Monkey Business

Things To Do To Throw A Monkey Wrentch In The System And Get Our Government Back - Naomi Klein's suggestion comes at the end of this segment with Amy Goodman. The link to the interview with her and Noam Chomsky follows. And then follows the link to Micheal Moore's interview with Amy, where he is also demanding we find some way to get our country back from corporate control.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, right now—well, you just flew into Park City, Utah just before President Obama’s State of the Union address. Your reaction to it?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I mean, we knew the spending freeze was going to come, but to me, it’s really striking. I think what this moment represents is the decision, which we all feared would come, to pass the bill on from saving Wall Street, from saving the elites of this country from their own mess, a bill worth trillions of dollars, to regular people in need in this country. I mean, that’s what a spending freeze really means.

And we have to look at it in the context of the debt crisis that is occurring at the state level. There’s deficit—huge deficits being run up. California is the most dramatic example, but you’re already seeing how students are facing things like 30 percent tuition increases. Women’s shelters are being closed. So, you know, when the President says freeze spending, that’s saying to the states, “We’re not going to help you. We’re not going to bail you out.”

So this is really—this, to me, all comes back to the top-down bailout that should never have taken place in the first place, the decision that was made to throw the taxpayer dollars at the banks, at the elites, no strings attached, not to help the people losing their jobs, losing their homes. And now the bill is being passed on, because the debt crisis, the private-sector debt crisis, which started this, the banks racking up these huge debts, was never solved. It was just moved. It was just moved to the public coffers.

And now Obama is—this is a Hoover move. This is a Herbert Hoover move. And I think we have to say very clearly, he is not FDR. And, you know, in the spirit of Howard Zinn, who passed yesterday, I keep thinking, you know, what would he say about the State of the Union? And I think he would tell us to refuse to pay this bill, that we need a debtors’ revolt.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/noam_chomsky_and_naomi_klein_respond

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/26/michael_moore_on_haiti_the_supreme

And here is a segment from Thursday's Headlines on DemocracyNow! about something very important that everyone can get involved in making happen:

Dems Seek to Undo Supreme Court Ruling on Corporate ElectioneeringAnd Democrats are gearing up to try to counter the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect and defeat candidates. In a five-to-four decision, the Court overturned century-old restrictions on corporations, unions and other interest groups from using their vast treasuries to advocate for a specific candidate. Speaking on the House floor, Democratic Congress member Donna Edwards of Maryland said she’ll introduce a constitutional amendment to revoke the Supreme Court ruling.
Rep. Donna Edwards:

“The American people already believe that corporate special interests and their lobbyists run the show around here. I mean, the halls are crawling with them. But that’s not enough. Now the Court says to the big banks, to the drug companies, to the insurance companies, ‘Hey, all bets are off, and it’s open season. Our elections are for sale.’ A law won’t fix this; we have to fix it in the Constitution. So today I’ll introduce a constitutional amendment so that we, the people, can take back our elections and our democracy. This is not the People’s House Incorporated. We are the people. It’s our house, it’s our Constitution, and it’s our elections. And we plan to take it back from the United States Supreme Court.”

In his State of the Union address, President Obama renewed his criticism of the Supreme Court ruling, saying he hopes Congress passes legislation “that helps to right this wrong.”

Here is a link to Guernica Magazine's interview of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur that show that there is hope from within the system to find ways to fix it:

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1432/kaptur/

And finally, the link to the second segment of Thursday's DemocracyNow!, which pays tribute to Howard Zinn, who passed away on Wednesday. The world will miss you, Howard Zinn, but we are so glad that you could share your wisdom - that war is unpredictable; war involves committing evil for the sake of a possible future good; war corrupts everybody involved with it; and that Democracy is The People, not the structures of government.

Thank you, Howard Zinn, for your active patience.

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1432/kaptur/

Bailout Disaster

The US government's bailout plans are a huge mistake and, if not revised, will prove to be the undoing of this great nation. Here are ten reasons why.

1.Bait and Switch. The way that this emergency was handled was the most astoundingly brazen attack yet on the democratic process by the Bush Administration. Congress was held hostage. “Give us the money or die!” They fell for the big bait and switch, wherein, at the last moment, the Bush Administration inserted one little sentence about restrictions on executive compensations when the government bought troubled assets at auction. But then the Treasury Department injected the funds directly into the companies instead, creating a giant loophole through which the executives are now free to jump toward their bonuses and compensation packages, thank you very much.

2.No Trickling Down. Hardly any of the $335 billion handed out so far, money that was supposed to liquefy the frozen credit markets, has actually flowed as credit out of the coffers of the banks and institutions that received it. The myth of “trickle down:” busted.

3.Homeowners Still Screwed. People were cajoled into buying homes they could not afford by the Republican-led government, which promoted homeownership because the real estate, insurance, construction, and mortgage lending lobbies were their “BFF's.” Nothing has been done to help people work toward staying in their homes.

4.Credit Schmedit. Now, between the housing slump and much stricter lending practices, everyone has maxed out their credit limits, even if more money is available to lend.

5.Monopolies. The results of the government handouts of billions of dollars to institutions that they claimed were “too big to fail” are the consolidation of these institutions into monopolies that are even bigger. Bigger is not better.

6.No Accountability. No one is being held accountable, not the Treasury Department, which is full of industry insiders who are looking after their buddies; not the executives who allowed their big institutions to fail because of pure greed; not the investors who collected fees by gambling away everyone's pension funds on complicated financial instruments that no one understood; not the lawmakers who insisted on a free-market free-for-all.

7.Workers' Rights. In the mad scramble to find solutions to keep failing corporations afloat, unions are being painted as greedy, lazy, corrupt, and (gasp!) socialist. This broad vilification of all unions, based on the actions of a few, sets all workers back and lessens their ability to negotiate in good faith with the management. Worse, it glosses over the fact that the executives have been raking in disproportionately high incomes. The bailout does nothing to address this kind of corporate structure.

8.No Nation Treasury. By emptying the the coffers of the National Treasury, government can then be drowned in the proverbial bathtub, and the small-government ideologues can live out their dreams of no government services or oversight, nothing but the police and the military. Banana Republic, here we come.

9.State Versus State. With a severe lack of federal funds, states will compete with each other to attract businesses by offering the lowest taxes and the least oversight. This will free the businesses to put downward pressure on wages and benefits, and the working classes will fall farther and farther behind the executive classes.

10.A Nation Divided. The final results of all of this will be a nation split by economic factors, where the wealthy will be the only ones able to afford educations and other means to keep themselves floating high above the lower classes. The great free market system will prevail, where private companies replace government entities, and these companies will be free to continue to hoard all the wealth by not paying taxes or living wages, polluting at will, and making profits any which way they can.

This is the picture that might very well unfold if We, The People do not stand up for Democracy and Accountability. What do you call a fallen Democracy, where The People no longer have a voice and the corporate leaders gain total control of the wealth and the government? It's called Fascism, and yes, it could happen here, if we are not careful during these difficult economic times to come.