Victory at Standing Rock

Hola Everybody,
Whew! Yesterday’s victory over the Dakota Access pipeline was a breath of fresh air. And yeah, people, we know that this is a temporary setback to corporates and that the struggle continues -- we don’t need you to remind us, sparky.

Fascism and Resistance

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
 -- Giovanni Gentile

Let me just state at the beginning that … No! The struggle that got the U.S. federal government to decide not issue the permit necessary for continuing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, is not an example of working within the system to create change. Our First Nation brothers and sister sacrificed and were ignored and beaten, tortured, and arrested for their stance. STFU with that bullshit.

It amazes me to no end to continue to hear (without challenge from all forms of media) the ridiculous assumption that we should continue to be subservient to and provide mind-boggling tax breaks for corporate elites (welfare for the rich). Even more confounding is the fact that a significant (mostly white) section of the United States electorate will vote against their economic interests. The Dakota Access Pipeline is a prime example of corporate welfare.

However, it shouldn’t be so confounding. We are there -- we are a quasi-fascist state. You might say I am being dramatic, or that I have lost my bearings and I would respond that you’ve had your head stuck in the sand too long. Take the blinders off for a moment and let’s look at the state of our affairs for a moment. Pretend this isn’t “America” and you tell me if I’m off… 

First, let me establish, and I think most sane people will agree, that corporations today wield an enormous amount of influence over our government. It’s evident in the way elections are run and how our economic and social policies are framed and created. During the election, outside of Bernie Sanders, who was completely blacked out of the mainstream media, no one was talking about a rigged economy or inequality. Poverty and the crisis of man-made catastrophic climate change, was not mentioned at all during the presidential debates. In fact, a climate change denier is now the president -elect. Bankruptcy laws were written by credit card companies, signed into law as is. 

Corporations influence our environmental policies for the most part as evidenced by resistance movements against fracking and oil pipelines. The US spends more on its military than the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. This is a social welfare policy that results in billions of profits for corporations. The list goes on. Everywhere we look today, we see the handiwork of corporations, of the mindset of profits before people.

That is not democracy. We are not a democracy. We are not what we have been conditioned to believe all these years.

Franklin Delano’s Roosevelt’s administration came to power in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression. While he couldn’t know he was going to fight a war in Europe, he did know and planned to fight a war in the US -- a war on what he called the “economic royalists.” FDR, a member of the economic elite, was also fearful of the rise of socialism as people who could not afford to eat were turning to other forms of governance for answers to their hunger. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in 1936, Roosevelt uttered the following words:

Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history. This is fitting ground on which to reaffirm the faith of our fathers; to pledge ourselves to restore to the people a wider freedom; to give to 1936 as the founders gave to 1776 - an American way of life.

That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776, we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy - from the eighteenth-century royalists who held special privileges from the crown… 

And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Of course, when FDR yelled “freedom,” he meant freedom for white men. And when he spoke of the power of the people to decide their own destinies, he wasn’t really thinking about people of color. And when he stated the death of tyranny, he did so while ignoring centuries of state-sponsored tyranny against blacks and First Nation people. Still, he had his finger on the pulse of the intellectual revolt that was occurring throughout the land. More… 

Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution -- all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital -- all undreamed of by the Fathers -- the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

I encourage you to read the speech in full (here) because FDR’s speech is as relevant today as it was then. We have come full circle where the power of the corporations -- of FDR’s “economic royalists” -- has eclipsed the power of government “by and for the people.”

So when you hear ridiculous talk about giving tax breaks to the wealthy and how it is in our best interests to cede our hard-earned money and our power to those interests, raise your head from the sand and dare to speak truth to power.

If you don’t, who will? That’s why today, I hail our First Nation brothers and sisters for their bravery, foresight, and sacrifice in the face of the brutality and the power of the moneyed elite. Theirs is the example we must follow. Shit, if the election of Trump won’t get the masses of their asses, I don’t think anything will.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

If you would like to support my writing, you can do so by clicking HERE. You can also donate via PayPal HERE.

 

Sunday Sermon [Social Economics]

Hola mi gente,
Another week, another round of interviews. Hope your week goes well.

Economics of Kindness

Tobacco Road, by DuvallGear

Once at a famous business school, a professor gave a remarkable lecture on social economics to his graduate class. Without saying anything, the professor carefully placed a glass jar on his desk. Then, as the students watched, he brought out a bag filled with stones and placed them in the jar until no more would go in.

The professor asked the students, “Is the jar full?”

“Yes,” they replied.

The professor smiled. From beneath the desk, the professor produced a second bag, this one full of gravel. He took the bag and shook the smaller stones into the spaces between the bigger stones.

For the second time the professor asked, “Is the jar full?”

“No,” they answered, now on to his trickery.

Of course, the students were correct for the professor produced a bag of fine sand and managed to coax much of the sand into the spaces between the stones and the gravel in the jar.

Again he asked, “Is the jar full?”

“Knowing you, professor, probably not!” a student seated at the back of the class joked.

Smiling, the professor brought out a small jug of water, which he poured into the jar full of stones, gravel, and sand. When no more water fit into the jar, he put the jug down and looked at his class.

“So what does this teach you?” he asked his students.

“That no matter how busy your schedule,” one of the students answered, “you can always fit something in!” It was, after all, a prestigious business school.

