Johns Hopkins, P.M. Forni. He has created the Civility Project. CNN interviewed him after showing video of the emergency room patient slowly dying in the waiting room. The good professor however confidently reported that his “project” is designed to reverse this incivility, one person at a time. Yes, you read it right the first time: “one person at a time.” He and his therapeutic minions are going to teach civility. He will teach interpersonal skills using 25 rules for civil conduct. But one must “choose civility” as the title of his book conveys upfront. Maybe enough of the ugly Americans out there will read the book, see the light and change their ways by “choosing civility.” This is how we might overcome the effects of living in the society of “strangers” he says we live among. Professorially administered civility projects all over America! Can you see it now? Do you feel the inspiration? A thousand points of light! Yes, the music to America the Beautiful plays in the background as a groundswell of “choice” begins to transform America one person at a time. Drug dealers give up their evil ways. Rapists apologize to their victims. Mortagage banks forgive millions of mortagage loans to homeless “homeowners.” Not one instance of road rage is reported in America. The US military gives the Iraqi’s back their country. Universal peace and love is felt in the air. You get the satirical picture I think.

What else could be expected from this project and this book, Choosing Civility, given its ahistorical, therapeutic and moralistic model. Forni must assume that the motivation may actually exist to cause people to want to choose civility. He also assumes that the fully abstract individual—the deeply engrained fruit of the homogenizing, nation building project of Americanization-- should suddenly, voluntarily adapt the concrete characteristics of “civility” as a psychic life style. Although such characteristics arise only within concrete traditional communities where self-identity, social belonging and existential purposefulness nurture and nourish such behavior, Forni believes he can reconstitute it without the necessary pre-existing social conditions. More poltical correctness for the masses. More self-censorship and repressed rage. As Rodney King implored all of America several years back after the LAPD beat the crap out of him on an LA freeway: “Can’t we all just get along!” Professor Forni to the rescue.

Only in the intellectualistic fantasies of a New Class professor could such bureaucratically inspired welfare state rubbish be imagined. Now that sociology has failed as a discipline to realize its aspirations as the research arm of the welfare state, Social Policy gurus with invincible dreams of transforming society imagine that they can do it psychologically with new rules of conduct to inculcate a civilized psychology in a socially and culturally uncivil society. The new social theorists will redeem their discipline by engineering character traits with a user friendly technique to induce morality or at least proper manners and concernfulness. The new sociologists will be moral philosophers with skills in moral therapy and social techniques of inculcating traits of civil character in the unwashed masses. And it's a good thing Forni and his associates are morally superior to the rest of us, thus justifying their moral pontification.

If Professor Forni does not see the error of his ways and the futility of his project, I hope at least he begins his project with the professional politicians. But somehow I think the barbaric incivilities of Karl Rove and the like will not be on the list. But then who does Forni have in mind? Billy Bob and his cousin Betty Lou down thar’ in Tennessee. Or maybe those damn drug dealers who keep killing one another in the big city. Maybe he could get them to talk things out with words during their drug negotiations. Or maybe all those ignorant people on the Jerry Springer show!

I shudder to think how much tax money will be wasted on this nonsense when the Washington bureaucrats find out about Forni’s road to moral salvation. And the great thing about it is that you don’t even have to bother with poltiics and concretely change the societal structures that created such barbarism. You just change all the individuals, one or two at a time, and then the whole damned country will be changed, qualitatively magically transformed. Pay your civility forward. Interesting idea! Why didn’t I think of that? Who needs politics anyhow?

DEMOCRACY'S SHELL: The Cases of Grear, Wolfgang and Christy in Niagara County Pseudo-politics

Brian Grear announced yesterday that he will run for NYS Senate against Senator George Maziarz. While doing so on Scott Leffler’s WLVL radio show, he pointed to his frustration in attempting to run for Sheriff that motivated him to up the ante and run for Senator of NYS.

If I understood this correctly, according to Grear, because of Maziarz and Henry Wojtaszek’s stalling Beilein’s appointment at the state level, there was not time for him to petition to run for Sheriff in Niagara County. So if this is true, the rules were such or being used as such by the Republican party leaders, or, possibly Beilein himself, that he was prevented from exercising his right to run.

