Like "Soylent Green is People" if corporations could render down humans into salable product there woulld be rush market . Endentered servitude is only avoided by the homeless. It seems that those years in the '80s when wages were rising that corporations vowed to never let it happen again. Raplh Nader's campaigns against corporations is our only hope. To say voting for third party is useless, it is ignoring the wisdom of one of my favorate sayings.

If you do as you did, you'll get what you got.

Sorry Walt, I'm not voting for a corporate Democrat. It just enables them. In your opiniom I'm abandoning the helpless, in my opinion, you're enabling these Democrats to continue to pander to the corporations and take progressives for granted. Two different opinions. I will continue to work for what I believe in and I do work at it.

After Kent State I did pick up my marbles and go home and stayed there until 2000, but a posting here reminded me why. Because the majority of Americans were glad those kids were shot. I felt like I was wasting my time. Progressive leaders would get assassinateed and the public wouldn't care. Even be glad. Now I want to fight for my country. Either that or leave, but I'd rather stay and try to regain it.

In the 50s and 60s the American middle class made enormous gains from progressive policies. But the people in this country are actually pretty conservative and I think they felt things were getting too far out of control. Everyone was shocked over the Weathermen and the SLA and kids yelling "f**k you" as an extreme of that. And now I think the country feels it's swung too far in the other direction. It might have started swinging sooner, but I think 9/11 freaked people out and they lost their senses for awhile. My brother used to say "The worse the better", and I've been wondering how bad does it have to get for people to wake up. Well, the middle class is melting like hot butter and people are getting worried.

But I know one thing for sure. Hillary Clinton isn't the answer and Barack Obama would be just about as disappointing. If their corporate sponsors don't want them to end the occupation, they won't. I know where their first allegiance is, it's where the money comes from. I don't believe anything will change until we start having publicly financed campaigns. And I haven't seen the Democrats hot on that trail. Not part of their agenda. Why should it be? The public tide is swinging their way (for now), and the progressives can be counted on to whine and complain and then vote for them anyway.

Now, you may be perfectly aware of all this and think what you're doing is going to work anyway, but I don't agree with you, and I don't thnk we have time to do it your way. Back in 2000 Ralph Nader said the Democrats needed a cold bath but they didn't get it and still aren't. They are still being enabled. That's my opinion. Every election I've heard the Democrats say, "but THIS time we've REALLY got to vote for whatever Democratic jerk that's running to stop those Republicans." The Republicans love it, this can go on forever. Makes me think of a sign in a physical therapist's office: "the beatings will continue until the morale improves".

And Ralph Nader has never stopped working on our behalf. Such a charge does him an injustice. Just because the MSM derides and ignores him doesn't mean he's home playing with his marbles.

Absolutely, warmongoring has always been a prime candidate for debasing the currency to raise the funds.

If people in America were actually hit with the bill directly, there'd be an uprising.

The peeps who estimated 2 TRILLION dollars now say they underestimated the cost of the occupation.

Read a striking description of a trillion the other day, to help put it into perspective. If you count something, such as dollars, one per second, it would take you a few days to get to a million.

But a billion would take you more than 11 years.

Know how long it would take to count to 1 trillion?

32,000 years.

It's a very, very, very big number.

But hey, you're over 8 trillion dollars in debt anyway, what's another couple of trillion? Look on the bright side, although your inflation is actually closer to 11%, with a bit of tweaking it's only about 3%, on paper, and the dow hit 13k. Times are good, nothing to worry about, everything's fine.

The ex Russian defence minister gave it some perspective. 8 trillion is more than all of the world's reserve banks put together, including America's. Your entire income tax barely covers the interest.

But hey, you'll pay it all back soon right?

Besides, you're rich. Did I mention the size of the "financial instruments" of credit on credit? I didn't give a figure, no one can.

Nobody knows.

We know one thing. It's huge. Absolutely fekin huge. It's huger than a huge thing. And that's big.

Pray, that in your lifetime, you never hear a talking head on TV say the words "cascading defaults".

S.

Smurfy,

Re: But in a nutshell, yes.

Well, on a positive note, that would put an end to the Iraq occupation in a matter of hours.

Attaboy! (gal?)

Almost.

But not a "government controlled" gold standard.

Recently "egold" started up, a company allowing people, similar to Paypal, to buy and sell online. With real gold.

Well, electronic digits BACKED by real gold.

More recently still, they just got slammed for not having a "license" and "money laundering", they even threw in charges related to "child porn".

Of course, those involved in kiddie porn never use "real" banks. In fact child porn didn't exist until egold came along.

*rolls eyes*

But in a nutshell, yes.

