The Grand Oil Party has been at it again, refusing to pass legislation (this time, inexplicably, it is an extension of tax cuts, which they claim to love). As is often the case during their political maneuvering, they deploy the word "certainty" with a frequency that reminds us that: A) they are speaking from a script, B) their consultants continue to advise that uncertainty is what scares American most, and C) they have no idea what the word's policy implications are.
This time, they are demanding that the president approve an oil pipeline. Not review and consider it, as the administration is supposed to. Not even make a decision on an accelerated timeline, as the republicans initially demanded. But approve it. Provide certainty to the petro-economy, so that it can grab more fistfuls of dollars,...um, uh, create jobs. Yeah, that's it. So we have a situation where the oligarchs and their tea party minions are trying to ignore the constitution, foist a favor to the industry onto the president's desk, force the will of one small part of the legislative branch on the executive. Tip the balance and cancel the check, there's money to be made.
Ironically, the party that has enshrined the "Market" for so long finds itself demanding government intervention on behalf of said Market, which in so many other arenas is supposed to work its magic best in the absence of any government action. But as we have seen so many times recently, the Market feigns terminal illness or threatens mass suicide if the government does not act. Remember TARP, interest free loans to banks, stimulus spending? Socialism, plain and simple, demanded by the same Market that says it believes in pure capitalism. Hmm.
What the Market and it's party actually do object to is regulation, and again they call on the ogre of Uncertainty to scare up suspensions of regulations, laws over-riding rules, or appropriations bills that de-fund enforcement of whatever they cannot erase. Clean air and water cost too much, and cause uncertainty among the job creators, we are told. Leaving determinations to trained professionals and basing policy on science rather than expedience can take to long, causing uncertainty.
Odd that rules written in the Federal Register, based on data-driven analyses, can be characterized as counter to certainty, but that's the party line. This paradox reveals that not all certainty is created equal, that what the corporate titans want is Certainty that they will not be constrained in any way, and that profit margins will not be affected by bothersome rules. And if those rules and regs reflect a concern for the environment, or the health and safety of the working class, if those rules reflect the preferences and comments painstakingly gathered from specialists, the people affected by them (among them, the business community), and the general public, too bad. There's money to be made, after all, and the Market is too damned lazy to adapt to its environment.
Speaking of the environment, let me also speak of evolution. Major corporations in the agribusiness sector have sought Certainty in ways that are bound to fail. Farming is inherently uncertain--always was and always will be. Creating a variety of super corn seems attractive to an idiot, but evolution will breed super bugs and fungi and a host of other beings to wipe that smugly certainty away. Inserting genes that make it certain that you can spray away all the plants but the crop give you a few seasons of certainty, until the messy mutations pop up with unexpected consequences. It all looks good in the plan, but reality intervenes, and the Certainty you had on paper erodes away quickly. There is pretty good evidence from archaeology that the greater the emphasis on certainty, the harder the fall.
At the altar of Certainty, there are those who would sacrifice the careful balance struck by our Constitution, the will and the common good of the people, that messy and ungodly Evolution, and for that matter the free market. But this will not bring peace of mind, not even to the wealthy few who get to decide what we are certain about. Certainty demands an unending series of concessions; the freedoms to change, to improve, to innovate are all anathema.
The only system in which Certainty is great enough to satisfy it's business-minded devotees is totalitarianism. Demands for freedom or the welfare of the commoners are troublesome. Democracy is rife with uncertainty, what with everyone getting a vote. People who want to develop a pipeline must face this uncertainty, and always have. To shirk that and insist on certainty is to deny that anyone else gets a voice, and that things change.
History is not about to stop, and absolute Certainty will always elude the captains of industry. Atlas can shrug, oligarchs can strike, but people are waking up and getting fed up. The plutocrats have almost all the marbles, and we the people are not inclined to surrender the last few. Those who whine about a few stray ones rolling around, messing up their perfect order, had better learn to adapt.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Commercial Disobedience (Why have I never heard of it?)
I know, google's first page or so would have you believe that this phrase has been uttered maybe twice in the past decade. First, in 2002, by a guy named Grimmelman at the Laboratorium, who used it to describe the time an RFID security tag fell out of a book while he was shopping, and he set off the alarm a couple times just to irritate the bookstore, then set to dreaming that if a million people did this, bookstores would stop putting the damn things in books.
More recently, Mark Cassello wrote about it in Huffington post, explaining that mass retreats from Netflix and Bank of America qualify as nothing more than collective consumer action, falling short of actual commercial disobedience. Then he goes off on a tangent about Apple's evilness, I guess because Steve Jobs was barely cold, as if a collective consumer decision to not buy ipads would qualify.
I'm not buying that any more than I believe that occupying public space is civil disobedience. Commercial disobedience involves asserting oneself outside the seller-consumer relationship, at least until such time as purchases are made compulsory. I guess you can get partial credit for resisting peer pressure to buy all the latest crap, but that's only the mildest form.
To disobey would be more along the lines of people who refuse to be foreclosed and ousted, who sit tight in their homes, maybe even force the bank to rove in court that it owns the mortgage (not so easy, given the slicing and dicing that occurred). Pickets and protests on corporate grounds, that's disobedience. The 1% want to have it all, and exclude us, so why are we not sitting in at their lunch counter, moving to the front of the jet? That's commercial disobedience.
I'm too big a wimp to crash a board meeting or an exclusive golf resort, so I satisfy myself with smaller disobediences. One great thing I read about lately was to take credit card offers and other postage-paid return envelopes and stuff them with whatever will fit: plastic, other junk mail, and messages to the mail-room staff like "Unionize!" or "Your CEO golfs and calls it work." My sister said she's enclosing stacks of coupons that arrive in her mailbox, since the people who open it may benefit.
Then there's the kind of disobedience that amount to dismissal, turn your back on commerce, drop out. Doing so completely is so rare that I bet you don't even know anyone who's done it. Short of pemmican in a pit house, you can pick and choose divestments, from ditching an IRA that leans on big bad companies to non-cash exchanges of food with friends.
Finally, there's armchair disobedience. Like sitting here and advising people to occupy foreclosures and walmart, peppering my prose with improvised sarcastic devices. So few people have ever seen this stuff that I can confidently state that no actual disobedience has come of it.
