THE SWORD'S OTHER EDGE: On Populist Possibilities in Local Politics

Historically populism has been a “grassroots resistance to encroachment by state and capitalist agencies on the basis of local traditions, customs and ethical norms” …. “ populism becomes a useful concept for configuring current as well as incipient developments both in the communist east as well as in the West. … populism has not emerged spontaneously during relatively “normal” times, but has always developed as a response to concrete threats to existing communities, lifestyles or other established relations.” (The Crisis, P. Piccone, pp. 202-04)

Populist thought and action has always been an attempt to restore the existence of the whole individual to life in the public sphere “rather than only a splintered economic or public persona. This is precisely what populism promises by vindicating concrete individuality rooted in communities, traditions, customs, etc.” (The Crisis, P. Piccone, p. 204)

Usually in American political discourse populism's image is reduced to the cliché of “pitchfork wielding farmers” or far right fanatics often of either the religious/millennial or militia types. However the historically sedimented motives and current momentum of such spontaneous movements have been lost on the American populace due to media manipulation and a universally degraded and distorted educational system.

At least since the presidential campaign of Ross Perot the populist slogan has been bandied about almost always opportunistically to secure various voting blocks which might not otherwise be harnessed for partisan purposes. Few have taken a serious look at the potential and possibilities of populist political self-understanding in America. When Perot’s “populist” communities and constituencies insisted on connecting with one another without his mediation or interference, Perot objected. So it was not difficult to see that Perot’s “use” of ‘populist’ slogans was for purely instrumental purposes, having no intention to promote the unfolding of concrete individuality and self-determining and self-sustaining communities. Perot had no intention to allow the spontaneous support that came his way to practically prefigure radical changes in democratic America. He wished to use it and then return it to the easily manipulable condition of alienated, massified individuals living in a homogenized and standardized culture and economy.

Bob McCarthy detected something of the populist rumblings in America locally here in Western NY in his Buffalo News Opinion piece entitled “Locals with pitchfork and torch.” He was referring, of course, to the ‘conspiratorial’ part played in the recent ‘Albany procedural coup,’ that reconfigured power in the State, by George Maziarz, HenryWojtaszek, Steve Pigeon and Anthony Baynes. McCarthy refers to these players as “upstate revolutionaries.”

Wow! I’ll have to re-check the definition of ‘revolution’ real soon. Because if that was a revolution I’ll eat my hat.

“We changed the way New York does business,” Baynes said. “And there were no tanks in the street.”

What unmitigated arrogant elitist Orwellian bullshit. Firstly, let’s disabuse ourselves of the notion that Maziarz and Co.’s actions led by the money of Tom Golisano has anything to do with Populism let alone revolution. It obviously doesn’t despite the ubiquitous pitchfork and torch metaphor. What happened in Albany was the proceduralist treachery of a corrupt bureaucratized party politics of entrenched politicos defending the interests of big business, not business in general let alone sustainable business and not for any other meaningful and transformative “reform” in NY. Of course they were also shoring up alliances to guarantee their own future power positions amongst the political class in Albany.

Maziarz has had numerous opportunities to take populist discontent in the county of Niagara and turn it into meaningful political power and the leverage for real change for local sustainability, improved quality of life and integrating the communities of Niagara County. However rather than spending time playing a part in organizing the organic potential of populist discontent in Niagara County in fighting the toxic waste business polluting our environment, helping to consolidate public services and mediating the political forces that perennially manages to keep Niagara County working against itself, Maziarz chooses to play bureau-boss in Albany. Maziarz too cuts with the other edge of the populist sword. Rather than grasping the power of populist discontent and its potential for real change in the quality of local life he chooses to play the part of shot-calling, cash dispensing local party boss. While he is objectively positioned in a region materially poised for real populist political power, his cynicism, careerism and Republican self-misunderstanding leave him wallowing in the shallow waters of state politics as usual, but waters in which real political leadership and creativity can easily founder and drown.

I believe it’s pretty well established that the merry-go-round of musical political chairs in our state capitol isn’t going to do anything for real political and economic change in Western NY. But the disconnect and vast divide between the people who, in a sense, are a “part of no-part” and the New Political Class is so starkly great that even the likes of Sarah Palin conceptualizes this divide between local interests and what she recently coined as the “party of government.” In her own down-home style Palin names the preponderance of political, economic and bureaucratic forces that have crystallized in the formation of a New Political Class that serves to systematically facilitate the centralist regime that looks out for the interests of mega-capital and the mega-corporations that keep the profits flowing to the top 1% or so of the “people.” But this class analysis applies as much to the politicos of Albany as it does the political professionals of Washington, D.C.

