Minnesota State Shutdown

File this one under "Recovery Strategies: Failed." How do you justify putting more people out of work? It can only take an ideological hatred of government that puts some anarchists to shame.

Not that I'm a big fan either, mind you, of the parliamentary form of capitalist democracy. I'm much more of a hands-on kinda guy myself.

But the hypocrisy is sickening. Why the tax-or-cut fetish? Republicans are so set on "not raising taxes (for their rich backers)" that they'll shut down the government entirely?

To prove what, exactly? That we don't need building codes approved, or children educated, or highways paved? Or perhaps just that their rich backers can be made even more wealthy by stepping into these roles themselves, and charging extravagantly for the services.

Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. The GOP consistently runs a strategy of deception, blame-shift, and obstruction. The DFL, on the other hand, is relatively good-natured, if still much too constrained by in-the-box thinking and totally inept at handling the sheer batshittery of the Repubs. This is their fault, and the fault of an electoral and representative system that cannot represent everyday people, but of course everyday people, who are honest and eager to "contribute to society," get fucked because that society barely even belongs to them.

Wrong On Libya

I perhaps should have begun posting about this last week, when it became clear Qaddafi wasn't going to fall on his own and was, in fact, pressing down on the rebels all the way to Benghazi. I "misunderestimated" (to use a Bushism) the strength of the rebel forces. (To my credit, at least, it turned out to be more a matter of firepower than a matter of will.)

Yet the U.S. and coalition airstikes - codenamed "Operation Odyssey Dawn" - will prove a Faustian deal. Even if Western boots remain planted on Western aircraft carriers, none of us are so naive as to think this is out of the kindness of anyone's hearts. It is always a ploy for markets, oil as much as imports (Libya is 10% reliant on China for its imported goods, and if the Obama administration is serious about reviving manufacturing, we'll need increase our export markets).

But the model of the Western imperialists is actually not to have to occupy countries if they don't have to (Bush was an anomaly in this sense). They want an ally in Northern Africa to moderate in case Tunisia and Egypt don't go in their favor.

Obama also has spoken about Qaddafi's violation of the Libyan people's "universal rights." I remind our readers that it wasn't all that long ago that China and the United States butted heads over this rather philosophical argument. (Chinese leaders think of this phrase as being code for "Western values" and insist that different peoples have different values ... kind of the forerunners in global postmodernism?)

So basically all the old-school imperialists are banding together and having a good ole fashion show of force, brandishing the sabres and sending a message to Iran and China and any other regime they don't agree with that universal rights aren't negotiable, that you have to respect your people's right to protest and their right to free speech.

Because universal rights apply to our geopolitical enemies first, our friends last, and ourselves.... You get the picture.

(And I'm not even going to touch the cost of this intervention in dollar terms. You shouldn't put a price on human freedom, in my opinion. Political rhetoric, however, will latch on to any excuse to slash living conditions....)

"Fire the rockets! ... and the teachers, and municipal employees, and construction workers, and...."

Colombia, Part I: the Capitalism of Coffee

The more I read about Colombia, the awfuller the situation sounds. But I won't get ahead of myself.

The country has one of the most diverse geographies in Latin America, which is saying a lot. This leads to a corresponding diversity of agriculture and industry and its potential wealth is impressive.

You may have noticed in the news that coffee prices are going up, especially as Colombian coffee growers "go green." American retailers have been slow to reflect that price - for a variety of reasons. (One of which is we'd hang the bastards! You don't fuck with our coffee. It's in the Constitution.) One of those reasons is that it's still a challenge to find Fair Trade coffee in many places in America (Minneapolis is one gratifying exception!). Coffee futures are also on the rise after bad weather affected crops throughout the region. The US also imports its coffee from a variety of places. All the resources I've checked imply that of those countries which export coffee to the US, Brazil is the most notable, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, and Indonesia in some order. (Although Colombia seems to be the #1 import for "green," or raw, beans.) Perhaps the production and trade of beans and blends is too complicated to reduce in a way that draws clear lines. That's globalization for you.

But no doubt about it, corporations are interested in Colombia. (Where don't they stick their nose?) In 2006, the United States and Colombia entered into a free trade agreement, the text of which seems pretty typical of such a pro-business arrangement - even though over the last 10 years Americans have become increasingly hostile to the practice. (On a for-profit basis, "free trade" hurts workers in every country.)