If this is true, this incident points to a third situation, that illustrates the decay of politics in Niagara County and most likely in most American communities. In Grear’s case, whether it was the party bosses, Beilein or the administrative campaign/election rules that stonewalled his efforts is irrelevant. Why? Because it is always people who make the rules and interpret if not manipulate the rules either to their own benefit and power or in the spirit of democracy. The American democratic community and civil society is in such a state of corruption and decay, that the latter is rarely a consideration.

The Republican leaders in Niagara County are suspect in accepting and nurturing this decadent state of affairs in local politics. It is sad if not frightening, that they have reached a point that our deeply deficient political ethos is thought to be normal and acceptable if not desireable. In fact the leaders of the Republican party need not have consciously intended to deceive and corrupt the process for the process to be de facto decayed and corrupt. It is enough that they have taken advantage of and thereby exploited an intellectually disenfranchised populace and a disempowered political process. They are still responsible but equally as unconscious and indifferent as the people to the disintegration of what we stand for politically and legally in America.

In short the meaning and spirit of American democracy is in disastrous disarray in the hearts and minds of the people. Rational participation in the life of a political community is forgotten. The Grear situation points to this travesty of democracy, this shell of democracy that passes for the real thing. But apparently Grear and his supporters have had enough with the Republican machine and aim to do something about it. Hopefully they will not also stoop to the level of manipulation, power mongering and patronage-manipulation of the people that seems to be our history, not only among Republicans but also Democrats.

However, if your memory is very short we need to stoke the brain cells and compare the Grear situation to the recent ouster of Joan Wolfgang without any credible justification from the Niagara County Community College Board of Trustees and the trumped up discontent that led to the administrative purging of Tom Christy’s very popular Legislative Journal program from the airwaves of LCTV Cable.

My point is that where there is the same smoke there is likely to be a similar fire. In each of the three cases of Grear, Wolfgang and Christy, upstanding, politically concerned members of the community were maneuvered out of their roles in the community by politically spurious if not devious means. The spirit of democracy was not taken into account in these occurrences. Undue influence, political manipulation and/or justification by power alone was enough to drive these three citizens from participation which, in a just and fair democracy, would have been considered an egregious and unconscionable offense against political norms, the integrity of the people and even common sense.

But the people remain unconscious to passionate, critical thinking and when “the people” has been reduced to a cretinized populace of abstract individuals, demoralized, disinterested and disinformed about the political process and events of the day, then such travesties of democracy and justice can pass, as they do, virtually unnoticed. When reason, critical thinking, sustained inquiry, historical reflection and motivated self-awareness of what is in the interest of the people and the good of the community is absent, and only the shell of democracy remains, surely then power, coercive legislative power blocs and politic threats can rule the day. When the people have stopped thinking and caring, then the integral rational political process that constitutes the heart of democratic discourse and deliberation appears to be a mere academic consideration.

These three cases surely seem not to pass the smell test for undue and coercive political influence. And I do use the word “political” here quite loosely because it has little to do with authentic democratic political process. But when such process lacks the organic community of citizens who alone can demand explanation and justification that holds water when such supremely questionable actions are taken, then the heart of democracy cannot beat. Then the people as a whole do not feel entitled to question, criticize and sustain the demand for reasonable action, justifiable governance and legitimate representation.

The cases of Grear, Wolfgang and Christy are symptoms of a pathologically depoliticized community and a de-communalized public sphere of civil society. They are signs of an educational system that has forsaken responsibility for concrete civic instruction. They are warnings of government leaders who have sinned against their long-since repressed pedagogical responsibility to honor, uphold and propagate the principles of democracy as opposed to taking advantage of our nihilistic state of political affairs and playing the shell game of control, domination and political pretense.

There must be a return to accountability in government and integrity in political process. Only a genuine community clear as to its identity, values and purpose can assure that this takes place. When political leaders will not help the community to return to and reconstitute its civic roots, the subsequent, long process of irrationality and disillusionment may itself lead to radical re-evaluation and the revolutionary action that our own Constitution guarantees and reminds us, in the end, is our duty.

NIAGARA POLITICS: Vulgarity, Violence and Crony Capitalism

The purging of Joan Wolfgang from the NCCC Board of Trustees was an egregiously blatant elitist act of political nepotism disguised as legislative process. After 25 years of highly commendable service Wolfgang was ousted at the obvious behest of Henry Sloma who wanted his girlfriend, Bonnie Gifford, to have the job. But why? Why throw 25 years of experience down the drain? Just because he can? Now we know why the vast majority of Niagara County citizens have given up on democracy in Niagara County. This power play was a brazenly unabashed and elitist flaunting of the power of money over reason. Whatever Sloma’s real personal reasons for this power play are, they must undoubtedly be sufficiently petty to not deserve the light of day. Because he’s not talking. And the cow towing cowardice of the Niagara County Legislature enabled this travesty of democracy, good sense and concern for the public trust to be flaunted in the face of the people.

