Is I Crazy? You Decide.

Tags

economics, evolution, humans, society

Oh, boy have I unleashed the dogs of war. Offering up such a juicy steak to those incredibly warped individuals who don’t think that I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. Handing them an eviscerating tool of great power–is I crazy? Twice?

Trust me, letting them think they have me at their mercy is just my way of inviting them into my lab-bore-a-tory said the spider to the fly.

Is I?

As a child, I laid upon my bed and wondered was anyone in the world like me? I feared not, and in the era of peer-pressured sameness that we all strove to reach, I quivered. Was I normal?

Now, at the threshold of agedness ( I shall never be a “senior” or and old person I swear), I lay upon my bed and wonder if there is anyone in the world like me. I fear so, and in an era of eccentricism, I quiver. I don’t wanna be normal.

I think my prayers are answered. Were answered, or were ignored but I was just lucky that my prayers were actually the way things are? One of the above.

I’m a nut. I believe in all sorts of things that you no doubt think foolish.

For instance.

I wrote about this before so bear with me. In college I took a logic course and was asked to write a response to this statement: Would you be willing to pay for the support of an individual whose only requirement was to read? In other words can I fathom a world in which not everyone must work for a living?

Buckminster Fuller suggested an answer:

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

See,  I went to college. But not to think. I went to earn a living. And I did very well, thank you very much. I set myself up for a gentle life, not working too hard, in a reasonably decent setting. I had tons of friends and colleagues. I made good money and enjoyed the perks of professional work. I needed to make a living and by all standards, I succeeded rather well.

But that’s not what should be or could be. Too many good minds are wasted in menial work of all sorts, professional and otherwise. These minds might be better used if we just let them think.

I think it would all sort itself out over time. I mean if you aren’t a good thinker, then thinking would become both boring and well, mindless at some point. One would ache to get one’s hand on a piece of wood or a pie crust. And one would move to that. We would do what pleases us and revs up our juices. It would be sane.

Trouble is, most of us aren’t willing to pay for others to do what seems pointless to many. But thinkers think about things and thinking about things leads to ideas and ideas lead to schematics and drawings and experiments and prototypes, and, well you see where this goes.

New stuff is discovered and people who work with their hands for pleasure make this new stuff. And thinkers and paper pushers and bus drivers enjoy this new thing, which makes their lives a wisp easier or more pleasant. What’s not to like here?

Still, tight asses will complain. They will suspiciously stare at the thinker and want proof that their money is being well spent. No lobster sir, be satisfied with bean soup you grifter! Yes, they will not trust the process, because they are all about making sure they ain’t bein’ ripped off.

Hey nothing is perfect. Somebody is always scammin’ the system. Hell people go to great lengths to set themselves up as pillars of the community when they are stealin’ ya blind. Humans are very human no matter the system.

But if you are of the mind that humans are in a process of evolving, then shouldn’t we pursue avenues that point to evolution in our THINKING as well as in our technology? Shouldn’t we be nobler and kinder in our systems of governing, pushing us mere mortals to be better than we think we can be?

Didn’t Jefferson and Adams and Madison and all the rest focus on the horizon and see a future better than any before them? Didn’t they offer us the messiness of democracy because we would screw it up surely as humans, but we would have something worth struggling for rather than languishing in the monarch-subject model?

Why do we keep beating up on the defenseless? Look, a cursory examination of physical types of human being proves rather clearly that genetics is a tricky and sometimes comical thing. I’ve seen people put together in what looked to be no more than random cutting and pasting of various limbs. Head too small, body growing outward as one descended, legs like stumps without the merest reference to ankles?

If some physical jokes pass as the range of genetic drift allowed within the species,why is it so hard to realize that not everyone has inside their cranium the makings of even a good basic biologist? Some people are dumb. Some are thoughtless. Some are unable to walk and chew gum, or see beyond their own nose.  Why must they be conformed to some job to which they are ill-suited in almost all respects?

Let them find their way, and then make up the slack. Don’t they have enough to contend with? What must it be like to realize that one got shortchanged in the brain functioning department? To think but not to reason well? Ah, that’s the rub.