"So what is this, Drez, some kind of coffee conspiracy?"

Au contrair. A conspiracy implies some kind of secret shared by insiders. Injustices in the coffee production system are often a result of haphazard business practices and a lack of developed alternatives. But we all know the military intervenes in the affairs of sovereign nations to protect US business interests. So in our next installment I'll take a look at the American presence in Colombia, the role of FARC, and just what is going down in this particular corner of the world.

The Recession is dead; long live the Recession!

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee, the "Great Recession" officially ended in June 2009, reports the Wall Street Journal. It's always nice to know when the academics define these things. It helps to have a good handle on how we use our economic terms.

And the article goes on to make plenty of sense. Americans still have no job prospects, they're exhausted, Obama has done nothing. Jobs may not come back until 2013 (plenty of time for a new Republican administration, or at least legislature, to claim victory for cut-throat economic policies that will rob working people of decent living standards). And those gains in employment - will they be largely service-sector jobs? Inquiring minds would like to know.

There might be solutions under capitalism, but they're not very ambitious ones. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international non-government organization (NGO) says the government could help by providing "additional job training and education programs to better match workers' skills to business needs."

But I find that questionable. What, exactly, are the "business needs" of today? The bottom line is - the bottom line. Businesses aren't hiring much because they can't profit off of it. Productivity soared on the heels of the recession as the bosses squeezed what workers remained for all they were worth (literally!). Now productivity has, according to one WSJ blog, hit its cap, so to speak. This leaves only hiring as a way to increase output.

But there's no reason to increase output if the revenue isn't there. And where is the money going to come from? It isn't infinite. It has to come from sales. The American middle class is not just broke - it's in debt up to its eyeballs and has only seen the tiniest relief. Mergers seem to be the tactic of the moment, with airlines and other industries looking to gobble down "post"-recession (stagnation?) deals. But any dolt who paid attention in high school economics knows that this leads to that most awful of capitalism's by-products, the (gulp) monopoly. (And Mr. Mathias makes the amazingly astute point at the end of his article, one we Marxists have been saying for forever - monopolies are the perfect opportunity to nationalize the industries that provide for people's needs.)

Republicans, Tea Baggers, Libertarians, and other denizens of free-market-fantasy-land (including many liberals and moderates) will probably insist that the ony way to deal with today's resultant monopolies is to bust them up the ole fashioned way (thank you President Taft). This is actually an idealist back-peddle, to think you can drive corporations backwards through time and make them behave like a small business again.

The only way to build jobs, to really build jobs and fix the economy, would be to take the monopolies and cartels (healthcare and finance and energy especially) and nationalize them. Then it wouldn't be up to the fickle whims of the capitalists to provide people jobs; federal aid would be direct and efficient. Not as a temporary stop-gap until the free market feels like playing ball again, but as a threat to corporate sovereignty altogether. Only then will we see actual nation-wide programs to create a green economy, float aid to the unemployed, and provide healthcare (and healthcare training!) to every American.

But it's clear the Democrats won't do that, so what are our other options at this point?

1300 Miles to Mexico

Many a terrible thing's been going on lately (when doesn't it?), but the immigration debate, perhaps, bothers me the most.

Maybe it strikes close to home because I'm from California. I went to a high school where the Latino students outnumbered the whites at least 2:1. In my lifetime I saw the population of California turn to 51% "minority." (And what a stink it caused!)

It also hits close to home for me today, where "home" means the Twin Cities. Recently the tiny Minnesotan city of Lino Lakes passed a controversial resolution in its city council, to the effect of not spending city money on translating city documents into languages other than English.

Lino Lakes, however, is some dinky-ass quasi-suburb on the outskirts of the metro area. In 2000, it was at least 95% English-speaking. Even if things have changed, there seems to be no need for such a measure. There are no expenses to printing said documents, probably because the majority of Lino Lakes is as whitebread as they come.

It's a conservative test. If they can pass it somewhere, they have an example to point to when it comes time to expand their English-only movement. The stakes have been raised.

It's part of a larger battle, to oppress, exploit, tyrannize, and generally destroy the hated brown-skins. I've seen it all before. "Why do we have billboards in Spanish?" "Why can't they learn to speak English?" "They take all our jobs!" "They're all having babies on welfare!"

