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.

NONE DARE CRY TREASON: Political Corruption or Social Class Power, Profit and Privilege

What is at issue today is treason against the American political idea, democracy, republicanism and the primacy and integrity of the Constitution. Recent history demonstrates that the very existence of a social class, the new American Political Class, is, in its very way of being, a betrayal of the intent and achievements of the Founding Fathers. Conceivably such treason manifests and may in fact be prosecuted in the case of persons such as Governor Blagojevich. Possibly most of such treason however is the betrayal of the people, We the People, and all that implies in subverting the ideal and promise of America. The latter is not a matter of litigation but of a reform which requires revolutionary restructuring of the sociology of the political.

Meanwhile this New Class functions undetected behind the invisible wall of the daily systematic dynamics of social and political exclusion of the Client Class of workers, welfare dependents, the mass of unemployed students and military recruits . In the New Class's world of fuel-injected normalization nothing could ever really be seriously wrong with their worldview despite the aberrant dysfunction and degradation of the way of American life of a mass majority of the People. While their worldview automatically re-legitimates through the Orwellian language and thought of the corporatized mass media, now nihilistically reduced to virtual if not actual entertainment, our world crumbles. Our suffering, that of the atomized, mass Client Class, goes unthematized and improperly politicized, yet always and only in the ultimate interest of the New Class. Since the Civil War this new class of bureaucratic-technocratic managerial, power-mongering, militarist empire builders, has preponderated toward the crystallization of hegemony over the will of the people and the interests of global economy.

Is recent history, then, comfortably dismissable as inevitably political and democratic “business as usual?” Or is it the startling symptomatolgy of social class structure, if not class warfare, manifesting as (1)scandal, (2)corruption, (3)graft, (4)business “mistakes,” (5)partisan self-contradictions of politicians supposedly courageously “reaching across the isle,” (6)“pay to play” disguised as lobbying and compromise, (7)‘pork’ as payoff to swing votes, (8)“donations” to influence policy and interest-orientation, (9)“bailouts,” (10)golden parachutes, and finally (11)mathematically rationalized “acceptable risk” formulas for the “monetizing” scavengers of Wall Street who need pseudo-scientific cover for their gambling and theft.

Is such corruption not treason against the very foundations of political democracy and a nation governed under the rule of Law? Surely when considerations of “size” surpass any meaningful and convincing considerations of principle and quality, this is corruption of all values that flow from the constituting principle of “We the People.” When the (a)size of a business,(b)the prevalence of practices of financialization and (c)the exigencies of predictable socio-economic “crisis” occlude from consciousness the (1)inherent social ineffectiveness and incompetence of super-centralization of power and (2)the entrenched bureaucratization of government, education, business and defense, then surely the political and social interests of the people are no longer in play as a determining force in government and political process. Any pretense to an essential equality of all the people on a putative, yet obviously illusory, mass democratic basis is pure unadulterated ideology, doublespeak and effectively treasonous political violence.

In short we are a thoroughly class divided political culture, where institutionalized access and advantage is structurally pre-determined by predictable educational failure, financial “corruption” of political process and the mass moronization of the people by a mindless, spiritually debilitating culture. Covering this scherade is a giant,hapless, effete media that turns to journalistic comedy, voyeurism and gossip while sustained analysis, relevant information acquisition and critical historical reflection fail to materialize.

Normality, that is normative acceptableness and tolerance of corruption, is in fact systematic brainwashing and lulling the People into dull indifference to the loss of values, insensibility to meaning and blindness to the exploitable automatism of character and attitude. Corruption is traditionalized, turned into romanticized legends of what is a history of heinous political infamy. Corruption is the personalized and moralized cover and excuse for a class co-opted government’s unwillingness to represent the people and to strive to realize the potential abundance of culture and community that the American way promises.

As Gov. Blagojevich said: “I did nothing wrong.” And according to the values and tacitly accepted conditions of power, profit maximization and privilege assurances, he didn’t do anything wrong. It actually was business as usual essentially and for the most part. It’s just that it wasn’t in any way in conformity with the Spirit of the Law and probably with the Letter of the Law. But when Law is instrumentalized to promote and legitimate the interests of New Class dominated big business interests and motorized by ‘bought and paid for’ congressional legislation, then the Law has no meaning nor regulative let alone constitutive force. What is materially and effectively “right” is not a matter of Law but what can be assured by the political monitoring and regulatory participation of the people who live and suffer the decisions of insular professional politicos virtually hermetically sealed from the voice and will of the People.

