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.

CULTURE OR POLICY: Policing the Back of the Bus in Wilson

Possibly Christian Peck, the new Public Information Officer in Niagara County is right, maybe prophetic. Quoth Peck: “I believe that Niagara County is going to be the next big thing in New York State.” Wow, was he right. We made ESPN national sports news. But not because we have some winning athletes at the Olympics or such. It seems we may have a sub-culture in Wilson's sports program that seems to have become culture or tradition. We may not be alone in that. Sports culture is very influential in America. But when sub-culture rises to the level of culture we may have a more serious problem than we realize. So while I wait to see whether Mr. Peck “informs” us as to the real meaning of the events in Wilson I have a few thoughts.

The legal truth of course will play out in court. The cultural question is the deeper issue and more difficult to answer. But it seems the school district of Wilson has already solved the problem with a new policy. Sadly, such administrative cover-ups may be at the heart of the problem. When culture and community may be in jeopardy, can we deal with the issue by passing a more directive policy such that “it doesn’t happen again?” Can we solve the problem by remanding it to the courts? Granted there are, at least, three issues here, one legal, one cultural/educational and one a policy issue. But each must be solved in its own domain and on its own terms.

So far the Wilson school district and probably most of the Wilson community are in denial. In the first place “hazing” as such is a degeneration of culture. It is a sign of decadence. To haze means to subject to harassment or ridicule. It means to submit to abusive or humiliating tricks, or, to persecute with meaningless, denigrating tasks or to embarrass by forcing to undergo demeaning actions. It is insulting to suggest that this is some “rite of passage” when nothing about being butt-fucked with a cell phone is uplifting, transformational or inclusional. It is perverse, violent and sub-human.

If this abuse had anything to do with a rite of passage, then adults would be actively and consciously involved. If it were a rite of passage, then all the youth would undergo the ritual. The infantile pseudo-adults who rationalize this perversion by saying that “boys will be boys,” or that it was simply a matter of “goosing” are the source of the problem. The parents and coaches who are undoubtedly part of that “herd mentality” are the source of the problem. They have no interest in ‘rites of passage’ or putting in the hard work that sees to it that all the boys make the journey from boyhood and adolescence to manhood. Apparently the coaches, during this reprensible incident, were too busy at the front of the bus somnambulistically doing nothing, except earning a paycheck they don’t deserve and should no longer receive. So this is absolutely nothing like a rite of passage. No adults were consciously involved and only the weaker boys were the victims of this “rite of passage.”

The fact that this act of pederasty occurred on more than one occasion means that this was a premeditated act in which some perverse predilection was at play. But this was not play in any socially acceptable sense. The boys who were victimized here have suffered pain and humiliation which will take much time and further suffering to overcome. The perpetrators of these actions were predators and the younger victims the prey. It’s as simple as that.

According to Hank Nuwer, author and critic of the epidemic of hazing practices in our schools, says that such “rites” are increasing by leaps and bounds just based on recent reporting of such incidents. As with rape against women, how many such incidents are not reported, we don’t know. We can be sure there are probably many more.

Part of the problem, especially as witnessed in the Wilson incident, is the refusal on the part of the schools to deal with issues of sexuality, homosexuality, virility and gender identity. As we experienced recently in Niagara County, the Newfane schools were dealing with parents protesting a novel called “Montana 1948,” a story which contained a characters description of rape. Quite a number of parents were up in arms about this “passage in the book” even though most had never read the whole book, were willing to criticize it wholly out of context and righteously demand that the book be substituted for or eliminated from the curriculum.

So it seems that for some in Niagara County it is ok to perform acts of rape, as long as we call it hazing, but not ok to try to understand the phenomenon of rape through literature and its concomitant educational experience. It’s ok for “boys to be boys” but not for any given boy to actually openly be homosexual. As Michael Mangus discovered in the North Tonawanda school district when his life was repeatedly threatened because he was openly homosexual, it is not ok to be homosexual in Niagara County. The North Tonawnanda school has been no more able to deal educationally and culturally with Michael Mangus’s concerns, safety and education, especially with respect to his homosexuality, than it seems the Wilson community will be willing to deal with the perversion of youth culture in their schools.

While these incidents in Wilson and North Tonawanda were “teachable moments” and opportunities for the communities to grow and mature, this has not happened at least in the case of North Tonawanda. By all appearances the quickly released “policy” to deal with hazing by sports teams on buses in Wilson is obviously an act of denial and an attempt at re-normalization. They probably will refuse to look at the history of this phenomenon and understand how such sub-human things can happen in the first place. As Hank Nuwer indicated when one takes on the “sports machine” and the mindless and immature parents who vicariously live through their ‘youthful heroes’ who apparently can do no wrong, it is an uphill battle.