No doubt there's more. Somebody must have been thinking about this before. Civil disobedience brought and end to Vietnam and legalized racism, and the term is something that is still widely taught today. But our anger at the savage capitalism that is to blame for so many of our social and economic woes remains inchoate (behold the aimless occupiers), marginalized (Ralph Nader's accurate but bland blandishments), or plain old stupid and dangerous (tea partiers who think the government is the problem).
Already, some have the support of their local sheriff, maybe even their congressional rep.
More recently, Mark Cassello wrote about it in Huffington post, explaining that mass retreats from Netflix and Bank of America qualify as nothing more than collective consumer action, falling short of actual commercial disobedience. Then he goes off on a tangent about Apple's evilness, I guess because Steve Jobs was barely cold, as if a collective consumer decision to not buy ipads would qualify.
I'm not buying that any more than I believe that occupying public space is civil disobedience. Commercial disobedience involves asserting oneself outside the seller-consumer relationship, at least until such time as purchases are made compulsory. I guess you can get partial credit for resisting peer pressure to buy all the latest crap, but that's only the mildest form.
To disobey would be more along the lines of people who refuse to be foreclosed and ousted, who sit tight in their homes, maybe even force the bank to rove in court that it owns the mortgage (not so easy, given the slicing and dicing that occurred). Pickets and protests on corporate grounds, that's disobedience. The 1% want to have it all, and exclude us, so why are we not sitting in at their lunch counter, moving to the front of the jet? That's commercial disobedience.
I'm too big a wimp to crash a board meeting or an exclusive golf resort, so I satisfy myself with smaller disobediences. One great thing I read about lately was to take credit card offers and other postage-paid return envelopes and stuff them with whatever will fit: plastic, other junk mail, and messages to the mail-room staff like "Unionize!" or "Your CEO golfs and calls it work." My sister said she's enclosing stacks of coupons that arrive in her mailbox, since the people who open it may benefit.
Then there's the kind of disobedience that amount to dismissal, turn your back on commerce, drop out. Doing so completely is so rare that I bet you don't even know anyone who's done it. Short of pemmican in a pit house, you can pick and choose divestments, from ditching an IRA that leans on big bad companies to non-cash exchanges of food with friends.
Finally, there's armchair disobedience. Like sitting here and advising people to occupy foreclosures and walmart, peppering my prose with improvised sarcastic devices. So few people have ever seen this stuff that I can confidently state that no actual disobedience has come of it.
No doubt there's more. Somebody must have been thinking about this before. Civil disobedience brought and end to Vietnam and legalized racism, and the term is something that is still widely taught today. But our anger at the savage capitalism that is to blame for so many of our social and economic woes remains inchoate (behold the aimless occupiers), marginalized (Ralph Nader's accurate but bland blandishments), or plain old stupid and dangerous (tea partiers who think the government is the problem).
Already, some have the support of their local sheriff, maybe even their congressional rep.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Fighting for Your Freedoms
It seems a long time but has only been a few weeks since Veterans' Day, when we pause to honor those who served in the US military. Then, as on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and the other solemn punctuations we place in our lives right up to and including funerals of all those vets, we honor the men and women who "Fought for Our Freedoms." This alliterative bit hits home, to the notice of cynical politicians and the mongering profiteers who run them, and it is so well used that it flows instantly and automatically with the narrative that becomes history.
Many soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines did fight for freedom against such worthy foes as European fascism. Even more spent tours of unmitigated boredom in varying degrees of discomfort. Some got hurt, lost limbs, and died. For Freedom, we say, because it's just too painful to abide otherwise.
The Leaders who send these kids to war have a pretty sorry record of using the military force at their disposal for actually protecting freedom. From the US, sham states in certain neighborhoods of Iraq and Afghanistan may look better than their immediate predecessors, but its debatable whether normal people fare any better there. Meanwhile, here at home, we citizens were stripped of a litany of freedoms during these conflicts and the overall War on Terror. Stopping a Libyan madman or Balkan genocide is good, but honest fights for freedom are rare these days. It turns out that Fighting for Freedom is not such an important policy objective that we do it in places without oil.
I would like to have people in uniform fight for freedom right here at home.
Not warfighting, and I'm not even suggesting we replace military with Americorps (not in this post, anyway). I mean the police and if need be the national guard protecting freedom. The freedoms to assemble, to petition our government, and to speak our minds, for example. I mean protecting the right of citizens to speak out, not just protecting the buildings and the politicians.
Maybe I should explain that what got me to thinking along these lines was the news that Wisconsin's bitterly partisan governor chose to wind down a year in which his citizens rose up against him by issuing a policy stating that more that four people in the capitol building or 100 people outside constitutes a demonstration which must get a permit. Oh, and to get a permit, a political appointee of said governor may decide to demand--up front--payment for estimated police pay and capitol clean-up, liability insurance, and a bond. Pay up, or no permit. No entry onto the grounds of your state's capitol, where democracy used to live.
To my mind, government should accept the cost of some extra trash cans and police labor as the cost of democracy. We have trillions for wars with Iraq, but not to ensure a safe place for people to exercise their democratic freedoms? Preposterous, our freedom lives here with us. The governor had $140,000,000 in tax breaks and give-aways to corporations, but balks at spending a small percentage of that to maintain the seat of government and protect the rights of citizens? Utter nonsense.
Governor Walker says the demonstrations (triggered by his arrogant stances against workers' freedom of assembly and petition) cost $8,000,000 in police and nearly that much again to clean up tape marks on the marble halls of power, a claim so dubious that even he backed away from it. He feels that it is fair to turn this into a sort of user-fee situation. Not a tax, of course. Not intended to make it hard for the un-wealthy to protest. Not intended to stifle free speech, to make the solons of the Badger State unreachable. Not thumbing his patrician nose at the teeming masses by making them pay for police who may be used to intimidate them. No. Not that at all.
Say each and every state capitol had Wisconsin-sized demonstrations every year, really saw an increase of $10,000,000 a year to cover the costs of democracy. That would be half a billion dollars nationwide. How many times over have we dropped that kind of cash to Fight for Freedom overseas? We did it a few times every week under Bush. We have in our arsenal single weapons that cost more than that. I propose that the federal government sell one of those and issue block grants to states to be used to protect our freedom.