It is the people who are a “part of no-part”-- especially not a part of that sector of the population represented by Palin’s concept of the “party of government” -- who manifest the populist discontent of the country. However just as Perot was not to be trusted in ’92 and ’96, so also Palin is not to be trusted since her interests are also not genuinely populist. She is a New Class wannabee manipulating every imaginable constituency in her bid to be the first woman President of the United States. So her sword also clearly cuts in more than one direction.

While the local state party politicos, especially DelMonte/Thompson, Stachowski and Maziarz fight against or ignore one another, the common issues of restoring our environment, regaining control of our local parks, creating a sustainable economy and expropriating our rights to water power go essentially unaddressed. Although efforts such as Dennis Gabryszak’s to return profits from unused power sold on the open market back to the region’s Economic Development Fund is a move in the right direction I wouldn’t hold my breath that we see that money any time soon, nor that this effort sparks any further consciousness of the political will and self-identity which such demands could ignite.

Until the people and the politicos can think beyond party politics, corporate configurations of the markets and centralist control of local economy and culture, the sword of politics, which seems to be slashing against those interests which continue to rape local economies and civic autonomy, will surely, as history proves, cut hardest against us on the backswing.

Lastly, it should be clear that populism privileges politics over economism and the bureaucratization and corporatization of culture as the source of our redemption and vindication as American communities, that is, as a confederation of communities and regions that still believe in self-maintaining and self-determining localities as the source and sustenance of the autonomous, responsible, not to mention, happy democratic individual. The values and preference that make a people free and strong are not determinable for us by de-localized professionals, bureaucrats, lawyers, financiers, social engineering experts, business specialists, technocrats and Ivy League professors. Populism is first and foremost about taking back the political sphere and the public realm of democracy as the lifestream of the civic and spiritual autonomy that embodies and assures any possibility of the good life.

LET THEM EAT WORDS

From “Confronting the Crisis: The Writings of Paul Piccone” [Telos Press, 2008]::

“…..the loss of a traditional grounding [of society] has brought about a veritable Orwellian predicament. Within the context of today’s conformist political theory, modern representative “democracy” can hardly be regarded as democratic anymore; contemporary “federalism’ has nothing to do with federations or the preservation of cultural and political autonomy: the concept of “law” has lost all normative import; degraded to the level of arbitrary and expedient “regulations,” it no longer warrants unquestioned compliance.

Even more recent concepts, such as “the nation” or “the people,” have lost all substantive meaning and have become crude instrumentalizations meant to legitimate the status quo. In the hands of Panglossian ideologists bent on pleasing the powers that be by demonstrating the “universal validity” and therefore the “unquestionable truth” of whatever happens to be the case, these affirmative concepts neutralize and deactivate the normative content they originally embodied.

Thus, “the nation” no longer exhibits any axiological dimensions which designate a particular, self-determining, and geographically circumscribed citizenry sharing a common history and common goals. Similarly, “the people” has ceased to have any specificity or qualifications; it designates only an amorphous mass of physical bodies whose only redeemable attribute is that it can be counted and instrumentalized to legitimate “democratically” whatever mediatized agenda it can be manipulated into supporting.

No wonder, then, that the very notion of “community,” degraded to a positivistic description of “really existing communities,” no longer connotes anything held “in common” other than the fact that some people happen to be in physical contiguity at some particular time.

The reduction of the "people" to an abstract quantifiable mass "democratically" approving or disapproving whatever pre-constituted agenda is placed before them or voting for candidates and parties that operate within a political sphere with no organic roots in active public life is not democracy, but manipulation. ... [T]his kind of [Orwellian] mass democracy often contradicts another fundamental democratic principal: self-determination.

The solution to this [contradiction] rests with a 'federalism' allowing maximum possible autonomy to the constituent elements [communities; regions] whose fundamental units will have to be sufficiently small to permit direct democratic participation. Only within such a context can organic participation in public life define the participants as "a people" determining their own destiny and, in the process, establishing a common identity."

EDUCATIONAL APARTHEID AT NCCC

For the past three years we at Niagara County Community College have witnessed an insidiously enervating assault on collegiality and educational progress. The Klyzek administration, backed by a myopic Board of Trustees, has conspired to take control of “education” at the college. Their strategy is to destroy the faculty union and probably return the college to the obsolete vision of community college as job training facility for local business and industry. Should they be successful they will not only ruin a college but pound the last nail in the coffin of a citizenry crying out for an institution in which the kind of general education can be obtained that frees and prepares its students for life in the citizenry, autonomously, responsibly and democratically.