In the present financial market crisis it has become clear that American industry has also been betrayed by a vitiating history of class policy that has opted for financialization at the expense of material industrial autonomy. Untold billions are shoveled into, at best, questionable “bailouts” with vague mechanisms of execution, unclarifed planning and unmeasureable outcomes. Yet when such conceivably related “bailing out” involves benefit directly to workers as in the Auto industry or to homeowners, suddenly Congress finds its “conscience,” its prudence, its concern about whether such money is even available, not to mention thereby wisely spent. Obviously, the right wing Republicans would love to destroy the UAW. No, they don’t hate workers. They hate organized and self-determining workers. They hate empowered workers. They hate informed and educated citizens who bring to light bald-faced contradictions, double standards and the stacked deck of the political process. They hate transparency of government and accountability to the people. While some $800 Billion has been funneled to failing banks through the US Treasury, another as yet publicly undisclosed $2 Trillion is surreptitiously shuffled off to other “players” in the finance game by the Federal Reserve Bank courtesy of the American taxpayer. We may never know to whom and why that money has been dispensed, what the collateral is and why the bailout should have been made. Courageously the Bloomberg news group has sued the Fed to force them to disclose to whom and how this bundle of billions will be disbursed.

Apparently at least part of the right wing crowd is still deluded by the belief that the “invisible hand” of free market forces will magically take care of all socio-economic problems, thus obviating reasonable regulation, oversight, historical self-reflection and social planning. The government, presumably having lost faith in the invisible hand, has taken the bull by the horns and expects a return on at least some of this bailout money but for fear of being called ‘socialist’ or caught in the act of ‘nationalization’ they refuse taking board positions and having a vote in what happens to these favored enterprises. Again we see government defending the interests of the CEO’s who got us into this mess but, in refusing to assume some executive power in the name of the peoples’ tax money, continue to provide evidence that there are no limits to which they see the Client Class as exploitable and expendable as an organized self-conscious socio-political class with needs and rights, especially the right to have their needs and interests defended. So socialistically tinged actions are permissible to support and further the interests of the New Class but taboo in protecting the interests of the Client Class.

Such preferential and prejudicial treatment highlights the fact that two quite opposed social worlds are being secured, the one nurtured the other denatured. All too predictable policy preferences of profit-determined privilege and special treatment further determine and are determined by class consitituting values, attitudes and assumptions. Financialization of the domestic product does not make for real industry even though the elites refer to it as the “financial industry.” Even though supposedly credible arguments are made for the new financial instruments creating value beyond skimming profit as a parasite on real industry, on the real economy, it seems that the evidence indicates otherwise. Although all big finance is too big to be LET to fail, it is not to big to in fact not succeed.

The New Class is a cancerous class wholly parasitic on the real value produced by real industry. Like a cancerous tumor, it feeds on the body until the body dies and it itself begins to die. The advantage the New Class has over cancerous tumors is it can find new bodies to suck the blood out of, at least so far. A pundit on CNN one evening scoffed at Obama’s pronouncement that he would fight waste and policies that promote waste. The pundit laughed that better men than Obama have tried this but never end up saving much more than a few trivial billion. Unabashedly, he implied, what was a few trivial billion wasted on wealthy farmers often paid not to farm when trillions more are at play and at stake alongside which these several billion are nothing. So in other words New Class subsidy is so unfathomably out of control of any reform, why bother at all. Only a being firmly rooted in class privilege and the virtual immoveable momentum of self-serving “class corruption” could scoff at saving a few measly billion when billions more are spent unnecessarily except of course to preserve the power and privilege of an entrenched way of life for a very limited group of elites. And whatever ‘trickle down’ should result from the ‘good times’ should be enough to satisfy the dependent masses. Or so say the New Class elite.

But such corruption is merely the internecine warfare of the New Class players struggling for advantage and control. Despite its portrayal this is not about bad people. Of course neither is it about otherwise good people. It is about an intra-class war for which the People are the raw material and cannon fodder. It is not as if the government and economy would work well if there were not these several immoral people who end up making unwise political and business decisions. The Law as practiced is itself immoral and thus corrupt. It preserves and cloaks the immorality of law as practiced. It preserves entrenched interests while sacrificing justice, creativity and constitutive humanitarianism.

This soap opera of surface corruption is the smoke and mirrors that systematically dissolves real discourse, problem identification and universal social action. Corruption is entertainment for the masses that prevents most now from realizing that it’s not a matter of the banks, for instance, being nationalized but a matter of the whole of the Treasury being potentially privatized and the Fed investing in a shadow economy. This is not just the transfer of capital to industrious private citizens but a situationally legitimized expropriation of rights and capital by a social class to prop up the historically enervated ideology of that class. Failing to pass the test of democratic self-criticism by the People, it legislates false authority on the basis of the disproven expertise of the likes of such as Henry Paulson.

Possibly in the name of our own Constitution it is time to execute all the would-be Czars.

Time for Niagara Politicos to Seek Federal "Bailout"

Niagara County is an ecological and economic disaster. The wheels of state government are turning much too slowly and don’t seem to be turning in Niagara’s direction when it comes to caring for the health of our people, restoring the integrity of our environment and maximizing the potential of our location and natural resources for economic success. The time for patience and trust in state bureaucracy, which includes the elected officials, and especially the DEC, is over. The time is now and the time is ripe for any politician who dare calls him- or herself a leader to look beyond the provincial indifference, likely incompetence and stifling inertia of established representation in Niagara County and turn to Washington for help. The help we need is in restoring and creating an “infrastructure” that makes us maximally competitive as a world class tourist destination

Barack Obama has made it clear that he wants to “rebuild” the “infrastructure” of America. The heart of Niagara’s infrastructure as a potentially world class tourist destination is the Falls and the surrounding water and land. Surely included in Obama’s project could be work on restoring such contaminated land and waterways and terminally dysfunctional and decrepit cities such as Niagara Falls to healthily habitable space, safely utilizable resources and possibly most importantly aesthetically attractive and thus economically productive destinations. If someone could lead the local politicos to assess our needs in doing such a comprehensive restoration and document the number of jobs that could be created in cleaning up Niagara County’s dump sites totally and permanently and reinventing our geography as such a destination, this would serve as the data needed to acquire funding from the Obama administration.