We may not agree with our fellow citizens. We may despise what they say. We may want to go out and say our piece, hold up our signs and shout slogans at each other. But we should not want them silenced. We should not support financial obstacles to showing up where the laws are made to speak to our Leaders. We should not support the perverse use of police to squelch protest, rather than to shepherd it.
I've seen the state troopers who guard the capitol here in Olympia maintain their cool, help keep the Occupy camp safe, and keep an eye out for actions that could escalate into violence. Entering the capitol building during one rally, I was asked to leave my sign by the door because it had a stick attached, which I guess some people would see as an infringement, but to me makes enough sense to comply. The point is that instead of jumping to eviction and pepper spray, they let democracy happen. I'd be happy knowing that my tax money helped pay for just enough police to keep me from being attacked for my beliefs or to keep rowdies from turning political protest into vandalism and violence. Protect and defend democracy, fight for freedom.
Friday, December 2, 2011
I Like Ike
It's a well known paradox of political archaeology that the earlier the Republican, the more liberal he looks. Bush II indeed proved Bush I's kinder gentleness. Reagan taxed rich people at cruelly larcenous levels by today's standards. Nixon signed into law some keystone environmental legislation and only played dirty tricks, no waterboarding; I mean, the guy signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. If you go back to Teddy Roosevelt, you find a Republican who set aside vast tracts of wild land and fought capitalism's malignancies right and left.
Lately, I've been feeling like the people I used to snicker at, who maintained that the 1950s were America's halcyonic heroic heyday, maybe they were on to something. Maybe it's only because our country has begun picking up speed in its downward spiral, making the present feel like the depths of the toilet bowl, the rim where we once were a gleaming symbol of hope. (This presumes you can see past the festering under-rim of racism and sexism--not to mention the war-pocked porcelain matted with scoundrelous profiteering growths.)
But like Jello Biafra said, we've got a bigger problem now. Worse than he imagined, maybe.
Makes me long for the warm comradery of the Eisenhower Era. You know, when Americans who had whupped the Japanese and Hitler, and determined (through our global example of gleaming capitalist prosperity) to keep Joe Stalin from taking over the world.
Also, when Americans who made more than $400,000 per year payed 92% tax; the poorest among these took home $32,000. Mid-way through Ike's first term, more than a third (34.8%) of wage and salary earners belonged to unions, which happens to have been the peak in that metric during the entire history of this country. A guy like me could support his family with a single job. It was as close as we ever came to the socialist worker's paradise.
What happened? If I could blame the Republicans, I would, but the data won't let me. Nor will President Eisenhower's parting words, which warned the nation to beware the military industrial complex and its ruinous effects on our economy and freedoms.
As the chart shows, the top tax rate did drop very slightly during the Eisenhower administration (it had peaked in 1944 at 94%, was 92% when Ike took office, and 91% when he left), but a much bigger drop--to 70%--occurred during the subsequent Kennedy and Johnson regime, although by the end of that there was also a 10% surtax to pay for the Vietnam war. Yeah, that's right, an extra tax; there was a time when wars were not considered normal ongoing activity, and citizens had to pony up some extra cash to pay for them. The other thing that happened during the 1960s was that the threshold for the top tax rate lowered from $400,000 to $200,000, so more people fit in this top bracket.
Then Nixon came in, which by current standards should have meant a huge tax holiday for rich people, but if that happened it was not in the highly visible income tax realm, which stayed the same. When Jimmy Carter stepped into office, the threshold and top rate were still $200,000 and 70%. By the time he left, all that had happened was that inflation had been acknowledged by raising the threshold about 7%.
The Reagan Regime was when the modern GOP agenda of disencumbering the rich and transferring ever more wealth to them truly took hold. Midway through his second term, regression had brought the top bracket down to 50% and increased the income threshold to nearly $360,000, which is so far beyond inflation that it can only be read as a gift to those whose salaries were exorbitant (though perhaps shy of obscene). Two years later, despite being busy selling arms to terrorist regimes that had attacked us, the administration had somehow found a way to reduce the top tax rate to just 28%. But because in this new mean Republicanism it is not enough for the rich to win, but the poor must lose, this top rate applied to anyone making $29,750. There was a "bubble" rate of 33% for income in excess of $71,900, but compared to the 50% of two years prior, it was nothing.
Bush I, true to form, accomplished nothing visible to the naked eye.
And then along cam Bill Clinton. After a dozen years of GOP rule, a chance to set things straight with the allegedly liberal democrats controlling everything. So the rich were once again taxed heavily, right?
Wrong. The "bubble" rate dropped again to 31.5%, and the threshold rose again in 1992, which ostensibly happened under Bush I, although the Democrats controlled Congress at the time and should have been able to hold out, given the political hay they could have had from the administration's criminal culpability in the Iran-Contra morass. Somehow, the Dems snatched economic defeat from the jaws of victory, though, and by the time Clinton had finished his final term, the top tax rate had risen marginally to just under 40%, but far fewer people qualified, since the income threshold had ballooned to nearly $300,000.
Bush II did not monkey around with the rates as much. Not because he was stymied by the compliant Democrats in Congress--it's just that the rich don't earn their money by working at jobs anymore. Decreasing capital gains tax, increasing the threshold on inheritance tax, and of course privatizing government functions so that his corporate buddies could collect money instead of paying, now those were policies W could get behind.
Now, there are increasing demands from us commoners that the rich pay more. Our economy is hurting, and if the government had money to invest, we could recover, create jobs, and fix our ailing public sector. But as it stands, only people who make more than $379,150/year pay the current top rate of 35%, and that's chump change to the richest people in the nation, who pay just 15.3% on the fraction of their investment income that is not sheltered.
So yeah, there is part of me that longs for that workers' paradise of the 1950s. Workers represented by unions, the populace at large benefiting from public works funded in part by the most fortunate among us being asked to help out their fellow citizens. Where is Comrade Eisenhower when we need him?
