There are so many topics that might be written about today that it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole to select one; just when you smack one down, another pops up. We could discuss the amazing clash of civilization playing out in response to the Torture Report, with Dick Cheney emerging from his hidey-hole to deliver scathing remarks to spider-friendly FOX News, while most of the CIA uses the same kind of duck ‘n cover defense used by foot soldiers throughout history: “I was just doing my job.”
We might examine the new federal guidelines regarding racial profiling, which only applies to federal programs, not your local cop shop, or take a look at the call for further sensitivity training in the halls of law enforcement, which is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig (pun, no pun).
True, Obama is expected to issue executive orders regarding oversight of military equipment going to police, as well as requiring extensive training in its appropriate use, but that won’t impact the dark heart of racism that exists in small towns everywhere. Hopefully, it will at least put local bullies on notice that someone is watching.
If we’re worth a tinker’s dam as human beings, we’ll have found the level of state-approved sadism become visible these last weeks to be not just AWESOMELY (Colbert here and Stewart here) distracting but deeply disturbing. In the land of the free and home of the brave, cops are picking off black youth with impunity, tazing pregnant mothers and autistic kids, while Texas and Missouri feel free to execute retarded prisoners on death row despite federal guidelines that forbid it. Ohio has botched so many of these drug-induced procedures, putting the offender through Constitutionally-forbidden cruel and unusual punishment, that the ONION wrote a piece entitled, “Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine.” Sounds almost merciful, compared to what’s been going on recently.
We could even open the lid on some of the good things that are happening — rare as a liberal at an evangelical revival — because POTUS is using his executive power without much fanfare to try to balance the right-tilt, or we might review a recent decision by SCOTUS that makes the Supremes seem almost reasonable, given their own considerable list to the right (and, as an aside, don’t count on the continuation of either). We could look at any of those things, but today let’s try splashing our faces with the cold water of realism and tackle the big green elephant in America’s living room: unregulated capitalism complicated by an addictive level of consumerism that has led us to full-blown plutocracy.
After pre-Black Friday sales shooting an arrow through our Thanksgiving festivities, there was Black Friday itself, followed by pre-Cyber weekend and Cyber Monday, then Cyber week, which — presumably — ends on Friday. I’m not counting on it. As I live too far from amenities to forgo buying on line, I’m stuck. Unfortunately, this option carries a cost in privacy, and due to the dreaded ‘cookies’ of cyber life, I presume my in-box will immediately fill with whatever newest cyber-salesmanship comes next. Like the gutting of Thanksgiving traditions — and the appearance of Christmas paraphernalia even prior to Halloween — nobody asked me what I preferred. Money won this round.
Money is the Gawd we worship on these shores. That’s always been true to some degree, the founders having established the seriousness of America’s capitalism by dumping tea into Boston’s bay, but now the mandate of the corporate board room as the holy of holies has gone as viral as fears over Ebola. I fault the religious right for this escalation of valueless secularism. If they hadn’t re-created Christian philosophy to resemble some darkly-inspired Disney cartoon, droolingly simplistic and insultingly ignorant, many of us wouldn’t have tossed the whole of religion over the side to sink with the tea.
In the years that followed, many of us who considered ourselves spiritual-while-secular failed to realize that it takes a certain amount of education to keep a system of ethics without pinning it to habitual practice and religious philosophy. When we throw something overboard, we create a void that must be filled. Unfortunately, the nation filled its own ethical void with shallow thinking and ambition for money and power. Now, sandwiched between fear and paranoia among the elders and the lack of structured ethical values in the generations that followed, we find ourselves with only mammon to bow to.
The Christocrats — read that Republicans, although the conservative base is a good deal more Wall Street than Church Street — have developed some very interesting ideas, force-fed to the home schooled and packaged for sale to those most nervous about things that go bump in the night. Capitalizing on that movement, the Koch brothers have spent years investing in research to discover how to capture the zeitgeist and harness it to their desires. They seem finally to have perfected their mojo with a data mining project that is, as Eric proposed in his subscription piece, a “sign of the times.” Do not be surprised, then, if an outlier presidential candidate surfaces with the K brand on his/her rump.
