If, as promised, Barack Obama announces a spending freeze in his State of the Union speech tomorrow, it will be my cue to mutter “what the fuck does he think he’s doing?” and make plans to slink away. What is it in the Presidential mind that moves him to take the classically wrong course of action for an economy in recession? (Unless of course it’s all a fiendish political trap into which the Republicans will haplessly fall.) Where are the massive public works projects? What happened to job creation by cutting edge tech? What happened to the single-payer US health service? Where’s the new green WPA? In every direction, all I see is madness. As Obama starts to act like Herbert Hoover, Wall Street and its zombie bankers continue to evaluate profits as some abstract numerology without even a token relationship to serving a social function or producing a product. It's that same Gekko-thinking that wrecked ENRON and everything else since. As the workers are progressively screwed and far too many are condemned to dangerous unemployment, no one seems able to recall that the worker is also the consumer, and when the consumer base collapses – as it is clearly in the process of doing – the country collapses right along with it. I would like to pretend that all the bad shit might still be turned around, but I fear my optimism will no longer stretch that far, as I become convinced that the US may be entering a decade of hard time that is a combination of former Soviet dysfunction and Japan’s ten year recession. And doubtless with eruptions of mindless and desperate fury as the right gratuitously messes with primal forces. It is not a pleasant prospect, and survival may now be the hot topic as we remember we stand a better chance united, and try to rediscover the knack of creating our own solutions.
And click here for Patti Smith doing “Changing of the Guards.”
The secret word is Solidarity
And click here for Patti Smith doing “Changing of the Guards.”
The secret word is Solidarity
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4 comments:
Wish I could disagree with what you're saying here, because I don't think of myself as pessimistic, but the progressive agenda, if it was ever on the table, has now crashed against the rocks while Fox News can say, see, we told you so.
Until this changes -- "Wall Street and its zombie bankers continue to evaluate profits as some abstract numerology without even a token relationship to serving a social function or producing a product." -- everything else is window dressing.
My fear is that it could be worse than Farren imagines. To many of the factors that caused disaster are still in place and seem likely to remain.
'Cause the oligarchy intends they remain?
http://www.greanvillepost.com/?p=3341
... and an interesting take on collapse:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259
I'm under the impression that the spending freeze on existing programs prevents cuts as well - and the Republicans will most likely gain seats in Congress later this year and push for cuts. Deflation is likely to continue through then, or be engineered to do so, so the effect is that of slight increases in budgets.
FDR took a long time to implement the New Deal - it came in several phases and the first was relatively moderate. We are in much better shape than they were in the Depression. At this point, ten percent umemployment is not a reason to panic - European countries seem to trundle along in that state for decades. The reason the country is freaking out is because a good third of them are waiting for Sarah Palin to lead them to the Rapture and they're still afraid of black people. There's not much we can do about that except try and restore the schools.
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