I Quote Donald Rumsfeld: Democracy is Messy.

I have a regular and ongoing exchange with a guy named Andy G on FB. Andy is a liberal Republican I think, or a conservative Dem. No matter, Andy provided the first fodder for some of what followed here on the blog because he posted something or other that sort of made my blood boil. If there is such a thing as a limousine liberal, Andy is the opposite. From the comfort of his perch Andy takes his shots against the protestors, and the left in general, all the while suggesting he is essentially for the cause, if only…

Anyway, I do sort of like Andy though I only know him through FB. A couple of days ago he posted a piece about the mess in LA after the Police cleared the Occupy sight there. For some reason it has drawn an enormous amount of response. Funny how that works sometimes.

What follows are some of the posts Andy put up, a link to the LA Times piece, and my response.

OH, PLEASE ... blame it all on the right? Give me a break! Civil protest is one thing, but there is absolutely nothing civil, respectful or decent about leaving your sh*t all over the place, I don't care who or what you're protesting! Don't hang this on the right, don't hang it on the rich. That's patently absurd.

Perhaps, Jeff, but I fail to see and no one here has successfully made an argument for why that justifies the wanton disregard for civility and why we all have to clean up such a horrendous mess. There's no defending it ... it's just wrong, plain and simple.

And frankly, if these demonstrations didn't turn from real protest to some sort of carnival, gypsy-esque commune type of encampment, we wouldn't be reading stories like this in the LA Times or anywhere else.

And our brothers and sisters, at least the ones who really weren't there for a real, legitimate protest, should have better manners ... that's all I'm saying. They want legitimacy and to be respected ... fine, no problem there, but act like.

So do I, Dan ... but we all end up footing the bill for those cleanups ... I'm supportive, but not when it costs society. How does that really add anything to what they're protesting? It doesn't. In fact, it actually tends to run counter to their whole objective. This needs to be thought through a little more by the actual OWS core base, since all this glomming on is likely causing a lot of the messes.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-la-30-tons-of-debris-left-behind-at-city-hall-tent-city.html

Jesus, Andy. What a priss. Is that you under all that shit you’re peddling? Do you really care they left a mess (as Jeff said someone else made the mess), or are you really just riding this thing because you have generated so much feedback.... No criticism there, I would be thrilled if there were 50 responses to a post of mine, but I would have to say less so if 38 were mine. 

 This is not right vs. left thing; or rather it is, but only to the extent that the right is now completely identified with and beholden to wealth. The talk about footing the bill of the physical clean-up of an encampment which was cleared with little warning or care for people’s personal possessions (Same thing happened in NY too, with similar results) is preposterous. Especially in a week where we learned that the Fed spent $7.7 f***ing trillion bailing out the banks, and later colluding with them to keep it secret, your outrage seems sort of misplaced. 

Your paean to the costs to the taxpayers sounds like a Romney-esque poll-tested and totally hollow response to the movement. Say this much, and frame it that way, and then everyone will believe I am sincere. What utter horse shite!

 Please identify for me the method of protest that you would find acceptable to confront the power structure. This group of people is literally is so far removed from the larger community on which they feed like friggin’ eels on a carcass that they could not identify a real American with a magnifying glass and a polygraph. If the Occupy kids dropped a deuce on the desk of the Chairmen of Wells Fargo, I would not consider it inappropriate or ill advised, and it seems to me that that the gleaming exterior that these bastards have has sort of hidden the result of their greed driven activities. A tattooed thug holds up a liquor store, running off with a few hundred and society gets behind the idea of punitive incarceration. But these bastards literally stole billions, and they continue to game the system using the profits of their ill-gotten gains. Bloomberg reports the banks made a cool $13 Bil from the action of the Fed.

Your response, “Hey look at the mess those kids made! Am I gonna have to clean that up?” F***! Really?

 I know you are well informed enough to know that the cause has merit, but increasingly you look to me like the white preachers that King wrote to while he sat in a jail in Birmingham after being gassed by the police. Those preachers knew King’s cause was just, but they just wished he had done something that would have been less confrontational. Sound familiar?

Jesus, Mike, sounds like you don't really give a shit that these protestors left all their shit lying around in the name of protesting. Are you any kind of an environmentalist? Give me a break! You keep trotting out the same old tripe about... this being a war on Wall Street, and I'm fine with that part. What I'm not fine with is people abdicating their basic civility to the rest of us and wantonly messing the joint and then saying it was all part of the protest! That dog doesn't hunt and all your ranting at me does NOTHING to justify why that kind of trashy behavior is acceptable! It's not and I still say it lowers the movement's credibility. Let's also not forget that OWS isn't and can't be wholly about the 1% and the banks. Some of that 1% are very high paid public employees, professors and other elitists who have nothing in common with the other 99% of us.

Andy, No I don't give a s*** how much debris was left down there. Last year after the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The next day the Sanitation Department cleaned up the mess, just as they do every year. There was 40 tons of mess, making our revelers messier than your occupiers by a factor of 33%! Yeah, we win!

What a load of… jeez, I don’t know. Occupy is a protesting in reponse to the betrayal of tens millions of people by the political and business structure in this country. They are mostly kids, organized primarily to the extent that they distrust leadership at any level, so much so that they have completely disowned it. As someone in their fifties that's quote a legacy to ponder.