I'm sure most people are aware of the Arizona law SB1070 that recently went into effect (with some federal injunctions - the proverbial 3" of knife pulled out). What most people may not be aware of is that there is an arm to this law that essentially attacks day laborers, making it a crime to hire or be hired from a vehicle that is in any way impeding traffic. So, right there, you have an economic front.

It's also illegal to "conceal, harbor, or shield" an illegal immigrant, which strikes me as awfully familiar, but maybe that's only because I had a "liberal" education.

Oh, that reminds me - there are attacks, again in Arizona, on "ethnic studies" in school.

Really the point the right-wing populists are making is that it is not ok to be in America and describe yourself as anything but an American. "We only want you if you jump through our hoops, submit to our re-education, and live according to our customs."

What is it Malcom X said? “History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.”

It's clear how conservatives think of Latinos. There is a refusal to treat them like equals, to allow them their own history and culture. A refusal even to allow them to scrape by through working on the fringe of society - ironic, considering this is a country wherein we are "supposed" to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps." Supposedly our white grandfathers did everything necessary to help our families pull through, but the old Mexican man selling oranges at the side of the road doesn't count for that, he's "stealing" a job, he's ahistorical, he's inhuman, even. And shit on the kids who depend on this man for support.

Arizona is even looking to ban such children from citizenship. That hard-line right-wing that so insists on the sacred immutability of the United States Constitution is willing to look the other way so long as they can attack the enemy they so detest.

It's pathetic. I still remember the mother of an ex-girlfriend of mine, back in California, a woman so loving and willing to take me into her own home, working overnights at the Swanson packaging plant. Her husband, gruff but no less open-hearted, crippled with arthritis after a lifetime of labor. They crossed illegally, contributed their share, raised three brilliant children, all of whom are college graduated (one at least from an ivy league) or at least college-bound. These are parents who are devoted to family and to God - ostensibly the same God that the right-wing supposedly worships.

But if it were up to this right-wing - and I'm not even talking about the extreme right, now, you understand - this family would have been split up, or deported, years ago. The world would indeed be a darker place if not for this family of immigrants.

It would seem, indeed, that the border does cross us.

Immigration reform isn't enough. We need an immigration revolution - we need a solution that shows just how obsolete the idea of national borders has become. Continues to become. This is going to be a turbulent becoming, because it will at the same time destroy what we see as the stability of our status quo. The immigration debate is a part of that, a part that proves how quick we are to blame people whose circumstances are forced on them. Forced by our lawmakers, who have pushed a one-sided agenda of globalization and free-market slavery. "Illegal" immigrants are victims of the same bureaucracy that entangles us all, strangles our livelihoods, keeps us from good jobs, and destroys our potential. A little equalization - scholarships for the children of immigrants, for example - can go a long way, but for every single gain the right-wing hollers and howls and tries to drag in average-joe workers.

It works. Why? Because we want some solution to the economic crisis (created, may I remind you, by our politicians and businessmen). We want jobs, we want less crime, we want a stable and dependable society.

Racism, however, is not the solution we seek.

if you believe hard enough, maybe the money will just pour out of your ass.

I came across an interesting link in the blog "Mark Mendall's America" today, discussing the pessimism that, with American business and consumers in its grip, threatens the whole world economy. The implication is that if the economy isn't friendly enough to business - if credit isn't sufficiently free-flowing, if labor costs aren't cheap, if markets are unprotected, if consumers aren't nibbling on the lures, then they'll hold their cash reserves hostage. No money for anyone else. (Obviously we're talking about the medium-term here, as the law of diminishing returns will set in after a few years ... leading to something like the 20 years of stagnation Japan has seen.)

The problem with faith-based economics, though, is that it doesn't address the underlying material conditions.

It's great to say, "Consumers need to buck up and spend," like Bush did after 9/11. Or for the economists to say, "Let's encourage business back to the table." (Businesses are indeed composed of "fat cats," and, like cats, must be coddled and cajoled into dealing with actual people. Unlike real cats, our entire social well-being depends on them.)

Yet this rhetoric doesn't deal with concrete policies. Let's look, briefly, at the pundents and their suggestions.