Apparently out of touch with the most obvious of trends in community college education for the sake of saving a few budget dollars, the administration and Board of Trustees are foolishly at the brink of dismantling what has taken 40 years to build in Niagara County. While at last survey 52% of college students enjoy their first two years of a liberal arts education at a community college, the trend does not seem to be declining. They receive a background of general education that helps them decide upon their future direction in life while experiencing a range of courses that serve as indispensable building blocks for personal development and growth as citizens. They receive the benefits of reduced tuition and the availability of faculty for one on one counseling, tutoring and academic inspiration through close contact in and out of the class room. This advantage is now being threatened BY the technocratic managerial ideology of the Klyzek administration.

Community colleges themselves have grown from technical schools of training to preparatory liberal arts institutions rivaling the first two years of college at any local and some of the best 4 year colleges in the nation. As an example of this I will speak of my own experience. After completing my Ph.D. at UB in Philosophy with a specializiation in the work of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer as applied to problems in learning and teaching, I was hired at NCCC as the replacement philosophy instructor. I had had several years of part time teaching at ECC, North and South, Medaille and UB. I had also completed master’s level work in psychology before completing my work at the doctoral level in philosophy. Now, after having completed my 20th year at N-trip, and having doubled the size of philosophy offerings at the college, not to mention years of continued study, writing and teaching, I am often compared to what a student would receive in philosophy education at UB. I would more often than not be seen as coming up short in this comparison. Even though, more often than not, a first year philosophy student at UB would be taught by a graduate student without a Ph.D., with little or no teaching experience and with much less life experience, education with me at NCCC would be considered less valuable, not as good, in short, inferior. In fact, the truth is, they are getting quite a deal. As compared to most of the educators at UB undergraduate level the education at N-trip is superior.

Moreover, I am a full-time, tenured faculty member. It takes a faculty of full-time professors to create the robust and productive educational institution we now have. But the present administration and undoubtedly a clueless Board of Trustees would eviscerate this faculty and replace it with part-timers most without Ph.D.s. This pennywise pound-foolish strategy is the step-child of managerialism in business. Kept on a shoe-string budget year to year by the county and state, the administration follows an obsessively penurious budgetary monitoring practice that keeps the college in a state of Orwellian oversight if not warfare over funding. The typical Academic Dean is kept running about shuffling papers, troubleshooting and defending the President’s latest money-saving maneuvers to the detriment of his supposed task, improving the quality of education at the college. In light of the mangerialism, every Academic Dean is inevitably turned into an assistant money manager incapable of seeing the educational forest for the budgetary trees.

Because administrative vision at the college has been painfully myopic in my experience since my hiring in 1989, they make mistakes that could have been avoided if they did not, in technocratic arrogance, refuse to listen to faculty. Again I will use my own case as an example. For approximately 15 years I have argued that simply hiring one more full time philosophy professor would give me the time and support to increase philosophy offerings and students that would not simply grow the department of philosophy but also bring in more students. It would in the long run mean more income for the college. Even as it is with only myself as the entire philosophy department, since I have been at the college, the size of philosophy has doubled. With one part timer and myself we offer approximately 10 philosophy sections per semester which includes 4-5 different courses, namely Introduction to Philosophy, Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Religion, Aesthetics and Political Philosophy. This includes offerings taught online in Introduction to Philosophy, Religion and Politics. If one more full timer in philosophy were hired to work with me we could not only agian nearly double the size of offerings but surely also double the size of the number of students becoming interested in philosophical studies. As it is I am overextended in what I do with no time for program development and improvement. Because philosophy is not seen as producing jobs, they don’t see the value in developing the program. Again they are surely painfully penny wise and pound foolish. The irony is that philosophy done my way would not only improve general education in enhancing our ability to deliver regarding teaching critical thinking but also bring in more students than some of their precious job training problems many of which simply fail.

If the Administration and hapless Board of Trustees, who do not really understand the implications of this needless assault on the faculty, have their way, they will eviscerate the quality of education at the college, permanently destroy any spirit of cooperation and collegiality and demoralize a fine group of educators all in the name of a managerialist ideology that does not believe nor trust that a well-rounded general education guided by an autonomous and responsible faculty is control and guidance enough for the institution to grow qualitatively and otherwise prosper.