S.

Smurfy,

So if I understand you correctly, am I to surmise you're advocating a return to the gold standard?

Real money. Was that a trick question?

On a discussion forum I frequent I once, for fun, asked why counterfeiting money was a crime?

The results were telling. Of 15 different replies not a single one of them actually had a clue until a lightbuld went off and one figured it out.

An American forum, obviously.

Some of the replies were quite bizarre but most were just plain confused and lacking any grasp of the concept of money in the first place.

"Because it's illegal/against the law/you're not allowed to" rather begs the question but popped up 3 times.

3 times.

Equally banal and on the same track were replies such as "only the government is allowed to". I had to ask again: "But WHY is it illegal?"

After some head-scratching came "Because you wouldn't be paying tax on it".

Awesome.

Then followed some other taxation stuff, variations on the taxation theme. It was literally a WEEK before someone posted the correct answer.

BECAUSE IT'S FAKE

That doesn't 100% cover it but it'll do.

Money is simply the most exchangable commodity. You exchange your efforts, time or general productivity for someone else's time, effort or productivity. If you spent a month building a nice rowing boat you don't need to find a cobbler who needs a rowing boat, just sell it to a boaty person for the most exchangable commodity and buy some shoes from the cobbler - with the most exchangable commodity.

For much of human history that's been gold, silver etc.

Now imagine I can just PRINT the most exchangable commodity? I will be taking productivity, time and effort from others, having put NOTHING into the "economy".

Such goods or services are NOT free, you and everyone else would be paying for them, with a reduction in the value of your money.

The more I print, the less your money is worth. In time I could literally buy everything there was to buy. You could never match me in an auction, because I could simply bid higher and print the cash.

And YOU and everyone else, would be paying for everything I bought.

It's theft.

I don't need to beat you around the head and steal your money, I just print the VALUE of your money. You can bury it, hide it, I don't care, I can steal it's value anyway.

Let's evolve it a bit - I can't print gold, right? But suppose I run a business whereby people leave their gold with me for safekeeping. I give them a paper slip, a receipt, so they can claim it back later, when they need it.

Now I could charge for this service, right? Yep, but I'm smarter than that. I'll PAY YOU to give me your gold for safekeeping. Why? Because I'll lend it to others for a higher rate of interest than I'm paying you.

The most exchangable commodity has a price. "Interest". I buy cheap, sell high.

That's fine, that's the market at work, go back to sleep.

But remember, I'm a dishonest lying bandit. Because I won't just lend people your gold. I'll lend them MY CREDIT SLIPS.

But I have less actual gold than slips I print and lend out. So when eurobelle borrows 1000 ounces of gold, as paper slips, I cheerfully print them and hand them over - she then has to EARN the interest through her productivity to pay me "back" the slips plus interest.

It's a more complex way of doing it but it's exactly the same thing as simply printing fake money.

It's theft.

Now in a free market people would soon get to know that I'm a lying dishonest bandit. Lenders would demand their gold back, everyone holding my slips would want their gold. I would have less gold than slips. I go bust, preferably lynched from the nearest tree.

Yes, some people would lose their savings - people DO lose when there's theft but at least the theft would stop.

But ever since kings and queens of yesteryear started mixing cheap metal with their gold coins, rulers, governments and so on have been keen on the idea of creating a monopoly on money and then faking it.

America was different, the founding fathers specifically stated only gold and silver. But there were loopholes and sure enough, bankers pressured the government into... can you guess?

Yep.

So today, legally, literally, no bank can go bankrupt. The "Federal Reserve" which is technically not federal and has no reserves, will bail them out of any bank run by either printing money or simply dismissing claims.

The market is not allowed to correct the banking system, by law.

Technically, to escape the law, the Fed is private. For all intents and purposes, it is government, in fact arguably more powerful than government.

But how can such fraud work on an international scale? Surely outside countries will come to see your fake money as, well, crap?

Read up on the petrodollar.

Then you'll understand why Saudi Arabia can do no wrong, while Iraq and Iran are "evil". You'll understand why Americans, around 5% of the world's population, sucks about about 25% of the world's resources, has the highest living standard on the planet, a military spend exceeding the rest of the planet combined, and even in America itself you're noting all the wealth concentrating at the top.

You're just feeling the effects the rest of the world has been feeling since Bretton Woods and the abandoment of the gold standard.

Understand this point - America is wealthy because you print the worlds credit slips, using other country's oil as your "reserves", and the rest of the planet, along with American citizens themselves, finance the US government via the stealth tax called "inflation".

They don't teach you this at school, instead they fill your head with bollox about how we "need" the Fed to "eforce policies" which will "tackle", "fight", "restrict" and "control" inflation.