Out of common decency let these people be! A decent home, nutritious food, medical care, education based on interests. Do this to our less fortunate and embrace them as providing a meaningful richness to the fabric of humanity and move on.

Stop the whine. Yes, uber conservative with your compartmentalized brain and your rigid sense of right and wrong, I’m talking to you. You have worked all your life. Nobody gave you a thing (I know you believe this although it’s far from true). You can’t retire because you don’t have enough of whatever it is you think essential.

But that is not the only model of living available. There is nothing to be ashamed of if for any reason you can’t hoe the row established by the not so bright but physically strong average human. There is a place for us all, and if we do it right, we will be doubly enriched by the offerings of all these oddball humans who contribute to the human family diversity.

Sometimes people just make damn bad decisions. Should they pay forever? Or can you cut them some slack and help them exist in what’s left of their lives? Can ya?

That damn Protestant work ethic and those bootstraps will be small comfort in the grave. It did not serve you especially well quite honestly. There are other ways.

It’s a little bit socialistic I guess. And a bit psychosis.

That is. . . .

We participate in SoCS.

Stuff You Might Want to Take A Look At

Tags

economics, enthicity, GOP, homelands, Humor, nationalism, Politics, right-wing Christianists, teabaggers

The Contrarian pointed me at this. One article led to another, and boy will you be shocked to realize that people (intelligent political pundits) were talking about the craziness of the Right way back in the 60’s.

This post may become a weekly thing that just alerts you to stuff I think you may find enlightening or interesting, beyond the usual outrage at idiots that we read about seemingly every day.

So peruse the list and see if anything interests you.

First on the list is a two-parter from the Salon and Kim Messick. Part one is entitled, The Tea Party Paranoid Aesthetic and explores the psychological underpinnings of the movement. If you get headachy every time you try to discern some logic to their madness, then this may help you understand. Warning: one must delve in the mad mad world of Glenn Beck to understand these folks.

While you are at it, you’ll want to slip back to read Richard Hofstadter’s perhaps most brilliant piece, The Paranoid Style of American Politics. This was written in 1963 and is now available in PDF format. Does this sound familiar to you?

The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are

conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true… The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a ‘vast’ or ‘gigantic’ conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is… an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms— he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.

Freaky isn’t it? Messick applies this theme to the Tea Party rather effectively. See if you don’t agree.

The second part of Messick’s essay involves how the Tea Party came to gain control of what had heretofore been a responsible political party of multiple factions and interests, one that understood the necessity of compromise. It is entitled The Conservative Crackup: How the Republican Party Lost It’s Mind.

To my mind at least, this explains the political battlefield we now inhabit better than anything else I’ve read. I suggest you will learn a very good deal about the Republican Party should you dive into these articles.

♦

If you are still wandering in the desert when it comes to understanding the economics of “free markets” and the mantra of the Far Right, which is burn baby burn, all the “social welfare” institutions to the ground (SNAP is just a start), then there is no better place to go than our very own Larry over at Woodgate’s View.  He has a great post up called The Croupiers of Libertarian Free Markets that is anything but dull and surely will educate you on what’s what. Larry has a unique ability to research well, and write well. In combination, well, just go at take a look at it.

♦

There is a piece called Homelands over at Aeon that is a bit heavy for our normal fodder, but actually speaks to a subject not alluded to in its writing. The rather absurd (to my mind at least) idea of nationalistic boundaries is explored. How they come about is simply a matter of historical fact, why we continue with them is fraught with political intrigue. But what happens, (as it so often does) when old lines, or new ones for that matter, make little sense given the ethnic composition of the inhabitants?

I’d suggest much bad happens. What is not alluded to is how the (largely) British muddling in the Middle East has resulted in a hodgepodge of “states” most of them making little or no sense. And guess what? No where is there more upheaval than here, and much of that upheaval is due to unnatural boundaries, controlled by minority ethnic dictators.

No answers of course, but the first step is understanding the problem is it not?

♦

And now, just because I love ya, something to tickle the funny bone. Linked from Salon who picked it up from AlterNet, this essay lists the 10 Weirdest Right-Wing Christian Conspiracy theories. I am, as you know, in a love/hate relationship with fundamentalist Christians. I want to tear my hear out at their breathtaking stupidity and lock them away from any voting booth, while at the same time, I see them as little children muddling along in an adult world as cute little simplistic munchkins who need to be petting on the head often.