The administration wants control of virtually every aspect of education at N-trip. They refuse to see that education is not a business any more than government is a business. Yet they persist for the sake of saving negligible amounts of money in reducing collegiality at N-trip to a situation of academic apartheid. In short all control and decision making, if the Klyzek administration has its way, would reside with a business inspired model of control disenfranchising faculty and placing them at the hands of an autocratic vision of educational leadership.

The recent vote of no confidence in President Klyzek was not a knee-jerk response nor loosely, thoughtlessly used rebuke because we can’t get what we want. It is a red flag that the leadership at the college is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The Board of Trustees needs to wake up and smell what roses are left. New dorms and a Culinary Institute do not a college make.

Goldman Sachs or Government Sachs?

[THE FOLLOWING IS COURTESY OF ALTERNET VIA I CITE BLOG:

Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs
(or reason 2, 998 why what the Obama administration is doing is not evidence of socialism but rather evidence of desperate measures to save a dying, greedy capitalism)
......
We could call it late finance capitalism, financial monopoly capitalism, debt capitalism, or, something with a history: Mafioso Capitalism. It's what we called the Russian form that emerged in the shock treatment of privatization as everything public was expropriated. Our version is of course much more extreme and advanced--makes you almost proud to be an American--because it's rooted in expropriating not just current public funds, but private savings (the exsanguination of all savings funds, funds themselves that were part of the buy off of the middle class). So, it's not the return of Mafioso Capitalism, but it's public face--they don't even have to hide it anymore.)

So, while these golden ones are loudly repudiating the $10 billion public subsidy they took from us, they are coyly retaining at least 40 billion of our dollars to stay afloat -- a tidy sum that does not include any restrictions on pay levels. Coincidentally, Goldman has since announced that it is setting aside nearly $5 billion to be distributed at the end of the year as compensation for its executives, including payments for outlandish bonuses for those at the top.

Saying that such-and-such is the greediest bunch of bankers on Wall Street is like someone claiming to have the biggest hairdo in Dallas -- the competition is fierce. But that's quite a head of hair atop Goldman Sachs. Well, sniff the executives, we merely play the game according to the rules we're given.

Sure, and the Mafia plays its game strictly according to Hoyle. The difference is that the Mafia must actually break the rules, while Wall Street simply hires lobbyists and politicians to write the rules.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs has been nicknamed "Government Sachs" by its rivals, for it always seems to have at least one of its top officials strategically placed inside government to bend federal financial rules to its benefit. In the 1990s, for example, two Goldman foxes -- Robert Rubin and Larry Summers -- were inside the Clinton administration henhouse, where they helped craft the deregulation scams that enriched their former banks, before the scams caused the crash of our economy.

Lewiston Provincialism Obstructs Niagara Regional Progress

Niagara Heritage Partnership has fought for over 12 years to restore the Niagara River gorge to its pristine state in the interest of creating a world class eco-tourist attraction. Local business interests in Lewiston have systematically and probably illegally obstructed progress toward the restoration of the gorge without any real concern for the greater good of the region and Niagara County. The following is an update by advocates for gorge restoration and the necessary removal of the Robert Moses Parkway of the obstacles thrown in their way by the myopic provincialism of the Lewiston business crowd:

ACCORDING TO PARKWAY REMOVAL ADVOCATE Michelle Vanstrom, a Niagara Falls businesswoman from Youngstown and member of the NF Tourism Advisory Board:

"I continue to find it interesting and appalling that decisions by elected and appointed leaders regarding the Robert Moses gorge parkway are continually made without EVER asking the removal advocates to make a presentation.

Why is that? I am perplexed, bemused.

How can anyone, especially when seated in a leadership/advisory position, expect to make an intelligent, well-thought out, informed decision without exerting any effort or desire to review or listen to all sides of an issue? To me, that's an imperative and crucial leadership role.

My statements made to the professor[Mr. Angus] and Mr. Ceretto were facts, not accusations. I don't recall seeing many of you at either Lewiston trolley meeting. Perhaps if had you attended, it might have become clear to you, also, that the trolley was all about Lewiston and only Lewiston and running it on the parkway. You would have heard this stated clearly by the owner of the Barton Hotel. Her statements (and my questions to Mr. Sloma and Mr. Ceretto) are documented, filmed by the local cable channel.

To date, Mr. Angus and Mr. Ceretto still refuse to provide a copy of so-called trolley "study" to the public.