The neanderthals, mistakenly called parents,adults and coaches, who insist that an act of “rape” was “all in fun” are hopelessly emotionally and ethically retarded. Ask the victims of this rape if it was fun for them. Ask the boys who sat on the bus in fear that they would be dragged to the back of the bus if it was fun for them. Ask the victims if not being able to share their fears and concerns with egregiously irresponsible coaches who didn’t have a clue what was happening was fun.

Actually, I would prefer to believe that the so-called “coaches” didn’t know it was going on because if they did know, I shudder to think how teachers who are also parents would understand, explain and justify psychological torment of younger and weaker boys such that a few of "the guys" can “have some fun.”

Heads should role in Wilson. But more importantly there needs to be a long and serious period of self-examination such that the question of sex, violence and the erotic core of human relationship can be dealt with openly, honestly and critically, no matter how painful, embarrassing or conflictual.

Legal decisions and policy revisions will in no way deal with the heart of this event. It is time for Wilson and the Niagara County educational system to grow up. This event was no exception that can be excused, ignored or rationalized. This is a symptom of a deep social perversion and hypocrisy. It is time to face the facts of the matter, especially the fact that the school system seems unwilling and possibly incapable of appreciating and dealing with the magnitude of such an event.

One last observation: After having read the Gazette article by April Amadon yesterday, I was left puzzled and even more deeply concerned. When, according to the article's account of the new Wilson "bus policy," the coaches were required to use “extreme discretion” when using cell phones on the bus, I truly hope this was not an attempt at humor. But even if it was not, what, pray tell, could it have meant? Possibly the article was not reported well. But it doesn’t seem that the coaches' use of cell phones is what was at issue. The Wilson administration had better wake up and smell the severity of the situation. It seems the nation is watching.

PIO Peck: Informing or Forming the Public?

We all know we have a new public information officer in Niagara County. Mr. Christian Peck, former Client Strategy Manager for Zogby International, landed the nearly $40, 000 position.

As I began to think about this new addition to the tax bill, I couldn’t really decide what the most important question was. Is it, “Do we really need this function here and why?” Or, is it, “What motivated this hiring at this particular time?”

Is this a progressive evolution from some prior state of lack of information, disinformation or misinformation? Is this partisan strategy? Institutional strategy? County Manager strategy, good will, inevitable bureaucratic fission? Or did someone just decide, “Hell, let’s spend some tax money for no good reason at all.”

As my title for this piece suggests, possibly we need to first ask the question whether the intent or effect of the PIO was or will be to “inform” the public or “form” the public? That is, are we now going to be privy to some information that we weren’t B.C., before Christian? Or, are we just going to now have a Legislature whose milieu now looks a little more like Washington, D.C.? Are we going to be given access to conversations, transcripts, events, phenomena that we didn’t have before? I've always been kind of intrigued to watch the publicist types dispense 'information' that becomes an 'explanation' which really explains aways the information that we need to understand.

That is, most importantly, is the public realm as a result now going to look something more like “the public sphere?” Are we going to be moving in a direction opposite to the de-politicization, disenfranchisement and disparaging degradation that we have been moving in this county for some considerable time? Is Mr. Peck going to provide, possibly miraculously, the value free, neutral, objective “facts” that we all love and cherish so very much (even though such a thing doesn’t exist, at least in the mythic sense we revere and worship). Is the public sphere now going to be restored to the domain of citizenship and participatory democracy?

What does Mr. Peck know, what skills does he possess or what exactly is he going to be doing such that we are now all going to be informed in a way that we weren’t before the $40,000 investment in the bureaucracy?

OR, is the consequence, if not the intent, of this newly created “position” to not ‘inform’ the public in some knowledge-producing, self-determination inducing way, but to in fact “form” the public that the Legislature wants and is conducive to the smooth, normalized functioning of the putative government? That is, are we about to enter into a media structure in which we will be given the “information” that they want us to hear? We all know what happens at the White House when well domesticated “journalists” throw pre-digested softball questions to a robotized “information officer” who handles all questions such that we leave believing that all is as well as it can be. Or, the best of all possible worlds. Of course we also leave with the feeling, if not conviction, that we really don’t know anything and never will. Probably Mr. Peck will avoid such a format. But let’s wait and see. If he does actually create such a media monster I just hope he is a few IQ points brighter than Dana “What’s the Bay of Pigs?” Perrino, and a little less ingratiating and sophistically slimy than Tony Snow. And if he does find some incriminating information as to the inside operations of the Legislature hopefully he’ll let us know a little sooner than Scott McClellan did.