Without even making an effort to appear convincing, Legislator Updegrove, reportedly “justified” this totally unjustifiable purging of Wolfgang as necessitated by “their management philosophy.” He claims that NCCC is going in the right direction. I’m not sure if that is now because Gifford is on board or because it has already been going in the right direction before the forcing of Gifford into Wolfgang’s position. Since NCCC has been going in the right direction actually for some considerable time why this unprecedented and arbitrary flexing of “political” muscle? Updegrove might consider that this regretful action on the part of a much too obviously solicitous Legislature is analogous to an equally reprehensible action that might hypothetically take place in law. Imagine that after an unchallenged law which remains on the books as established precedent for some considerable time is suddenly reversed without good reason, justification or explanation. This would upset a fundamental tenet of legal reasoning. In like manner, what changes or events have transpired that now legitimate Wolfgang’s tenure being invalidated? This is nothing but rule by fiat, brute and viciously indifferent power which has no respectable authority and imparts no convincing let alone enlightening truths.

And what exactly is this management philosophy, that is political philosophy, that required an unethical compromise of the working integrity of the NCCC Board of Trustees? And what is the “right direction” that NCCC is going which is now so pleasing to Updegrove? We will never know because the Republican power block doesn’t feel obligated to enter into discussion with the people. If the Ethics board is not brain dead and still represents any sense of the good, the true and the just, this escapade needs thorough investigation. What happened in Lockport on Tuesday evening does not pass the smell test and is stinking up the whole county.

And why exactly is Bonnie Gifford qualified to replace Joan Wolfgang? As a former member of the nursing faculty apparently she qualifies. I fear however that if the model that the nursing division of NCCC provides to the college is her criterion, then the college also needs to beware. As a professor of philosophy the only time I ever see a nursing student in my classes is if some advisor mistakenly registers one for a philosophy class or they get lost. The only nursing student I can remember who did take a class from me plagiarized a paper. When I confronted her, she broke down crying and admitted her brother wrote the paper for her. The Nursing division at NCCC is successful, competent and replete with awards and recognition. My problem with them is that they probably should be a college all by themselves. I don’t see them structuring their curriculum such that their students are freed up to explore and experience other dimensions of reality. If on the other hand Gifford’s selection is a sign that they want to push NCCC toward a greater jobs oriented curriculum, then the business folk better start providing some jobs. On the other hand, what we really ought to be concerned about as patriotic Americans is creating a curriculum in the community college that produces competent citizens who can still practice and care about practicing democracy. A business model of political practice is the death of the American political ideal.

When such power as displayed at the Niagara County Legislature two nights ago arrogantly abrogates any reason that might pass public scrutiny even at the lowest conceivable standards of persuasion, we are all in trouble. When money can buy votes, the deliberative and discursive dimension of democracy is dead. These actions smell of a witch hunt mentality, a virtual paranoia, that harks back to the Nixon administration seeing enemies everywhere or possibly to the Stalinist regime that imagined traitors around every corner.

Niagara County is surely in a sorry state economically and socially with the welfare rolls increasing daily. But now our political state of affairs is of immeasurably greater concern. The people are demoralized and angry if not merely cynically indifferent. Open discourse, criticism and inquiry is repressed as witnessed in the ousting of Tom Christy from the Republican dominated airways of LCTV. The Legislature feels little compunction to honor the intelligence of the people and explain the reasons they have for what they do. Platitudes, vague generalizations and shoddy rationalizations won’t do. This is a vile state of affairs and gives rise to the only meaningful conclusion. The “leadership” of NC is a cohort of cronies who preponderate toward interests, attitudes and actions that reflect the fact that they aspire to be a part of a new social class in America. I call it the New Class. Their interests are not that of the average wage earner. They reflect the interests of the state bureaucratic consort whose strings are pulled by Washington incumbents, lobbyists and the Washington “wannabees.” Crony capitalism is the rule of the day in Western New York. Tax money for business investments smells like socialism to me. Socialism for the capitalists. Welfare and workfare for the “people,” a term which itself no longer indicates any coherently self-conscious group of citizens who are aware of and capable of affirming their self-interest. In Niagara County the reservation doesn’t stop at Smokin’ Joes. All the people are on “the reservation.” The problem is that “the people” haven’t understood themselves as a de facto social and therefore political class. So for the foreseeable future, it’s life on the reservation. Six packs, cynicism and a part time stint at MacDonald’s, or if you’re lucky, the new Family Dollar opening up at a corner near you, courtesy of the IDA.