This is an opinion I have as a parent who paid for several college educations: Since this was a graded project for the NU students, Mr. Angus, as a college professor, had an opportunity and a professional obligation to insist on accepted academic form. He did not encourage the NU students to conduct an genuine academic argument, a presentation of all sides. In the eyes of Mayor Soluri, at the second Lewiston trolley forum, that is an "unbiased" approach. Again, a statement on film.

Regarding the "spirited meeting":
Mr. Gromosiak's justified anger came from two situations. One he mentioned several times as he spoke, the on-going, snide remarks Mr. Nicols made in undertones not caught on camera to a woman seated next to him. Two, the disparaging remarks made by the Niagara University professor about Niagara Falls and Main Street, the roads in particular.

From what I witnessed, Mr. Gromosiak as he spoke to the EMC clearly stated he felt threatened and harassed by Mr. Nicols. As a follow up to the remarks made about the City, Mr. Gromosiak subsequently contacted the individual NF City Council members. No one from NU met or contacted the City Council about the trolley.

Why? Mr. Sloma and Mr. Ceretto mentioned regionalism multiple times during the first trolley meeting.

As a County advisory council, you might find this interesting: as we left, several people listening from outside the library meeting room, opened a closed door, and made a point to stop us and thank us for speaking up.

For your perusal, I'm enclosing a benefits to removal summary of the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway. It's a copy of an email sent to about 30 key leaders at local, regional, and state levels. It might have crossed your desk already.

I've also attached a copy of the resolution(s) signed by objective people who took the time to not only envision the concept of total gorge parkway removal, but took the time to become well-informed. I think you'll see the very clear reasons why they signed it. Perhaps, that's what terrifies the parkway preservationists.

Please read the attached resolution. We will provide and/or present the supplemental information to anyone who would like to hear the rest of the story, the counter response to those who say it (the removal of the Robert Moses GORGE Parkway) can't or shouldn't be done.

One of the reasons we advocate so hard for total gorge Robert Moses Parkway removal is to reclaim and protect our viewsheds (a key Smart Growth initiative), the old growth at DeVeaux and in the gorge walls, and to stimulate the economy in every Niagara Falls business district as well as the entire region (a key Economic/Business Survival initiative).

We have provided all the supporting documentation-- studies on road removal from unbiased, unsolicited experts proving the NHP proposal is not only the right thing to do, it's astounding--economically viable and feasible. The NHP report includes employment numbers (hundreds to thousands) and economic and quality of life benefits and tourism dollars (in the billions) all provided by the very successful, dozens of cities around the world that implemented the exact type of project NHP has advocated for over the last 12 years. We have an informal marketing study (www.niagaraheritage.org) where locals and potential tourists (millions) tell us clearly what they want to experience when they come to Niagara Falls.

The NHP proposal is visionary. It promotes Deep Change rather than incremental change which inevitably leads to decay. (Author, Robert E. Quinn, a Leadership Buffalo suggested reading book.) To quote Mayor Dyster, "We could have been pioneers. Instead, we follow."

Somebody benefits if the city of Niagara falls. The question, posed to the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, is who and why?

Please read the attached resolution. This was signed by the Main Street Business and Professional Association, Niagara Falls City Council, the Niagara Falls Tourism Advisory Board.

We have personally handed the complete Niagara Heritage Partnership proposal and report to:
the Buffalo News,
the Niagara Gazette,
NYS Parks Commissioner Carol Ash,
Governor Patterson,
Mayor Paul Dyster,
Senator Antoine Thompson,
the Niagara Falls City Council,
the Niagara Falls Tourism Advisory Board,
to the entire Niagara Co. Legislature - which includes representation from the Niagara County IDA,
the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper,
the Buffalo Niagara Partnership,
and to anyone else we could think of that is in a position to and might actually help, presenting and providing them with the complete NHP package.

Senator Gillibrand (D) was also personally handed the NHP proposal with all its supporting documentation when she was in town attending a luncheon hosted by the County Democratic Committee. (This was after the convention center meeting with local governments, including Mayor Soluri (R). Senator Gillibrand stated she'd contact me by phone the next day. She didn't.

Now what's sad: everyone, especially after reading the NHP documents and seeing the proposal presented in actual economic dollars and numbers, knows the NHP proposal is the right thing to do for the greater good, for the most people, with minimum impact on neighborhoods. It shows everybody profits.

Here's the wrinkle:

What's being proposed by Niagara Falls master plan, removal of RMP up to Findlay Dr., is to, yes, remove the RMP, BUT join it to Whirlpool Street AT Findlay Dr. In other words, remove one road and replace it with another. This does absolutely nothing to support the city business districts, yet it's in the city's current, proposed comprehensive plan, as yet not passed. In picturing that scenario, it appears that another slice of DeVeaux Woods will be sacrificed.