Combined with large donations to education providers that meet their prerequisites, the result of this kind of social engineering — smacking of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its cohorts — can be seen in the latest bill to come before our lame duck Congress, the Omnibus Budget Bill. This is the trillion-dollar baby, the one that is close to passing while containing enough poison pill riders to give the average liberal a very bad case of agita.
If you’re a C-SPAN wonk, you might recognize this baby. It isn’t new, it’s been kicking around the House since 2013, closely matching, word for word, a proposal written by Citigroup. It turns back regulations and allows banks to do more high-risk trading: the same kind that all but burned down our fiscal house, which had to be bailed out by taxpayers. The already fragile Dodd-Frank financial reform act takes multiple hits in this proposal, while the five big banks that deal in derivative trading — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — will benefit. Let Mother Jones fill in the blanks if you’re interested.
This Omnibus Bill, which will cost upwards of a trillion bucks and keep the nation from shutting down once again, contains something for everybody to bitch about. The Baggers object bitterly to the “moderation” included in this proposal, funding Obamacare and other “liberal” projects. They insist that the bill’s touted “bi-partisanship” shows that Boehner’s gone too soft by refusing to defund the dreaded “amnesty” offered by Obama’s immigration plan.
On the left, the bill is seen as a monument to triangulation, Obama giving in too quickly to the big money faction and selling progressive leadership down the river. It is, they insist, the same kind of short-sighted accommodation Clinton sought when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, established the Commodity Futures Trading Act and completely redesigned welfare. Indeed, the bill itself — best referenced by Charles Pierce, I think, who named it “a veritable compost heap of Republican goodies” — seems to make no one happy but that infamous one percent.
Republicans aren’t good at looking back. It seems encoded in their DNA to let themselves off the hook while trolling for someone to blame things on. They depend upon the ignorance of the American public when it comes to politics. They only tortured because they had to and they’re only giving the store away to big business and banksters because jobs, jobs, trickle down, jobs (or, as Al Franken once titled a book, “Lies and the lying liars that tell them”). Their greatest skill, like baby quail running in lockstep behind their mother (but not nearly so cute) is unity. They do “hive mind” better than any other type of citizen here in North America. They all “get the memo” and abide by it, even though the information may not serve their best interests.
Democrats aren’t as good at herding their diverse kennel of cats, but at least they have the grace to look guilty when charged. The schism that’s finally being felt in the liberal party is shaking like an earthquake, thanks to the ascendency of big money, brought to us by clueless culture voters on the right and uninformed moderates in the middle this mid-term. It shouldn’t take long for a real sense of buyer’s remorse to set in when Wall Street pops its cork in celebration and the only thing that trickles down to the rest of the country will be slim pickings.
This current government funding bill has brought out the harshest judgment on party policy heard in years — referenced in the press as “a revolt” — and led by no less than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is not a member of the Progressive Caucus but is being supported in her criticism of this bill by over 70 members of that group. They are mostly House members that include dependable lefties like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, and accompanied by the ONLY Senator aligned with the caucus, Bernie Sanders.
To their credit, however, there are a number of mainstream Dems complaining about this bill and very reluctant to support the White House, which seems to want to just get this over with. the Prez relieved that the Pubs are making an attempt to do ANYTHING that smacks of compromise. It’s apparently time to throw the cards in the air and pick a side. And although they wouldn’t admit it, Pubs must be silently ruing the day they fought Obama’s desire to appoint Elizabeth Warren to the newly created and continually endangered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where her duties would have been limited.
Instead, she found a job in the Senate as the progressive voice of the Democratic Party, and she’s not afraid to use it. With rare clarity on the Hill, here’s what she had to say:
“I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question — who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?”
“A vote for this bill is a vote for future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street. It is time for all of us to stand up and fight.”
