... and I'm Couth

How Did We Get Here?

Democrats are paying heavily for their political failures — and for ditching the working stiff.

By Donald Kaul

Dick Tuck, the legendary political prankster and wit, once ran for local office in San Francisco and lost. His concession speech, in its entirety: “The people have spoken — the bastards.”

Now, you know me — I wouldn’t say anything like that about the recent elections. It’s vulgar and I’m couth.

However, if the shoe fits…

Perhaps it’s safer to quote the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, who said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

The 2014 midterms were a Mencken moment.

It was a disaster for the Democratic Party, of course. They lost every election that was possible to lose and a few that weren’t. But it was an even greater disaster for the American people.

Statue of Free Enterprise, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib

Faced with an onrushing manmade climate crisis, U.S. voters have now elected a congressional majority that denies global warming. (Did I mention that it’s also a majority financed by oil, gas, and coal money?)

Burdened with a reverse Robin Hood tax structure that robs the poor to give to the rich, voters elected the people who are most adamant that the rich, the richer, and (most of all) the richest be taxed lightly (if at all) lest they cease creating jobs.

Whether they create jobs or not.

Angered by the political gridlock in Washington, Americans not only reelected the leaders of the Republican obstructionist caucus, they substantially increased its numbers.

Frustrated by President Barack Obama’s inability to clear up the mess in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and all that), they backed the party that made the mess in the first place and has yet to so much as apologize for it.

The result is that We the People find ourselves at the mercy of cynical manipulators joined at the hip with true-believing ignoramuses.

How did we get here?

I blame the Democrats for having lost their identity as a progressive party of the working stiff. The Democratic Party is instead…nothing at all. It’s a collection of political strands that pull in one direction and push in the other.

Moreover, it’s leaderless. Obama has his virtues — he’s bright and reasonable — but he’s an awful politician. He makes Jimmy Carter look like Lyndon Johnson.

Nothing makes this clearer than his treatment of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Essentially, he made a speech and let his crack federal bureaucracy handle the details.

To make a long story short, it didn’t work. The rollout was horrendously inept, and Obama did next to nothing to sell the plan to a confused public until it was too late.

Into the resulting vacuum the Republicans injected a never-ending barrage of vitriol. Without being very specific, they characterized the plan as an unparalleled disaster. And they did it on a daily basis. For two years or more, Republicans could hardly broach any subject — the war, the economy, the weather — without including a rant on the evils of making health care more widely available.

Regrettably, this demonization of health care carried the day, even though the plan overcame its early problems to become a success. Its flaws were exaggerated. Its virtues became secrets.

That’s a failure of political leadership, which Democrats paid for heavily.

There’s talk now in Washington of a new spirit of cooperation between the two major parties. This talk is generally between people who start drinking before noon.

For the past six years Republicans in Congress have done everything in their power to delegitimize President Obama. They’ve questioned his citizenship, his patriotism, his intelligence, and his religion. They did that while narrowly controlling one house of Congress.

To think that giving them full control of both chambers will make them kinder, gentler, and more amenable to compromise requires a leap of faith available only to saints and fools.

May God help the United States the next time we have to raise the debt limit.

OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. OtherWords.org 

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[Mirrored from Otherwords.org]

--Joe

They Call THIS a Compromise

[UPDATE Below]

When you can't feed your family and your kids are hungry, look to your Republican neighbor first, then take a good look at your Democratic neighbor, especially the one that voted for and continues to support Barack Obama. Maybe they can make up the difference in food stamp losses. They, the Republicans, Democrats, Independents and God only knows who else, take your money, keep it to use for buying votes, or spend it on lawless wars and bail-outs for the Banks and Too Big To Fail 1% oligarchy, and you and your children can eat dirt.

This is a news headline on Democracy Now this morning Wednesday, February 5, 2014:
Senate OKs Farm Bill with $8.7 Billion in Food Stamp Cuts

The Senate has approved a long-stalled farm bill that includes a major cut to food stamps. The measure would reduce funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $8.7 billion over a decade. The figure amounts to a loss of $90 per month for 850,000 families in need. The cuts mark a "compromise" between a Republican plan to slash food stamps by $39 billion and a Democratic one to cut them by $4 billion. The bill would also end billions of dollars in direct payments to farmers, but still hand out billions more through the expansion of government-subsidized crop insurance. President Obama is expected to sign the measure into law. In a statement, the Children’s Defense Fund said: "It is shameful that Congress continues to treat poor Americans like second-class citizens by cutting supports they desperately need."

The Google definition for compromise is:

compromise
noun
1. an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.
verb
1. settle a dispute by mutual concession.
2. weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable.