Mr. Peck could be the new guard at the Iron Curtain of whitewashed “facts,” “problems,” “questions,” and “events.” Hopefully his position is not about shaping and conditioning an even more passive, indifferent and demoralized public. This could happen however even if it is not Mr. Peck’s conscious, evil intention to manufacture an Orwellian mass of zogby’s, oops, I mean zombies. The training and conditioning of a “publicist” as opposed to, let us say, a journalist, may have a way of conveying “information” after of course he has more of less consciously or unconsciously pre-selected facts, information, interview data, etc., that caters to the interest of a County Manager who thinks in terms of policy management, systems analysis, etc., a Legislature populated by possibly too many lawyers or businessmen/women who can’t imagine how government should be conceived and run as anything other than a business.

If Mr. Peck conceives of his first obligation to be to and in the interest of the public, a public which in fact empirically and functionally virtually does not exist, then his job becomes something much more than that of a publicist or client strategy manager. Is Mr. Peck going to “manage” information or access and interpret information in the interest of the people? Is he going to move and operate in the ethos of a dialogue, inquiry and discourse? Or is he going to arbitrarily, thoughtlessly and uncritically transmit whatever pap is thrown his way? Is he going to ask himself the question, “How shall I understand and interpret and present to the public "information" which will count as authentically political information?”

I hope, in short, that Mr. Peck is conscious of the fact that “facts” are created by prejudices, paradigms of knowledge, political interests, personal interests, professional self-understanding, situational pressures, etc. He cannot be neutral and he will have an effect in shaping the public consciousness if not the public sphere whether he tries to or knows it or not. Facts and information do not show up, ready made, prêt a porte, to be served up a la carte or possibly even as smorgasbord. Facts and information are not fashion. And, in fact, information is created over time in a sustained discourse, dialogue and inquiry. It involves history and, yes, even theory.

But at a less theoretical level, if the Legislature/County Manager want us to be more or better informed, why was their such a concerted effort to rid the county of one of the best sources of information we have had for the past 10 years, namely, The Tom Christy show, Legislative Journal on LCTV? Or why was there so little effort on the part of the Republicans to save the show even though their "commander and chief," Mr. Maziarz, always calls for public scrutiny and even participation of sorts? If we really want a diversity of sources of information, thus, assuring a fairness of perspective and interest-consideration, why would one of the most important sources of such “information,” (at least to some 70 people who gathered to protest Christy's summary purging from LCTV at the Coffee Shop in Lockport on a Legislative Tuesday last spring), be cancelled? The Christy show was a vigorous and rigorous opening to the goings-on in Niagara County. I guess they didn't like the "information" his show was generating.

Will Mr. Peck ask of the Legislature,their appointees and other County operatives the hard questions that Christy and his audience frequently asked? And if he does will he find himself again looking for work? Let’s hope, but stay vigilant, to see just how this plays out. But let’s not allow a new kind of local ‘spin doctor’ to set up practice in Niagara County. We have enough of that on the blogs and the new LCTV media mouthpiece for the Republican party and local town marketeers, namely, Access to Government (if its even still on the air. I don’t watch it anymore).

We need a populist publicist, or PIO for the people if you like, not a brainwashed or brain dead “professional” who believes he can smooth-talk the locals into believing we know all we need to know, that all is well and “in fact” it already is the best of all possible worlds. Let’s not allow Mr. Peck to smooze his way into believing that he has some talent of prestidigitation that bestows all the “news” worth knowing or the only perspective that gives a clear view on the truth.

Let’s also hope now that the Legislators don’t feel even less obligated to talk to the public than they already do, if that’s even possible.

But who knows? Maybe Mr. Peck can help the potential citizens of Niagara to actually begin to think like a community that has more in common than it realizes, a task that the Niagara County Comprehensive Plan project has failed to carry out.

SCAPEGOATING EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS AND CULTURAL FAILURE IN NEW YORK STATE

Given the anti-union ideology in America in general and the particularly virulent union busting, bad faith negotiation going on at NCCC between our local and a clearly anti-education, anti-faculty contempt on the part of an overpaid administration, I have a hard time being unsympathetic with NYSUT. I am also a member of NYSUT.

Moreover given the viciously anti-intellectual culture that I experience on a daily basis in the classroom and have as an intellectual experienced first hand throughout my life, it’s hard not to circle the wagons when teachers and education are pointed to as being the source of a failing business community in New York State.

Given the community’s expectations of teachers to overcome the failings of the family and the culture at large which respectively do little more than provide extensive infantilizing video entertainment at home and cretinizing amusement in movies, music, athletics and aesthetics, I would maintain that teachers earn every penny they get and more. Accountability in education cannot make up for that preparation for learning that comes in intelligent socialization for which the community is accountable but has failed essentially to provide. Moreover if parents would raise their children to be something more than merely tolerant of authority and educational institutions, then half of a teachers energy wouldn’t have to be put into maintaining a level of civility in which learning becomes possible. A teacher unfortunately has to do more than teach. He/she shouldn’t have to.