Surely the legislature with the aid, let’s say, of the recently hired Public Information Officer, the County Manager and whomever else they must hire who might be required to carry out such a task, could create such a “grant proposal” and execute such a study post haste and have it on Obama’s doorstep the evening just after the inaugural. Surely they could do this. It’s time to forget that the good will and creative concern of NY State career politicians will ever turn in our favor.

Surely a case can be made that as a potentially major tourist destination, Niagara’s infrastructure must have a pristine environment and a properly integrated geography which at present is lacking. Only such an environment can rightly consider itself a world class destination if in fact it is going to “work” to its own greatest advantage economically. It seems to me there is little good reason for us to not be at the top of the list of those needing and deserving help from the Federal infrastructural restoration project if some such case can be made.

Whoever here might lead such a project probably cannot count on the backing of a demoralized and depoliticized populace which has lost its sense of entitlement to self-respect, good health and equal treatment by State government. Hopefully not all of our poltical “leaders” have also not fallen into the groupthink of such second class non-citizenship, victimization and pathological civic passivity. Someone must step forward and take our case to Washington.

Niagara should be the jewel resort area of the Great Lakes region and not the dump site of first "resort" of the Eastern Seaboard.

New Political Class Secures the Yachts While Client Class Drowns in the Storm

Is it becoming clear to anyone during this latest economic crisis, that there are two distinct classes of people in this country? There are those who are paid millions as serverance pay for nothing more than failure. Then there are those who are merely reserve labor, social statistics or potential problematic voters that the two wings of the party duopoly must compete for in order to secure power and guarantee their corporate supporters 4 more years of special treatment.

It is ironic that the likes of Thomas Friedman would say that “"The loop we're in now, if we don't find a way to get America to go back shopping, to get a catalyst there [for the economy]…”(in Politico.com columnist Victoria McGrane’s “G-20 Punts on Global Market”). It seems that when push comes to shove some would want the people to bail “the market” out of its mess, including Bush who also urged America to go shopping shortly after the Twin Towers came tumbling down.

Well, I guess we know our allotted role, don’t we? We’re consumers. That’s all. So shut the fuck up and go shopping (whether you can afford it or not).

While its permissible for several large banks to sock away several million of tax payers money for a rainy day and further shore up their solvency by buying up smaller banks also with taxpayer money, it’s not ok for the American consumer, formerly known as citizen, to save for that same rainy day. We OUGHT to go shopping. We ought to buy American. We ought to suck it up. It’s ok for the ruling political class, the New Class, to be safe, secure, covered for health problems and always having the American tax coffers to fall back on when capitalism fails again and again, but not ok for the people to have the same social guarantee. Who do we fall back on? As Senator Phil Gramm recently announced: ‘Americans are a bunch of whiners.’

If you don’t get that this is effectively the most egregiously heartless if not effectively violently vicious class structured society that has ever been, wake up and smell the crisis. It is the latest historical phenomenon to point to the permanent crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism. The people and the polity are in effect expendable when the well-being and interests of the New Class are in jeopardy. Their solution is further centralization and bureaucratization in order to lock down control on our future and the democratic process which may provide voice to alternative paths for progress.

The first clear sign that democratic influence in confronting the economic crisis was surely off the table was when the first Bailout Bill which was defeated was also opposed by over 90% if the American people. But this mandate to let the failures fail was not enough for the Conservatives who shot the bill down to hold their ground in the re-vote given the $150 million “incentive” in the form of strategically placed earmarks. Read bribery. What a difference several million dollars makes. Big business wins and democracy loses. The will of the people is unceremoniously ignored. While the people are willing to pay the price for the mistakes if not the greed of big business, big business is not. They refuse the corrective that might in fact return Capitalism to a principled course. The people are will to be Capitalists and the Capitalists are not. Go figure!

We the People are now good for cheap labor, an easy source of tax monies when capitalism as such fails again and again, cheap votes in managed and engineered elections and cheap cannon fodder in our latest neo-imperialist wars. Little else. So if you didn’t hear it the first time: Shut the fuck up and go shopping. After all, there’s a sale at Wal-Mart. What a country! Or maybe join the army. We have another big fiasco coming up in Afghanistan if Obama feels the need to prove he’s not effeminate. He’s got to keep up appearances for that upcoming election in 4 years.