Lately, I've been feeling like the people I used to snicker at, who maintained that the 1950s were America's halcyonic heroic heyday, maybe they were on to something. Maybe it's only because our country has begun picking up speed in its downward spiral, making the present feel like the depths of the toilet bowl, the rim where we once were a gleaming symbol of hope. (This presumes you can see past the festering under-rim of racism and sexism--not to mention the war-pocked porcelain matted with scoundrelous profiteering growths.)
But like Jello Biafra said, we've got a bigger problem now. Worse than he imagined, maybe.
Makes me long for the warm comradery of the Eisenhower Era. You know, when Americans who had whupped the Japanese and Hitler, and determined (through our global example of gleaming capitalist prosperity) to keep Joe Stalin from taking over the world.
Also, when Americans who made more than $400,000 per year payed 92% tax; the poorest among these took home $32,000. Mid-way through Ike's first term, more than a third (34.8%) of wage and salary earners belonged to unions, which happens to have been the peak in that metric during the entire history of this country. A guy like me could support his family with a single job. It was as close as we ever came to the socialist worker's paradise.
What happened? If I could blame the Republicans, I would, but the data won't let me. Nor will President Eisenhower's parting words, which warned the nation to beware the military industrial complex and its ruinous effects on our economy and freedoms.
As the chart shows, the top tax rate did drop very slightly during the Eisenhower administration (it had peaked in 1944 at 94%, was 92% when Ike took office, and 91% when he left), but a much bigger drop--to 70%--occurred during the subsequent Kennedy and Johnson regime, although by the end of that there was also a 10% surtax to pay for the Vietnam war. Yeah, that's right, an extra tax; there was a time when wars were not considered normal ongoing activity, and citizens had to pony up some extra cash to pay for them. The other thing that happened during the 1960s was that the threshold for the top tax rate lowered from $400,000 to $200,000, so more people fit in this top bracket.
Then Nixon came in, which by current standards should have meant a huge tax holiday for rich people, but if that happened it was not in the highly visible income tax realm, which stayed the same. When Jimmy Carter stepped into office, the threshold and top rate were still $200,000 and 70%. By the time he left, all that had happened was that inflation had been acknowledged by raising the threshold about 7%.
The Reagan Regime was when the modern GOP agenda of disencumbering the rich and transferring ever more wealth to them truly took hold. Midway through his second term, regression had brought the top bracket down to 50% and increased the income threshold to nearly $360,000, which is so far beyond inflation that it can only be read as a gift to those whose salaries were exorbitant (though perhaps shy of obscene). Two years later, despite being busy selling arms to terrorist regimes that had attacked us, the administration had somehow found a way to reduce the top tax rate to just 28%. But because in this new mean Republicanism it is not enough for the rich to win, but the poor must lose, this top rate applied to anyone making $29,750. There was a "bubble" rate of 33% for income in excess of $71,900, but compared to the 50% of two years prior, it was nothing.
Bush I, true to form, accomplished nothing visible to the naked eye.
And then along cam Bill Clinton. After a dozen years of GOP rule, a chance to set things straight with the allegedly liberal democrats controlling everything. So the rich were once again taxed heavily, right?
Wrong. The "bubble" rate dropped again to 31.5%, and the threshold rose again in 1992, which ostensibly happened under Bush I, although the Democrats controlled Congress at the time and should have been able to hold out, given the political hay they could have had from the administration's criminal culpability in the Iran-Contra morass. Somehow, the Dems snatched economic defeat from the jaws of victory, though, and by the time Clinton had finished his final term, the top tax rate had risen marginally to just under 40%, but far fewer people qualified, since the income threshold had ballooned to nearly $300,000.
Bush II did not monkey around with the rates as much. Not because he was stymied by the compliant Democrats in Congress--it's just that the rich don't earn their money by working at jobs anymore. Decreasing capital gains tax, increasing the threshold on inheritance tax, and of course privatizing government functions so that his corporate buddies could collect money instead of paying, now those were policies W could get behind.
Now, there are increasing demands from us commoners that the rich pay more. Our economy is hurting, and if the government had money to invest, we could recover, create jobs, and fix our ailing public sector. But as it stands, only people who make more than $379,150/year pay the current top rate of 35%, and that's chump change to the richest people in the nation, who pay just 15.3% on the fraction of their investment income that is not sheltered.
So yeah, there is part of me that longs for that workers' paradise of the 1950s. Workers represented by unions, the populace at large benefiting from public works funded in part by the most fortunate among us being asked to help out their fellow citizens. Where is Comrade Eisenhower when we need him?
Monday, November 21, 2011
Occupy Bank Houses
It is time to take back the houses.
Every day, most Americans drive by houses that stand empty. Houses foreclosed, their inhabitants moved on to a relative's couch if they are lucky, and a tent if they are not. Maybe the people who lived there made a bad choice, or did not fully understand what kind of mortgage they were getting into, maybe they even knew full well thy could not afford the house. But more often, they got hit with a medical bill that ruined them, or lost their job, or were talked into a predatory loan. The bank, rather than work out a way to work it out, foreclosed and took the house.
Every day, most Americans drive by homeless people, although we're getting to the point where we do not even notice. Begging at traffic lights, hidden and huddled in a tent tucked in the woods, or milling about outside food banks, shelters and churches. No job, and often as not no prospects, they are waiting. For veterans' benefits, for cans of beans, for a chance to take a shower, for enough money to buy something to dull the pain or ease the boredom.
These are two phenomena in need of a merger. While the Right rails about us being a Christian nation, they reveal their deeper devotion to Mammon by enshrining these empty homes as the domain of conniving corporations. Love thy neighbor? Well, if he has no house, then technically he is not a neighbor, so the logic goes, and the lucky ones (often as not thinking themselves Chosen or Righteous) feel no responsibility to the wretched, no compulsion to charity. Maybe the Bible should have been a little more clear in that requirement, like the Koran.
But I digress. The issue is more fundamental than religion. There are homes standing empty and people standing in the cold. Both are symptoms of the immense transfer of wealth over the past few decades from people who work for money to people who simple collect interest, dividends, capital gains, and of course, rent. If I thought the greedy were smarter than they are, I'd say this was by design, that loans were made with the express purpose of collecting interest for a couple of years before taking possession of the property. But instead, the housing market collapse has more to do with stupid greed than anything else, CDOs, derivatives that may have involved some high-dollar math, but no sense.