Even though it may be the case in recent history that increases in educational spending have not resulted in increased test scores and graduation rates, it certainly doesn’t follow that reducing teachers salaries, increasing class size and demanding more bureaucratized accountability is going to increase the quality of education. The problem with so much criticism of education is that the issues are always confused. The question regarding quality of teaching is logically independent from level of salary. The question of tenure is likewise independent of salary. Tenure is ultimately a question of protecting freedom of speech not protecting bad teachers. No one in the teaching profession wants to protect bad teaching. However the degree of incompetency in education is no higher than in medicine, business, the priesthood or government. When a heart surgeon fails noone argues to lower his pay. When businesses fail the government bails them out. When hundreds of priests abuse children they get sent to rest camps to chill out until things cool in the community. When governments commit blunder after blunder, they still get salary raises.

Here are my recommendations. If we are going to make cuts in education then let’s cut first the extreme excess of overpaid useless and officious administrators. Then let’s eliminate counselors. Educational institutions shouldn’t be responsible for mental health. Thirdly, let’s eliminate all the sports programs and coaches which are absolutely unnecessary. When I was a kid I would come home, eat dinner and go outside for three to four hours of running, sports competition, hunting, fishing, etc. I didn’t need an idiotic coach telling me how to climb a fucking rope in a gym. Why do kids need exorbitant sports programs which unfortunately are seen by many parents as the early training ground for professional athletes. As stupid as this is, it is the case. Elaborate football stadiums, equipments uniforms, coaches, assistant coaches, etc., etc., etc. Fourthly eliminate the required arts programs. As with athletics there could be voluntary programs, community sports, community bands, etc. Why does all this stuff have to occur in the schools. Let the parents pay for shoulder pads, helmets, arrogant obnoxious coaches and the rest of the crap. Schools are about learning to think, communicate, calculate and reflect. It is about creating a tradition of literacy, knowledge and critical self-examination. It’s not about providing enticing programs to “keep kids in school.”
If the kids don’t want to come to school for the right reasons, then as George Carlin used to say: “Fuck ‘em!” Let em go get jobs and see how they like that. Or join the army. There’s always more need for cannon fodder in America.

Please stop painting criticism of education and teaching with such a broad brush and thick paint that we can’t see what we’ve painted. And let’s please stop scapegoating education for the failures of a gluttonous consumerism, a cultural laziness that has created the well-known ugly American, you know, the one in your neighborhood who has the sign out front: I’m proud to be a redneck. Oh wait, that’s in my neighborhood.

But speaking of an overpaid excess of administrators there have been an abundance of articles recently about the bevy of bureaucrats populating our several hundred Authorities, the halls of the legislatures and I haven’t forgotten education. And if local communities didn’t have to spend a fortune in Washington to support our 776 military bases around the world and our unnecessary meaningless war in Iraq, possibly some of that tax money could stay in the communities where it’s needed. And if the 2/3 of all corporations in America who pay no taxes at all would start chipping in, possibly we would have some extra cash where it’s needed.

So the point is I’m quite sure education is not the culprit here. There is incompetency and waste and ignorance well enough to go around. Education and teaching remains your best investment. Education is the real thin blue line between civilization and barbarism.

POLITICS AND THE POLITICAL: The Catch-22 of Political Exploitation of "the Political"

Any reasonable discussion of "politics" needs to take into account “the political.” “Politics” is that use of power that takes place either among established or wanna-be professional politicians, or within the hallowed halls of established institutions or within the den of wolves of the political party machines. “The political,” on the other hand, as opposed to “politics” is a domain that includes or at least overlaps with politics. However ‘the political’ is a domain of activity of self-determination that happens essentially outside the three domains delineated above. It is a realm of protest, discontent, disillusionment, alternative social movements, one-issue groups and other “friend-enemy” groupings struggling to protect their rights, achieve their self-interest and promote conditions of the general good. Often when populists and the like refer to “the people” they are referring to this paradoxically de-politicized domain of “the political.” It remains “the political” insofar as it has not yet been irrevocably suppressed or exploited by the politicians, government bureaucracies or parties to further their own ends.

It is tempting to claim, but difficult to establish, that the realm of “politics,” strictly speaking according to the above definition, is the purview of a new social class, call it the New Class. The preponderance of socio-historical forces that have led to the crystallization of this class is multi-faceted and complex. To find an essence responsible for the emergence of such class forms of domination in the positive sense is at the very least extraordinarily difficult. In the negative sense it is easy enough to claim that humanity fails to trust the possibility of universalizing the highest human potentials for freedom, love, justice, trust, equality and creativity. Thus one “class” of people embody the end of human purpose and others embody the means. Claims to actually be striving for the realization of the Western Ideal of economic and political justice, with the unbridled abundant unfolding of the fullness of individual personality as the measure, ring as hollow, passionless ideological rationalizations for refusal to move beyond the modernist cul-de-sac of instituted privilege, power and instituted fear and violence as the essential control mechanism of societies.