AN OPEN LETTER: NADER TO OBAMA

November 3, 2008

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

BONFIRE OF THE BANALITIES: Toward the Democratization of Political Economy

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. I’m feeling kind of sucker punched by the economic and political situation. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the economic crisis. Yet I really can’t get a handle on how to begin to grasp what needs to be said to move the political discourse forward, at least in my mind. Not that I’ve moved it forward or could move it forward in anyone else's mind. I really don’t harbor such grandiose kinds of illusions. But as Jodi Dean at the icite blog said, are we “in a situation of such global volatility that there isn’t a cohesive locus for thinking about it.” That is, how do we “frame,” contextualize and locate the vantage point of an illuminating perspective.

It certainly doesn’t do me any good to worry about my retirement account. I’ve decided to just ride out the storm and hope there’s something left standing when it’s over. I can’t even dream that I would have anything to contribute to resolve or solve the international economic crisis. Even if I had the economics background enabling me to analyze the situation, I’m sure I wouldn’t be any more confident or convincing than the beating around the bush I’ve heard over the past few weeks from the “experts.”

I’ve never heard so many experts with such sterling credentials say so little to throw new light on the situation. Undoubtedly the debates that Bernanke, Paulson and the likes have in the room behind the Boardroom, I probably couldn’t even begin to understand. I just can’t help believe and have faith in the possibility that in a democracy there should be some better attempt to educate regarding and to communicate about what’s happening to us economically.

Economics Professor Cristian Ioan Tiu of SUNY, Buffalo said, “Why can’t we take all we know about risk aversion and translate it into prudence? … This crisis is built on the foundation of financial illiteracy.” [Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/10/08] I’m not sure if he meant the illiteracy of the majority of the populace or actually the illiteracy of even the experts, or, of course, both.

If the business model of Wall Street itself is bankrupt, as some have suggested, then someone needs to shake up Wall Street undoubtedly way beyond the controls now being imposed which don’t seem to be much more than kind of giving the fox limited times and conditions under which he gets to continue to ravage the hen house.

Possibly however it’s not just the business model but the very idea that the international economy can be “managed” that has been exhausted. If in fact globablization has made us inextricably inter-dependent, then the fulcrum for carrying out management mandates may not exist. Haven’t we reached the point where the international economy itself must be democratized given that the theoretical leverage and/or the practical wisdom doesn’t seem to exist that can unify the global players for the good of the international communities. And shouldn’t we begin the renovation of the educational system which until now leaves most of us unable to fathom the language and practices of a financial system that leaves us helpless and hopeless to participate politically even if we were sufficiently democratized to do so.

NIAGARA: World Class Wasteland Finally Secured

Watching events in Niagara County is like watching someone slowly die of cancer. And many more of us may well be doing that given recent revelations. Yes, the State sneaks tons of toxic waste into BWM under the cover of darkness. But it wouldn’t matter if they did do it in the light of day preceded by a mariachi band. Most people in Niagara County still wouldn’t know about it, especially the politicians and the press. The secret is out. Niagara county doesn’t have the guts or will or leadership to stop it.

As I wrote a few weeks back nothing was going to stop the further vile and slimily surreptitious abuse of Niagara County short of street demonstrations blocking the path of those trucks crossing the state and our county. But the press was asleep. The politicians were asleep or as all too often working with their heads in the sand if not up their asses. The representatives of these two institutions are a joke if not cowardly, stupid or actually complicit in the sacrifice of our area to “waste management.” After all, lest anyone forget we are also “managing” tons of nuclear waste which isn’t going anywhere soon, except maybe to pave more roads in the county. Besides, I hear glowing roads at night reduce accidents.

Niagara County politicians are cowards, deeply in denial, playing at politics but not willing to take the risks to get anything meaningful done for our people. The Niagara press and politicians are impotent chumps, pretenders at leading and informing the public. Buffoons, clowns, poseurs. Ludicrous bumbling fools. Things would be no different here if they didn’t exist at all. In fact things would probably be much better. We would have more money. We might take responsibility for finding out what is happening to us. We might begin to form social organizations that actually inform, protect and represent us. We might grow the balls necessary to start thinking though secession from the vampires and parasites that run the state of NY.

So there it is. Now we all know Niagara County will do nothing to live with self-respect and integrity. Anyone can dump on us from Hillary Clinton with her false promises, to the state DEC with its thousands of tons of waste with nowhere to go, to the downstate elitists such as Senator Kevin Parker who believe they should get all the Homeland Security money since there is nothing in upstate worth securing.

But even the Niagara County Legislature seems to agree with Parker. The Legislature has yet to answer my questions, presented a few months back during a formal session of that august body, as to why the Lewiston-Queenston bridge which could obviously be blown up by a deaf, dumb and blind terrorist in a mini-van, still remains by all obvious appearances unprotected. The Legislator too does not really believe we are worth saving. They seem to implicity agree with Parker. They accept the crumbs from the table of the State. And Maziarz’s long food chain of supporters seem to act as if those crumbs taste like steaks.