Anyway, these are a hoot.

Oh How Many Times Must We Repeat IT?

Tags

economics, economy, GOP, Keynes

Sorry, I’ve been away for so long. That person writing all that stuff about Ford, and food, and happiness? Oh she is just a lonely soul looking for a place to land.

No seriously, I am getting dangerously close to violating the first law of blogging–keep to your topic! This blog (as you know I have others) is devoted to politics first and foremost, though I occasionally slip off into something tangential. The Ford stuff is arguably that and belongs here, but some of the rest?– just a necessary break from the ongoing “they are so stupids out there,  I might pull the last hair from my head” diatribe that engages me so much of the time.

In other words, I just got bored with the same crap!

So in face of two facts, one that the economy constricted the last quarter, and that the jobs numbers are pretty good and all the internals seem good but for the constriction of government spending last quarter, I got the usual jabs from the Right–how’s that Obama economy doing now? Our economy CONSTRICTED, the sky is falling! Well, not quite. Actually it rather proves the point that people like Krugman make–cutting spending will send us back into recession.

Now, I am not an economist, but I’m reading a lot of stuff, and I’m trying to understand all this it. Let’s look at things in simplistic terms, but in illustrative terms still. Keynesian economics basically call for government intervention to stave off bumps in the economic road. When there is a slow down, the government pumps in money (stimulus) and cuts taxes. When the economy is booming, it doesn’t and it raises taxes. It tries to keep things going smoothly.

A recession is basically caused (in its simplest terms) when some people stop spending money and start holding on to it. Since they are not spending, others have less income, forcing them to buy less as well. The economy slows, and so on. So spending money is the traditional way out of a recession.

Now let’s look at the Republican model.

1. Republicans want to cut taxes, which admittedly fits into the Keynesian model.
2. They want to cut regulations to free businesses to operate more cheaply presumably (it always comes down to money) without having to meet standards imposed upon them not by market demand but by government.
3. They want spending cut especially as to social programs which they consider a waste of money, giving people the idea that they don’t have to get a job ( support business interests) and EARN their own money. But spending cuts shouldn’t occur in the military budget (which supports all those military supply business interests).

Let’s look at the Republican model in action:

In 2001, Bush sponsored a huge tax cut. Everybody got a tax break but the wealthy got the biggest one by far. This is in keeping with their mantra or should we say little Grover’s mantra that we cut and cut and cut taxes so there is less and less revenue for government because government should be small.

The Bush tax cuts remained in place untouched for over eleven years. Okay.

Secondly, Republicans wanted business deregulated. And so it was to a pretty large extent.

They were in place for some seven years at least.

Spending? Well Bush didn’t exactly cut spending. In fact he increased it to gargantuan levels with two wars and a drug prescription bill. And he chose not to pay for any of it, instead he borrowed the money, creating deficits unlike any yet seen in America. You see the laws were passed, meaning Congress authorized  the wars and the drug bill. But given that the coffers were pretty empty given those low taxes, Bush borrowed money to service the three things.

Okay. Where did that all get us?

Tax cuts didn’t result in any job creation as Republicans claim it will. In fact millions of jobs were lost. .

Deregulation didn’t result in an economic boom. No, instead the unbridled greed and criminality of Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy and send us into a recession that nearly rivaled that of the Great Depression.

And of course spending without paying for anything, sent deficits through the roof.

That is after 8 and in some cases nearly 12 years of Republican policies.

Slowly the economy is recovering, due in part to stimulus, but the deficit continues to grow, albeit at a much much slower rate. In the fourth quarter, the ONLY segment of the economy that shrunk was government spending. Which as the Republicans tell us, should have made the economy sing. Instead it caused it to shrink. Before you tell me that Keynesian economics says we should cut taxes during a recession, they are already so low an ant couldn’t have trouble jumping over them.

You tell me. What is the better plan?

Europe has been dealing with a recession and out of control deficits. We are told that if we don’t stop spending, we are going to fall into their predicament.