 As I said I would consider it a totally legit form of protest if a couiple of Occupy kids dropped a deuce on desk of the Chairmen of Wells Fargo. Jamie Dimon made $20 million, plus last year, they should drop two there. To their credit Occupy has shown up at Obama events across the country, but mostly hit financial institutions and Republicans. They followed the money (and this is sort of where it led).

I have made a good living for years and I do pay taxes. I am a businessman. Have been for 30+ years. I am not a socialist, though the recent suggestion someone made against me to that effect was amusing. I vote in almost every election, but millions of other Americans I am really angry. I am also pretty well informed, and so not just responding to the lost chapters of my youth. The issues Occupy is raising are the real deal. Big money corruption is rotting the soul out of both parties, and I  have made my feelings about that that clear both on this site and on the postings on my blog.

I seek neither violence nor retribution, but I have a deep desire to find justice, and to equal the playing field for the most vulnerable in our society. The political and financial establishment don’t care yet about me, or what the Occupy crowd is doing. They faint a little here and there, but they don’t really don’t care.

So we are in a war of attrition. Does this movement, perhaps the most important in our lifetime, certainly since Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement, have the tenacity to stick around long enough until based on people’s discomfort, either to their routine or perception, they do start to care?

I continue to be amazed at the level of corruption of which you are well aware, and see that the only thing that gets you and millions of other fence sitters riled up over is silliness, whether the “fake” mess reporting’s in LA and Portland, or the unruly behavior resulting --at least in NY-- with arrests for people spilling from the sidewalk.

They f***ed you Andy, you and everyone else, who works hard, plays by the rules, and pays their taxes. The people at the brunt of these protests did not.

And in a self-perpetuating cycle the bastards invested some of the ill-gotten gain into running ads and on public relations gambits to convince enough of you and people like you, that they didn’t do anything bad. Their paid mouthpieces on Fox News and elsewhere bring us their phony outrage, and raise the smoke level. They hope America will forget the damage done. Perhaps they will. As with everything else, the right finds a way to get indignant for behaviors previously tolerated when it fits the argument they hope to make. Now they are upset about deficits, but a few years ago they funded two wars by selling bonds to the Chinese and spent $5 bil a day doing it. Pardon me if I feel the credibility has leaked out of the hot air balloons over there.

“When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out.” Abbie Hoffman

Newt, The New Boss

Hello, Newt.

The Washington Post reports that you legally transferred all of your business interests to your third wife when you decided to run. Now that’s a firewall. She must be pretty happy.

It has been widely reported that my man Newt has worked the system pretty well since getting throw… ahem, leaving office. Quoting Newt’s own attorney Randy Evans, The Washington Post reported my man Newt has made a bloody fortune since leaving office:

• $1.8 Million consulting for Freddie & Fannie
• $60,000 a pop for “50 to 80” speeches a year
• $52 million running a think tank called American Solutions for Winning the Future
• $37 Million collected from the Health Industry as dues to a group called the Center for Health Transformation

In fairness it appears that Gingrich and his team stayed clear of lobbying. However, like everything else in Washington there is the spirit of the law, and the letter of the law. Corporations did not pay Gingrich $100 million in consulting fees because they wanted to share a cup of hot cocoa. Corporations pay for access to get their agenda heard and then carried out.

In the spirit of Romney Gingrich now sees himself backtracking from the few areas where he has been bold enough to compromise, or worse, take a progressive position. In 2008 Gingrich appearing in a TV ad with Nancy Pelosi joined an Al Gore organized advertising effort to promote the battle against climate change. He now calls that “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done”.

Gingrich’s posture on the healthcare proposal which has raised the most ire and which is now being challenged in front of the Supreme Court—mandates for the citizens to purchase insurance—has evolved.

• 1993 “I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.”
• 2007 Editorial in the Des Moines Register- “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance”
• May-15, 2011- When given the opportunity to go after Romney Newt said, “I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay--help pay for health care… I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond ..."
• But a day later (May-16, 2011)  on his website Newt stated, “I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.”

The post also reports that not all of Gingrich’s clients were happy. PhRMA, a lobbying group for the drug industry, dumped Gingrich after he suggested the industry should set up a web site to help consumers compare prices. F***ing communist!

The New York Times reported on a rapprochement  between Hillary and Clinton and Newt, and at the core I believe Newt’s views on healthcare might be thoughtful and there is the potential in their for some creativity, but as Romney already knows and Newt appears to have discovered the thuggery of Republican politics leaves little room for reconciliation and creative thinking.

Sadly for me at least, Newt’s suggestions about what he did for Fannie and Freddie look to be complete hogwash. David Frum, a speechwriter for George W Bush writing on his own blog the day after Gingrich made his assertion that he told-them-not-to–do-it took issue with Gingrich:

“…let’s not overlook this audacious moment from the debate: Newt Gingrich’s breathtaking assertion that Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for a lecture he gave “as a historian” about how they should forthwith cease their business practices.

Turns out, that’s not quite how it happened. From the AP:

The records obtained by the AP reflect growing concern within Freddie Mac over a chorus of criticism from Republicans worried that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had grown too big. The two companies owned or guaranteed over $5 trillion in mortgages.

The Bush administration and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were sounding the alarm about the potential threat to the nation’s financial health if the fortunes of the two mammoth companies turned sour. They did eventually, when they took on $1 trillion worth of sub-prime mortgages and when their traditional guarantee business deteriorated. Commercial banks regarded Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as competitors and were anxious to pick up business that would result from scaling back the two companies.

