The Mess of 2009, Part 3

In part 2 of this series, I outlined the use and effect of consumerism on American culture, particularly in the service of publicly-held for-profit corporations. Convincing Americans, first and foremost, that they are consumers, that some part of their self-identity is tied up with being a consumer of things, was a significant step in insuring the profitability of corporations. I consume, therefore, I am. Once a person on some level accepts the notion that they are consumers, that they consume and do so in increasing quantities, that person becomes more and more vulnerable to the machinations of corporations through advertising.

We can see how successful this effort has been by reflecting on the casual manner in which the word consumer is tossed about. A prime example is the monthly publishing of the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. This index is a measure of the average price of consumer goods and services purchased by households. We frequently hear references to consumer confidence as a barometer of how people in this country feel about buying things. Low consumer confidence is bad, high consumer confidence is good.

Think about that for a moment. This idea rests upon the notion that buying more things is good, in and of itself. So, then, high consumer confidence works against such notions as thrift, frugality, conservation, modesty, and other qualities. The more we buy, the higher consumer confidence rises.

I now want to move to another associated handmaiden of corporations that, combined with identification as a consumer, is a powerful hook to close the circle for endless profits. I’m referring to the notion of debt and credit. It is this idea, and the manner in which it has evolved over just a handful of years, that lies at the center of most of our current economic problems. The key, however, in understanding this idea lies in full awareness of what debt serves. Understanding that debt serves a specific purpose for corporations is vital in discerning a solution to this issue and the role of corporations in American and world culture.

Americans are bombarded with endless offers to get more and more credit. Of all things that corporations attempt to sell us, credit is the single element that is the basis for almost all advertising. Corporations try – and largely succeed – to sell us on going further and further into debt. There is hardly an item sold under any venue where we’re not also encouraged to buy the item on credit. Whether the item is a large item like a house or a car, a moderate item like a vacation or a TV, or a small item, that we can purchase for six easy payments of $14.95 (plus shipping and handling), nothing escapes the grasp of debt and credit.

More importantly, we’re sold debt on the basis of debt being at least a neutral experience, perhaps even a good thing. There is rarely a situation where anything negative is associated with increased debt. If you “own” a home (I use the term “own” loosely, since most of us, in fact, don’t own our homes – the mortgage company does) the mortgage company will inevitably try to sell you on more debt. Take out a home equity loan (which actually means, “buy” some more stuff and roll the cost of that stuff into your mortgage). Throughout such a process, there are never any “red lights” – never any effort on the part of the lender to say, as an example, “Do you really need that $30,000 pool in your back yard? Maybe you should save up that $30,000 and pay for it cash!”

As a result of this view of debt, I could, this afternoon, take my credit cards and find something to buy worth $75,000 and spread the debt across several cards, without any cash down. No one, none of the credit card companies, would ask me how such a dramatic increase in my debt would affect my life, whether I can really pay such a debt off, or any other questions that might cause me to pause before spending a tidy sum like that.

In order to grasp the magnitude of the change in attitudes toward debt, reflect back, if you’re old enough, to a time when credit cards were a rarity. If you’re too young to remember this, ask anyone who can remember the early 1960’s. I’ve asked this simple question of dozens of people: “How many credit cards did your parents have?” The answer is usually quick and unequivocal: “None.” Or maybe one – a gas card, or perhaps a department store card. Most often the answer is that our parents had no credit cards. Not a one.

In the early 60’s the public attitudes toward debt were vastly different. Debt was considered negative, something to be avoided. Going into debt brought a certain shame with it. In part, this attitude toward debt reflects longstanding moral restraints on excessive interest charges. The term usury implies charging excessive interest. Usury laws date back thousands of years, with prohibitions on excessive interest charges found in both the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. In particular comes this warning from the Old Testament:

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. – Proverbs 22:7

There are two key elements to these ancient words. The first phrase states what I consider a primary goal of rich people: rulership. While not universal, many rich people believe that their wealth gives them rulership rights. The second phrase then spells out their tool to accomplish their rulership permanently: debt.