So should we reward mindless greed with property? No. Should we allow our neighborhoods to sink into the squalor of abandonment? No. Should we let people suffer when a solution is at hand? No.
Some of you will think this is radical, but it isn't. What is radical is to cut and cut and cut away at our social safety net the way we have for years, so that tax cut for the wealthy can become wealthier. Radical is insisting that a cold family stay cold because the global investor class not experience a minor decline of prospects.
Sheriffs across the country have decided that it's not radical, and are refusing to evict people. Some politicians have urged constituents being foreclosed on to stay put. Those of us commoners with common sense would rather see someone in a house than the house be abandoned and people be homeless.
I pay a monthly mortgage--to a credit union, and not a Wall Street bank--and don't plan on stopping. Houses should not be stolen, or taken by brute force. But as an interim measure, while people are out of work and houses are not selling anyway, house occupation seems both reasonable and humane. If five years from now there is a problem with people refusing to work and occupying someone else's property, then we can deal with it then, but now there is an urgency to our societal dilemma that justifies occupation.
Besides, as a political message, it works. It is easy enough to find out which houses belong to Wall Street, and occupying those houses is a far more direct confrontation than occupying public parks. Thus far, occupations of banks themselves end rapidly with arrests, but the legal process will be slower with bank-owned houses. The same muddled state of sliced-and-diced mortgage-backed securities that allows banks to say the cannot trace the actual mortgage holders to arrange a re-finance should be used to slow down re-evictions. Also, we are learning that the initial foreclosures often do not stand up to scrutiny, having by-passed some legal requirements before being robo-signed.
Not everyone wants to make a statement, and for them, I suggest the back door. Quietly move in. The banks have so many foreclosed properties that it will take them a while to notice you are there and arrange for your removal.
We live in an age rife with symbolic acts, and if we run out of people who need a house to occupy, we can still make a statement. Replace the "For Sale" sign with one that says "Foreclosed by Bank of America." Or "Property of Saudi Investors. Trespassers May Be Beheaded." Or just, "Your Neighbors Used to Live Here." Or "Abandoned by Citigroup." Call the banks that own the places and demand better upkeep.
We used to live in a nation where we knew our neighbors and helped them out. We raised barns together, and paid taxes that helped the poorest among us get a leg up. We expected those who were born well off, those who had money to spare, to spread the wealth and not try to maximize it at the expense of the rest of us. We did not stand by while people were kicked to the curb. It's time to move back in.
Every day, most Americans drive by houses that stand empty. Houses foreclosed, their inhabitants moved on to a relative's couch if they are lucky, and a tent if they are not. Maybe the people who lived there made a bad choice, or did not fully understand what kind of mortgage they were getting into, maybe they even knew full well thy could not afford the house. But more often, they got hit with a medical bill that ruined them, or lost their job, or were talked into a predatory loan. The bank, rather than work out a way to work it out, foreclosed and took the house.
Every day, most Americans drive by homeless people, although we're getting to the point where we do not even notice. Begging at traffic lights, hidden and huddled in a tent tucked in the woods, or milling about outside food banks, shelters and churches. No job, and often as not no prospects, they are waiting. For veterans' benefits, for cans of beans, for a chance to take a shower, for enough money to buy something to dull the pain or ease the boredom.
These are two phenomena in need of a merger. While the Right rails about us being a Christian nation, they reveal their deeper devotion to Mammon by enshrining these empty homes as the domain of conniving corporations. Love thy neighbor? Well, if he has no house, then technically he is not a neighbor, so the logic goes, and the lucky ones (often as not thinking themselves Chosen or Righteous) feel no responsibility to the wretched, no compulsion to charity. Maybe the Bible should have been a little more clear in that requirement, like the Koran.
But I digress. The issue is more fundamental than religion. There are homes standing empty and people standing in the cold. Both are symptoms of the immense transfer of wealth over the past few decades from people who work for money to people who simple collect interest, dividends, capital gains, and of course, rent. If I thought the greedy were smarter than they are, I'd say this was by design, that loans were made with the express purpose of collecting interest for a couple of years before taking possession of the property. But instead, the housing market collapse has more to do with stupid greed than anything else, CDOs, derivatives that may have involved some high-dollar math, but no sense.
So should we reward mindless greed with property? No. Should we allow our neighborhoods to sink into the squalor of abandonment? No. Should we let people suffer when a solution is at hand? No.
Some of you will think this is radical, but it isn't. What is radical is to cut and cut and cut away at our social safety net the way we have for years, so that tax cut for the wealthy can become wealthier. Radical is insisting that a cold family stay cold because the global investor class not experience a minor decline of prospects.
Sheriffs across the country have decided that it's not radical, and are refusing to evict people. Some politicians have urged constituents being foreclosed on to stay put. Those of us commoners with common sense would rather see someone in a house than the house be abandoned and people be homeless.
I pay a monthly mortgage--to a credit union, and not a Wall Street bank--and don't plan on stopping. Houses should not be stolen, or taken by brute force. But as an interim measure, while people are out of work and houses are not selling anyway, house occupation seems both reasonable and humane. If five years from now there is a problem with people refusing to work and occupying someone else's property, then we can deal with it then, but now there is an urgency to our societal dilemma that justifies occupation.
Besides, as a political message, it works. It is easy enough to find out which houses belong to Wall Street, and occupying those houses is a far more direct confrontation than occupying public parks. Thus far, occupations of banks themselves end rapidly with arrests, but the legal process will be slower with bank-owned houses. The same muddled state of sliced-and-diced mortgage-backed securities that allows banks to say the cannot trace the actual mortgage holders to arrange a re-finance should be used to slow down re-evictions. Also, we are learning that the initial foreclosures often do not stand up to scrutiny, having by-passed some legal requirements before being robo-signed.
Not everyone wants to make a statement, and for them, I suggest the back door. Quietly move in. The banks have so many foreclosed properties that it will take them a while to notice you are there and arrange for your removal.