In this corner: Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Slick Willy and member of Obama's "economic transition team." He spells out that US consumers are out of cash and credit now that the housing bubble has burst. Foreign consumers could fix this - if only their economies hadn't been geared to producing cheap goods and had instead given them some sort of consumer wage. Oops.

Guess we shoud've fought harder against NAFTA. When you lose unions, you lose a significant amount of the working class's involvement in the consumption sphere.

In this corner: Peter Morici, former Chief Director/"Head Economist" of the U.S. International Trade Commission. His article points out that the Obama administration's trillion-plus stimulus squandered much of the money and failed to produce an adequate number of jobs. This is ... actually, very true. (Don't worry, the stuff he says about the deficit being bigger than it was under Bushie is also stupidly ignorant, considering Bush didn't have more than a moment of the recession to deal with; any Prez under that pressure would have enacted some kind of stimulus.) Under the Obama model, a lot of that money went to NGOs and nonprofits and private corporations. Under the Republican model, it probably would have gone to private corporations and tax cuts for the rich. The difference is pathetically negligible.

A "New-New Deal" would have been better - but even that hadn't been sufficient in the 1930s. The economy had only been rebooted by World War II, the significant loss of industry and labor in Europe, and the unprecedented rebuidling effort of the Marshall Plan. In order to create jobs on the scale we needed (and still need), we need to bypass big business's profit model entirely. (On a related note, has anybody thought about how the census project is what kept employment even remotely afloat through the Spring? The census happens once every ten years - we only had this boon because it happened to be 2010. That's like calling Christmas sales sign of a recovery. It's seasonal, you idiots!)

Anyway. People don't get fed on prayer; people get fed on bread. People don't get jobs on faith. We get it from employers. And as if bakers hoarded bread, people would riot and take it, if employers refuse to give us jobs, we ought to take the workplaces. Obviously they aren't running the economy in our interests. Perhaps its time control of the economy changed hands.

Preferably before the budget cuts - which will be equally ineffective, and even more harmful for working families- come rolling in.

The Hills are Alive with the Sounds of ... Profit

Personally, I don't like to reflect much on political personalities and the changes in bureaucratic cogs. Rearranging the deck chairs (or changing the mast head) may have an impact on how people percieve what's occuring, but it doesn't change the underlying reality of capitalism, consumerism, and the fundamental character of the state. My comrade Nullstellensatz wrote recently in his own blog, "Liberals believe that fundamental change can be secured by replacing a few politicians." I would say that description applies to conservatives as well, only on the opposite side of the spectrum. Even the tea baggers are taking a conservative, rather than a radical-right, stance when they call for ousting incumbent officials.

Policies and personalities shape each other, but for all intents and purposes (or at least my own at this stage), I am not interested.

I am interested, however, in the study released last week concerning "mineral riches" lying under Afghanistan.

States the NYT: "The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. "

This is, in my humble opinion, the best political news of the year so far. My only criticism is the timing of this report. I imagine these particular causes for enthusiasm and concern are not obvious, so let's look at it in more detail.

Why Afghanistan Needs Capitalism

This central Asian, civil-war-torn nation is fucked. Caught between insurgents and imperialists, the every-day people can't get by, industry can't grow, government can't provide services, and the overall quality of life remains as landlocked as the geography. Agriculture remains the central feature of the economy - and opium remains the central feature of agriculture. No matter how much opium occupying forces light on fire, the economic incentive to grow drugs remains. Proving, yet again, that the characteristics of an economy play a decisive role in determining the characteristics of a society.

The presence of valuable minerals is a game-changer. But only, of course, for the long-term prospects. Local industry is hideously under-developed. Even hiring a bunch of people to go dig up some gold is pragmatically implausible. Who has the money to spare for shovels or gold pans, not to mention labor? And you probably aren't going to mine any friggin minerals at all without the use of hydraulics. And then you have to refine the mined product. It's the same way for each mineral, and it requires some serious capital investment. Not to mention supply lines for exports or distribution lines for commercial retail. And the presence of commercial retail in the first goddamn place.

So we can see the opportunities for domestic investment and development of a mining industry in Afghanistan is pretty goddamn microscopic.