The Biblical definition for Sin is Compromise - The real reason Jesus Christ was put to death. To try to force him to sell-out or compromise his soul, to extinguish the light.
[Source]

[UPDATE :: February 6, 2014]

Senate Republicans block new bid to restore jobless benefit

Despite majority vote, Democratic plan to restore long-term unemployment insurance fails to clear parliamentary hurdle

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Don't you just love them? 

--Joe

The Third Alternative – Don't Vote

Stay home!

In his speech “Beyond Vietnam” Martin Luther King spoke about his belief that Americans had a choice to make. He offered that “choice” 45 years ago. History reveals a “choice” was made, but was it the one Martin Luther King hoped would be made?

If anyone bothered to listen to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech last night you would know or see firm evidence that a decision was made alright, but not the one Martin Luther King hoped for. What he hoped for was: "If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." The choice he offered then and still viable today was: “nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.”

Forty five-years is one long day, but here we are at it's end, five minutes before midnight. The choice is still available, but who to choose to lead the way? Americans are being forced to decide in a few months who will be President of the United States. Leading Republican contenders' choice is obvious – “violent co-annihilation.” Ron Paul being the exception here, but he has the “winnable perception” problem. Then there's the standing President and his record speaks for itself – he's as much of a corporatist warmonger as the Republicans. So, what do peace-loving, patriotic American voters do? Waste their vote? The question is, who or what are you voting for?

Every one of these candidates, from the lowliest dog-catcher to the President of the United States is totally corrupt-to-the-gut and that is precisely what you vote for. Everyone gets exactly what they vote for. Which makes every voter liable and accountable for everything they do, every law the deliberately violate, and every individual human the murder or cause to be murdered.

For the first time today I heard someone with some experience in this voting process answer the American Voters' dilemma – how to chose the way of peace and absolve themselves their blood guilt. Democracy Now has a pertinent interview with Ralph Nader on President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech: "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address. This is the link for the complete interview.

You may not agree with Amy Goodman or Ralph Nader, but there is one thing you cannot disagree with them on - Democracy works!

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, you have written a new book called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win. People may be listening to you right now and agreeing with a lot of what you are saying, and also saying, "What is the alternative here? Mitt Romney? Newt Gingrich?" What is your response to that? 

RALPH NADER: Well, this is the book, and I’m going to drop it off at the White House soon. I think he should read it, because the left is not making any demands on Obama because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans and their crazed rhetoric on their debates. Well, if that is going to continue for 2012, that means the corporations are pulling on Obama and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are pulling on Obama and Democratic Party, because they’re getting all the media, because they have a vibrant primary process, and there’s no primary challenge to Obama, so the progressive agenda is not getting any media at all, week after week. 

So the alternative, Amy, is for the left, such as they are — progressive, liberal people, I like to call them "justice seekers" — to make demands on Obama, to make demands for improving the rights of labor, improving the rights of small farmers, improving the rights of small business, the environmental demands that need to be made, the crackdown on corporate crime, a whole panoply of corporate reform agenda, the kind of crackdown on these global corporations that have abandoned America and shipped jobs and industries to fascist and communist regimes who know how to keep workers in their place.But there is no pull, because they’re so freaked out by the Republicans. So, one can really say the Republicans could sit around in a smoke-filled room and say, "Let’s be even more crazed. Let’s be even more corporatist." This will create a good vacuum for the Democrats to move into, because both parties are dialing for the same corporate dollars, and it will bring the left to their knees, because they’ll say, "We’ve got nowhere to go." 

Well, the reason why this speech was so failing, especially in foreign and military policy, the reason why it was so failing is because Obama doesn’t have to worry about tens of millions of people who call themselves progressives or liberals, because they have signaled to him that they got nowhere to go. Well, I think if they believe they got nowhere to go, that they don’t want to vote for a third party or Green Party, they can at least, in April, May, June, hold his feet to the fire and present him with a set of progressive demands, in order to tell him that they do have a place to go: they can stay home. And that’s what hurt the Democrats in 2010. People can just stay home.

There's your choice, folks. What it really means to practice 'non-violence' and peace. In other words: Practice what you preach or stay home. Let's see who has the guts to make the right choice.

--Joe

Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaks To You

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his Beyond Vietnam speech. In many ways it is more appropriate today, not just because Barack Obama is President of the United States, but because his words really focused on our time today. Here is an excerpt:

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam writes, "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

In that "Beyond Vietnam" speech he gave America and Americans the "choice." Make the right "choice" then, he said, "If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

If you possess any doubt that Americans FAILED to make the right "choice," consider the words of leading Republican seeking to be President, Mitt Romney. His words mirror the status quo of his Republican contemporaries and Democratic cohorts lead by Barack Obama. The stark possibility that any of these Republican men, including the current President Barack Obama representing this country in the future makes me believe it is already too late. Here is an excerpt Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words for today, compliments of Democracy Now and Amy Goodman:

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: After 1954, they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. And they remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South, until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores.