I find it almost humorous to ask people who grew up in the 60’s whether their parents had credit cards. It’s almost like a light comes on when they think about this for the first time, which many people do because debt is almost an unconscious matter in our culture. In contrast, it is almost normal now for younger people to live in total dependence to debt, thinking that any and all debt is acceptable.

Crucial to this entire effort is this:

Take a moment to reflect on the reality this commercial attempts to conjure up. Going into debt keeps the wheels of progress moving ahead. Paying with cash stops the wheels of progress. Corporations, and the wealthy people they serve, want to convince us all the debt is freedom – like the credit card commercial set to the Rolling Stones’ lyrics, “I’m free to do what I want, any old time.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. This should be obvious once we stop to think about it. There can be no freedom in debt. Who of us feels free when we get our credit card bills? What factors keep us from rising up when we see injustice? Isn’t our indebtedness – our things, multiple cars, a myriad of electronic playtoys, two or more houses, you name it – the force that prevents us from saying what we really believe in that meeting at work?

Even now, despite the fact that the U.S. economy, which appears to be leading the rest of the world toward some economic hellhole, Americans seem so….quiet. We hear reports of older folks going to the homes of AIG executives demanding accountability. Realizing they have few remaining years left and little to lose now that their “guaranteed” 401K’s have evaporated, faced with the prospect of being a greeter at Walmart, what exactly do they have to lose? The rest of us yell…..at the TV.

I contend this is all purposeful. Corporations, serving the desires of a relative few on this planet, have created a clever web. I will detail that web in my next article.

A Musician’s Manifesto

Do you still remember when it started for you? I’ve played music, it seems, since before I was born…and in my case that may actually have been literally true. My mother was a classical pianist and my father, a clergyman, also played pipe organ. I remember one conversation with my father about my bass playing where he noted to correspondence between the mighty sound of the pipe organ and the sheer power of an electric bass.

But there was a point where something touched me. As a bass player, (I already played guitar, piano, violin) there was a moment. I’d just moved to Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where the previous dwellers had left a copy of a fateful LP – “The Moods of Marvin Gaye.” One song started it – “One More Heartache.” The bass player – unknown to me at the time – played this bass line that changed my life fundamentally. I had just bought this 1952 Fender Precision Bass (damn I wish I’d kept that one!) for $100. Stunning instrument. Maple fingerboard. This bass line came out of my record player. I had headphones. I listened to it and numerous other Motown songs again and again.

I now know what happened to me. Something resonated - a sympathetic resonation. What I heard flowing from the genius hands of James Jamerson (who I consider the greatest electric bassist of the 20th century) started something vibrating inside of me – like a string somewhere deep in me, a string waiting to be caressed, to sing, to cry.

Do you remember that?

The music of that time had that same world shattering effect on so many of us. We sang about such important things. It was the irresistible beat that moved our feet – and our hearts – without our even noticing. Feet tapped. Heads moved in rhythm. Our bodies felt the groove – the groove of Something Different – a different call than anything we’d ever known before.

And our poets wrote. That same Motown tune:

One more heartache,

I can’t take it,

My heart is carrying such a heavy load,

One more ache will break it.

As I looked out at the world, my heart, indeed, did ache, to the point of “one more and I’ll explode.”

Other poets asked, loudly, poignantly, “What’s Going On?”

Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today - Ya

Father, father

We don't need to escalate

You see, war is not the answer

For only love can conquer hate

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today

What’s going on?

Others imagined this:

By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust

We are golden

And we’ve got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

We all felt that place, inside – something moved – what we heard in this great music was, indeed, a call, a spiritual experience we all could taste.

For many of us, music plays that central a role in our lives. It is not “entertainment”. It is, as a great jazz drummer said to me at the end of recent set, music is “re-creation.” We are, indeed, re-created by music. The great African drum cultures, out of which blues, jazz, R&B and rock flowed, understood this. Drumming was not an “art form”. Drummers were not “artists” doing their art Over There. Drumming was the way the unseen forces communicated with the people. It served as a conduit, the way that this unseen realm engaged the village and made them a People, connected them to the earth and to each other.