The NH proposal for RMP gorge removal would REJOIN the DeVeaux Old Growth with the Old Growth remaining at Whirlpool State Parks. (Standing in parking lot, facing Whirlpool and the gorge - see the few remaining trees on your right.)

NHP, and supporters of their proposal, advocate total RMP removal to the north city line. That's a compromise, something Lewiston et all claim the NHP doesn't or won't do.
Well, as stated to Mr. Cerreto and the Niagara Co. EMC. NHP and advocates did compromise. We want the RMP gorge section totally removed to Lewiston and replaced with a natural landscape for ecotourism, but have, in the interest of compromise, backed up to the North City Line.

Now, we want Mr.Ceretto and the northtowns to compromise and send the proposed trolley down Main St, into Niagara Falls, via Hyde Park Blvd and Highland Ave to North St. to Main Street. This route, if coming from Lewiston, starts at the intersection light by Niagara University. It bypasses the entire DeVeaux residential neighborhood. This alternate route was presented to the DOT two years ago. It's also pothole free.

In case you're wondering why this isn't being considered? Well, drive it. Come to your own conclusions.

This is why NREC was asked to stop Lewiston's incomplete proposal presented to the Niagara River Greenway. It's another attempt to circumvent the removal of the RMP.

We have provided this information to county Legislator John Ceretto, and to the Niagara University students who are attempting to undermine all efforts for RMP removal by promoting the trolley on the gorge parkway, which is illegal. (According to DOT laws, the only traffic allowed on the RMP are cars. No school or tour buses, no trucks, no bikes, no horses, no commercial traffic. Why aren't the state, and local police issuing tickets? I saw a semi on it the other day and tour and school buses.)

NU professor Angus has refused to share the trolley study with the public, despite the fact they presented it in two public forums. I asked for a copy, even offered to pay for copying it. He refused, claiming it belonged to the County. I had a county legislator make the request and was refused. I asked again, at the NCEMC meeting, and was told it belonged to the County as "they" hired him. I stated the county was in attendance (Mr. Ceretto and Mr. Jason Murgia.) Would he please give it to Mr. Murgia?

So, we now know: it belongs to Mr. Ceretto. NU still refuses to provide the public forum information, and Professor Angus and Mr. Ceretto refused to say they wouldn't send the trolley down the parkway. [Note in 5/14/09 Gazette, the NFTA omitted sending the FREE-but-supported-by-NF-bed-tax trolley down Main Street, Niagara Falls.]

We want to make it clear that NHP and their advocates support the trolley. We do not support the proposed Robert Moses Gorge Parkway route. The trolley could be and should be beneficial for the entire region,e very business district. We are on record, in both public forums, in newsprint, and television media as stating this. I attended both trolley presentations. NHP was presented in the NU power point as an obstruction to the trolley. A blatant fabrication and lie.

I also attended a meeting - Re-imagining Youngstown - and listened to key tourism people state that "Youngstown needs traffic on Main St." The NU students suggested the closing of the RMP and redirecting traffic down Youngstown's Main St. Ironic, no? Same meeting: How key people intend to support regionalism: "they were going to go to Niagara Falls and just take the tourists." and at a different meeting, last Saturday, I heard another, different key leader state: "Niagara Falls is no longer. It's gone." A recent letter writer to the Gazette, yet another leader, stated removing the RMP is "repugnant."

Webster defines "repugnant" as inconsistent, incompatible, and contradictory. Key people have made major decisions and statements about removing the RMP without ever looking at or considering the NHP proposal and their subsequent report. Please read the attached resolution. Some one, please, explain how the NHP proposal is "repugnant."

In light of these facts, whose guidance would you suggest?

In summary.
We, NHP and the NHP advocates, have systematically researched every opposition argument and successfully documented that four-lane removal of the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway from Niagara Falls to Lewiston,NY and the subsequent reclamation and restoration of natural landscapes not only includes the tri-nation area, (Seneca Nation, US, Canada) it embraces cultural celebrations (Underground Railroad and the Native Americans), it has value, a net worth in hundreds of thousands of jobs, and it can and will stimulate our economies, generating profit margins in the billions for Niagara Falls, for the county, for the western NY region.

We did our homework. We met with people and organizations. We listened and responded. We provided a well researched, articulate, economic and factual report.

Now, in the interest of fairness and for the regional greater good, the State needs to do the same and they need to include all the Stakeholders.