We live in an age rife with symbolic acts, and if we run out of people who need a house to occupy, we can still make a statement. Replace the "For Sale" sign with one that says "Foreclosed by Bank of America." Or "Property of Saudi Investors. Trespassers May Be Beheaded." Or just, "Your Neighbors Used to Live Here." Or "Abandoned by Citigroup." Call the banks that own the places and demand better upkeep.
We used to live in a nation where we knew our neighbors and helped them out. We raised barns together, and paid taxes that helped the poorest among us get a leg up. We expected those who were born well off, those who had money to spare, to spread the wealth and not try to maximize it at the expense of the rest of us. We did not stand by while people were kicked to the curb. It's time to move back in.
Occupy Walmart
One of the litmi of the Left is Walmart. "I Don't Shop at Walmart" stickers appear on bumpers of old Volvos, Prius's, and other awkward-to-pluralize brands preferred by progressives. Labor protests the poor wages (poorer still if you are a woman) and the anti-union stance of the company. Liberals smirk and giggle at that People of Walmart website.
And strangely enough, it works in the other direction as well. The Right--or at least the rank and file, the commoners with the votes, the LumpenRight--shops at Walmart. Scoop up them Asian goods, even though it meant your brother got laid off. Buy that beflaggled patriot wear and the disney princess crap. Squint and grunt at them commies who would let unions into Walmart. Swipe the card while Walmart swipes your paychecks. And for God's sake, vote Republican.
So, with this powerful symbol of piratical capitalism run amok, amidst every community with a 15 acre pad site and the critical mass of consumer households to offer, we are occupying parks? Parks?! Land that already belongs to the public?
Granted, marching into a Wall Street Bank or a Walmart Street retail establishment and setting up a tent invariably results in arrests, whereas most cops are just letting the protesters stay in the parks, entertaining themselves at the seeming cluelessness of some college kids, and the un-bra'd chests of others. Occupying private property is frowned upon in the US, and it's really hard to imagine Occupy Walmart lasting more than a few days, ending in the ozone and burnt hair aromatic aftermath of taser fests of the rent-a-cops and eventually the real ones.
But, we can protest outside. We can hold up signs about jobs outsourced and landfills bursting, about grandpa serving his country and working all his life only to be humiliated as Greeter because he cannot afford retirement. OK, that's a long sign, but you know what I mean.
And, stealthily, we can protest inside. Pick up something and replace it on the wrong shelf. Try on the maximum number of clothes every time, ask for assistance, do whatever it takes to make the workers work more, because that's the only way they'll get more hours and more cash, the only way Walmart will create more jobs (crappy though they may be). Get yourself hired there, and then invite in a union. Go in and apply stickers with "This Used to be Made in America" or some other clever shit I cannot think of right now.
Or not. You don't need to sneak and snivel. Get in their face. Rouse the rabble, yell crazy stuff or go all yippie-theater on them 'til they escort you off the premises, making everyone there a little freaked out, a little less inclined to hang around and spend more. You don't even have to go there physically, just write letters to the editor, blog, expend your own breath ranting and exhorting (or, if you are not a blowhard like myself, riffing reasoning). Talk to your Walmart-shopping friends about how the place sucks money out of localities (not just what you spend there, but jobs lost, taxes unpaid, resources expended on their behalf, not to mention that act that someone who works at Walmart is eligible for welfare because the pay is so shitty).
Occupy Walmart however you see fit. Squelching the flow of customers, shaming the company in the public eye (all you gotta do is tell the truth for that to work), or advocating for their workers. Whatever you want to do. Just don't buy anything there.
And strangely enough, it works in the other direction as well. The Right--or at least the rank and file, the commoners with the votes, the LumpenRight--shops at Walmart. Scoop up them Asian goods, even though it meant your brother got laid off. Buy that beflaggled patriot wear and the disney princess crap. Squint and grunt at them commies who would let unions into Walmart. Swipe the card while Walmart swipes your paychecks. And for God's sake, vote Republican.
So, with this powerful symbol of piratical capitalism run amok, amidst every community with a 15 acre pad site and the critical mass of consumer households to offer, we are occupying parks? Parks?! Land that already belongs to the public?
Granted, marching into a Wall Street Bank or a Walmart Street retail establishment and setting up a tent invariably results in arrests, whereas most cops are just letting the protesters stay in the parks, entertaining themselves at the seeming cluelessness of some college kids, and the un-bra'd chests of others. Occupying private property is frowned upon in the US, and it's really hard to imagine Occupy Walmart lasting more than a few days, ending in the ozone and burnt hair aromatic aftermath of taser fests of the rent-a-cops and eventually the real ones.
But, we can protest outside. We can hold up signs about jobs outsourced and landfills bursting, about grandpa serving his country and working all his life only to be humiliated as Greeter because he cannot afford retirement. OK, that's a long sign, but you know what I mean.
And, stealthily, we can protest inside. Pick up something and replace it on the wrong shelf. Try on the maximum number of clothes every time, ask for assistance, do whatever it takes to make the workers work more, because that's the only way they'll get more hours and more cash, the only way Walmart will create more jobs (crappy though they may be). Get yourself hired there, and then invite in a union. Go in and apply stickers with "This Used to be Made in America" or some other clever shit I cannot think of right now.
Or not. You don't need to sneak and snivel. Get in their face. Rouse the rabble, yell crazy stuff or go all yippie-theater on them 'til they escort you off the premises, making everyone there a little freaked out, a little less inclined to hang around and spend more. You don't even have to go there physically, just write letters to the editor, blog, expend your own breath ranting and exhorting (or, if you are not a blowhard like myself, riffing reasoning). Talk to your Walmart-shopping friends about how the place sucks money out of localities (not just what you spend there, but jobs lost, taxes unpaid, resources expended on their behalf, not to mention that act that someone who works at Walmart is eligible for welfare because the pay is so shitty).
Occupy Walmart however you see fit. Squelching the flow of customers, shaming the company in the public eye (all you gotta do is tell the truth for that to work), or advocating for their workers. Whatever you want to do. Just don't buy anything there.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Unoccupy Wall Street
My last post expressed some doubt as to the sustainability and soundness of the Occupy protests happening. It is only fair to suggest alternatives, or be branded a do-nothing whiner.