What has been the European solution? Severe austerity–in other words, deep spending cuts. Exactly what the Republicans claim will SOLVE the problem. It hasn’t. It won’t. That is why Obama continues to push Europe to SPEND money instead of making further cuts. But so far they are still trying to cut their way out. Don’t look for the Cameron government to make it through another election.

That is the way I see it. Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong, but please in doing so, do show me exactly how I am missing the point, and show me the examples of why you are right. Otherwise, lets get off this silly mantra of “we have a spending problem.” No we don’t. We have exactly the opposite.

Related articles

• Robert Creamer: The Verdict Is In: GOP Austerity Proposals Are Toxic for Our Economy (huffingtonpost.com)
• Economy Contracts For 1st Time Since 2009 as Obama Cuts Military Spending (atlantablackstar.com)
• Republican Austerity Cultists Chant Their Spending Cuts Mantra As They Sink the Economy (politicususa.com)
• Charts: What if Obama spent like Reagan? (washingtonpost.com)
• Why Are Republicans Trying To Cut Us Back Into Recession? (ourfuture.org)
• What The GOP Doesn’t Want You To Know About The Deficit (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Paul Krugman: ‘Just Wrong’ To Say Government Spending Is Suddenly Surging (politicalcrazyness.tumblr.com)
• Paul Krugman: Austerity Is Not the Answer (motherjones.com)
• We Need More Government Spending Right Now, Not Less… (delong.typepad.com)

Mitt-Wit’s Bain Problem

Tags

Bain, economics, Election 2012, Politics, Romney

Although our boy Willard avoids Mormon faith like the bubonic plague, I’m pretty sure that lying is still a sin in the “Mormon bible. And by every account I’ve come across, Mitty takes his faith seriously.

But apparently he doesn’t take it THAT seriously. Just serious enough to attempt to placate the religious masses with things like claiming that the US Constitution was “probably inspired,” and other self-serving chatter like that.

Willard has a case of the lying when it comes to just about anything that he thinks will  work to get him elected president of these here United States  of Merika. And what he lies most about is how he’s this wonderfully brilliant economic business genius.

And then he assures us that once at helm of the ship of state, he will fix all our financial woes. Of course President Obama doesn’t believe in free enterprise at all according to  Mitt-Wit, he hates it in fact. On the other hand, Bain CEO the Mitt-meister, knows that business is just a case of strong-willed smart men willing to bet their fortunes on business schemes that, should they fail, will leave them paupers. That’s the difference between them and us–guts. We prefer to stay attached to our safe and boring little pencil-pushin’, lathe-operatin’ jobs for that “steady” paycheck, while brave souls like Mitty risk it all on their business acumen.

Naw, not really.

Actually they have scammed the game of free enterprise so that it never goes tilt.

Bain doesn’t go into a failing business, pour tons of cash in, restructure and so for and then sit and hope for the best. Far from it.

Basically what Bain does it access the money on hand of the company in question, take half of it, assess another quarter of the remainder for “professional expenses” and then restructure what is left and “hope for the best.” If it works, well that is nice. If it doesn’t, well, Bain has it’s profit, and the company is sold off in bits and pieces, Bain taking the bulk no doubt for its expenses, and paying off creditors if  there is anything left.

This is what, in my opinion the Obama team is missing. They keep attacking Bain as if it is careless of the companies it takes on to “fix”, and even callous about the workers there. It is not. It’s just that they rig the game to win regardless. That’s not capitalism. That’s a scam, that it seems to me, leaves the crippled company in greater danger of going under than it would have if it had simply hired a new team to run things,  and paid them the normal salary.

In today’s game of high-stakes venture capitalism, true capitalism is not being played. The playing field is anything but level. The rich have structured it so that succeed or fail, the rich get paid no matter what. It’s the way the CEO business is played these days–you don’t have to show a profit as CEO–your golden parachute is there cushion your fall regardless.

This is what Mitt-face is promoting–a corporatocracy where the “right” people control the wealth , establish what you “need” in salary, and maintain a stable workforce, one that has little or no recourse, except another job which is basically the same.

The Obama team needs to attack the very premise that what Romney and company do, remotely resembles free enterprise.