The Niagara County Legislature does not represent Niagara County. Henry Sloma’s actions are a direct unapologetic insult to the social and discursive norms of any community. What Marcy Cole is to alcohol, Henry Sloma is to power. Given this man runs economic development in Niagara County we can only hope that greed and vulgar displays of power are good for business. If we have learned anything from this fiasco, it is that the old cliché is no cliché: power corrupts and you know the rest. What the cronies can’t accomplish for themselves, the state Authorities will do for them.

SOCIAL AMNESIA: Marcy Cole as More than Media Fodder

Something more needs to be said before the Marcy Cole drunk-driving incident recedes and is forgotten in the archives of local journalism only to be replaced by the most recent bit of titillating information. It’s not difficult to see that this incident is about more than Marcy Cole. Drunk driving is a national pastime. And an impotent legal system is as symptomatic of such social pathology as is an educational system and social system (read ‘community') incapable of remediating those who compulsively defy healthy and productive cultural norms.

Various attitudes and opinions have emerged on the blogs and radio shows as to how we should comprehend and resolve this issue. But of course let’s keep in mind that this is not just an issue about Marcy Cole. It is about symptomatic alienated individuals who have failed social integration and not yet found a fulfilling personal identity. Marcy Cole is not alone as the issue, though she may stand out either as an extreme example or the tip of the ice berg. The issue is a disintegrated, impotent community incapable of culturally or educationally, that is within normative institutions and practices, socializing its members as autonomous and responsible citizens while imparting a sense of self with personal power and esteem. This is a kind of social amnesia in which we have forgotten the socio-cultural roots which nurture either healthy or pathological identities, purposefulness or the lack thereof and a sense of belonging or not belonging. If Marcy Cole were a lone example then we might claim that she is soley responsible for her anti-social, unintegrated behavior. Given she is one of innumerable cases, we must admit that this is a social failure to integrate her and those like her, a persistent, systematic "system failure," a crisis of community incapable of acting for the good of the whole and re-creating itself as such politically. The "problem" can't be solved at the level in which it manifests, namely, that of the individual. Given that it is persistent and pervasive, the real problem exists at the social level and must be solved at that level structurally and dynamically. A cancerous body won't be healed by cutting out its malignant cancerous cells piecemeal.

It does little good for the well-being of the community to reduce Cole’s case to a psychiatric problem. They may well do nothing but further suppress --even though possibly successfully chemically remediate her with various pharmaceuticals-- the cause, motive and reason for such self- and socially destructive behavior. Self-help groups like AA have not eliminated this pervasive, if not growing, social problem. Moreover, to relegate the ‘problem’ matter-of-factly to the Courts may result in finding her soon back on the streets and, God forbid, conceivably even back in the classroom. Lapsing into a bleeding heart “liberalism” in which sloppy compassion ends up letting her in some way “off the hook” is equally disastrous. Moralizing the matter and blaming someone who is obviously a victim, but a victim of victimization which cannot excuse irresponsibility, further represses and refuses to address the social dimension which continues to breed and de facto bless such potentially murderous dysfunction and its concomitant irresponsibility. Tougher laws or judges won't work. Have they solved the "drug problem," assuming such a problem is one of criminality? No, they have simply created a new industry, the 'criminal industrial complex,' also known as the prison system. Of course they have also created smarter drug dealers.

So the blame is “ours.” The responsibility is ours. Only we can root out and “remedy” the causes, motives and reasons within a community that in effect turns a blind eye to what is right in front of our faces as social dysfunction and pathology. Any occasion of drunk driving is a tragedy, we all ‘know’ but do not effectively “acknowledge,” waiting to happen. When that next tragedy does happen unfortunately we are all too ready to mobilize readily available rationalizations and other pseudo-solutions such as: “Life is tragic!” or “You just never know!” or “Some people just don’t care!” or “Maybe she deserves another chance!” or “Lock her up and throw away the key!” or “Hey, people are gonna drink!” etc., etc., etc.