And the cheerleaders over at Niagara Times, some of which feel that after all somebody has to be the waste dump of the Eastern seaboard, falsely bemoan our fate as the dump trucks keep on coming. They in the end seem to shrug their shoulders in a comfortable victim mentality, and say “why not us?” But that profound think tank concludes that “The county needs to let it go” even though they say that what the state has done is absolutely wrong. Then they go on to argue that since the dumping doesn’t incur additional costs we should shut up, worry about the state deficit and not try to levy any selfish fees just to try to stop further shipments. The crowd at Niagara Times is despicably stupid and dangerous. With that kind of cheap pop-psychological reasoning (and I use that term oh so very loosely), which undoubtedly now in fact reflects the “thinking” of our supposed state leadership, we are doomed.

Our state representatives are de facto paid collaborators in securing and reducing Niagara County to the World Class Toxic Toilet of the Eastern Seaboard. And Hobbes, mouthpiece for the Republican “crumbs off the table” machine, certainly knows who butters his white bread. After all he lives in radioactive Lockport and trusts that the PCB’s won’t touch his community. And if it did the radioactivity might dissolve the PCB’s anyhow. So he’s safe.

So when driving in the area anywhere between the Whirlpool Bridge to Wheatfield to Wilson to the hallowed cess pool that is BWM, watch out for fast moving trucks and hold your breath. Otherwise, begin planning to move as far away as possible.

The good news here is that when you’ve reached rock bottom, there is no where to go but up, assuming you choose to live like human beings. But the county just doesn’t seem to know how to act like human beings in a unifed political manner. The eastern crowd would prefer to think that the western crowd doesn’t exist with their failing city and waste management dump. Apparently they don’t like the smell and probably the color of that area. The rest of the divisions are too painfully numerous to detail and also to embarrassingly provincial.

So tonight as I write this I have little hope for Niagara County. And of course why should I then have any hope I’ll ever hear from Greg Lewis or any of the other Legislators as to what it is that prevents the Lewiston bridge and the power plant from being easily blown up other than the fact that the terrorists just have chosen not to do it. Why should they condescend to take me seriously? They are small-town, small minded elitists coveting their own little piece of a pitifully small pie. And why should I expect news coverage to be competent and legislators to be informed let alone real leaders? This is a crisis of competence, conscience, courage, integrity and self-respect. Not just a political crisis, but a human, cultural, educational and communicative crisis.

So call me pessimistic if you like. The accurate appellation is ‘realistic’ at this stage of the game. Any fool could see as much. Pretend if you like but, face it, we are in the shitter, literally and figuratively. And most around here have accepted this seemingly as normal and they maybe even kind of like it. Hopefully the bus loads of Japanese won’t find out.

VOTING: The Weakest, Most Passive Form of Political Participation

The following is an except from an article by Adolph Reed, Jr. in this weeks "Black Agenda Report" obtained through Jodi Dean's 'I cite' blog.

Reed writes:

"Obama represents a class politics, one that promises to cement an alliance anchored in the professional-managerial class (including, perhaps especially, the interchangeable elements of which now increasingly set the policy agendas for what remains of the women's, environmentalist, public interest, civil rights and even labor movements) and the 'progressive' wing of the investor class. (See, for example, Tom Geoghagen, All the Young Bankers, The American Prospect, June 23, 2008.) From this perspective, it is ironic in the short term -- i.e., considering that he pushed HRC out of the way -- that Obama would be the one to complete Clintonism's redefinition of liberalism as conservatism. So there's no way I'm going to ratify this bullshit with my participation, and I'm ready to tell all those liberals who will hector me about the importance of voting that it's the weakest, most passive and least consequential form of political participation, and I'm no longer going to pretend it's any more than that, or that the differences between the Dem and GOP candidates are greater than they are, just to help them feel good about not doing anything more demanding and perhaps more consequential....

To be clear, I'm not arguing that it's wrong to vote for Obama, though I do say it's wrong-headed to vote for him with any lofty expectations. I would also suggest that it's not an open and shut case that - all things considered - he's that much better than McCain. In some ways Obama would be better for us in the short run, just as Clinton was better than the elder Bush. In some ways his presidency could be much worse in the longer term, again like Clinton…." ....

"But here's the catch-22: The left version of the lesser evilist argument stresses that it's unrealistic and maybe unfair to expect anything of the Dems in the absence of a movement that could push them, and no such movement exists. True enough, but where is such a movement to come from if we accept the premise that the horizon of our political expectation has to be whatever the Dems are willing to do because demanding more will only put/keep the other guys in power, and they're worse? I remember Paul Wellstone saying already in the early ‘90s that they'd gotten into a horrible situation in Congress, where the Republicans would propose a really, really hideous bill, and the Dems would respond with a slightly less hideous one and mobilize feverishly around it. If it passed, they and all their interest-group allies would hold press conferences to celebrate the victory, when what had passed actually made things worse than they were before. That's also an element of the logic we've been trapped in for 30 years, and it's one reason that things have gotten progressively worse, and that the bar of liberal expectations has been progressively lowered....

Frankly, I've begun to suspect that the election year version of the 'now is not the time' argument and its sibling, the 'get him elected first then hold him accountable' line, as well as their first cousin, 'Well, that's what they all have to do to get elected,' reflect nothing better than denial of the grim reality that we can't expect anything from them or make any demands of them. After all, how can we hold them accountable once they're in office if we can't do it when they're running, when we technically have something we can withhold or deliver?"....