Pushing back, Freddie Mac enlisted prominent conservatives, including Gingrich and former Justice Department official Viet Dinh, paying each $300,000 in 2006, according to internal records.

Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model.”

It has since come out that Gingrich was paid $1.8 million by Fannie and Freddie, which makes his posture overtly corrupt and highly misleading. He may not have lobbied, but he wrote and lectured and humped their case. Almost certainly cash won out over wisdom, because as with every other one of these scum, I simply refuse to believe that people did not know better. Everyone was making so much money everyone ignored the obvious. When the s*** hit the fan the rich walked away with their dough, and their bailouts and the poor and middle class took it up the what’s its.

On immigration, Newt has already proposed amnesty. I could forgive the scramble to avoid the word. As with the draconian posture suggesting free markets as solution for the housing crisis, just once I’d like to hear a lame-streamer ask how the right would propose making 11 million undocumented workers simply disappear.  Here again, this isn’t Newt, but Romney and the others are throwing red meat to the lions as a substitute for serious policy discussions.

On tax and economic policy with a few wrinkles, including a “Voluntary Flat Tax system” he is well within the mainstream of Republican circles which proposes additional transfers of wealth to those who already have done amazingly, stupidly well. He humps the same de-regulation crapola as the rest of them, which again shows the lack of seriousness in the goal of creating jobs by the Republican field.

I am still endorsing Newt though on the basis that he is still less slippery than Romney, and so more likely to say it like he feels it that whiff of blow dry, Willard from Massachusetts. Go Newt.  

Herman Cain- Sex, Lies, and 49 Bye Bye's

Well, I thought the silly season would have been done a few weeks ago when  Herman got tangled up in his web of harassment deceits. As many of you know I have come full out for that slimy bast… (oh, sorry) for the certain eventual republican nominee and my guy-- Newt !
Of course the absurd thing with Cain is not that the pattern of behavior seems to have at last (almost) wrung him from the race, it is that his total lack of knowledge on almost every subject has not. He has run with pride dropping alternating pearls of mind numbing ignorance and seasoned unwillingness to even think about issues, much less propose serious solutions. Thoughtful serious solutions as we know are my man Newt’s area of expertise, but I will long remember Cain stumbling through his first debate after the harassment allegations broke answering 9-9-9 preposterously to almost every question, like a friggin’ machine. 9-9-9! 9-9-9! 9-9-9! 9-9…. Ah f***, shut up already.

Cain is Jon Galt for the no attention span MTV Generation. I read Atlas Shrugged. Hated it, but at least Ayn Rand was a thinker, an intellectual even. She certainly was someone that gave great thought to the issues before her. The current Republican electorate can’t be bothered with deep thought. Like Galt, Cain and the Republicans speak metaphorically for the masses, but at their core they really just represent money. Unlike Galt’s creator the Republicans can’t be bothered with giving any real thought to the issues though. And poor, poor them, they are so unfairly affected by the power of government. They just can’t do whatever they want, whenever they want. Look, look, Obama nationalized the auto companies, AIG, Freddy and Fannie, and several large banks who he forced to take TARP money. The educated right will tell you all this was foretold in Atlas Shrugged. I guess the collapse of 2008, and the rescue of 2008 & 2009 is all just part of a big plot by statist elements on the left to take over everything. If only the market had been left to its own devices... 

Listen carefully to the Republicans, even the “moderate” Romney, calling for market solutions to the housing crisis. Roughly defined I guess this would mean letting around 20 million more households —roughly all those with underwater mortgages-- lose their homes. None of the lamestream newsies at the debates actually gets to the reality of the damage that would be done by these draconian proposals. It’s so much more satisfying to hear “free market solutions”. Do we really need to delve into specific consequences?

Jon Stewart expressed disappointment about the potential for Cain leaving the race, especially after “we lost Trump”. Give Cain credit he was, and for now still is, the gift that keeps giving. Cain expressed his opposition to appointing Muslim as judges or members of his cabinet. Apparently a staffer advised him that there was something in the Bill of Rights that guaranteed religious freedom or something and it looked bad to suggest that as the highest political figure in the US he would sort of ignore it—at least before the election. So he backtracked like a moron to limit his opposition to Muslims that want to destroy America. I’m all in there. No candidate should be nominated that proposes hiring terrorists for the department of Transportation. Whew, close on that one, but Herman was there.

In an informal debate with my man Newt on healthcare, Cain preformed a near ritual suicide, a precursor to the Libya brain freeze. There they were seated at the couch when Americans for Prosperity Texas chairman Ben Streusand asked Cain whether he favored a “defined benefit plan” or “premium support” when it comes to Medicare. Cain repeated the question, looked to the sky for relief, wiped his face (perhaps the answer in the palm of his hand?) and finally said "You go first, Newt". Libya was the live performance. Few in the media picked up the dress rehearsal. If forced to answer honestly his only reply could have been “I really have no idea”. Fair disclosure: I am not sure I know the exact answer to the question either and I have no clear posture on the answer. But 1) I am not running for President presenting simplistic solutions to almost everything, and 2) I actually think I could formulate at least a limited response based on what I know of the concept presented.

Stymied when scrambling to repair damage to his right wing anti-abortion rep, Cain evidenced a total lack of knowledge on the basic function of the constitution. He said he would “sign it” referring to a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Presidents of course do not assign amendments. Once passed by congress, amendments are ratified by the states.