This was no mere metaphor – just as the power of our music was no metaphor. The great movements of the 60’s – and they were great, indeed – were driven by the music. Those of us not born black took our first look into the world of African Americans through music, whether it was “race music” played on AM radios all over this country throughout the 40s and 50s, or the soul infection so many of us fell to from the truly ecstatic music that flowed out of Motown, from the hands of one of the most potent collections of musical genius we have ever seen. My man Jamerson was the shaman – he was the constant force thoughout that time, the channel that made the Motown sound the Motown sound. He and the drummers made music that changed the entire face of this country. And while the words did wonders, it was the unspoken portion – the music – that changed our hearts.

We didn’t have to go to church. There was no creed, no test we had to pass. It was direct, unmediated. It took no initiation – beyond, of course, the initiation of listening, which seemed impossible not to do. Who could resist it? It crossed all boundaries. Close your eyes. Listen to a Motown tune. There are both black and white musicians playing. Tell me which is which…can you do it? More importantly, does it matter? With my eyes closed, listening to this music, it didn’t matter anyway. It was soul music. And my soul knew it. It was transformed.

So many of us have had this experience. We Knew Something. It drove the revolutionary changes of that era.

What happened? Too many of us lost this sense.

We finally are hearing great voices rising up. It saddens me greatly that too few musicians rose up against the Iraq War. Those of us who remember the 60s and 70s know the power that music held in our movement. Those voices moved us to action.

There has been too little as of late. Too few of us spoke up against the expansion of the corporatist mindset in our culture. Our generation fell for consumerism. And musicians fell for it.

At this point in time, the life of a successful musician is this:

1. Record a CD.
2. Record company buys the CD.
3. The musician or band goes on the road to hustle the CD and to play a few tunes from the next CD.
4. The next CD gets recorded.
5. Go back to step 3.

And that’s about it.

Is this really all that music is to us – yet another thing to hustle, that adds to the aggregate success of a bunch of suits?

There were many excesses in the 60s and beyond. We may have gotten too high. However, the thing we heard in music was real – authentic. It meant something. It is time we got back to that.

We live in a time at the cusp of something. I don’t know what it is, or where we go. But we all sense it – we’re on the edge. It is time for all artists to dig deep, to listen to those same primordial voices and rhythms that moved us before.

There should be no question that the suits led us down the wrong road. Corporations, as I discuss elsewhere on this blog, have attempted and largely succeeded in seducing us all to buy their things – all of them, lots of them. In doing so, I contend that their efforts have been quite conscious and deliberate – that their intent has been to decimate the middle class in the United States, and weaken our democracy in doing so.

It is time we musicians, artists, poets, find a loud and clear voice again. Once we stood up against a war we considered unjust, and we spoke out against a culture we knew was too rigid, too closed. It is time we rise up again. This is our time. Let us, once more, listen to those voices, the ones speaking through the rhythms in our music, rising up from a powerful authentic source.

Losing Our Religion

I made some comments earlier about Tim Geithner, and wrote about his comments that there was some "basic inherent economic value" in troubled Wall Street assets. I want to expand today on why I see statements like these as troublesome, and why Tim Geithner needs to be replaced.

My critique of Mr. Geithner - and perhaps of others in the Obama administration - centers around the fairly obvious disconnect between Geithner and others within the Wall Street Fantasy Land and the rest of us who actually live in the real world. Consider, as an example, this comment by CNBC talking head Mark Haines:





Raines makes the following breathtaking comment:

Let’s get back to what I regard as a fundamental issue here. I know it’s politically unpopular, politically incorrect. I know it goes against all of the populist indignation that’s out there right now. But you can’t really, it seems to me, expect that these Wall Street companies are going to be run well by a bunch of people who don’t make more than $250,000.

Let's take a moment, after picking ourselves up off the floor, to think about this bizarre notion.

First of all, Haines drops the "politically incorrect" stinkbomb, that roughly translates into, "now I'm going to speak in the secret code of all of us right wing lunatics. Once I say this please disperse it widely on FreeRepublic or Fox News."

After all, if this argument was rational, there would be some basis that Haines would proffer in support of this idea. We've heard, again and again from the right, that the plan to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 would unfairly affect small business owners. Here's one example:

Obama's populist rhetoric suggests that he's only going after the super-rich. Yet reportedly half of individuals earning over $250,000 a year are small business owners. During the past 15 years, small businesses have been creating over 90% of net new jobs -- altogether, more than 20 million jobs. How smart is it for the heavy hand of government to come down on these employers?