We ask for and trust we will receive the same complete, thoughtful and objective response backed with facts irrefutable figures."
.............
THE FOLLOWING IS THE ADVISORY BOARD'S RESOLUTION FOR PARKWAY REMOVAL:

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS: The lower Niagara River and the Niagara gorge is a natural wonder of international botanical, cultural, ecological, geological, and historical significance and remains a unique corridor of wilderness within our urban region; and

WHEREAS: The Robert Moses Gorge Parkway bypasses the entire Main Street Business District, Pine Avenue Business District, Niagara Street Business District, Third Street Business District, the Niagara Falls Downtown Business District, and the City’s core; and

WHEREAS: The Niagara Falls’ City Master Plan calls for miles of parkway removal and the Niagara Falls’ December, 2008 “A View of the Falls Final Report,” (page 51), USA Niagara has proposed the 6.5 mile section of the Robert Moses Parkway along the lower river gorge from Niagara Falls to Lewiston be removed with traffic channeled through the city’s center; and

WHEREAS: Eco-tourism is one of the fastest growing major trends in the U.S. and over 55 million U.S. travelers can be classified as eco-tourists who can be drawn to the area to create new economic opportunities; and

WHEREAS: Green Infrastructure Planning College Curriculum (page 10) notes there are economic reasons to protect “viewsheds” since they are important to attracting what are known as Heritage Tourists who come to see historic or culturally important sites spending, on average, two-and-a half times as much money than do other tourists; and

WHEREAS: The 32 member, Smart Growth Network’s (page 43-44) economic analysis concluded owners of small companies ranked recreation, parks, and open space as the highest priorities in choosing new locations for their businesses; and

WHEREAS: Niagara Falls and the Niagara River Region has been designated a National Heritage Area and removal of the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway is consistent with its goals; and

WHEREAS: Removal of the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway is consistent with the Niagara River Greenway Plan for the Region and New York State; and

WHEREAS: the New York Natural Heritage Program concludes the Niagara Gorge calcareous cliff community harboring some of the oldest trees (500-1,000 years old) in the state are threatened by adjacent upslope development (e.g. residential, agricultural, utility right-of-ways and roads) and its associated runoff and other habitat alteration (NYNHP Conservation Guide – Calcareous Cliff Community -page 2); and

WHEREAS: When land adjacent to a historic site is developed, it can mar or even destroy the integrity of the historic site and when these scenic vistas are lost, visitors may stop coming and residents will lose aspects of the landscape that they most value; and

WHEREAS: The people of our region as well as the people around the world should have an opportunity to experience this wonder in its natural and restored state, unmarked by destructive and unsightly development; and

WHEREAS: The Niagara Heritage Partnership’s online petition (www.niagaraheritage.org) and list of supporting organizations represents an informal marketing study of over 1 million people who support total gorge parkway removal; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the Niagara Falls Tourism Advisory Board strongly endorses the Main Street Business and Professional Association resolution for four lane removal of the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway from Niagara Falls, north, to the city line and the subsequent restoration of this land as a heritage natural area, as described herein with the supporting documents attached; and therefore, be it

RESOLVED that the Niagara Falls Tourism Advisory Board strongly endorses demapping the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway, remapping it as parkland, as the road is neither environmentally sound nor economically feasible, and notes that such closure is financially sound, more cost effective, a more sensible tourism strategy, and a timely economic stimulus for city tourism.


Representing: The Niagara Falls Tourism Advisory Board
745 Main Street, PO Box 69
Niagara Falls, NY 14302
716-286-4303

TORTURED LOGIC AND RIGHT-WING RHETORIC RUN RAMPANT

Michelle Bachman relieves our anxiety regarding global warming on the House floor when she informed us that carbon dioxide gas is not harmful because it is natural and comprises 3% of the atmosphere.

Dick Cheney will defend torture as being something other than torture because it works.

Sean Hannity will undergo waterboarding voluntarily to prove its not torture.

Glenn Beck (and other assorted right wing nutjobs) think all our various pecadillos at Gitmo and elsewhere were not torture because he “doesn’t think it is” and “it’s a matter of perception.” I guess when Beck looks up the definition of truth in the dictionary he reads “Glenn Beck’s opinion.” The philosophical problem of relativism never bothered him.

Republicans call for the resignation of Janet Napolitano because of a Homeland Security Report that presumably targets right wing extremists. They fail to extend their criticism to the Bush Administration which started the program of tracking extremists, which, by the by, included left wing extremists.