The so-called lame-stream media promoted his candidacy endlessly. Before his epic crash and burn, the major networks mostly talked about the newness of his voice, and the simple seductiveness of 9-9-9. Early on there was little actual reporting on the wisdom of the plan, and ultimately it fell to Cain’s Republican rivals to eviscerate a plan that had no chance of passage anyway. The gaffes were reported on, but often with a patina of “Well, at least he says what he means”, as if a scolding, narrow minded ass that sputters ill-informed crapola – but with a lot of verve and feeling--is what the country needs at this juncture in our history.

On the right the coverage was fawning. After the fiasco in the Heath debate, John Hayward of Human Events when summarizing that healthcare debate with Newt wrote, “Cain embodies the warmth of a Christmas Eve spent by the fireplace with a mug of hot cocoa, and connects with people so easily it’s almost hypnotic.” Holy crap! Really?  Heyward sounds like he’ pining for one of those 4:30 AM booty call IM’s.

Cain’s is clearly unwilling to give serious thought to the issues. He combined this with a carnival barker’s decorum, sprinkled liberally with bitter remarks about lazy Americans, bigoted comments about Muslim Americans, and an outwardly hostile attitude about women. But none of that drove him out. His general disdain for the rabble amazingly didn’t do him in. Ironically it will be the religious right’s abandonment of his campaign due to his problems with women that probably will be the death knell. Somehow that seems wrong. An unethical bigot with no knowledge of how government works should have been done in long ago for the obvious foolishness of his candidacy. Instead he raised $30 million and we had to wait for the religious right to finally get their fill. Pathetic.

Bye, bye Herman. I think I know what your wife will “say”. See you on Fair and Balanced.

How The F*** is it that Martha Stewart Went to Jail

I remain convinced that average citizens on both sides of the political equation have much more in common than the rich and powerful would ever like to see articulated. I saw Jon Stewart talking about this last night and dug up the article, dated, Nov-27, this morning. CNN reported the story a couple days later, but the lame stream media has not picked this up. Several commentators on fair and balanced have addressed it, but by and large the scope of the transfer of wealth to the criminals who precipitated the financial crisis has gone unnoticed. $7.7 trillion dollars, 11 times TARP money, was loaned by the Fed at 0.01% interest. The banks and Fed hoped to keep this secret and notified neither the Executive (Treasury Department) nor Legislative (Congress) arms of government.
Here’s a portion of the Bloomberg Article.
“The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.“
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html
Here’s Stewart’s Take: “Bloomberg report reveals that the U.S. government loaned banks $7.7 trillion in secret bailout funds at no interest and then borrowed the money back at interest.”
The banks took the money, tried to keep it secret, and then reinvested it reaping a $13 billion profit. http://www.thedailyshow.com/
The first two segments of the Daily Show have beome the most important (and entertaining) much watch news segnments in the media.

Memories of Eddie, Joey, Joey, & Joey on World AIDS Day

I came to New York in 1978 with little sophistication, a country boy really with no big city experience or worldly knowledge. The extent of my upbringing was a cast of mostly middle class white kids and their families. We were Catholics in a Catholic town though some of my friends were Protestants or Baptists or whatever, no one really focused on that. In our little group there were a few kids of Hispanic background, but no black kids until went we went to big bad Elgin High with the squealing tires in the more “urban” setting. Well, it was Downtown Elgin, but I wouldn’t call it a city, not even today.  A lot of us didn’t know what to do. Sadly, stupidly when one looks back on it, there were fights over race born of the ignorance and fear that the whites and blacks had about each other. Looking back most of us white kids did not realize how completely sheltered we were, or the extreme proximity of our rung on the ladder to the black kids we were just meeting then.

There may have been gay kids in the group. Hell, there must have been, but no one I knew thought about it, and whomever they were kept it pretty quiet. No one came out in High School in the mid 70’s.

I graduated High School a year early, pretty disenchanted with that whole education thing, and started working immediately. Back then a teenager could take his pick of crappy jobs. I had a few. McDonalds was the first.  Got fired. Then I got a job pumping gas, which seemed like it would be lucrative, but I didn’t really like getting my hands dirty, and the Oil Embargo came along and I got tossed. Shortly thereafter I found a job selling shoes and after a couple of years of 70 hour weeks, leavened with aimless consumption of alcohol and not insignificant quantities of illicit pharmaceuticals, I was able to wangle a passage to New York. I have been a desk jockey of one sort or another ever since.  

In New York, everything changed. I literally wore a straw hat off the plane, but lost that quickly as I learned how critical it was to try to avoid drawing attention to yourself as you traversed the streets of the city. My first stop in New York was the majestic Woolworth building, where I worked in a pretty large office with several hundred staff. There everyone knew where they were on the ladder, but the people I knew, or rather the people I met and hung around with, were mostly in the same spot- entry level office workers. It was not that integrated, certainly not by todays’ standards, but pretty much all the races were in representation at some level, and there were people from all over the place with accents foreign to anything I had heard. Joe, the stout, big hearted Rangers fan from Brooklyn, was exotic to my eyes. It was hard to stand out though, because everyone stood out or was different in some way.