Apparently this "half" of all those making more than $250,000, who create 90% of net new jobs aren't even qualified to do their own jobs. And their companies aren't run as well as the Really Big Companies where you need a person to make a Whole Lot of Money because they are Super Smart and Super Cool.

Maybe Haines should watch any current episode of Celebrity Apprentice. These folks all make more than $250,000 a year. It should be clear to anyone that these folks are really, really smart.

Or to quote Borat, "Not."

Mr. Haines was apparently asleep during the Enron debacle. We saw, played out on the international stage, the depressing fact that Ken Lay thought he had been "fooled":

“I don't think I'm a criminal, number one,” says Lay. “Am I a fool? I don't think I'm a fool. But I think I sure was fooled.”

While no person wants to admit, on the world stage, that they were a fool, few of us who watched this corporate fiasco unfold can successfully parse Lay's distinction between "being fooled" and "being a fool."

And more to the point, as chairman of Enron, Lay was paid the big bucks not to be fooled or be a fool. Supposedly these guys make all the money they do because they somehow see things that the rest of us don't. They have sufficient vision to be able to steer a large corporation away from foolish decisions, ideas and the like. They have the insight to direct a large company toward goals that won't be viewed as foolish afterward. If they don't have the qualifications to do this, so goes the myth, they aren't qualified to be a "captain of industry", to quote my favorite captain of industry, Tony Soprano.

Who, then were the fools in Enron? Was Ken Lay a fool, or were the Bright Folks who hired Ken Lay the fools? Or perhaps they were all fools? I favor the latter evaluation.

So back to Mark Haines, and Tim Geithner. I think it is important to state that Haines' comment that Wall Street corporations need people worth more than $250,000 a year is not a matter of political correctness. It is critical to realize that most of the money made on Wall Street doesn't arise from actually making anything. Those men and women who run your 401K investment account don't create anything except more money (recently less money). At the end of the day, there is no picture they can take of this thing they actually made or built or helped build. As we've all seen, the vast sums of money recently bleeding out of Wall Street office suites was conjured up by manipulating debt. Borrowed money and credit lay at the center of any "bubble." After all, if there was something real at the center of these funds, there would be no bubble to break. This is like the difference between "owning" a house (when in reality the mortgage company really owns the house) and actually owning a house. No "bubble" can alter the fact the a home owner really owns a home, a house with a real address on a real street.

Since debt lays at the center of almost everything Wall Street does - whether we're talking about the accumulated and amalgamated debt of people like you and me surrounding our homes or autos, or the credit default swaps/wagers on whether those mortgages will or won't go sideways - it is critical to remember that all debt and credit depends on confidence - the belief that this person who I lend money to will pay it back with interest. This confidence is an act of faith, not a matter of fact.

The notion that we need Really Smart People to guide the ships of industry is an act of faith within the Wall Street confidence game/religion. It should be painfully obvious that that idea is an act of faith every time you look at your 401K balance right now.

Likewise with Tim Geithner. When he says that Wall Street assets have some "basic inherent economic value" he speaks an article of faith, not a statement of fact. Again, check you 401K balance. Is there some 'inherent value' to it, or does it more resemble mine, which clearly appears to have a declining value, that appears to be an investment I should not and cannot rely on?

This gets to the heart of why I think Geithner and a bunch of these other folks need to go. They are speaking metaphysical mumbo- jumbo. They speak about such 'inherent value' in order to get me to believe these assets have some inherent value - not because really they do. They want me to believe this so that I will have confidence, so they can continue their gameplaying. Without my confidence in them, they cannot change water into wine, economically, or perform some alchemical alteration of lead into gold within the Wall Street arena. Like paper money itself, which only has value as long as we all believe it does, Wall Street hoodoo merchants depend on our confidence in them. Given what we've all witnessed in the last six months, can anyone produce a good reason for giving them our confidence?

