Publictakeover's Weblog

‘Gang’ plan

As debt debate begins, Obama praises ‘Gang’ plan – Yahoo! News.

What gets me most about this is the refusal on the part of lawmakers and media pundits to remove themselves from the process and the reporting of the process.

If they can’t get the job done, get out.

House Conservatives’ Slash, Crush and Topple Act | OurFuture.org

House Conservatives’ Slash, Crush and Topple Act | OurFuture.org.

It’s The Shock Doctrine come home to the good ol’ USA.

Ignorance Index III: The Revenue Problem | OurFuture.org

Ignorance Index III: The Revenue Problem | OurFuture.org.

S’en Van’

Away we go.

The Republicans will now allow Obama to raise the debt limit, incrementally. They attempt to confound the public with confusion between unemployment and the wrecked economy on the one hand, and the Federal deficit on the other hand.

They don’t want us to realize that all the money in the country belongs to the sovereign people. We make the rules here, not our bosses.

Keep everybody distracted. When the economy really tanks we can bring the troops home and stave off revolution while stripping out what little wealth we haven’t absconded with already.

Feudalism is Fun! Let’s go down The Road to Serfdom!

For Obama not to bring up–publicly and often–what Joe Stiglitz points out here:

Unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health care costs—fueled in part by the commitment of George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake—quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits.

But, instead, it sounds like the “cave man” is getting ready for a monumental new collapse:

“I’m prepared to take on significant heat from my party to get something done. I expect the other side to do the same.”

It’s amazing to see how completely the “opposing parties” have merged. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for this phony, plutocratic system, and the collapse will be the first step toward restoring meaningful democracy.

Meanwhile there are plenty of places to start to find real solutions, it’s just a matter of not digging ourselves into the same hole, over and over again.

It’s Not Their Money

There’s so little about each of us that is uniquely our possession–if any such thing is possible in the first place–that we have to make it up.

The Fed provides the money by U.S. law, and we use it by government protection, and uniform guarantees of security, value and infrastructure. We also implicitly acknowledge equality of opportunity, not to mention of law.

“I worked for my money, why should I let anybody else have it?” The system that enables you to get rich with use of resources, legal protections, banking and finance infrastructure, roads, airports, shipping, etc…. requires a higher return based on the degree by which one profits from the system.

If you want to blow up the pie, there won’t be a slice for anybody.

Opera ancora

Went so far as to actually download the Early Caruso from iTunes, now I’m considering another $10 purchase of 44 more songs by him

Banned Again

Looks like my Firedog Lake account was suspended. I must have attacked another blogger pretty harshly for me to get bounced from that blog.

The other place I couldn’t believe I got banned from was Media Matters. I mean–they know me, personally. I mu st have sent them a half a dozen requests to either reinstate me or at least explain why they kicked me off–what rule I broke.

Silence.

Control

Under a subheading, Ideological Control in Democratic Societies, Jean Bricmont writes, in the first chapter of Humanitarian Imperialism (2006)

Ideology is especially important in democratic societies, where it may constitute the principal form of social control. The dominant ideology is far more powerful in the United States, with its freedom of expression, than it was in the Soviet Union, where the obvious monopoly of political expression, enforced by repression, created widespread disbelief.