“No!” thundered the professor. “What it shows is that if you want to get the big stones in, you have to put them in first.”

It was a lesson in priorities.

If you want to get to the “precious stones,” you have to make sure you schedule them first, or you will never get around to them.

What are the big stones in your “jar”? What is the most important fit in your life? Will you find space for the precious stone of kindness?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

If you would like to support my writing, you can do so by clicking HERE. You can also donate via PayPal HERE.

Economic Apartheid

Hola Everybody,
I’m going to do a series on what it’s like to be unemployed. I don’t think we really appreciate the negative effects of unemployment on health -- both physical and psychological. And it shouldn’t be this way. More on this starting tomorrow.

Working for a Living

Lots of people who are smart and work hard and play by the rules don't have a fraction of what I have. I realize I don’t have my wealth because I’m so brilliant. Luck has a lot to do with it.
 -- Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Inc.

Since the 1980s, income inequality has risen to proportions never before seen in this country. The constant bray of neocons is that if we continue to cut taxes for the rich, we will all be better off.

In fact, the vast majority of the working class in the US is worse off today than they were 20-30 years ago. Today, most of us work far longer hours for less pay and less job security. In addition, crucial government services such as health care and education have suffered to the point that they are the laughing stock of the industrialized world.

And yet, neoliberals continue to clamor for more of the same economic policies that have created this catastrophic economic displacement. As a percentage of wealth, you (if you’re middle class) pay more in taxes than wealthy individuals. And this is a bipartisan issue: as horrible as Trump seems, there’s very little difference between who he will appoint run the economy and who Obama appointed and Hillary would’ve appointed. In fact, some of you pay more in taxes than multinational corporations. Neoliberalism is what is known in the con game as a “bait and switch.” Meaning you may get a nominal windfall on your return, but you’re paying out the ass for other crucial services such as college, oil, and other “luxuries.”

In his 2004 report, I Didn't Do It Alone: Society's Contribution to Individual Wealth and Success, Chuck Collins spotlights successful entrepreneurs and concludes that the myth of self-made success is destructive to the economic infrastructure that fosters wealth creation. Collins states, “How we think about wealth creation is important since policies such as large tax cuts for the wealthy often draw on the myth of the self-made man,” He adds, “Taxes are portrayed as onerous, unfair redistribution of privately created wealth -- not as reinvestment or giving back to society. Yet, where would many wealthy entrepreneurs be today without taxpayer investment in the Internet, transportation, public education, legal system, the human genome, and so on?”

When you actually ask successful people, they tell a different story than the ones being sold in the corporate media (remember that six corporations own the vast majority of US media). Some successful entrepreneurs emphasized key factors such as the advantages of privilege, such as inheritance and race. Others emphasized government-provided services, like subsidized college tuition and government investments in technological research. And still others noted good old-fashioned luck. Click here to read the full report.

Conventional neoliberal economic superstition would have you believe the myths of the self-made person so that they can continue to con you. If we’re lucky, history books will write about this era as the greatest con ever.

On the other side of the ledger are the vast majority of us who scrape by from paycheck to paycheck, year after year, without much to show for it. When income just covers the basic cost of living, building even a small amount of wealth becomes impossible.

As I alluded previously, income inequality has grown since global neoliberalism has taken over economic policy. Between 1983 and 2003, average income for households in the top 5% grew by $108,987. The gains were far smaller for every other income group. In 2003, the 20% of households with the least earnings scraped by with an average income of just $9,996, only $839 more in real dollars than what they had 20 years earlier.

Income and wealth are related in two ways. People with high incomes can accumulate wealth, and this wealth can generate additional income. However, for the vast majority of people, income is just a means of surviving.

So why should you care about economic inequality? You might point out that many poor people in the US today own cars and cell phones, luxuries that even millionaires didn’t have a not that long ago. But yesterday’s luxuries are this year’s necessities. Let’s see you find and keep a job without a car or telephone, for example (something I’m currently attempting). Furthermore, human beings tend to define their standards of living in relative, not absolute terms.

Extreme inequality (as found here in the U.S.), reduces people’s sense of inclusion in the larger society. It reduces the likelihood that they will be able to work together to solve social problems or become engaged civically. If you want to better understand the lack of electoral participation, look no further than inequality. It also contributes to overt forms of social conflict, violence, and disease.

Studies of US states and Canadian provinces show that higher income inequality is associated with higher rates of homicide. In 1990, for instance, the homicide rate in the US was Louisiana. That state also had the highest level of income inequality.

I hope to revisit all of this very soon. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

If you would like to donate to this blog and my writing, you can do so by clicking HERE. You can also give via PayPal HERE.

References

Daly, M., & et al. (2000). Income inequality and homicide rates in Canada and the United States. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 43(2), 219-236. (click here)

Pickett K., Wilkinson, R. (2009). The spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better. New York: Bloomsbury Press. (click here)

Wilkinson, R. (2005). The impact of inequality. New York: The New Press. (click here)

Landa, D., & Kapstein, E. B. (2001). Inequality, growth, and democracy. World Politics, 53(2), 264-296. (click here)

Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Lochner, K., & Prothrow-Stith, D. (1997). Social capital, income inequality, and mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 87(9), 1491-1498. (click here)