Ultimately this is a political problem of community re-constitution. A community that capitulates to mass cultural trends such as exonerating drunk drivers, not to mention a social life all too dependent upon inebriation, is no community at all. A community that cannot act politically to address and reflect upon the problem of its identity, values, norms and social expectations is one not consitituted by social individuals but variations on narcissistic personality types who always find a way to rationalize and justify their own behavior while remaining consciously oblivious to the social center that no longer holds and a social whole without definition, parameters or limits.

The Emperor has no clothes and the 800 lb gorilla remains in the room. In the meantime, while we objectify Cole and thus dissociate ourselves from forces that produce train wrecks like her, we might begin to ask whether some latter-day Godot is ever really going to come and whether we out to stop waiting for “him.” Or do we have to do something about it? Do we not have to do something that involves not only helping Marcy Cole but thereby helping ourselves to create an authentic political, i.e., self-educating and self-determining community, and create an opportunity for inevitable and absolutely necessary soul searching on the part of each of us, individually and in groups, families, churches, schools, etc.

Anyone else out there knowingly drive drunk lately? Anyone else out there know they are dependent on if not addicted to alcohol or some other source of false consciousness? Anyone else out there feel that the fragmented agencies and individuals designated to re-mediate this dilemma do not really have the "remedy?"

FALSE DEMOCRATIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Real and Artificial Antagonisms in America

I suppose I shouldn’t be trying to make any critical or historical points regarding politics or government on a local call-in talk show. Scott Leffler continues to remind me of that at least every third time I call his show on WLVL radio in Lockport, N.Y. Last Friday he told me I used three too many “…izations” during my comment. I can accept that. I do consider it an inadvertent form of censorhip but I understand Leffler’s problem as a talk-show host. He runs a good, necessary and fun show. After all, there are appropriate languages for different domains of discourse. Talk radio is not one I’ve mastered by a long shot.

The question nevertheless might be asked whether such “appropriateness” is not either another form of political correctness or another form of unintentional censorship. Those, of course, may be two sides of the same coin. Just because a certain way of speaking is “appropriate” doesn’t mean it’s adequate to the situation or the issue. I am in no way objecting to Scott for his quip regarding my 10 syllable words ending in “ization” no matter what his conscious intent. I’ll take full responsibility for not being able to my own satisfaction express my thought and convince my audience. Pretending my audience can or should change to my vocabulary or style first in order to “get” what I’m saying is both naïve and idealistic if not arrogant.

But the problem here is not really about speaking “correctly” or “appropriately.” It’s not about fitting in linguistically. In fact what the censorship of language and the demand to conform to “ordinary everyday language” is all about is politics. When language, speakers or venues of discourse are censored, suppressed or even ridiculed what is operating behind the scenes are political if not ideological assumptions. Leffler’s assumption arose when our discussion turned toward the political status of our country. He insisted we are a “republic” and I said, “no, a democracy.” As luck would have it the show was ending and this very difficult but essential issue couldn’t be pursued. Not that he would have let me pursue it. He probably wouldn’t for probably legitimate reasons. Nevertheless, after my call was disconnected Leffler quipped that he really hates when has to re-teach his kids when they come home from school. Leffler’s sarcastic point was that I at least was teaching my students at NCCC all wrong, misinforming them that we live in a democracy as opposed to a Republic as clearly stated in the Constitution. At worst he implied that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Well, I invite Scott to my venue any day to find out if that’s true. What we should have talked about, however, was the false opposition between “democracy” which he defined as having to be necessarily pure democracy and a “republic” which he seems to define as at least excluding democracy, apparently constituted by professional, “effectively” functioning servants, I guess. Thus, we were beginning to be engaged in a typical kind of debate that falsely divides people, abstract and artificial conflicts and oppositions which function essentially to separate people who belong together as a class, a political force and a new vision for America, local and national.

However my point is that his Libertarianism is showing through. I’ve written a little about Libertarianism below in this blog. I won’t go into this more deeply here but one point needs to be made. The “effective” government that he and the Libertarians yearn for will never exhibit such “effectivity of government,” whatever that is, until an educated and socially self-conscious populace that understands and values its own interests can confront government and provide the necessary opposition and feedback. In philosophy such power of confrontation is called “negativity,” meaning the subjective force of a self-determining social body that stands for and politically fights for its real interests. Such “negativity” is in reality positive because it posits its own material existence as the really existing antagonism which the co-opting force of government pretends doesn’t exist. It pretends that it represents this negating force when in fact it does not. The social body that discovers its 'negating' force can represent itself in the face of its erasure by government ideologues. Effective government can be defined only if we can determine who it is effective for and who it is not for. We ought to be asking what interests, values, purposes and ways of life it is trying to “effect” and for whom?