The inability of Liberal democracy in its bureaucratic centralist form to credibly address serious human issues even in the most prosperous of political states, namely America, and its equal inability to avoid engaging in actions of state that qualify as anything better than irrational and at worst beyond the humanly ludicrous such that the worst qualifiers such as “abomination” remain infinitely inadequate to describe the virtual evil involved, leads us to conclude that the Liberal State is in permanent crisis. Its normalization of “crisis” by elevating it to the status of a sign for economic opportunity is pathologically symptomatic of this fact. Crisis also allows the political class to use such opportunities to further dilute if not dissolve social aggregations within the realm of “the political.” Then such “political” ferment within the domain of the above-defined “political sphere” can be used as a feedback mechanism informing the New Class as to what needs must be minimally met in order to stop further political developments, that is, further embodying of established, anti-systemic power. If the needs of the groupings of “the political realm” are sufficiently strong they can be bureaucratized as intra-institutional feedback mechanisms for corrections of the inherent irrationality of the system. This de-socializes and de-politicizes any such social movement, that is, any anti-systemic political force.

Since the power and privileged enclave of the New Class has been historically secured and the hegemony of politics is established within the purview of the structuration of the professionals, the politicans and the parties, the residue or remainder of the politically disillusioned, demoralized and disseminated social strata also forms a class. Let’s call it the Client Class. It is not as such self-determining because it fails to see and understand itself as a positive force and self-identified action group. It is a class as excrescence, politically illegitimate, and subject to police action as opposed to political redress. It is a class by default and as a consequence of the actions and purposes of the New Class.

We can see the consequences of this socio-historical reconfiguration of political forces in the machinations and manipulations of local ‘politicos.’ The Niagara Falls Reporter recently speculated that recent maneuverings of the new Mayor Mr. Paul Dyster might best be explained by his positioning himself for an eventual run for the House seat of Louise Slaughter should she retire. Whether these political musical chairs, if in fact they are being played, is in the long term best interests of Niagara Falls is at least highly questionable. The general point, however, is how often have we seen the interests of local communities being exploited by the personal interests of professional politicians vying for power or struggling to keep power or possibly merely a job. Hillary Clinton is a case in point. Moving to New York, making impossible promises to the desperate citizens of Western New York, all to position herself for a run for the Presidency. Senator Maziarz’s recent handling of the planned dumping of 3ooo truckloads of toxic waste, 75,000 tons of PCB’s and such in Western NY, culminated in a mailing sent to his constituents which we mail back and he sends in bulk to the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation. End of story. Will it work? We have to wait and see. But my question is how it could work if this kind of represention has already led to and relegated Niagara County to being the dumping ground for WWII atomic waste and presently the proposed dumping ground for the Eastern seaboard.

With such political action the people are apparently placated, the issue emerging from the realm of the “political” is now safely translated into the institutionalize “politics” of the state agencies and everything returns to normal. If I were a betting man I would put my money on seeing hundreds of truckloads of toxic waste continuing to pour into Niagara keeping much of its land the Elliotonian “wasteland” it already is. This is the result of a de-politicized populace whose political concerns have no force because of no authentic and ethically mandated representation. It is only a state of normalization, in the sense of “politics” as usual, to keep the conversation going with bureaucratic exchanges within the formularized language of the institutions, with token mailings which some novice intern may peruse momentarily and summarily trash and with news stories that keep the journalists happy and the pundits and bloggers with pulp for further pontificating.

The Catch-22 is that to become “political” within the horizon of the Client Class is to experience the energy of the issues, the motivation for real problem solving and the proper self-understanding necessary for socially concerted action, exploited and instrumentalized for the purposes of keeping the New Class in power and the politicians legitimized with token action and enticing but empty promises and useless discussions whether in the community or in the Legislatures. To become political is to experience the frustration of real issues, problems and concerns becoming the talking points to power hungry politicans and power-lacking wanna-be’s who want to be appear legitimate, that is, not a threat to the hegemony of politics in the State. To become a politician within the domain of structured politics is to lose interest in the problems of the Client Class. To remain authentically interested is to lose the required power to play the game of New Class politics.

If Senator Maziarz should actually act on my suggestion which is to lead his admiring constituency in a real street protest, even possibly physically blocking trucks from coming into Niagara County, possibly the only thing that will stop them, he would become a laughing stock of the “political class,” the so-called “New Class.” And besides he might get his suit dirty, both literally and metaphorically speaking. Furthermore why should he or anyother New Class politician take such chances as long as rationing 'political welfare' from his "member items" stash can keep the constituency in the pasture, even though that's nothing more than letting them graze on some hay that was originally their own grass harvested from their own pasture. Ain't it great to be so thoroughly domesticated, really being a lion but believing you're a lamb?