"The fact is that they know we don't have the power to make them do or not do anything and treat us accordingly, and they will until we develop the capacity to force them to do otherwise. I know this is a difficult message for those who like to believe that politics is about good people and bad people, or that writing really smart position papers that demonstrate the formal plausibility of a win/win agenda that satisfies everyone's concerns should be enough to counter the influence of those $30,000 per head corporate and hedge fund contributors, but that's just not the way the deal goes down."

NATURE ON THE RUN

It’s nothing new to suggest that nature is in a state of siege. From polar bears to coral reefs, tigers, rain forests and glaciers, the loss of natural forms are taking place. How this state of affairs is evaluated is varied such that nature may be seen as endangered, on the one hand, and, on the other, as safe and secure as it’s ever been.

I would take neither position although both have some considerable truth to them. What man’s relation is to nature is a burgeoning philosophical question and is solvable by neither the Luddites and environmental extremists nor by the business/industrial crowd that sees nature as mere raw material for manufacturing. Whereas the former extremists see nature romantically, the latter see it in terms of use and exchange value. They are both equally abstract if not parasitic.

I don’t presume to have a sanguine, salutary solution to the problem, the conflict let’s say between primordial nature and putatively civilized society. Possibly the answer lay in our recognition of our dependency upon a nature with limits. On the other hand it may lie as much in the recognition that we are of the “nature” of that primordial nature. To use it without acknowledging and taking into account both its qualitative and quantitative limits, is to deny our own nature and our own limits technologically and spiritually.

In my own town of North Tonawanda, there are a few stretches of nature remaining, several patches of wood and wetland and of course the waterfronts, Gratwick Park being the most undeveloped. When I spoke to my Legislators, Paul Wojtaszek and Andrea McNulty, regarding the preservation of Gratwick, recently on LCTV’s Access to Government, I was left feeling as I usually am after talking to most politicians: unheard, reduced and dismissed. Apparently, McNulty thought I was saying that Gratwick was a “waste” because I suggested that I couldn’t imagine what $11,000,000, presumably slated for Gratwick in the future if all works out well, could be spent on. It seems that they feel that because at one time Gratwick was a Brownfield, a toxic dump site, that all additions after the clean-up are now an improvement.

The clean-up was of course a good thing, be it as it may. A proposed new fisherman’s dock seems not to be too intrusive to the natural beauty, wildlife and water, even though many seem to fish there now without much difficulty. But it seems that eventually, Wojtaszek, indicated that restaurants were in the works for the Park.

Apparently, kite flying, fishing from shore, bike riding, various sports being played in the open fields such as toy plane flying, golf, soccer, frisbee, etc. does not sufficiently ring their bells. It seems they believe some restaurants are required for people to be “attracted” to and enjoy the Park. Why that is so, I’ll never know. Apparently enjoying nature must be mediated by food and/or alcohol served in a restaurant. Possibly people don’t know that the Park is there without ‘bells and whistles’ to remind them that they live within minutes of a beautiful river with wonderful birds, sunsets, relative peace and quite, serenity and solitude (that is, when the speed boat races aren’t in town). Of course they also obviously still fantasize the immediate area a “tourist destination”: ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!

When commercialism enters the scene, in my opinion we have gone too far and nature becomes merely another attraction, not to enjoy, but to facilitate selling and consuming, all of which is of course handily justified by an endlessly bad economy.

I guess anyone such as myself who believes “enjoying nature” is a matter of being in and with nature itself rather than its being an accompanying adornment to the experience of consumption, buying and selling, is too weird to be taken seriously. There must be something about an unexploited space, a field without infrastructure, pavilions, parking lots and of course something being bought and sold that suggests that it’s a waste. In short to our Legislators “nature itself and being with and in nature itself” is a waste.

So in fact it is not myself who thinks that Gratwick as it is, is a waste. I love, enjoy and respect it as it is without any further "improvements." It seems that McNulty is the one who really sees it, as it is, as a waste. Wojtaszek also seemed to be bemoaning the fact that the water could not be seen from the road given the buildup of ground which is actually, as I understand, the cap on the pollutants that were not removed during the clean-up and restoration. Wojtaszek I believe was saying that the “improvements” would make the Park even more enjoyable, supposedly partly because somehow they would enable the water being seen from the road. I don’t see how that is possible and it sounds like double talk to me. I’m sure packing in several pavilions and restaurants is going to make the river more visible from the road. It just doesn’t make sense. Sports fields and restaurants can be put anywhere. Why in the middle of a bird sanctuary and in front of an incomparable river view? It seems to Wojtaszek people now only drive by Gratwick. He wants them all driving through! Why? Possibly he could put a detour sign on River Road and have everyone redirected through the Park. Or, maybe he or one of his friends in the business/legal crowd will be a future proud owner of one or two of the new restaurants. If the people can't be aware of and appreciate the beauty of Gratwick now in its relatively pristine state, when it's filled up with "civilization," they still won't be enjoying it. They'll be enjoying the distractions and Gratwick as nature will be gone. It will be a tool to make money, per usual.