Somehow Eddie found a way though. Eddie stood out. He was proudly out in 1978, barely a decade after Stonewall. He was fit as hell, and in his none too subtle way he made fun of almost everyone who wasn’t. At office parties he often spun the records, or influenced heavily whoever did. Nightlife music in New York was disco back then. It was the common music of gays, blacks, Latinos, and every white kid everywhere—especially in cities, and especially in New York City-- who followed street life and street fashion. Hip Hop was just being born in the Bronx, and was not widely followed or known. When Eddie was around, one did not hear Sweet Home Alabama, but he could wind it up for I Will Survive. I can still see him shakin’. The girls loved him and the guys, well, they responded to him in many different ways. He made fun of me. I remember once in the bank, he motioned at me flamboyantly from across the line. It seemed like sort of a come on, but it was really just a ribbing. Eddie knew I wasn’t there, but I think that made embarrassing me even more fun for him. He took his license to torture me, and that he did. Eddie, who had boundless spirit, could be relentless once he knew you. For out and proud people in the gay community in those days, New York was a mecca for the endless party. But then Eddie got sick. No one knew what it was called. It just seemed like sort of a flu or pneumonia. He withered away before our eyes, and then he was gone.  I remember you, Eddie. Somewhere I hope you’re still dancing.

The years went by quickly. I loved the urban milieu and dove in again and again. I felt often like I had missed a lot growing up in Illinois and was determined to catch up. I moved to Hoboken, where my brother joined me. It was a lot more boho then (and affordable). My brother and I hung out, a lot, in a bar named Maxwell’s. They had bands every weekend, and the good times rolled. We met Sean there, a professor at Farleigh Dickinson, who was Irish, smart, progressive, funny, and gay. I think he tried to turn both my brother and I. At least I know he encouraged me to consider alternatives. He was a blast. Through Sean and others we met I began to attain a comfort level that would have better prepared me for Eddie.

We lived on Washington Street there in Hoboken. Our landlord Joey, rented us his beautiful duplex. The rent was manageable and the place was way too nice for my brother, our roommate and I. It was painted bright yellow with high ceilings and white shutters and a tar beach out back. We played the music loud annoyed our downstairs neighbors and I think mostly amused the lady directly below us who owned the beauty parlor. Joey was an interior decorator, and left some of his personal choices (the place was his abode before he rented it to us). What I remember most is the elegant slender lladro piece, a boy or young man reading a book, totally appropriate for Joey’s home, but a bit incongruous for the three of us.  By the time Joey passed, we knew what it was called. Joey died of AIDS, a few years after we moved to Washington Street.

Later I moved to Atlanta, though I would eventually come back to Hoboken. My best friend met and married a real Greenwich Village girl, who seemed to know someone on every narrow street down there. She worked at the famous Whitehorse Tavern and knew or seemed to know the best place to get pizza (Arturo’s) , the best deli, best bars, butchers and dry cleaners. And of course she knew where to send you to get your hair cut with style. So I often went to see Joey during my many trips back to the city from Atlanta, where I was dutifully given the MacGiver. It wasn’t his fault I swear. I wanted it, sort of the fashion in the mid-80’s. He often suggested something else, but I was so insecure of myself even into my 30's, I still went with what I knew. That Joey too dies of AIDS, though I did not see the demise and only heard later of it. He was a gentle soul with a small nurturing space in the Village. You did not go there for the shampoo and cut. You went for the ambience and to be around his sweetness. I miss you, Joey.

As I said I did move back to Hoboken. I moved with my first wife before we were married into a bigger building on 11^th Street with dozens of apartments . We had a dog then, Dexter, though we really ought not to have. The dog was hyper as hell and miserable. My brother would eventually rescue us and the dog. Dexter relocated to the more suburban Bayonne. Before Dexter moved he helped us meet the gay couple at the end of the hall. They also had a dog. I do not recall both names, but I know that of the two one died, and his name was Joey. I remember it because of my personal history of young Joeys lost to AIDS. Honestly the other fellow was much nicer though I am not particularly friendly and so not one to talk. But Joey was sweet to our Dexter, clearly a dog lover himself. When you have a dog, particularly a hyper one, live in close quarters, and then see that the dog is met with kindness and patience you tend to hold a little warmth for whoever smiles or pets the beast. That was Joey. His exit was excruciating and painful for both of the men down the hall and anyone who saw him deteriorating. By the time he had passed, ignorance was no longer an excuse for political inaction.

But as we know the president at the time went almost his entire presidency without ever uttering HIV or AIDS. Larry Kramer and others in ACTUP and other organizations forced the issue onto the national agenda through a series of inconvenient, confrontational and wholly necessary actions. Kramer was one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, to which I have made an annual donation for almost two decades.  Sometimes I write the name Joey in the remarks.

So long, friends. I miss you all, especially you Eddie. I wish that I knew what I know now when I met you, but then you wouldn’t have had so much fun.

Minor Mania

Note: Several left leaning sites, have chosen this moment in history to take off after the Bush Family. For some reason a dozen or more have been posted o a FB page I frequent. Following is my reponse to it. A couple of the links follows the essay.

I’m not sure where it is coming from, but I note that here are a series of articles popping up here, with ominous stories about the history of the Bush Family.

I’ll probably piss off almost everyone here, but I can’t help thinking what a waste of time. While we fret as to whether Prescott Bush (George HW’s—41-father) “helped Hitler’s rise to power” or not, the idiot grandson (43) blew a trillion dollars on two wars all while giving bloated tax breaks to fat pigs who used the f***ing money to buy $30,000 umbrella stands, and (with apologies to Steve Martin) fur god-d***ed sinks.  