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else, for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after the short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long, they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote: "Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism,” unquote.

We continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing — part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime, which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary.

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task, while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality —- and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy— and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisers" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago, he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions.


It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means, in the final analysis, that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft-misunderstood, this oft-misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.

When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response, I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I’m speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the First Epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says, "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word," unquote.

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam writes, "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now, let us begin. Now, let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:


Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.


And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

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If you would like to read the complete speech you can go to: Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence - Picture source.

--Joe

Gerbils and the Dumb-Down

If anyone thinks that what's happening in this country and to the World economy was caused by simple lack of oversight, moronic screw-ups or some other philosophical malaise, try thinking again. Since Ronald Reagan the Republicans have doubled the debt in their predetermined massive transfer of wealth to their enabled elite. What's happening is NO accident.

Here's one of my posts for Friday, August 8, 2008:
How The Stupid Rule

The Wrecking Crew: Thomas Frank on How Conservatives Rule

Frank writes, “Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction.”

Read the interview to learn how Ronald Regan and GHW Bush dominated Bill Clinton's agenda and how G. Bush Jr. has setup the next President.

Then there's this interview for Thursday, March 12, 2009, on Democracy Now with Michael Parenti that makes my case once again. Only it's his assessment that the goal is to make America and Western Europe just like Indonesia. According to him their doing a pretty good job, so far. You can read who they are in the complete interview here:

Michael Parenti: Economic Crisis the Inevitable Result of “Capitalism’s Self-inflicted Apocalypse” Here's an excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Democrats and Republicans. You said you’re infuriated by the Republican response, because they just want tax cuts for the rich. But what about the Democrats—I mean, just now we were playing for you Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary—and the approach to this crisis?

MICHAEL PARENTI: Oh, it’s insufficient. I mean, that’s what’s coming out with your questions. It’s insufficient. They’re not dealing with systemic questions. There’s all this debate about the stimulus package. Hardly a word has come out about the Federal Reserve giving away two-and-a-half trillion dollars, just giving it away unaccountably.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

MICHAEL PARENTI: The Federal Reserve just went—while we had this $750 billion stimulus package, which was passed by Congress, the Federal Reserve printed up—it can print up money and create money—and handed out over $2 trillion to the financial community in America, with no accountability, no debate in Congress and very little notice.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what’s the significance of that?

MICHAEL PARENTI: Well, the significance is that we’re going to—I mean, that’s our money, that it becomes real money when it becomes debt, and we’ve got to pay it. You see, the Republicans were never against debt; they were the biggest debt spenders there ever was. When Ronald Reagan came into office, the national debt was $800 billion. When he left office, it was $2.5 trillion. I mean, it was OK with him to spend. He also put in the biggest tax program that ever was, but it was a regressive tax. It was a Social Security tax on tens of millions of people. When George Bush, Sr. came in, the national debt went from $2.5 to $5 trillion. Clinton—I’ll give him credit for that one thing—he did try to go for solvency. But when you got to George Bush, Jr., for eight years, the debt has gone from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. And these Republicans were voting for that all along. All these spending bills were theirs. So, you see, they don’t mind debt, because debt is really a way of upward distribution. You tax the common people, and you give the money to rich creditors. It’s a very regressive way of redistributing wealth upward. So debt is fine with them.

Don't you just love these Republicans? Tell me this wasn't their longterm goal.

What do you see is the future of capitalism?

MICHAEL PARENTI: I see it as a future in which there’s going to be a lot of
suffering. I see it—the goal is to have more and more Indonesias and fewer
Denmarks and such.

And that means?

That means that even in the social democracies in Western Europe, there are going to be cutbacks, there’s going to be privatization, deregulation, greater—growth of inequities, rollbacks of human services and such, in countries that were pretty decent, countries where capitalism was reined in and held in line, to some degree, anyway.

Well, Indonesia, I mean it’s a free market paradise. They talk about free market. In
Indonesia, there are no consumer protections, there are no regulations, there is
no public medical care, there’s no public education. People just die younger.

If that's not enough you can read, Capitalism’s Self-inflicted Apocalypse by Michael Parenti.

Michael Parenti is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer.
He is one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. His highly
informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of
audiences in North America and abroad.

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Here's a related commentary on SoHum Parlance II in his "WTF???" post about this subject. -- Well, when prodded just a bit he wasn't exactly at "a loss for words." A valid point, neverthe less:

March 11, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Eric Kirk

In spite of this, progressives trust the gov’t more than private industry (which they can hold accountable). Go figure…

Um. Well. The problem here is that government did not keep tabs on private industry. So let’s just say that the culpability is less. The private industry ripped us off. The public sector was negligent in preventing it.

--Joe