Related articles

• As Obama Team Releases New Bain Attack, Cory Booker Walks Back ‘Nauseating’ Critique: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
• The Reason Why Bain is important. (3chicspolitico.com)
• Obama Campaign Ad: The Story of Bain Capital and Ampad (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital took $20 profit for every dollar invested in Ampad. Creditors got {title}.002. (dailykos.com)

Is This What We Bargained For?

Tags

economics, editorial, political theory

 

Illustrations from sergemaksimov.com

Much as we wold like to think otherwise, we haven’t progressed all that far from the caves we originally inhabited.

 

But we have to go back that far to figure out how we got to where we are today. We indisputably live in a country where the most of the wealth of the country now resides in a very small portion of the population.

I read  a blog post by Robert Reich yesterday, and it got me to thinking. Reich says that we are at a defining point: we must determine what we think government is for. I tend to agree with him, mostly because I think we have long forgot its original intent.

Thomas Hobbes taught that primitive man was both brutish and short-lived. He lived in a world of chaos, with danger ever at his door, and hunger never far from his mind. Each day was an exercise in simple survival.

I tend to agree with that. For whatever reason, pure evolution or something more transcendent, we are bred for community. We learned that banding together helped ensure greater safety and we were more able to secure enough food.

As time goes on, and communities enlarge, we build on the past. Like a very few other evolved animals, we are able to transfer lessons learned. So we begin to herd animals, and we begin to farm. We in essence begin to settle in place at least for parts of the year. And with that come a host of new problems.

Problems that need to be addressed communally. Who is to farm, who is to hunt, who provides security. Who makes weapons, and bowls, and clothing. And how to trade ones services for the necessities of shelter and food? All these are discussed, and agreements are made.

Over time, this develops into a form of government. A class of citizens are allowed to build roads, provide security, teach youngsters, provide healing and so forth. And we do this by freely giving up some of our autonomy as individuals. We give of our assets (taxes) to provide for our common good.

And such things work fairly well, especially when everyone has an equal vote, and those that are in the minority are not severely burdened with the results, at least no more so than the majority.

But we as humans are by nature not equal. We are individuals, and therefore, some are naturally brighter than others, some are more ambitious, and frankly some are just luckier at crucial points. And thus, over time, some become “wealthier” than their neighbors.

Now, that is not important in and of itself, since what one does with wealth is not universal. Some will turn it over to the community to build a new dam, or build new canoes. But others will use it to hire help to do their share of work while they go off to other pursuits. Some will enjoy the accumulation for its own sake. Some will see the possibilities of “getting their way” with the power of their money. The offer of a dam can be used to extract some desire.

We have, over several hundred years, concluded that a free enterprise or free market system is the fairest method of engaging in wealth building and the distribution of services. We all grew up with learning about the laws of supply and demand. People won’t buy what they don’t want, but they will what they do. Those who build what people want, will succeed, and so will their workers, who will get higher wages, and thus buy more themselves.

Everybody is happy.

But then, the world greatly enlarges, and we aren’t just competing locally for the dollar of the consumer. Other countries with their goods and services make offers. And they may, in order to get the business, offer lower prices, and better services. And so a free market is jeopardized. Today, our government subsidies farming, energy, drugs, and a host of industries, all to “level the field” in some way, or to keep things running smoothly.

I am no economist. I just know what I see. And our “free markets” largely unregulated, has led to a place where government seems to work only for the rich, enhancing and growing their wealth at an alarming rate, while the middle class has nearly gone extinct, and the lower class and poor grows exponentially.

I read yesterday where a Russian just paid 88 MILLION DOLLARS FOR A CONDO IN MANHATTAN. This is simply insane.

Republicans think the answer is to free the markets even more.

Democrats think that the rich need to be taxed of their excess.

Neither side may be right. Perhaps, we must accept the fact that the free market model is no longer appropriate to the global world we live in.

If this model were set out before us, as we sat about the fire in the community cave, would we agree to it?

I rather doubt it. This is not the government any of us 99%’s would think was fair.

Some folks are more capable than others, and apparently over time, they will take over the system. They are like card counters in a game of Blackjack. The game is rigged. There are no bootstraps to pull up. There is not amount of “hard work” that will or can make a difference any more to average people.