So, let's Unoccupy Wall Street. Denizens of the financial district are not among the readers here, so we can begin by claiming success in terms of the physical place, but you know that's not what I'm getting at. Divest. Don't let your money occupy their vaults.
You live near a credit union that can take care of your banking needs from saving pennies to getting a home mortgage, and they won't Lincoln and Hamilton you to death with fees. You'll be a member, sharing in the profits and governance of a financial entity beholden to a broader ownership and longer time horizon than profit-obsessed big banks. You may also have a local bank that has a stake in a healthy community and treats its customers decently. Either choice beats parking your money in an institution prisoner to quarterly profits, sophisticated (yet still fundamentally stupid) gambles, publicly-funded bail-outs, exalted executives, and just plain greed.
But I don't need to convince you why, just that you should take that step if you already have not, and make your personal finances Unoccupy Wall Street. This November, vote with your finances. While media images of hippies and anarchists doing everything from wearing sinister masks to making love easily lend themselves to dismissal or discrediting of the Occupy movement, it would be hard to misinterpret the image of a run on the banks, a line of people in front of Bank of America waiting to withdraw their funds. If I had the audience to pull it off, I'd call for November to be Vote With Your Money month, a coordinated action. Doing an Unoccupy Wall Street event during the election month (or maybe the cyclical, slower-building version of the plan: Withdrawal Wednesdays), seems like a decent strategy to focus attention and impact on the action.
The financial effect to the big financial players would be negligible to begin with, and the power would be in the perception that we commoners are sick of playing their game. But as was the case with ending South African Apartheid, a few humble divestitures can lead to a few more, and eventually reach a tipping point where continuing business as usual becomes too costly, and real progress happens. You can be the beginning.
Meanwhile, it's a matter of retreating from the various corporate territories you occupy. Get food that was grown closer to you (your own yard would be a good place to start), and processed less; go to restaurants run by local families. Clothe yourself at thrift stores and yard sales, so even if that shirt was made for a famous name brand, they don't get a cent on the transaction. Keep driving the same old car (repaired by your unemployed neighbor or a local shop) or hop on a bike or bus. Disconnect the cable and just use your phone for phone calls instead of incessantly connecting to the corporate web. Make your gifts.
So really, unoccupying Wall Street turns out to be a bunch of small, easy steps. You'll find that you end up saving money. You will be more free of the corporate matrix, and at the same time more connected to your community and interested in its welfare. In the short term, divesting improves your life. If enough people unoccupy Wall Street, then in time our nation's life will take a turn for the better. Try it.
So, let's Unoccupy Wall Street. Denizens of the financial district are not among the readers here, so we can begin by claiming success in terms of the physical place, but you know that's not what I'm getting at. Divest. Don't let your money occupy their vaults.
You live near a credit union that can take care of your banking needs from saving pennies to getting a home mortgage, and they won't Lincoln and Hamilton you to death with fees. You'll be a member, sharing in the profits and governance of a financial entity beholden to a broader ownership and longer time horizon than profit-obsessed big banks. You may also have a local bank that has a stake in a healthy community and treats its customers decently. Either choice beats parking your money in an institution prisoner to quarterly profits, sophisticated (yet still fundamentally stupid) gambles, publicly-funded bail-outs, exalted executives, and just plain greed.
But I don't need to convince you why, just that you should take that step if you already have not, and make your personal finances Unoccupy Wall Street. This November, vote with your finances. While media images of hippies and anarchists doing everything from wearing sinister masks to making love easily lend themselves to dismissal or discrediting of the Occupy movement, it would be hard to misinterpret the image of a run on the banks, a line of people in front of Bank of America waiting to withdraw their funds. If I had the audience to pull it off, I'd call for November to be Vote With Your Money month, a coordinated action. Doing an Unoccupy Wall Street event during the election month (or maybe the cyclical, slower-building version of the plan: Withdrawal Wednesdays), seems like a decent strategy to focus attention and impact on the action.
The financial effect to the big financial players would be negligible to begin with, and the power would be in the perception that we commoners are sick of playing their game. But as was the case with ending South African Apartheid, a few humble divestitures can lead to a few more, and eventually reach a tipping point where continuing business as usual becomes too costly, and real progress happens. You can be the beginning.
Meanwhile, it's a matter of retreating from the various corporate territories you occupy. Get food that was grown closer to you (your own yard would be a good place to start), and processed less; go to restaurants run by local families. Clothe yourself at thrift stores and yard sales, so even if that shirt was made for a famous name brand, they don't get a cent on the transaction. Keep driving the same old car (repaired by your unemployed neighbor or a local shop) or hop on a bike or bus. Disconnect the cable and just use your phone for phone calls instead of incessantly connecting to the corporate web. Make your gifts.
So really, unoccupying Wall Street turns out to be a bunch of small, easy steps. You'll find that you end up saving money. You will be more free of the corporate matrix, and at the same time more connected to your community and interested in its welfare. In the short term, divesting improves your life. If enough people unoccupy Wall Street, then in time our nation's life will take a turn for the better. Try it.
Occupied
A month after the Occupy Wall Street protest began, the movement has replicated on an international scale. I live in Olympia, Washington, where our own Occupation began this weekend. Wrapping up a year that began with massive labor protests ignited by Wisconsin's union-busting, I have to say it is inspiring to see people taking to the streets, speaking out, refusing to just sit back and take whatever abuse AmeriCo feels like dishing out.
But occupations are mostly doomed. In Iraq, the West Bank, Soviet satellites, and on down the list, occupiers find themselves at odds with local populations, trying to maintain order in places they do not know or understand, stuck fighting an opposition when they'd rather be home. Having chosen a military metaphor, the movement faces congruent difficulties. In the US, occupying private property touches a deep nerve; people in general may not care what you do on someone else's property, but they sure as hell don't want someone camped out on their private property, and will oppose on principal such action. Occupying a public park, on the other hand, creates an insurgency among the usual users and the municipal authorities charged with serving the general public, which may feel no common cause with an occupation force perceived as radicals and people with too much time and too little work ethic.