Until we Americans come to grips with the plain fact that the likes of Ken Lay, Tim Geithner, and a list of other people, want to fool us into these confidence schemes, we will be bigger fools than they are. We've been talked into accepting the article of faith that debt is OK, that more debt is great, that betting on debt to make more money is a good idea. Until we divorce ourselves from these Articles of Faith in the Wall Street Religion, we shouldn't be surprised to find we need to lose our religion.

Bad Tone

Was I the only person that found Dr. Christina Romer irritating on Meet The Press this morning? Here, as an example:

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I have no comments about her content. But her tone and demeanor were just a bit too...chipper. Frankly, she smiled just a bit too much - much too ''light"..... David Gregory was decidedly serious. Romer could have been talking about her grandkids' performance at the grade school play she saw last night.

In contrast, when Jon Stewart had Jim Cramer on his comedy show this last week, Stewart did little to provoke a laugh - because the things he was talking about were just too serious to kid about.

Romer seemed just far too upbeat, too smiley, given the fact that, like millions of others, I lost my job a few weeks ago. I'm just not smiley and chipper about things. Those who lost their jobs long before I did inevitably carry more weight on their shoulders than I do. I, for one, just don't want any smiley, upbeat nonsense from anyone in Obama's administration. Any optimism right now must be tempered by the reality that those of us on the business end of our current financial debacle just don't feel real upbeat these days.

It's akin to going into surgery to get your left leg amputated, and the doctor telling you, cheerfully, just before you fade off under the anesthesia, that you'll be up walking around in a a couple of days.

Just a bit of a disconnect.....

Sticky Wicket

I've been a huge fan of Kevin Phillips for some years, having read all four of his recent books starting with the stellar "Wealth & Democracy." He commented here on HuffingtonPost about the current Obama financial team and its plans. Like others, I have big concerns about the likes of Geithner and Bernanke. I discuss my concerns here:

http://notesfromtherustbelt.blogspot.com/2009/03/if-pigs-could-fly.html

My concerns with these folks are manifold. As quoted above, Geithner's comments about the "basic inherent economic value" of Wall Street assets belies a basic level of nonsense talk. There is nothing "inherent" about the value of these assets. It's like saying that there's some "inherent value" in dollar bills - if there is, I'm now going to declare that toilet paper is money, has "inherent" value, and has increased value after usage, and then further declare that nothing smells about this...

Paper money only has value because we say it does. Wall Street assets have the same inherent value, the value being exactly "nothing".

I believe our problems run far deeper than Wall Street. A more fundamental problem, in my view, is the very position of corporations under the law. Until corporations no longer are viewed as "persons" under the Bill od Rights, something unheard of when the Bill fo Rights was written, until corporations can no longer use advertising and lobbyists as "free speech" under the Bill of Rights, they will continue to wield the inordinately huge influence they have over seemingly every aspect of American and world culture. We all decry the influence of "lobbyists" in DC without questioning WHY they have the right to sit in the offices of our national representatives and do nothing but push for the views of the corporations that pay their salaries.

Until the efforts of corporations, whether through advertising, lobbying, campaign contributions or a myriad of other channels, are no longer viewed as "speech" protected by the Constitution due to their supposed "rights" as "persons", nothing about Wall Street, or governance in DC, will change. Until a corporation no longer has the same voice as a real person, a real human whose free speech is protected by the Bill of Rights, and until the point where real citizens regain the real power over our government, we will see no significant changes on any of these issues.

I'm developing a series of pieces on my blog on this subject. Read these in order. More to come.

http://notesfromtherustbelt.blogspot.com/2009/03/structures-that-divide-us.html
http://notesfromtherustbelt.blogspot.com/2009/03/mess-of-2009.html
http://notesfromtherustbelt.blogspot.com/2009/03/mess-of-2009-part-2.html

I fully admit that I'm sketching out a level of change for this country that is massive. It is difficult to imagine a world where corporations don't have the seemingly omnipresent power and influence they currently enjoy. It is vital, however, to remember the fact that, in large part, the American Revolution was fought over the influence of a corporation - the East India Tea Company - over the colonies, with the support of the then World Empire, Great Britain. We now face the need for a comparable revolutionary force, although hopefully within the context of our Constitution, without the need for a physical uprising. Our American conversation MUST move forward under that premise.