It’s time to redesign our economic system to account for the world as it is today. We need to compact for a form a government that works for all of us, not just some.  What might that be? Don’t ask me.

I seldom have answers, I just have the questions. Do you have any ideas?

Related articles

• Ian Fletcher: Why Free-market Economics Is a Fraud (huffingtonpost.com)
• The “Free Market Game” Explained (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)

Scientists Announce: Newt Gingrich Created the Universe!

Tags

economics, Election 2012, GOP, meglomania, Newt Gingrich, religious right, Tony Perkins

Ya see, I believe that God in infinite wisdom, created us with a two help-mates. One is a devil, and the other an angel. Stay with me here.

They are constantly pushing us to respond to their line of reasoning.

They are meant to be kept relatively equal.

So most of us are pretty much even throughout our lives.

We are good about half of the time, and bad about half of the time. We try to keep the “bad” mostly thoughts and words, and not so much actions. That helps to keep us out of jail. (The angel is a good advocate for practicalities.)

But in some humans, the devil is listened to far far too much.

And things get way out of whack. Mostly the poor little angel atrophies from lack of use.

And it’s voice gets tinier and tinier, and harder and harder to hear.

And the devil grows by leaps and bounds.

His voice gets louder.

It gets more insistent.

It sounds more reasonable.

It offers more things that make you feel good.

In fact it’s speciality is making your feel good.

Temporarily.

And it urges you not to think of the future.

Or pay back.

Or inevitabilities, such as death, and whether you will be well received at the Pearly Gates.

But it can drown out the tiny voice of the angel.

The poor little angel sounds almost like a squeak.

It cannot be heard any more.

Look familiar?

It should.

If  you could cast a spray of pixie dust over Newt Gingrich, you would see these two quite clearly.

If you were in Newt’s boudoir (perish the thought) you would notice it easily. For Newt’s one shoulder hangs perilously lower than the other. The devil  is one heavy dude for this man. One of the reasons you don’t see Newt without a jacket on, is because he is forced to wear a very heavy weight under his arm to counterbalance the bloated devil on his shoulder.

 It makes him waddle like a duck when he walks. I’m sure you’ve noticed that.

Newt is convinced that the free world was created by himself. He’s already taken credit for the collapse of communism, and the fall of the Berlin wall. He claims to be the creator of “supply-side” economics, though a few others might dispute that.

Now he claims that Mittens ought to be thanking him, because it was his economic policies which he convinced Reagan to pursue that led to Mittens great wealth. And that may be true. At least it’s true in Newt’s mind.

But if it is true,  . . .well. I guess it means that Newt is responsible for much that is wrong with our economic system today. I guess he is proud of the fact that there has never been so much inequality in America. I guess he approves of the destruction of the middle class.

Newt listens to his devil too much.

But, it may be the only friend he has.

Oh, I forgot. Another way you can tell that a person’s devil is too big? Their heads get really really big. I spoke to Newt’s haberdasher only yesterday. His head size is up 2″–in just the last two weeks.  Just sayin’.

♦

Somebody else who has been listening to the wrong shoulder, is Tony Perkins. Tony, you remember is a right-wing family values kinda guy who heads up the Family Research Council. That means he favors Republicans, since only Republicans are pro-family. You knew that.

So, Tony, like others of his evangelical kind, try to prop up the mean-spirited  economic goals of the GOP.

So Tony has decided to “interpret” Luke 19: 11-27, commonly known as the Parable of the pounds.

In a nutshell, a man goes on a journey, and gives money to several of his servants. The first two, engaged in some business trading and multiplied the money, while the third, simply hid the money for safekeeping. The man punishes the third servant for doing nothing to increase the money.

Tony, doesn’t get what a parable is. He thinks the story is literal.

He thinks that Jesus is applauding free market economics, and rejected collectivism. Kinda like, Jesus would reject Occupy Wall Street today and applaud the banks.

Tony’s interpretation is not unique. It’s been heard before by the likes of David Barton, that brilliant pretend historian who also dabbles in biblical explanations.