That part of “the political” sphere which cannot be bought off, sublimated in bureaucratic processing and deliberating or disenfranchised through the expropriation of resources such as the power of the power plant in the Falls, income from the state parks and tax assessments through the nationalization of lands in the case of Indians in Niagara Falls or leasing of public lands to private corporations, THAT PART can be repressed by denigrating and vilifying the efforts of legitimate political action groups and individuals as marginal malcontents of one sort or another, “tree-huggers,” “bleeding heart liberals,” “radicals,” “unpatriotic subversives,” “cults,” etc. Illegitimate actions such as the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building though terroristic in nature was a political action. But rather than describe it truthfully the national media sensationalized the event and reduced it to the acts of a madman, a young man disgruntled and deranged but certainly not someone with a legitimate political grievance.

The right to empowerment of the “the political” sphere of the Client Class can be further exploited by denaturing public education, especially stripping it of any meaningful civic education which has any chance of democratizing the people and fulfilling upon the American political ideal.

So the astute New Class politician can play upon this catch-22. He can go to the people and promise action in their interest. But he can then use the excuse of an obstructive government to explain away his failure to help his community. But this “government” no longer exists to further their interests. The truth of the matter is that the “government” is no longer positioned or aligned to help the communities as such. They are not inexplicably obstructive with every real and good intention to help. They are structurally incapable of helping and therefore objectively intentionally obstructive. To address the issues of “the political” sphere is to dismantle the structures and mechanisms of state and class power. It is to indict “politics” as usual and bring the game of systematic political hegemony, political exploitation of “the political” and domination of democracy officially into question.

SOCIALISM FOR THE HYPOCRITICAL FREE MARKETERS

Get ready, Sports Fans! This is the shortest piece I’ll ever write, I think.

State money for private investment in Niagara Falls Hotels spells something that sounds like SOCIALISM!!!!!!

Even Senator Maziarz is pissed! Go figure. Oh, wait that does make sense. It's not his people.

So all you propagandizing capitalists out there, please don’t bullshit anymore about the virtues of the private sector. You just love the people to take the risks for you don’t you. Whether it’s money or bodies, the poor and middle class are still taking it where the sun don’t shine. And by the way, did Bush’s daughters volunteer for that patriotic war in Iraq yet. Or are they waiting for the Iran fiasco to start?

And please stop trashing public money for public education. It makes no sense. Unless of course you need more of that education money for private investments.

By the way do we get to distribute the profits from that public money invested in private ventures with the public? Or do we have to wait for trickle-down dividends?

Gee, I just realized that for the hotel investors using state money I guess it is a "free market" after all. Ain't capitalism great when your lackeys are in office.

PENNYWISE POUND FOOLISH POLITICS

Kevin Gaughan is certainly to be applauded for his efforts to improve local government. But as I wrote below in the “GOVERNMENT SIZE” piece, the problem is not merely and simply quantitative. It’s not just a matter of how big in number government is. At least if there was some convincing argument that less government officials is qualitatively better government process, then Gaughan’s efforts may be more justifiable. If this is just about saving money, I don’t feel this is a sufficiently strong reason for “downsizing.” It simply plays into the ideological hands of the power elite who want to reduce all measures of value and reasonableness to the bottom line and all discussion to the mystifying language of economics.

Also, obviously I think, in Niagara’s situation it is generally a good idea to consider tax reduction across the board. But that’s just the beginning of understanding what’s going on. I don’t pretend to understand all that’s going on in the County let alone the Country, but certainly oversimplifying doesn’t help the situation. As Einstein once said: “Everything should be understood as simple as it is but no simpler.”

Gaughan is wise to resist the attempts of the Golisano money-machine to instrumentalize his grass-roots efforts misguided though it may be. Gaughan seems to be nobody’s tool. Of course that may not stop Golisano from turning the issue into his tool if not Gaughan himself. And it would be a waste of anybody’s time to try to stop him. All we need to do is see through such transparently parasitic efforts.

I still feel that, on the positive side, the unconscious tendency to move toward increasing the size of government is a distorted effort to acquire authentic and empowered representation. The logic of progressive increase in the size of government could be driven by the desire to move toward that kind of populist communitarian self-representation in which pure democracy becomes possible. This would empower us locally and make it possible to raise the issue of re-federalizing the country.

At least in our mass democracy, pure democracy is not possible. Pure democracy may be possible in a mass democracy. I just can’t imagine what such a mass democracy would look like, at least one that worked.

So this whole “downsizing” craze is pennywise in that it may save some tax money but pound foolish in that it distorts the issue and prevents a meaningful discussion and real solution to the degradation of democracy in America.