Unemployment is stuck at 9%. The dream of home ownership may pass a generation, and has turned into a nightmare for another left in shambles by Wall Street river boat gamblers who were neither punished nor re-regulated with force. Manufacturing jobs are on permanent decline in the US, and the opposing arguments of the two parties are either based on protectionist measures which have no record of sustained success or the cruel laissez-faire attitudes of the right which consider broken lives and constricted hopes the price of capitalism. Bernie Sanders posted a poll over the weekend that said that 41% of Americans think the American dream has died. So few?

Everywhere we are limited by a decade of corporate greed and personal and professional selfishness that has left the country flat broke. Politicians argue over whether the US should invest $50 billion in green energy, scream to the skies when Solyndra goes bankrupt, and sit quietly as the Chinese pour nearly a trillion of monies gleaned from our economy into green energy programs on the other side of the world, thus making real the possibility that the US for the first time in its history will be a non-factor in a crucial and emerging technology. The president has been too timid by a factor of ten on energy policy.  The first term is a near complete loss.

Our entire process has been corrupted. The Koch brothers are the most obvious example as they buy regulators and politicians across the country to shield their empire from political or regulatory scrutiny and maximize exponentially their putrid wealth, but we all know the fix is in. And those among us who see it honestly know that the corruption of money has soiled both parties. Chris Dodd both wrote the financial regulatory bill (alongside Barney Frank) and left office under a “Countrywide” Cloud. Countrywide finance, now well under way to sinking Bank of America, is the poster child for extreme and predatory lending practices that lead to the crash.

We only focus on those ugly Koch brothers because they smear their filth in our faces like Cagney’s grapefruit. The politicians the rich support give us Neo-Fascism as the face of today’s Republican Party. 400 families have amassed more wealth than 150 million Americans; most of this amassed in the last 20 years. Make no mistake it went on unabated under Clinton. Difference was that people at the bottom did a little better then so it seemed less pernicious.

At political rallies the candidates call for abrogating the Bill of Rights, with nary a peep except from poor ole Ron Paul. They endorse torture as a practical method of law enforcement, and the audience roars as we announce how many criminals we killed. The crowd giggles as frat boys call for the death of the uninsured. We “Support the Troops” so long as they are straight men.  Women complaining of harassment and worse, and gay men even raising their voice are quickly shown the exits by the mob of thugs.

But the real scandal is the American people who in their fear and anxiety seem willing to buy almost anything that can be portrayed as strength. In this we are all culpable, even those of us who would call  the dialogue we practice malicious and the condition of our political soul malignant, because we have not managed to muster the arguments whether of shame or logic or common morality to turn back the hordes of right thinking zealots. Leave it to the exception of the Occupy crowd who challenge all Americans to look and to hear, even as some quietly drum their fingers and roll their eyes as they wait for winter. What passes for dialogue almost everywhere else (myself included) is the sound of one hand clapping.

So excuse me, if I don't get the interest here in Presoctt Bush's business in the 1930's. Well, I guess I get it, but the underlying theme seems nearly hysterical to a point I cannot comprehend. The stories are layered with innuendo and suggestion about a history 80 years past. Fair enough the Bush family has a history of profiteering from war, and seems still to be doing it.

 The fact is that money follows and travels in the same circle as money. It has been crossing oceans and borders for centuries. This is not news. The dichotomy between East and West, the US and China, or in earlier years the US & Russia is set up specifically for the purpose of creating a vacuum through which billions of dollars are siphoned. The profiteering in the Bush clan cannot go on unless the public buys the narrative of the other.

So we get the featherweight Romney, trying to generate his right wing street cred by calling for absurd increases in defense spending, and free market solutions to 20 million underwater homeowners and millions of kids drowning in student debt. I don’t give a damn about Prescott Bush, I want to know what someone is going to come along and point out the utter ethical hollowness of the entire discourse, the emotional detachment which runs to dehumanizing behavior. In this climate fascists rise. Can we fight the new power, or just tsk tsk the rise of 80 years ago?

Wars are about economics and power more than anything else. Race, religion, and skin color are the common cover for pure hyper grabs for wealth. It is no doubt true, that industrialists and bankers across the West including Europe and The Americas did business with their German counterparts. Ford and GM were already multinationals in the 1930’s and the arms of these companies in Germany definitely produced materiel for the German war effort, though there is dispute to what extent the US based companies knew or were complicit in the activities of their foreign subsidiaries. Historians and lawyers can sort that out, but we know that both were instrumental in the effort to defeat the Nazis and turned the production effort of their US factories to the war machinery once mobilized. In the past 15 to 20 years these companies, Swiss Banks, and others have scrambled to deny their complicity.

And so what? I think the larger story here is how corrupting money is, or at least can be. How many businessmen looked the other way as the pre-ware atrocities flamed across Europe?  But as we look back at history as we should, might we also ask the cost of the corruption at our doorstep?  Are we so sure that we would not let a similar power rise again?  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/28/in-bed-with-the-enemy-a-bush-family-tradition/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

The Perseverance of Hope

On Friday, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Opposition leader jailed or under house arrest almost continuously since 1989, announced the intention of her party to register and take part in new elections. In 1990 her party, the National League for Democracy, won 80% of the legislative seats in free and fair elections, the results of which were nullified by the military which has held power ever since.

The advances towards democracy in Burma are fragile and tentative. President Obama had called for Suu Kyi’s release, and in an announcement that seemed time to coordinate with the announcement from Burma the administration said Secretary of State Clinton will visit Burma in an effort to encourage the efforts towards reconciliation so far and to encourage further progress. Clinton on Friday called for the release of all political prisoners in Burma as one requirement for the full normalization of relations.

Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. With the prize money she established a health and education trust in Burma. She also won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and many other international awards but she spent most of the time since 1989 either confined to her home or imprisoned.

Suu Kyi was married to Michael Aris and has two children. Her husband whom she married in 1972, died in 1999. Suu Kyi saw her husband just five times after her arrest. As an inducement to abandon her campaign for democratic rule the Burmese military offered Suu Kyi the opportunity to leave to visit Aris when he was dying of cancer. Believing that she would not be allowed to reenter the country after departing, she refused.  She did not see him before he passed.

In a near Kafkaesque regimen of release and detention Suu Kyi participated in small flowerings of democracy in Burma over the years only to see her followers beaten, jailed, and killed after which Suu Kyi would be detained again without trial or charges.  In 2003 during one of the periods when some movement was tolerated the government precipitated a massacre at Depayin. Suu Kyi and her followers were on their way to a political rally, when they were set upon by paramilitary associates of the government. At least 70 were killed and the government used the violence that they precipitated as cover for further detention of Suu Kyi.

Nelson Mandela was confined for 27 years, 18 on Robben Island. When he walked free in 1990 Mandela led the African National Congress to victory in free and fair elections in the Republic of South Africa. In 1985 Mandela was offered his freedom in exchange for renouncing violence as a tactic in the overthrow of the South African white ruled government. Stating that, “Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts”, Mandela refused.

Nelson Mandela had Robben Island. Suu Kyi had the house on Inya Lake. She was forbidden visitors, and the home itself was allowed to deteriorate with little repair during her confinement. In 2009 an American attempted to meet with her, by swimming across the Lake. He was detained and later released after intervention by Senator Jim Webb, but the Burmese givernement penalized Suu Kyi by extending her house arrest by 18 months. Still Suu Kyi persevered, taking every opportunity to speak to the cause of freedom and democracy through peaceful and democratic means. As with Mandela she neither turned to the darkness of the soul, nor abandoned the non-violent, Buddhist, principles from which she sprung and through which she advocated political reform.

Meanwhile Burma, now Myanmar, has spiraled into ever deeper isolation and depravation. As is so often the case, a small minority lives as kings while the vast majority suffers. Child labor, forced labor, human and drug trafficking have been repeatedly sighted by the UN and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights watch. Ethnic divisions, so common at the end of colonial rule across Asia and Africa where the colonial powers often aggravated tensions for their own purposes are a constant thread in Burmese society.  During the long reign of dictatorial rule the Military has used these tensions, much as we have recently seen with despots have in the Middle East, to justify their grip on power. Despite the stratospheric growth of other economies across Southeast Asia and a wealth of natural resources, Burma’s economy has stagnated, ranking 163 in GDP per capita at $1,250 per year. By example, neighboring Thailand has an average GDP of nearly $5,000 per capita.

I have recently been studying the Progressive Era in American history with my son. In this period from roughly 1890 to 1920, the US constitution was amended to provide for the direct election of Senators who had formally been elected by notoriously corrupt state legislatures. Anti-Trust legislation was passed.  After a period where it was exclusively used to rein in labor unions fighting at the time for the most basic reforms, it was eventually turned towards the oligopolies chewing up the transportation, coal and oil, and other heavy industries. Initiatives were passed at the State level to create legislation, overturn legislation on referendum, and recall elected officials.  Congress also created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate rail costs. The ICC s now a bedrock of business regulation across many industries in the US and essentially regulates any commerce that crosses state lines.  Women were finally given the right to vote.

Today six banks control assets equal to 60% of the US GDP. That sort of power and consolidated control of resources was a banker’s wet dream in 1910. Just 30 years ago, in 1990, that figure was 20%. Most Americans know how few companies control the oil and energy industries today, but few would guess how deeply engrained these companies are becoming in the emerging green energy market. That involvement seems mostly designed to divert the effort for green energy rather than to encourage it, but the oil companies are investing billions. Most dangerously, gilded politicians of both parties have been corrupted by the torrent of cash washing through the electoral process.

Our times call out for a new progressive area. But there are those that look at those in OWS, or Occupy Oakland, or DC or whatever and cannot see the urgency of the situation. There are those that say they understand their motives, but cannot agree with people being inconvenienced on their way to work or in their apartments at the edge of the financial district. Despite the monstrous crimes that have damaged literally millions of American households there are those that long for prettier more well—groomed protesters, and less confrontational tactics. Americans it seems have no taste for the discomfort of obviously needed change.  

But on the other side of the world despite the destitution of her people and the deprivation of her own existence Suu Kyi continues the fight. In 1990 she gave a speech entitled Freedom from Fear. In it she said, “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is on the verge of realizing aspirations which she has fought and sacrificed for over decades. To those that believe as Martin Luther King did that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” we can only hope there are great days ahead for Burma. We applaud Suu Kyi’s perseverance, courage, passion and commitment. At the same time we pray that America will awaken to the corruption at her soul, corruption that threatens what it is to be an American. There seems to be a growing sense both for those opposed and those in favor that once the OWS go home for the winter or whatever we can just move on and that will have been that. We are so short of attention span as a nation with distractions and toys in abundance. But when we recall the greatness of Americans who came before that made this country what it is, let us remember the Greatest Generation of WW II, but let us also remember those that insisted on change for the better despite the long odds. In their name, and that of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi let us vow to fight on.

If Only Democracy Was Prettier...