That means foreign investment, foreign capital, which is a form of imperialism (which is an advanced stage of capitalism, not to be confused with colonialism, a cruder stage of capitalism). And in this case, foreign business is a little reluctant to put down roots. And will probably be especially hesitant to invest in such a labor-intensive industry. No matter how much investors may foam with lust for the Islamic Republic's rich lithium veins, the present situation just isn't safe enough to support their desires.

It is inevitable that foreign capitalism will attempt to make Afghanistan "safe." (Incidentally, "safe for democracy" is really just a code for "safe for our investments," they don't give a rat's ass if they need a dictator to do it. A sham democracy just looks nice. Foreign policy/public relations brownie points!) And there will be those investors who want to challenge the situation, "get the jump" ... and inevitably get creamed. (The poor sods they get to work for them are the "contractors" you hear about, getting kidnapped or beheaded. Workers get screwed every which way.) But it will take a while. It will take paying off the insurgents like they did in Iraq, and the blood of many more Afghans. Men, women, children. More US and coalition soldiers, too. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, flag-draped caskets you won't see on the news. But we'll squeeze that precious dust from the rocks, by God.

Karzai, inevitably, will also have to go. More warlords and ter'rists too. Allies will become enemies and enemies allies. Eventually, either American imperialism will breed Afghani puppet-capitalists, or the United States will be forced to pull out in a humiliating defeat, and a breed of capitalists more acceptable to the Afghani ruling class (and more marketable to the Afghan people) will assume the role. The top three candidates for the position, in order of least likely to most likely, are Russia, China, and Iran. (I won't get into why right now; perhaps you can muse it over yourself and let me know what you think.)

"But Drez," you poor beleaguered souls may be saying, "I thought you stand opposed to all capitalism, foreign and domestic."

Too true, comrades! I don't trust capitalism as far as I can throw it, and as a vast and complicated political system I can't even hoist the goddamn thing. But history has shown (at least so far) that you can't "skip over" the "phases of development." Afghanistan needs some degree of capital investment to make a transition into a more sustainably democratic society. The Afghani working class will only have something to seize and be thus equipped to revolutionize their society - if there is an introduction of capital.

Or should I say ... a re-introduction of capital.

Why This Report is Suspect

(I mean, besides the fact that it's been released by the US government.)

This poor country gets a lot of flak. I mean, people talk about it like it's been the backwaters of the planet for its entire history. And that's just not true; back in the day, Afghanistan was a pretty swingin' place - well, if you were a rich Afghan or a rich Brit, at least. And you have to hand it to the European colonialists: they were interested in "civilizing the savages." Often that meant shooting the crap out of anyone who resisted their rule, but in this case it also meant helping draft a constitution, build up infrastructure, and introduce compulsory education. All very capitalist developments.

Eventually Afghanistan got some indepenence from the Brits, and then - as was fashionable in poor countries in the latter half of the century - went on a Marxist kick. At one point the standard of living began to have similarities to industrialized nations. The US backed the anti-Soviet forces in the country, the corrupt USSR invaded in retaliation, the Taliban took over, and the rest is history. (Or current events, if you will.) Booting out the Marxists in favor of the USSR and then the ultra-right wackos tore the country to bits.

Yay Umerika!

So in reality, the complete disarray of this country isn't an unbroken thread of barbarism, but a dialectic of development and the strategic intervention of international powers and the internal competition for the country's soul, so to speak (will it be a country ruled by might, or will it transcend nationhood and build itself on reason?).

And furthermore, there have been sophisticated studies on the valuable mineral deposits in this region at least since the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1970s, though I don't doubt that the anal-retentive British colonialists also scoured the soil meticulously. The gold, at least, should have been common knowledge in geological (and, presumably, military intelligence; those guys are pretty damn comprehensive in their analyses) circles. The lithium has probably been known since pretty early in the invasion.

Now obviously, the US didn't declare war on Afghanistan just because there are gold deposits under Takhar. We aren't talking about oil, the great consumer-capitalist lubricant. Gold is a capitalist bauble in comparison.

It is the timing of this report that is suspect. At a time when the popularity of "the good war" is steadily sinking, and disillusionment in Obama is building, I think the administration is looking for some way to rebuild the confidence of its own investors. There have been almost 10 years of conflict and there can easily be another 10 and you have to reassure the corporate world that you can, and will, and should slug it out. It isn't a revelation; it's a reminder.