The other feeling I was left with after my call-in to Access to Government is that they’ve really already got their mind made up as to what they want there: the blind progress of business as usual. I felt patronized, placated and merely an obstacle to their idea of progress. It seems making the Park look like every other part of town is unquestionably considered development and economic progress. Hopefully, maybe by the grace of God, they at least won’t put another pizza and wings joint there. Surely we have enough of those around town to satisfy any number of junk food addicts and overweight denizens of the fast food frenzy. If they put a McDonald’s there I promise to move out of town.

But at the root of such economic myopia or even blindness, I believe, is really the fear of our own nature. It is a fear of being with primordial nature, the nature which, if we manage to destroy ourselves thru ecological neglect, will remain in the end. To be with nature is to feel and know our own serenity and solitude, our own timelessness and purposeless presence in physical space. It’s much easier to obliterate our own natural primordiality, by filling nature up, covering it over, exploiting its inherent attractiveness to avoid being with that which we are minimally and eternally and will eventually return to. If we could be with such nature, independent of the trappings of supposed civilized community, we may discover that very sacred part of ourselves that technological toys and commodities cannot fill up nor satisfy. We may in fact discover it is more sacred than any of the institutions or practices of religion.

Somehow I don’t think the technocrats of progress will hear this plea. If they could, they would hear the plea of nature itself, the reality which in the end of it all will have the last word by restoring its place, its primacy and priority as the eternal Edenic garden, that is the sacred primordiality to be found even in relatively unspoiled places like Gratwick.

IDIOCRACY DOMINATES NIAGARA LEGISLATURE

The Niagara County idocracy is in strong and secure hands in the Niagara County Legislature. Recent reports indicate that the ball is in play to downsize the ranks of the Niagara County Legislature by none other than the Legislature itself. But as far as I know, no good reasons, arguments, justifications or explanations for the need to considerably downsize the Legislature in NC have been given.

Idiocracy is a good name for this ethos of unreason. I really don’t mean to call or imply that any of the Legislators are idiots. They are not. However they are participating in issues and actions seemingly with their minds made up regarding both what is at issue and what the solutions are. In such an idiocracy, democracy is either dead or as Tom Christy likes to say: “being held hostage.” Nevertheless, meaningful discourse, dialogue, discussion, rational reflection, debate or self-accounting is absent. In the purging of Tom Christy from the now thoroughly exploited and instrumentalized LCTV; in the non-renewal of Joan Wolfgang to the NCCC Board of Directors; and now in the predilection to downsize the Legislature from 19 members to possibly as few as 11, again no requisite explanation or sustained rational debate is forthcoming. There is much talk that it will and should happen but as of yet it just doesn't seem to be happening. It's kind of like "Waiting for Godot." Though democracy may not be dead, the dialogue with the people surely is.

Maybe that’s why they hired a Public Information Officer. By the way whatever happened to Mr. Peck? Did I miss something here? I have not seen hide nor hair of him. Did he quit already? Get fired? If he is around somewhere, probably with his own show on LCTV, maybe he could explain this “downsizing” mania. Hellllooooooo, Mr.Peck! Where are you? Come out, come out wherever you are! Explain what's going on here. Or was I right the first time when I questioned whether he really isn't at all a Public Information Officer working to inform the public politically? That is, he is just going to be a marketing publicist for Niagara County, an arm of the IDA and Economic Development. "Public Information Officer" is a misnomer if not a euphemism for what the Legislature possibly didn't want to tell the public explicitly.

Nevertheless, back to the issue at hand: the age of unreason or a-rationality if not irrationality in NC. Chairman Ross has indicated to the media that with respect to the talk about “downsizing” our local Legislature, “its going around.”

What’s going around, I ask, Mr. Ross?

Mr. Ross also shared with the Tonawanda News “It’s the principle.”

Mr. Ross, what principle is that? Is “downsizing” of government a principle?

“It sets the example and you move on from there,” Chairman Ross says.

Mr. Ross, what are we setting an example for or about? And what is this compulsion to keep “moving on?” Could it be that if anyone for any reasonable length of time examined what passes as “legislative action” we would realize that a-rational, robotic inertia has possessed the local government?

As far as I know there is no formulation forthcoming as to what the Legislature thinks it’s doing politically in its downsizing surge. But Mr. Ross hadn’t stopped there. After all why should he stop there? Why should one unsubstantiated opinion, assumption, act of conformity not lead to another. When you’re on a roll you keep going, no? And so Mr. Ross continues: “With this going around and being very visible you’ll likely get a county legislator to step up and get the process going.”

As I’ve asked before: Mr. Ross, Sir, what process is that??? Is it a process that’s “going around,” kind of like a disease or a fad or a fashion or a craze or what? What is it that’s visible? Is it Kevin Gaughan writing a bad article for the ArtVoice about downsizing? Is that what’s visible and going around? The fact is that there are more people who “think” that downsizing is a very bad idea than those who “think” it is a good idea. So what’s going around? The Pro’s or the Con’s? The Legislature seems to selectively “think”
That the Pro’s are “going around.”