As in Leffler’s own town of Lockport a recent issue discussed on his show illustrates the problem of government being out of control because the democratic corrective of an ‘effective’ populace is lacking. The Lockport Council is requiring businesses to conform to standards of historical heritage correctness. The town is trying to showcase and sell the community in light of its apparent historical heritage and thus is trying to preserve or reconstruct simulated historical sites. Or something like that. As Leffler points out, it seems the Council may be making it more difficult for businesses to succeed. For example, Leffler asks whether the local laundromat should conform. But, conform to what? How? And there are other examples as to how other more contemporary businesses with a modern theme should be made to conform. It’s a considerable problem for Lockport. In response Leffler calls for, yearns for, “effective government.” So far so good. But again why isn’t the government more “effective,” or, let’s say more considerate of the tough business climate.

My answer to the question is that the inadequate level of participation, concern, input, feedback and critical questioning by the people beforehand, before laws are passed and action is taken, is why government is inadequate,“ineffective” and out of control. There are systematically too many "done deals" as may well have also been the case in North Tonawanda with the Wal-Mart albatross that may soon be coming to town. The “done deals” syndrome is itself the function of a virtual social class of people who find it well in their interest to stick together, work together and get what they want. Locally the usual suspects of incumbent politicians, lawyers and business men form a virtual social class who preponderate toward actions and interests that do not benefit the majority of the community. Their insular actions certainly do not benefit the democratic process that is constitutive of the ideals of the American political culture that we have soldiers dying for in the Middle East.

So, to conclude, radio talk shows, blogs, sound bite TV, superficial press coverage, etc. is all well and good. And if it’s not at least it’s here to stay. But this is not to say that we shouldn’t keep abreast of the assumptions, ideological beliefs, attitudes, and willingness that colludes unknowingly with predominant power and ideology preventing us from seeking out the forest which often gets lost amongst the many trees that get in the way. Much contemporary local political discourse is myopic, lacking sufficiently large and refined contexts that would enable discussion to not only deal with substantive issues and problems but also reflect upon the process by which these issues are dealt with. But to deal with this process, a democratic process of self-determination, the myth that we are a mass society of individuals first and foremost and that government, whether local or national, will take care of us must be debunked. National government is already “effective,” as we speak, for those whom they wish to be effective. The New International Political Class (the New Class for short), as John McCain points out, is doing “the economy” quite proud. The Iraq war is enormously profitable for this New Class, this social class of empire and war. Halliburton would love McCain’s suggestion that we could be in Iraq for another 100 years.

But the “forgotten man,” so to speak, has been left out of the equation. Without reconstituting a substantive, participatory, self-determining democracy, grounded in the forgotten class of disenfranchised and exploited, call it the Client Class, our "participation," in reality pseudo-participation, in determining the outcome of decisions at the National level especially, but also at the local level, is simply as spectators who might even get to “call in” and “participate interactively” but will never play a materially determining part in the decisions before the decisions. The real decisions are made by this power elite of New Class empire builders, warmongers and globalists who then in ritual elections engineer supportive votes for their tyranny in order to continue to appear as if their exploitation and manipulation of the masses is legitimate and democratic. It is not. Nor is such political manipulation legitimate at the state and local levels where the New Class “wannabees” imitate and support the bureaucratic centralist ideology of the power elite at the State and Federal level. The local and state epigones and sycophants of “government” march lockstep to ideas and models that progressively disenfranchise the marginalized, the ‘forgotten man,’ the dwindling middle class, in short the disempowered of America.

To pretend that we can be a republic that works effectively for the people without a radical restoration of democracy, a democracy that even such as James Madison in the Federalist Papers saw as the ground and heart of a republic, is to build our political foundation on mud. In dry weather all looks well and good. But when the storms hit the very structure does not likely hold. To pretend that democracy can be merely procedural and formally legitimating and still be democracy is delusional and politically self-defeating for the mass majority of Americans. To pretend today that America is democratic at any level of politics or government may be comforting or heartwarming but substantively false and materially subversive of the very republic originally foreseen as possible and desirable but unrealized by the founding fathers.