And it should remind us, too. It should remind us that war is a racket. Fought by we the workers, lost by we the workers, and won - win lose or draw for us - by the rich.

There has Gotta be a Better Way

It's not looking too positive now. In another five years the world may start shooing away the gluttonous supply of Afghanistan opium. That's good. Any number of people out of that particular drug trade is positive. Constructive jobs for the Afghan people? Also positive. Without a doubt some citizens remember, or have at least have knowledge of, a better period for their people. Keeping that hope alive can always infuse their struggle with purpose and vigor and throw off the oppossed oppressions of the US and the Taliban.

There is always a possibility, albeit small at this stage, of a third route that circumvents US capitalism and other forms of foreign oppression: a planned economy. Democratic control of the workplace by the workers and nationalization of industries and the co-struggle of workers and farmers - therein lies the key to this route. Such dramatic participation of the people in the economy and government could so radicalize Afghanistan that industrialization could occur in a matter of years and make it a major regional, even world, power. That was the effect on Russia in 1917 when it transitioned to vast Tsarist hinterland to a republic of worker's councils.

But that republic in Russia was quickly lost - an unindustrialized country simply does not have the economic basis to maintain this advanced form of organization for long. It would need to link up to working-class movements in more developed countries, such as Greece, Ireland, or Spain, where those movements are challenging capitalism's global oligarchy. It's a tall task. But otherwise, the people of Afghanistan will end up living in mining towns that resemble work camps, and their harsh but beautiful countryside will be subjected to the worst practices capitalism has to offer. The profit system leaves undeveloped nations few alternatives to exploitation, and so the working class there needs to seize foreign capital with zeal and vigor and just not let go.

Recession Part II: The Stock Market Strikes Back

Global stock markets, those infallible thermometers of capitalism's health, are back on the rise with the news of Greek's loan deal and a 750-billion-Euro plan to back up loans and provide emergency funds to future failing governments. These promised funds from the European Central Bank are like water to the parched roots of Wall Street, the London FTSE, and even the Asian markets. Proving, once again, that this is truly a global economy, all is right in the world, glory glory hallelujah.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (who happens to be Portuguese) even says, according to the BBC, "Our fundamentals are certainly good."

Surely he must mean the "fundamentals" of a regional and global economy, meaning consumer goods, industry, and raw materials?

When we juxtapose (I love juxtaposing) this statement from a BBC article with yet another good article, this one on the sustainability of the environment and its economic implications for the future, we see this is not the case. Human economies are often conceived of as a supply chain, but we forget that the beginning point of this chain is nestled in the complicated web of the Earth's environment. It's a web we hardly understand, yet one corporations fuck with like the own the place. (Seriously? Golf balls and tires? It's the 21st Century!)

So my apologies to the fine bankers of Europe, but your institutions are built on sand. In 20 or 30 years, it won't matter how many shiny Euros you have in the bank; if there's no arable land, no amount of gold will buy you food.

This is just another touted event in the "inevitable" climb to "global recovery." Of course we will remember that after every "recession," the so-called "recovery" leaves hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe worse off than before. Their homes foreclosed, their once-stable jobs irrevocably lost, their future in peril. As this instability increases, the chances that their region will go to war increase as well, and we all know by now that war is not a desirable outcome (except, perhaps, if you're Haliburton).

So yes, the banks are now investing in Spain and Portugal and all the rest of those governments that teetered on the edge of disaster. Perhaps that will stave off the remaining fallout from 2008's Great Recession. Now the stock market can creep back towards its "infinite growth" and the capitalists can rub their paws in anticipation of their "absolute wealth." It'll be 1991 all over again, only this time the European Union version: the countries taking international loans will sacrifice their people's livelihoods on the altar of austerity.

But let us here not forget that the seeds of the next crisis have already been sewn. The peoples of Europe, led for the moment by the rowdy but largely stumbling Greeks, will not take all this lightly. Not when banks and industry go back to making record profits. Unemployment in the United States has felt no alleviation. The wealth continues to concentrate on the top and wreck havoc at the bottom. BP will get a slap on the wrist (at best a spanking) when it deserves the corporate death penalty. There are other problems here at home, too: commercial land prices, consumer debt, the coming health and education sector storms. (And further on, the public sector.)