This arrives on the heels of Warren’s loud protestation over the nomination of Antonio Weiss, Wall Street insider, to Treasury. This is an example of the “revolving door,” Warren asserts, supported by policies of both parties, but in service to no one but the one percent. A number of senators — Durbin, Franken, Shaheen and a conservative, Joe Manchin — are also opposing the nomination and for the same reason.
The Wall Street wing of the Democratic party is beginning to look a lot smaller these last few days, even though, as Robert Reich writes, “… the reason Democrats have pulled their punches with the financial sector for years is because it’s hard to punch the hand that feeds you.” As to Warren, this is not a woman to whom political maneuvering matters.
I believe her when she says she doesn’t want to be president. This is a senator who values the truth, within her purview. I’ve heard she is not supportive of various other issues progressives favor, like vanquishing the XL pipeline for instance. But what she does understand — feels she has a personal stake in — she puts herself on the line for.
By the time you read this, the bill will probably be in the can, awaiting a signature on Obama’s desk. At this point, Elizabeth Warren and her progressives are holding up a Senate vote on the poison pill that allows derivative expansion, and it’s important to understand that the principled stand she’s taken on this is not equal — as is being suggested by CNN as I write — to those held by Ted Cruz on the right. It’s taking a good bit of nerve to stand on that populist principle, to split her party and oppose her president. At risk today is closing down government, not a gamble for the faint of heart.
Still, this is just the opening shot on these kinds of heart-burns. In January, we begin a two-year brush with the wish-list of plutocracy, champagne glasses clinking in the ivory towers and the unaware below them bumbling along without a clue that life is about to get tougher. Not good news, but always best to bite the bullet before it bites you. Ultimately, we will manage it and it will inform the nation in ways we don’t yet appreciate.
And before I close, I want to do a little reminder of the “politics is personal” sort. I want to bring anything you’ve read here, buzzing around like abstractions, down to earth. This is the reason that the differences between Wall Street and Main Street are important:
A friend in her mid-seventies, who takes occasional work to try to flesh out her slim Social Security check, got caught by traffic cameras making a rolling stop this week. The system generated a picture of her failing to stop for the obligatory three-seconds, and sent a bill for $436.00; half of her monthly income. It seems to me that this is the kind of extortion that has kept Ferguson, and neighboring communities, in the cross-hairs. What was that example we reported? Some 1,800 residents and over 33,000 warrants? Warrants that citizens have no way to pay for or deal with? When the government feels free to consider the public a cash cow, it’s time to make changes.
A friend who has had chronic problems with arthritis was prescribed an 8 ounce bottle of topical cream that was helpful with pain. Covered by insurance, he was told his cost was $90.00, paid by his plan. As the yearly deductibles are due to kick in, he looked over the paperwork that is sent from time to time by his insurance carrier and discovered that the cream was charged out by the pharmaceutical house that offers it at $2,100. My friend called, indignant, and spoke to a representative, who said he’d have to speak to a pharmacist, who, you will not be surprised to learn, wasn’t available at that moment. Nor since. When these kinds of disparities are tolerated by the system, it’s time to make changes.
A family member could not afford a non-generic of a med she used every day, but the generic option simply didn’t do the trick. Although she only sees her (expensive) specialist when necessary, she contacted him because of her symptoms and he insisted she get the real stuff,” hundreds of dollars worth a month. When she told him she couldn’t afford it, he wrote her a script and gave her the name of a Canadian pharmacy where she now spends pennies on the dollar for the exact same meds in question, delivered promptly to her door by her mail carrier. When we have to go outside our own borders to get our needs met, it’s time to make changes.
It’s time to make changes, because we’re being victimized. Time to decide where we stand because the culture war has just been given a green light. Time to support those who support us and let the others fall by the wayside. In the wake of near-genocide of young black men, a close look at terrorism through the lens of an inquisitor, and a coming handover of power to the business class that considers us all a demographic to be squeezed and wrung out until dry, it’s time to take these politics very personally.