But it has nothing to do with what Luke (or Matthew 25)  was trying to get across. Which was simply that  we are responsibility to live out our beliefs–namely spread the Gospel and bring into the Kingdom as many as we can. We can’t just sit in our salvation, complacent and smug.

But reality means almost nothing to those who believe that God is calling them to cheapen the bible with partisan interpretations, in order to SAVE OUR COUNTRY FROM THE DEMON OBAMA.

Mr. Perkins is also known to always wear a jacket.

♦

The Anatomy of a Movement

Tags

corporate America, economics, editorial, Occupy Wall Street, OWS

The Occupy Wall Street movement continues. And those of us who are sympathetic, and in fact feel connected to those who camp in New York and cities throughout the land, hope that their determination does not flag.

The Right heaps all manner of garbage on the movement, demanding a “manifesto” which if given, would only cause them to proclaim that this was nothing more than a communist plot. Claims that various groups, Acorn, Van Johnson, George Soros, and all the usual suspects are put forth to wild-eyed wingnut TeaNutz® reassuring them that they are true patriots while these “unwashed” protestors are anarchists who “hate democracy.”

Of course, other than their soul-dead followers, the Right’s arguments fall on deaf ears. The average American is inclined to look favorably upon those who claim as their mantra, “we are the 99%.”

There is no manifesto, precisely because this collection of dissatisfied Americans, come from all walks of life, with all manner of complaint. For some it is unemployment, but even that is divided between older workers and just-graduated youth. There are those who are burdened by college loan debt and see no way to ever pay it back. There are those who are losing homes through foreclosure caused by Wall Street machinations that most certainly were illegal. Then we have those who have found their pensions looted and those who are facing cuts in medical care and wages in order to hold on to the lousy job they do have.

There is in fact, no end to the complaints. The bottom line: This country no longer works for the vast majority of Americans. People no longer expect that they will do better than their parents, or that their kids will do better than them. Hope is failing, and when hope fails, people get ready to march.

Most of these folks, including myself, are far from proficient in economics. I know the barest amount about supply-side crap, and free markets and all that mumbo-jumbo. I know almost no more about Keynesian theories. I don’t know if Adam Smith had it right. But I do know this, that the economics of the last thirty years or so doesn’t work for me.

It doesn’t work for most people. It seems to work really really well for the rich. It seems to work really really well for corporations. While the rest of us flounder and worry about how we will get by, the massive corporations literally cannot get up from the table, they are so bloated with profits. And a nice portion of that is bled off to the suits in massive salaries and stock options.

Being the lawyer that I used to be, I realize the point about corporate person-hood. In terms of civil law, that declaration allows the little guy to sue the corporation for all manner of tortious behavior. (Of course the current SCOTUS has worked really hard to limit their liability to peanuts.) But that was the point, originally.

It was never envisioned by anyone that corporations would be granted this status in order to allow them to use their unlimited resources to back the candidate that was prepared to be their “spokesperson” in the government. Anyone who thinks this is not what they are doing is simply brain dead.  Corporations have no other reason to give to candidates unless they expect favorable legislation in return. Citizens United in a sense really just brought this out in the open and made “buying the candidate” part of  business as usual in America.

A superb article The Politics of the Poor, explains the movement and what we should and should not expect at this point. I thought a tweet they included said it best:

“Lots saying #ows should occupy Pennsylvania Ave instead of Wall St. Eh? Why speak to middle management when you can go straight to the boss?”)

This is a clarifying statement. It shows that what is clear in the movement, is who is the enemy. While the President may be moving too slow, and Congress not at all, they are not the target here. You hear almost nothing in interviews with protestors about party affiliation.

There  is a recognition that what has gone wrong here is that corporate America, indeed global corporations are close to literally controlling all world governments, if they don’t already.

It’s unclear what these CEO’s who of course, with their boards, ARE the corporations, expect will happen. Do they expect people to just take it? Do they anticipate that they will through armed force make folks do the work at slave wages, living in slums, with poor food and water and air? Do they expect to live in bubbles themselves on islands? They seem to.

Ironic. Corporations, who we think are always looking far down the road in planning, seem to have no end game. Or not realize that it must inevitably blow up.

I find it illogical. But then I find the TeaNutz® illogical.

What about you?