So I wouldn't look so smug and hopeful if I were you, Mr. MBA. If you don't get a decent war to clear your slate, the pace of recession and economic disaster will only pick up.

"Fearless" Leaders Piss, Moan

The finance sector has no idea what it's doing.

Not a single one of them knows how an economy and an industry actually work. They come up with a bunch of numbers and shuffle papers and speculate. Speculate. The market is based on guessing.

Working people, we don't guess. We have to do, we have to know. We are held accountable when things go wrong. And why do things go wrong?

Mostly because the speculators can't get their own shit straight. They can't both produce and distribute goods in a reasonable way. Profit gets in the way of reason.

That means they end up saying stupid shit, like"Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak and Company," who told the NYT: "The economy is turning; unfortunately it is not improving as much as one would hope given the downturn."

Well thank you detective.

The economy can't improve without jobs. Without jobs there is no economy. These lousy morons can't get us jobs. Their whole system is posed on the brink of another collapse and all they can do is piss and moan.

I got your "Après moi, le déluge" right here, motherfucker.

Well, well, well. I had hardly even just spoken of the devil and it has to drop in to make sure I got it's fucking evil record totally straight.

If you've seen Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," this particular leak from Sachs might seem in the same bitter flavor as the now-infamous Citibank Memo. (Which, of course, warrants its own discussion.) Or, if you've ever seen the documentary "The Corporation," which makes a brilliant case that corporations themselves are sociopathic in relation to humanity, you might remember the bit with the employees at Enron. (Incidentally I think "The Corporation" makes its case, and makes its case well. If you're not read up on corporate personhood and the 14th Amendment I suggest you do so quickly.)

It ought not come as any sort of surprise. If anything, it ought to come as a clear sign that the citizens of New Jersey should rally outside the Goldman Sachs building and not let any of those bloodsucking sonsofbitches work another day at their sad parasitic excuse for a job.

But then again the implications for this are immense. If one gigantic financial institution - and 6 such institutions have assets equaling 60% of our GNP, so you have to wonder what their influence is like - is parasitic and bloodsucking and essentially a danger to humanity, how many of the other 500 biggest corporations issue memos like this on a daily basis?

You know that the profit you make for your boss at work is just used to invest in machinery that eventually will replace you. Your boss - not the dude just above you making a buck more an hour but the celestial tool in some office a thousand miles away making decisions that will make or break your life - knows it too. It's an idea behind every word and phrase that bastard issues "to" you (more like "at" you) but is hideously clear in the internal correspondence that is passed to and fro from day to day without ever seeing the light of the public.

Such is the insulation that private (read: undemocratic) corporations provide their scheming bureaucratic despots.

This is an age in which Capitalism is king. In which money buys and sells us on a labor market. In which loans and interest rates make or break families. This is a system whose highest echelons are so removed from reality that humanity appears to them only as red ink in the expenses columns of their accounting books. These are the tyrants we allow to set policy and buy and sell entire neighborhoods, if not whole counties and states.

What this leads me to ask of you is precisely this: Question the free market.

Question who it defends, and who defends it. Question the logic of selling your power to work on a market. Question our basis of ownership in this society. Question your conceptions of the people, past and present, who have stood up against this system. But most of all: Question your complacency with it.

Because it's all well and good that The Establishment is beating the war-drums and going after Gold Man-Sacks. The Establishment always finds someone to call naughty and slap on the wrist just to alleviate public discontent. It has to maintain some facade of objectivity or the whole goddamn thing goes to pot, right?

Sure The Establishment will pursue, from time to time, the occasional torture case, or some specific member of the CIA. And the media will call attention to it for a little while, and somebody might get fired, but the whole intent is to Restore Credibility. (Which, let's face it, our government today lacks - whether you're looking from the left or the right.) The United States government has always walked an insanely thin line. And to boot, it's always kept a really firm heel over all its discontent. But increasingly, it's running out of wiggle-room. The late twentieth-century showed some incredibly deft maneuvers. Obama himself was from the outset a wondrously smart choice to nudge towards Presidency.

But reviling Golddigger Sacks to rile support for the financial reform bill (standing at 80% polled support as of this afternoon, I believe) is only going to do so much. The retail property market continues to look shaky, unemployment isn't poised to shrink, and even in the best-case economic scenario climate change is going to render our best laid plans awry.