Drinking The Kool Aid

You really have to hand it to the Bush water carriers. They don't even flinch, having no shame, no remorse, no doubt. Yesterday's exchange between Chris Matthews and Ari Fleischer spoke volumes about why, in 2009, this country has so much ground to recoup. Here's the entire interview:

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This stuff is breathtaking. Let's see if we can wade through this nonsense at all.

Fleischer: Of course, there is (sic) a number of people who believe in George Bush, believe in his policies, believe he helped contribute to a stronger, better America where we haven't been hit since Sept. 11...

Apparently Fleischer has been out of the country....what is "better" about our country as a result of Bush's presidency? The hallmarks of his presidency were 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Hurricane Katrina debacle. Those events were "better" in what way? (He just couldn't resist the 9/11 reference in the first 45 seconds, could he?)

Fleischer: Barack Obama should say thank you every day that he inherited a world without Saddam Hussein in it.

These folks won't give up on that, will they? Note to self, Ari - Saddam was not a threat to this country, He had no weapons of mass destruction. He had no delivery systems. The ultimate proof rests in the ease with which the Hussein rule fell - they offered virtually no resistance. Also - Iraq isn't near the United States - not even a long drive. How could they really be a threat to us?? (Going through all this stuff again is really dumb.....)

Matthews: Are you proud of the economic record of George W. Bush?
Fleischer: You know, I think he came in with a recession and left with a recession...
Matthews: No, really are you proud of it? Is it something to brag about?
Fleischer: Chris, it's not a simple, one word answer.

Well, Ari gave a one word answer: recession.

Fleischer: I think when people look back on the Bush years, the one thing people will remember the most is that he kept us safe, we've not been attacked since 9/11. The second is....Barack Obama has inherited a world without Saddam Hussein in it.

What bizarre logic. Somehow we're "safe" due to something the Bush administration did? Tell that to the more than 4000 American soldiers killed in Iraq and their loved ones - a war of choice that did not make us any safer. Tell that to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers and their families who suffered casualties at the hands of the Bush administration. What sane person can argue that we are "safer" because we invaded Iraq? And just how is a world without Saddam a better world for President Obama?

Fleischer: We can all be proud that we haven't been attacked since Sept. 11...that's what people are gonna remember about President Bush's administration.

Perhaps Ari forgot about the anthrax attacks.

Why should we be "proud" - proud of what? Should we be proud of breaking international law when we attacked Iraq, a nation that was no threat to us, that did not and could not do anything to the United States? Should we be proud of killing hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of Iraqi citizens as "collateral damage"? Should we be proud of our record on torture during this war?

It depends, then, on which "people" you're talking about who "remember" what happened.

Fleischer: Who is talking?...I don't recall you saying that James Carville, Paul Begala, those people shouldn't be on the air defending their boss.

What precisely does Fleischer have in mind that Carville and Begala had to defend that compares with the long list of egregious acts of the Bush administration? Are we going to compare the "sins" of Bill Clinton's White House tryst with Monica Lewinsky to the actions of George W. Bush? What is the moral scale that sets this kind of equivocacy up?

Fleischer: You were tough on President Clinton on his ethics and morality....how couldn't you be?

Gee, Fleischer, how couldn't you be tough on President Bush's ethics and morality? What was ethical or moral about the Iraq war? Does Fleischer really want to raise Clinton's sexual issues to the moral level of war?

Fleischer: He (Bush) wasn't warned directly, it was one of those vague warnings about Al Qaeda wants to attack in the United States.

What is this guy talking about? Richard Clarke writes vividly about his 'hair being on fire' regarding the seriousness and imminence of these attacks. Clarke could not get a meeting with Condi Rice on these issues. He was ignored. The Bush administration was not focused on terrorism before 9/11. That is the record.

Matthews: Do you believe that the administration made an honest case in taking us to war in Iraq?
Fleischer: Yes, yes...I said we were wrong, not dishonest...it was an intelligence mistake. We were all wrong.

I love it when people use the words "intelligence" and "mistake" together.