IT AIN'T MY JOB

On the Scott Leffler show this morning, a lady called in inquiring about the progress on the "NO TOXIC WASTE IN NIAGARA COUNTY" signs for our front yards. Of course, as far as I know there is no such "progress." Now we know why thanks to her call. Scott, I believe, suggested that she might do it. The caller responded,"That's not my job!"

I can see the wry uncomfortable smile on her face right now. She should be uncomfortable because I have to ask her whose "job" it is.

Let's just get to the point. It's no one's "job." Poltical action is a responsibility and an initiative. Unfortunately most people in Niagara County seem to have no such sense of political responsibility or inititiative let alone inspiration or self-determination. The caller seems to believe that those whose "job" it is are going to take care of her and her interests. I guess she must believe it's George Maziarz's or Francine DelMonte's "job" to do it. Well, don't hold your breath Sports Fans. You will die of asphyxiation.

If the caller was speaking figuratively and not literally, then she could only have meant that it's not her responsibility to take such action, apparently even if it's only making a sign herself and putting it in her own front yard. So it's not her job and it's not her responsibility.

Maziarz has taken the inititative to send cardboard protest letters to his constituents which is good and commendable but probably not enough. He needs the overt, explicit and physical support of his constituency. If this caller is any example, he doesn't have it and it's partly his responsiblity that he doesn't.

So this caller exemplifies and partly explains our political situation today in this dying democracy. Most think 'it ain't there job' to do it. Screw it! "I don't have the time, money, energy" I can hear them saying now. Politics becomes somebody's "job" for which we pay too much money and get no significant results except to lose our sense of democracy, our sovereign identity and our national purpose.

Americans on the whole have become passivized, pacified, demoralized, commodified, infantilized and cretinized. So it's not surprising they think somebody is actually going to take care of them. They still think the world owes them political freedom and responsiveness. Democracy is a full-time "job" for all of us if we want to get our "freedom" paycheck.

I hope this lady gets the wake-up call and makes the god damn sign. Maybe others will follow her lead. That's how it happens. Witness the movie Ghandi with respect to how he started the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

After all if there hadn't been the minimal stir and and discontent that there has been regarding the 3000 truckloads of waste slated to come here, Maziarz would never have mailed out those protest letters to us. I wonder what it would take to get him to lead a Martin Luther King style march to stop the trucks?

GOVERNMENT'S SIZE: More or Less or Better or What?

Before the last Niagara County Legislature meeting I had a good conversation with Rosemary Warren, one of our more responsible citizens in Niagara County, about the number of Legislators we have. Of course the issue was whether we should have less or maybe even more representatives. Mary thought less and I thought it wasn’t a matter of more or less. As my friend, the very censorial Hobbes over at NiagaraTimes, raises the question: “is downsizing good for democracy” or not? Let’s note here and now that we shouldn’t start this discussion with concepts or models taken from the world of business. Proper representation is neither a downsizing nor upsizing problem. Also more or less government and more or less democracy are two different though not necessarily unrelated problems.

As I suggested to Rosemary, the question isn’t ultimately quantitative in nature but qualitative. It’s much more a matter of “kind” than “amount.” If one favored dictatorship, that would certainly decide clearly the number of representatives. If one opted for local pure democracy as one’s system of government, then we would all be representatives. Here we should keep in mind that democracy doesn’t have to mean American mass moronic democracy. A form of pure democracy is still possible if authentic communities were reconstituted and a true Federalism were restored.

A Liberal Democratic republican form of government would require various numbers of representatives, the logical justification of each depending on various things such as whether we first are talking about local, state or national representation. Of course, then, either size of population or number and size of authentic communities does obviously have something to do with the size of representation.

Ultimately, “how much representation” first depends on how many concretely different communities or populations must be represented. When constituencies are divided relatively arbitrarily and abstractly according to legally constituted geographical districts, then representation is reduced to a more or less purely quantitative problem. This problem is probably not logically solvable, that is, as a quantitative problem. Ultimately, isn’t “representation” a matter of having both the right people and the right number of people to have the concerns and interests of a specific body of citizens fairly and justly represented. I think we can see this isn’t purely, or, at least only, a quantitative problem.

Kevin Gaughan’s analysis published a few weeks back in ArtVoice, is flawed at several levels. However, something interesting does arise out of his observations. We need not get obsessed as to his vulnerability to the machinations of our local little Hitlers and Machiavellis. In short he finds in his survey “tour of governments” in parts of Western NY that even though we dwindle in population and decrease in wealth and power, that is are disenfranchised economically and politically, the number of representatives increases. Of course the cost of such increase also increases.