This is just The Establishment giving the masses another installment of Justice Theater.

How much longer will we suffer it?

EDIT: "Dresden," some of you have asked me, "don't you have a position on SB1070 to share with us?"

"My brothers and sisters and siblings," I have said, "I know nothing better to say than those who have gotten up in the ugly face of capitalist power and spoken themselves."

Go Back To Smoking, It's Less Lethal

Many fast food joints have inflicted culinary atrocities upon the American public, but Kentucky Fried Chicken has pushed the envelope- well smashed right through the fucker, actually- with its Double Down chicken sandwich. Who else but the inventors of the " Famous Bowl", in which every item on their menu was shoved into a cardboard trough and covered in gravy, could think replacing the bun in a sandwich with two pieces of fried chicken was a good idea. There is bacon, processed cheese, and some kind of special sauce in between the chicken pieces. The overall impression of the cheese and dressing oozing out between the chicken breasts is that the Double Down is the end product of a chicken necrophiliac fetishist's sodomization of a batch of Extra Crispy.
This is not a review. When I see a disgusting pile of shit, I don't wander over to it and take a bite- I already know it's not good to eat. I'm not a granola cruncher on some anti- meat rant, either. This sandwich has pushed fast food past the limits of decadence. It is obscene. It is base. It is something from a Lovecraft novel- the geometry is alien and the angles are wrong. If the Old Ones got together for a picnic, they would serve sandwiches like this.
What is really disturbing is that while the Double Down is being sold as a gimmick in upscale suburbs and college towns for a limited time, it is likely to join the McRib and Chicken Fries as a staple fast food item in poorer urban and rural areas around the country. The final, grotesque irony is that while capitalism deprives millions of poor children around the world of a subsistence diet its adherents in the American food industry make the most unhealthy, least nutritious food known in history more affordable than anything else to eat.

Another word on Private Property

There is, naturally, a difference between the terms "private property" and "individual property," although the former is a term we are never invited to examine.

Individual property belongs, in essence, to a person. For example, in my tiny Minneapolis apartment there is a dresser I am using as an entertainment center, a folding TV tray made of black wood - from Target - a filing cabinet from Officemax, a wobbly shelf system I picked up from a thrift store called Savers. These possessions belong to me, as an individual. Day where I invite people into my home to watch TV, they don't take the dresser when they leave. The property is recognized as mine. The man who comes to fix the internets doesn't take the router when he leaves. "Possession is 9/10s of the law," the old adage goes; truly, the courts and cops and lawyers and jury duty summons serve their purpose in keeping an ordered society that will defend your individual property from hoodlums and ne'er-do-wells. Justice, on occasion, is served.

Private property is the twisted perversion of individual property. It is the Mr. Hyde to individual property's Doctor Jekyll - making the word "property" a gentleman by day and a rampaging monster by night (or even in mere shadows). Under the twisted logic of capitalism, a corporation has as much right to a factory as I have to my dresser or television. My furniture - my personal belongings - even my car (technically belonging to the bank) - regardless of their incapacity to feed and clothe and house people, is lumped into the same ideological category as the Ford plant in nearby Saint Paul. Gigantic plants for metalworking that employ hundreds of people and that are the foundation for an entire economy of steel are considered alongside your two-bedroom-one-bath house.

And yet what is the rhetoric in society? That Marxists socialists, who call for the "re-appropriation of the wealth," want to rob you of your home and the contents of your bank account, want to melt down your SUV for a statue of Lenin, want to give your iPod to orphans in Harlem.

Let's get something straight out the gate, yall. We have bigger fish to fry than playing musical chairs with the housing market. (The capitalist-bred Recessasaurus, however, is coming for you, and we defend your right to your home.) When we talk about "abolishing private property," we mean the springs of social wealth ought to be taken into the hands of society so that all may drink from it. Everyone ought to have access to the basic needs of the human condition without worrying about the next paycheck, the overdraft fees, the bills. In a global society of plenty, we can provide more than enough to go around.

But it means the wrenching of the means of production from the hands of profit-seeking capitalists and corporations. As long as absolute wealth is the goal of our economic system, supply will never meet demand in a way that is humanitarian and fair.

Yes, not only can you keep your iPod - you can have a stake in the social direction of Apple, too.