The examples of patently absurd and embarrassingly transparent illogic are legion.

This might all be for 'shits and giggles' if it weren't for the fact that much of the right-wing lunatic fringe, Conservative and Republican rhetoric decays into the absurdities of dualistic oppositions that preclude the possiblility of discourse, inquiry, dialogue and self-reflection. For this ideologically fanatical mindset self-criticism of America by Americans is equivalent to treason.

Voltaire is more relevant than ever: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

WHAT’S GOIN’ ON? Politics of Hyper-hyperbole, Demonization, Irrationality….

Given that there are enough people in this country who actually believe in Satan as evil incarnate, the Republican right wing can continue to try turning the most innocuous of Obama’s words and actions into demonic signs of impending tyranny, fascism, socialism and finally the arrival of the anti-Christ in the form of Obama himself.

Or is it because the Republican/conservative/lunatic-fringe actually have no remotely clear cut philosophy, platform or project which really serves America as a viable polity that they huff and puff with theatrically unconvincing feigned indignation and conviction? I simply can’t believe that anyone is convinced, for example, that Sean Hannity, who is far from stupid, really believes that Michelle Bachman is anything but a flake at best or literally delusional at worst, especially Hannity.

It is sad if not frightening however if in fact the real motive in all this fake-hysterical non-sense is to mobilize an irrational if not violent reaction by the pseudo-political hysterical fanatics who swallow the Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Beck demagoguery as objective truth. Maybe recent right-wing militant media is only life-support for the core loyalists, i.e., the fundamentalist Christian culturalists, but I do sometimes wonder if this could be more insidious than meets the eye. What exactly are the Republicans thinking if the best they can do is try to manufacture a mass ‘mob-mentality?’ And is this mostly media crowd of proto-authoritarians really anything remotely what we might authentically call “conservative” or “republican?”

Well, the “Republicans” who will in 2012 represent the real opposition to Obama have only one real interest to defend: the wealth and power of mega-capital which the recent 19 page Republican “budget” did its best to declare as its real interest. They did this by offering only one solution to the economic crisis: lower taxes on the rich.

Let’s get clear however, as Obama himself is proving, that there is no significant difference between the two major faux political parties in America. It’s not that Obama, unlike the Republicans, has a viable philosophy, platform or project that will transform America. He does not. He is proving to do nothing regarding the economic crisis except recycle the ‘bubble and bust’ boys but now with taxpayer money. Obama is the black Bush with a helping of Rooseveltian stop-gap measures. Obama is continuing the Iraq war and gearing up his own in Afghanistan. He apparently will continue to tap our phones and refuse to carry out the demands of justice by not prosecuting the Bush war crimes. Lastly, he seems to have little interest in restoring the integrity of the Constitution.

On the other hand, the opposition to Obama does not comprise a consensus let alone a coherent consensus. The vocal opposition to Obama that preponderates toward the lunatic fringe does not a party nor a “real opposition” make. Unfortunately the power of the centralist media and the force of mega–money will most likely again instumentalize, aggregate and mobilize the mass of Americans suffering the illusions propagated by the New Class. Again many will conceive of their situation as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. This mass authoritarian pseudo-consensus will continue to masquerade as the real opposition, the semblance of a political party and, unfortunately,as a meaningful, coherent, rational critique of our political situation as symbolized in Obama (which it is not).

But America is many blue moons away from any sober discourse and rational self-reflection on this time in our history. If rationality means anything amidst the irrationality of our time, it may well be an acknowledgement that we do belong to the same society and must all seek together to realize its universality as the maximization of social freedom. In doing so we must walk the narrow path between the Scylla of massification at the hands of the authoritarians and the Charybdis of atomization at the hands of the assorted cultural relativists and marketers of rugged, possessive individualism.

I'm a Father!!!!

Two beautiful baby boys born April 7 and doing great!!! Mother is doing well and father is a basket case. But what a blessing!

Bill O' Reilly and the Likes Thereof...

Bill O’Reilly is the “professional wrestling” of American political punditry.

Substitute Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Colter and a number of other right wing lunatic info-tainment wannabees and you have the same thing.

It’s a waste of time, of course, to try to analyze, debate, refute or deconstruct these parasites on journalism. The ‘pro wrestling’ analogy is sufficient explanation of it all. Just like ‘pro wrestling' they have and probably always will have their audience of uneducated and badly misled if not deluded myopic groupees who need to live in an overly simplified pseudo-reality.

For such sub-humans attempting to critically encounter the real is much too terrifying.

God bless and take pity upon them.

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.