But aside from the distraction of cost, why the supposed disproportionate increase in representation? Doesn’t it have to do with the fact that disenfranchisement and disempowerment is seen as possibly being overcome if we have more voices speaking to hierarchically removed power? After all 1 Maziarz and 1 DelMonte so far has not solved our economic difficulties nor our pollution issues? Do we need more of them or less? Apparently 1 Schumer and 1 Clinton has brought little action to deal with the same. Don’t we need more Schumers and Clintons? Less Schumers and Clintons?

Another dimension to the explanation of the proliferation of officials in WNY may be the unwillingness or inability of people to come together as a community and speak as 1 for change. They remain deluded, especially given the obstacles of bureaucratic hierarchical indifference and unresponsiveness not to mention the chasm of a class society, that more specially designated “officials” will get the job done for them. Of course they don’t. And the people can’t come together as a community because they are not communities. They are simply collections of narcissistically self-absorbed and fairly cretinized individuals coagulated in neighborhoods that aren’t always that neighborly and rarely sufficiently political. They remain misinformed, politically uneducated and culturally disengaged form the concretely continuous process of real political and governmental engagement.

So we do need to begin the process of questioning and creating what we think community and thus authentic self-determination and representation would be. We also need democratically educated and politically enculturated individuals who can feel and think beyond the walls of desires which are not even their own but those of the culture industry and commodified consciousness. Lastly, until government is genuinely re-Federalized such that political community can once again re-emerge according to the philosophy of our more astute founding fathers, “we the people” will continue to be conned and controlled by the smoke and mirrors show of the capitalist State and its desire to constitutively regulate every aspect of life into which they can insert another bureaucrat, Authority, police agency or lawyer.

The question of how much and which government or democracy must turn the clichés of “all politics is local politics” and “what can be done at home must and should be done at home” into the organizing principles and propadeutics that they really are.

An Open Letter to Local Politicians

Local government needs badly to rethink its structure. Despite our living in an age of ubiquitous communication why are our so-called "representatives" so conspicuously absent to the mass majority of the population. Unless local citizens make it a point of personal pride or even identity, it's unlikely the average citizen will usually know what or who their representatives are let alone what they are up to. It is less likely that they will know what the issues are. It is certain that less than a handful will ever think about what the issues should be.

Just as likely in this age of individualism the rare well-informed citizen will surely blame the uninformed for their supposed ignorance. Aside from the irony if not contradiction between a world characterizable on the one hand as an age of information and on the other as an age of individualism, it is nevertheless unjustifiable to place sole blame for the disconnect between politician and the people on the individual. Yet it seems to make sense to blame the individual when the only seemingly real agent of action is this very individual. It moreover seems to be even more justifiable when the politician's responsibiliity is covered by announcing his/her actions/activities as necessary information. When the social context and agency of the community is non-existent, except in Sociology class, only the abstract, isolated "individual" can act. And he/she essentially and on the whole does not. At best he/she reacts and behaves within the mechanisms of mass propaganda and ritual legitimation of the status quo of the war-mongering power elite of financiers and New Class functionaries.

Citzenship is a burden, a hobby for bloggers, a distasteful and dispensable bore, an anachronism, an ineffective and meaningless parade of promises. Politicians are functions of a state apparatus whose hierarchical power structure necessitates that they play the game of positioning, prostrating appropriately and of course profusely promising, promising, promising. It is a top-down game that preserves an upside down mechanism of power and prosperity.

Thus the separation and structurally alienating divide between people and the politicians. Thus the justifiability of beginning to admit and discuss this chasm as the realized class structure that America refuses to admit exists. Call this virtual cabal of bureaucratic-technocratic elite of managers, administrators, specialists, professionals, professors and communicators the New Class. Call the rest of us, the politically disenfranchised and therefore disempowered mass of "individualsts," the Client Class. The latter is a mass alienatied class of consumers, cheap labor, exchangeable servants and easily mobilzable, readily expendable soldiers. The Clent Class becomes increasingly intellectually illiterate, historically ignorant and disengaged and spiritually impoverished. The New Class becomes more technically and linguistically alienated from the people and more politically unaccountable.

The dilemma that exists today, then, is one in which the local arena of possible issues and initiatives becomes the locus of the political, of real politics and action. The local politician can keep his/her ear permanently turned toward the state capitol and Washington. Or they can turn to the potential community of civic reconstitution if not revolution. The people can require that the local politican listen or they turn to themselves and reconfigure real relations of community, culture and humanly productive political power.

Back and Gone Again

I just got back from vacation and have gone on another short one!

Hey, who's plagiarizing me at Niagara Times blog??? Some Anonymous, as you might have figured, cut and pasted a piece of my writing in one of Hobbes posts. For shame, for shame.

It seemed in good faith, if that makes sense. So I forgive you.

See you all in a few days.

Plasma gaseification? Sounds like the answer.