It’s so disgusting when Americans exercise their constitutional rights. I wish these protestors would just go home, so the hard working well-meaning people on Wall Street could go back to doing what they do best.

Let’s see what exactly is that those Wall Street bankers do? I can’t really remember. Let me check the Wall Street Journal. Oh yeah, there it is. The Masters of the Universe recklessly gambled away about 40% of the 401K value for those Americans between the ages of 50 to 59. Well in fairness, the stock market has rebounded nicely, so about half of that has been recovered for some who did not need the money for food, medicine, housing, or college cost for their kids after they lost their jobs.

But Wall Street was also quite helpful in the job add housing markets. 11 million lazy slobs lost their mortgages and their homes in just the three years since 2008, 20 million more households have underwater mortgages. 20 million of our neighbors are unemployed or underemployed. I‘m sure the million so construction workers are much happier filling nail bins at Home Depot rather than earning the living wage they had before the Crash of 2008. It gets so cold outside. But you really can’t blame that on those lying thieves on Wall Street.

Even if you could blame the greedy slime on Wall Street, who literally looted the nations treasuryof trillions, criticizing those people, or regulating their efforts will only delay the recovery which we wall want. An unregulated market is what we really need. It worked so well up til now.

But those people between 50 and 59, ah, they’ll be ok. People like that still have 20 to 30 years to make that up. Yesterday it was reported that three quarters of all Americans expect to work in to their retirement with a full 25% expecting to work until they are 80. That last point is a little unfortunate because the average life expectancy is 78, so some of those people will be just a little disappointed. 78 is pretty close though, and at least they can die knowing that those rich f***s drained them of everything they had, so they got that going for them.

The WSJ reported that 60% of Americans do NOT support the OWS movement. Better we should all stay home and tsk, tsk about how all those dirty people are just making such an embarrassing mess of things. Let those Wall Street types get back to work.

Tax Breaks for the Rich, or Food Aid for the Poor, Oh, What to Do? What to Do?

The current Super Committee goal is to find a minimum of $1 trillion dollars in savings over ten years, in combination of tax revenues and spending cuts. There are those in Congress pushing for a $4 trillion dollar package, which would be my preference, but the base goal is $1 trillion over ten years, or about $100 billion a year.

According the Tim Dickinson’s article in the Rolling Stone-- How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich- there are 400 households in the US that average $350,000,000, yes $350 MILLION, a year in income. In total this group of 400 pulls down a nifty $140 BILLION a year in income. A 10% surcharge on this group of 400 would raise about $14 Billion a year or just under 15% of the total target amount. A 10% tax surcharge on 400 taxpayers pulling down an average of $350 MILLION a year would fulfill almost 1/6th of the goal.

There are about eight million Americans that earn over $1 Million a year. In total these households pull down $8 trillion a year. A 2% surcharge on these incomes would raise about $160 Billion a year, a three percent surcharge would bring in $240 billion a year. Over ten years the 2% surcharge would raise $1.6 trillion, more than the budget reduction target.

Does anyone really feel that the “job creators", earning a million or more a year, would stop hiring, maids, nanny’s, drivers, gardeners and landscapers, tutors for their kids and so forth if their income was reduced by $20,000 a year?

According to Mother Jones magazine the average income of the highest income groups has grown by nearly 1/3 since 2000. Which means this tax surcharge would amount to a fraction of the increase portion in their compensation/ wealth in that period.

Let’s see, we can cut Medicare, Social Security, medical care for the poor or do this. Oh, oh, oh what to do???

Romney wants to close the gap by cutting off all funding for Planned Parenthood, which is just over $350 Million a year. Anyone who proposes cutting PP funding as a partial down payment to close the yawning budget gap is not a serious political person. The person is a soulless demagogue pandering to his party’s right wing religious nut job faction.

The US will spend upwards of $70 Billion in 2011 on food stamps. Seems like an insane amount of money to spend and we can be sure that there are some abusing the system. But that expense supports over 45 million people in putting food on the table every day.  According to the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine about one in two children will at some point in their lives between the ages of 1 and 20 receive some sort of food aid through the SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp program. One in six Americans are feed at least partially by Food Stamps.

Of course the rich want their wealth, apparently all of it, but the question is not what anyone wants, but what is right for America.

Go Newt, Go!

I for one think that that Newt is the most serious of the presidential candidates in the race. As Jon Stewart says he bristles with "Dickishness", but I agree with Gingrich's statement that the Washington Press Corps is much happier covering chaos & scandal than actual issues. Even when this plays well for the Dems as it has with the Bachman & Perry gaffes, and Cain's stunning uncertainty about foreign policy-- Libya was just the latest in a series of "I really have no idea" foreign policy commentaries-- it does not serve to advance the necessary dialogue about how to solve real and complex issues. I would be glad to see the debate format Gingrich has proposed, a series of 3 hour dialogues with the President, the Republican nominee but no moderator-- where the ability to clarify and illuminate positions would be a requirement rather than a tactic to be avoided. Every time I see that Bachman clip where she responds to Cain's 999 plan with her speechwriter's "The devil is in the details" blather I want to throw my shoe at the TV. Gingrich is wrong on almost everything but he is no fool. He's not an idea man, but Americans could decide that for themselves in these longer formats. I saw this morning that he is now leading in one poll. Mitt is almost certainly a more formidable candidate for the president based on his slippery positions on almost everything. Gingrich would lay it all out there.  Better to battle the forces of evil head on then get in a debate with the tower of sand. Go Newt, you slimy bast***!