Mr. Updegrove, majority Republican Legislative Leader says his caucus supports downsizing. Of course is he going to tell us why? He says its something we should explore and consider. Well that’s sounds promising but don’t forget that his “caucus” already supports downsizing; so if you’re a betting man put your money on them already having their collective mind made up. And so far only God and the caucus know why, if in fact they really even even have any idea why they “think” what they do. I become even more skeptical when Mr. Updegrove adds that we need to “determine how we should implement a reduction.” UH, OH! Sound like the “machine” has started to build momentum, despite that the cart may be well before the horse here.

Mr. Updegrove was reported to have said that “The question is what level of representation is optimum.” And he’s right. Now let’s have a meaningful discourse about this and begin the INQUIRY as to what is best for our county governmentally if not politically. But in the same interview Mr. Updegrove says, “We are committed to reducing the size of government in Niagara County.” UH OH! Sounds like commitment precedes justifiability here doesn’t it?

We all know that reducing costs is driving this. But this is another example of pennywise and pound foolish. Democracy is the heart and soul of the Republic. If representation is not optimized, then we move toward “managerial government in toto” not just “county manager government.” Then again maybe we should just dump all the Legislators and let Mr. Lewis run things. He seems to have a decent business sense. That should make the business crowd all warm and fuzzy. If his ‘business sense’ is not sensible enough then for the government-based-on-a-business-model ideologists, then just hire a better manager. Who needs government after all?

But given that desperate attempts to save money is behind this, could we be slightly be confusing downsizing with consolidation. It seems to me that there may be an overlap here, but the merging of auto bureaus and eliminating 8 Legislators lay in different domains of significance.

Given that several weeks have passed since the first reports came out about downsizing, one would like to believe that some real discussion has taken place. Possibly it did at the September legislative meeting. I don’t know. I missed it. But once again why isn’t Peck informing me about this. The least I could get is an e-mail from the guy.

What we have gotten as far as I know is a recent Tonawanda News article claiming that the Legislature does “believe the time has come to at least start talking about reducing the Legislature’s ranks.” And I ask again, what “time” is that? What “time” has come? Sounds dramatic but I’d really like to know what “time” that is? It seems like somebody thinks this has been brewing for some time and now it’s “time” to shit or get off the pot. Personally other than the Gaughan project I don’t know of any other brew on the political stove. Is Kevin Gaughan that influential? When I read his uncritical, unreflective article, I just didn’t see the “pied piper” quality shining forth.

Nevertheless as Mr. Ross predicted Ceretto, Farnham and Sklarski are expected to “step up” and present a resolution “that calls for the Legislature to support a plan to reduce its own membership once the 2010 Census has been completed. So I guess “they” really are “committed.” Still no justification. When does Updegrove’s “exploring and considering” come in? Or was that just for public consumption to make them sound like they really think about what they plan to do no matter what YOU the citizen think about it? Yet, given that such a decision depends upon “future census numbers, redistricting and input from lawmakers themselves,” according to the News, I should suspect the “input” should begin, considering how slow and tedious such “input” can be in coming forth and how much getting such input out to the public is like pulling teeth from a rhinocerous, especially when it requires some convincing justification.

The News reports that Cerreto says the resolution “is intended to spur debate over how best to approach downsizing so that the Legislature is prepared to do what it needs to do when the time comes.” God, there’s that “when the time comes” thing again. Sounds like something out of Dicken’s “Christmas Carole.” When the “time comes” you get your comeuppance kind of like ol’ Scrooge.

Cerreto “thinks” that 220,000 citizens would best be served by “reducing the number of elected leaders in the county, and, perhaps at other levels as well.” But why? Why? Why? Please give me some decent reason or even some indecent reason.

What we got was “the county has been moving in a direction to reduce government,” Ceretto said. It has. Since when. And who/what exactly is “the county?” “The county” is moving? What the hell does this mean, please pray tell!

“As legislators, we need to take the first step. We have to be the leaders. We have to set the example.” Where is the “need” in all this, the necessity to reduce government? Why now? Who are you leading and do you really care whether they want to be led in this direction?

Apparently Sklarski claimed that the resolution will not bind the Legislature but provide a “benchmark” from which Legislators can work. Please, again, I really hate to be repetitious, bu somebody tell me what that benchmark is! I wait with bated breath. Sklarski says he THINKS 11 is an appropriate number for the county. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Take your time because even though the “time has come,” for “considering,” the “time to do what it NEEDS to do” has not come.

Sklarski we hear is also leading by “example,”even though, with him also, we still don’t know what his lead is an example of. Sklarski says you just have to be “willing to lead by example.” So now some sort of “will” is involved. Maybe the Legislature has secretly been reading Friedrich Nietzsche and has bought into some political “will to power.” So far there has been no "leadership" at all. There has only been conformist "followership," their fingers to the wind ready to do what "seems" to be acceptable and politically useful.

So maybe the Legislature has developed the will-to-power to lead by example to do what needs to be done when the time comes given that we need to do what has been going around and is in the air and since the county has been moving in this direction anyhow. Go figure!

Idiocracy? Please prove me wrong, very, very wrong.