No, Mr. Fleischer, the mistake was a moral failure, a failure in judgement. Everyone didn't believe that Iraq had WMD's. The U.N. inspectors, who were doing their jobs right up to the start of Shock & Awe didn't believe there were WMD's. Scott Ritter, decorated U.S. Marine who was a major player in the inspection of Iraq as a U.N. inspector throughout the 1990's, knew there were no WMD's. He spoke and wrote about this passionately before the war.

These people are without conscience. There is no good reason to think they will ever admit their foolishness, their immorality, or amorality. I listened closely to Chris Matthews during the buildup to the War in Iraq. If he was against the war, which he now claims, I, for one, could not tell. That said, I applaud his current rage against the follies of the Bush administration. It may be too little, too late. But the likes of Ari Fleischer, who somehow musters the strength to go on national TV and tell more lies about the Bush administration, is beyond the pale.

The Unhinged Right

Just when things look bad enough, folks on the Right go totally off the deep end. We heard from "Walker Texas Ranger" Chuck Norris during the 2008 election cycle sounding fairly strange. Now that they lost, these folks seem to be moving toward treason and insurrection.

Claiming that the second amendment is, indeed, the amendment in support of uprising, Norris goes off:



David Neiwert comments about this at Crooks and Liars. David has been writing about the subject of extremist rhetoric on the right in particular for a good while. The specter of a destabilized economy pushing people toward violent, physical responses to perceived enemies is a factor that we Americans should be having active discussions about.

These folks aren't kidding around. They have a whole lot of guns. If we cannot resolve our differences with words, our future fate is clouded at best.

More Thoughts on CNBC

After listening to and reading about the goings-back-and-forth between John Stewart and Jim Cramer, I have some additional thoughts particularly about the role of a company like CNBC in the financial arena. I have some real problems with the notion that CNBC, fully owned and operated by General Electric, has no particular agenda in marketplace issues. The idea that, somehow, these folks who must do the bidding of their Masters are, somehow, filling the role of a legitimate "fourth estate" role as part of the press strikes me as absurd. And while a great young writer like Cenk Uygur says here that his critique of CNBC doesn't reflect any "axe" he has to grind with them because he didn't lose any money in the market, I think he needs to step back and go the next step.

The fact is that, unless you live on Mars, or are part of an indigenous culture somewhere on earth that is still unaffected by the spread of the "global economy", none of us are immune to the faltering steps of these giants that walk the earth. The megaforces at work in multinational corporations have propagated this idea of the "global economy" which has some influence on all of us. This price of oil, as an example, responds daily, it seems, to market vicissitudes. Of course, there is widespread speculation, deservedly so, that oil markets, like the market manipulations that Jim Cramer admits to here, are frequently driven by other forces beyond supply and demand.

Four dollar gas - or two dollar gas, for that matter - affects every one of us. The manipulated fluctuations of the market creates countless ripples that none of us can ignore.

Jim Cramer vs. John Stewart

Huffington Post has a great video up today with an interview in 2006 with CNBC host Jim Cramer. Cramer has been the focus - justly so -of Stewart's barbs recently. I say "justly" in light of the interview. It's shocking to actually hear and see someone defend these extreme, egregious actions on the part of market players:



Money quote: "What's important when you are in that hedge fund mode is to not be doing anything that is remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view - it is important to create a new truth to develop a fiction."

Fiction. I'm speechless.

Giantism

Yesterday, my friends at Crooks and Liars published this article with the title, "Why Are Companies Allowed to Get Big Enough to Impose a 'Systemic Risk'?" This question is an important one. Not only should we be dealing with the effects of this giantism, but a host of other issues around corporate governance. This article clearly points to the obvious fact that corporations in the "private sector" have massive influences on the public. When companies experience financial difficulties there is always a cost to the public - whether it's payment of unemployment benefits to displaced former employees or other issues. There are relatively few companies that actually have plans in place to deal with the consequences of disposing of the things they produce. And when these companies control the financial security of entire countries - or, with the example of AIG, perhaps the world economy - that certainly has massive effects on every one of us.

At some point, we need to stop talking about corporations as part of some mythic "private" sector. There is simply no such thing.