This may not be a fair perception, but it is sure as hell reinforced by corporate media, ranging from the all-out attacks by Fox and other right wing organs on 'un-American' protesters to the regular mention elsewhere of marijuana smoking, un-focused, and by implication unlikely-to-succeed, occupiers. Evil or addled, or maybe just plain naive as some pundits would have it, the story line rarely credits the movement with potential to create real change, and drags before the cameras an unending series of spokespeople who cite goals that are vague beyond comprehension, or have to do with grinding a very specific and odd ax, or betray ignorance. The resistance benefits greatly from the fact that a leaderless movement that worships free speech and personal autonomy can be "represented" on camera by the most idiotic among the occupiers.
Another flaw lies in the territory being occupied. In Manhattan, it is Zuccotti Park, which despite its name is not a public space at all, but the property of the Brookfield Properties corporation. Elsewhere, Occupy clones are popping up in public spaces, but it's not the county or city or state that the occupiers have a grievance with. Occupy a city park, and you may inconvenience the municipality, the people who the week before had gone there to feed pigeons or play with kids, but you do not hurt the corporations that looted our economy. In fact, you do them a favor, setting in motion a conflict between citizens who occupy the park and the civil servants responsible for maintaining it. If I were a Wall Street banker, I'd be laughing all the way to the, uh, my work, as city officials fretted and faced unplanned expenses while occupiers focused sizable effort on avoiding eviction and the remaining citizenry split into pro-, anti- and apathetic camps. Divide and divert, and meanwhile very little corporate real estate is occupied.
I support my family by working for money, which means I cannot go down an take part in the Occupation, at least not in the sense of living there day in and day out. I can lend support, bring supplies, write blogs and comments lauding this patriotic antidote to the Tea Party. But my occupation is something else, and I don't have time to occupy a city park. Instead, I'll occupy my house, which is actually just a tiny percentage mine, belonging as it does to the mortgage holder (in my case, this is a local credit union, and not a Wall Street bank, so mine is a peaceful occupation, nothing adversarial unless I chose to stop paying the bill I willingly signed on to). As much as I support civil disobedience and speaking out against our greedy, corrupted system, I do find myself wondering who it is that will have the time to occupy a park for weeks or months on end, and whether with all that time, they might have something to do that would create more tangible progress.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will it devolve into an extended dance party that accomplishes nothing? Will people lose interest or hope and go home? Will the clampdown roll through like MacArthur's tanks through Hooverville? Will corporations see the error of unbridled capitalism and surrender?
I'm pessimistic enough to think that those question were presented in descending order of likelihood, but optimistic enough to think that beyond the Occupy movement, there may be positive change. The protest may have some deep flaws that keep it from being sustainable in its present form, but this week people are talking about issues that were buried a month ago, and maybe in a month they'll be taking more substantive measures. Occupation may prove to be a vital step on a journey that leads to a better nation.
But occupations are mostly doomed. In Iraq, the West Bank, Soviet satellites, and on down the list, occupiers find themselves at odds with local populations, trying to maintain order in places they do not know or understand, stuck fighting an opposition when they'd rather be home. Having chosen a military metaphor, the movement faces congruent difficulties. In the US, occupying private property touches a deep nerve; people in general may not care what you do on someone else's property, but they sure as hell don't want someone camped out on their private property, and will oppose on principal such action. Occupying a public park, on the other hand, creates an insurgency among the usual users and the municipal authorities charged with serving the general public, which may feel no common cause with an occupation force perceived as radicals and people with too much time and too little work ethic.
This may not be a fair perception, but it is sure as hell reinforced by corporate media, ranging from the all-out attacks by Fox and other right wing organs on 'un-American' protesters to the regular mention elsewhere of marijuana smoking, un-focused, and by implication unlikely-to-succeed, occupiers. Evil or addled, or maybe just plain naive as some pundits would have it, the story line rarely credits the movement with potential to create real change, and drags before the cameras an unending series of spokespeople who cite goals that are vague beyond comprehension, or have to do with grinding a very specific and odd ax, or betray ignorance. The resistance benefits greatly from the fact that a leaderless movement that worships free speech and personal autonomy can be "represented" on camera by the most idiotic among the occupiers.
Another flaw lies in the territory being occupied. In Manhattan, it is Zuccotti Park, which despite its name is not a public space at all, but the property of the Brookfield Properties corporation. Elsewhere, Occupy clones are popping up in public spaces, but it's not the county or city or state that the occupiers have a grievance with. Occupy a city park, and you may inconvenience the municipality, the people who the week before had gone there to feed pigeons or play with kids, but you do not hurt the corporations that looted our economy. In fact, you do them a favor, setting in motion a conflict between citizens who occupy the park and the civil servants responsible for maintaining it. If I were a Wall Street banker, I'd be laughing all the way to the, uh, my work, as city officials fretted and faced unplanned expenses while occupiers focused sizable effort on avoiding eviction and the remaining citizenry split into pro-, anti- and apathetic camps. Divide and divert, and meanwhile very little corporate real estate is occupied.
I support my family by working for money, which means I cannot go down an take part in the Occupation, at least not in the sense of living there day in and day out. I can lend support, bring supplies, write blogs and comments lauding this patriotic antidote to the Tea Party. But my occupation is something else, and I don't have time to occupy a city park. Instead, I'll occupy my house, which is actually just a tiny percentage mine, belonging as it does to the mortgage holder (in my case, this is a local credit union, and not a Wall Street bank, so mine is a peaceful occupation, nothing adversarial unless I chose to stop paying the bill I willingly signed on to). As much as I support civil disobedience and speaking out against our greedy, corrupted system, I do find myself wondering who it is that will have the time to occupy a park for weeks or months on end, and whether with all that time, they might have something to do that would create more tangible progress.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will it devolve into an extended dance party that accomplishes nothing? Will people lose interest or hope and go home? Will the clampdown roll through like MacArthur's tanks through Hooverville? Will corporations see the error of unbridled capitalism and surrender?
I'm pessimistic enough to think that those question were presented in descending order of likelihood, but optimistic enough to think that beyond the Occupy movement, there may be positive change. The protest may have some deep flaws that keep it from being sustainable in its present form, but this week people are talking about issues that were buried a month ago, and maybe in a month they'll be taking more substantive measures. Occupation may prove to be a vital step on a journey that leads to a better nation.
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