They dress it up and make it look complicated with big words and complex graphs, they talk of "money velocity" and other gibberish. But it is the Fed that creates the inflation in the first place.

They adjust interest rates simply to hide the truth. When the fake money gets obvious (high inflation) they raise interest rates to make money seem more valuable. As the economy wobbles towards a depression they lower interest rates, making money artifically cheap.

Sometimes they get it wrong and lose control. Then, in supreme irony, they call it the "business cycle" and blame the market. You progressive lap it up and look to the government to protect you, from the nasty market. It's hilarious.

They've learnt how to control it, or at least stop a major crash. It's easy, you just delay it, making the crash even bigger. But you just keep delaying it.

So you get credit building on credit building on credit which is building on a foundation of credit, which is held up by credit, which..

In the meantime you're also building debt. Trillions. of. dollars. of. debt.

That's nothing compared to the trillions of fake credit floating in the ether, which could vanish in a blink.

Doubtless, when this huge bubble eventually explodes, leading to financial meltdown and worldwide depression, you'll blame the evils of capitalism and... yep, demand more protections from government.

There IS no alternative to real money, commodity money, money backed by something of value such as gold. You're asking me what's the alternative to fake money?

Well duh!

Carry on?

S.

Smurfy,

BTW, you have made several dispaging remarks about "fiat" currency. I would be interested in hearing your ideas on alternatives.

Smurfy,

You prefer forclosures, bank failures, and unemployment to proper regulation of the money supply? I guess we really have very little basis for discussion, as what you are advocating comes down to, in the end, the strong preying on the weak. This does not fit my concept of a happy society.

I will make one final comment, though.

Try and get your head around this point - government does not control interest rates in order to fight inflation, government controls interest rates in order to control the visibility of the inflation that they create as a form of hidden tax.

The government does not control interest rates in order to fight inflation or even the appearance of inflation. The government controls interest rates to regulate the money supply. The lower the prime lending rate, the more easily money can be borrowed, and thus the greater the infusion of credit money into the economy. And vice-versa. Inflation generally goes out of control either as a result of a wage/price spiral, a condition that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the investor class class has largely nullified, or as a result of speculation, which the concenctration of wealth in the hands of the investor class has exacerbated. The fed knows this, of course, so guess what motivated the rise in the prime lending rate.

Otherwise, the primary cause of low-level inflation is credit. Credit must be paid back with interest. This interest money must be obtained from the economy, and as such it will be obtained either from marginal economic growth or as a resu7lt of inflation. If the combination of growth and inflation doesn't cover the interest rate, someone's gonna go down. And when that happens, there will be a transfer of real wealth from debtor to creditor.

So when we consider the effect of raising the prime lending rate, as the fed has done over the last two years, coupled with modest economic growth, we can see that defaults on loans are inevitable. And when those defaults occur, the creditors are going to end up with the real property backing up those loans, representing a transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.

Not that the interest charged wasn't doing that anyway...

In the end, it kinda makes you wonder if all this wasn't planned...

kathyodat. I've been right here in the middle of this s**t for a long, long time. Please don't assume you know what none of us know. Nothing you listed about the Democrats is news. Nothing I read on http://www.initiativesamendment.org/ do I find unrealistic or inadvisable.

Maybe I should tell you what the real issue is for me: Time. In less than 17 months we will elect a new President. That President will either begin the long hard process of plugging the holes rent in our social fabric by the neo-cons, or widen them to some degree of near permanent damage. That matters. That matters to the poor ... hell that matters to the middle class. That matters to our veterans. That matters to our schools. Our planet. The list is endless.

On the one hand it will take small, steady steps like the initiatives amendment. On the other, it will take participation in real politics, with the politicians we have a choice among. The messy ugly compromised crap of the real world.

The Corporatization (sp?) of POLITICS AND SOCIETY - not just the Democrats - is the greatest danger facing our society and perhaps world civilization. The military-industrial complex is a sub-set of that, along with the Congressional-Pharmaceutical complex, the NRA-Government-Gun Manufacturers complex, the Wall St-Madison Avenue-White House (Money, Media, Government) complex. This will not be destroyed in day, or in 17 months.

I am arguing to be practical. Do both things. Pursue the laudable foals of the initiative, but also fight the first battle in this war: Get a Democrat in the White House. Put pressure on them. Elect progressive candidates at all levels and keep the pressure on. Educate, Participate. Activate. The American people are beginning to understand the depth of the chaos Bush has unleashed and the magnitude of his betrayal. There is a real opportunity here but real work to be done as well. Don't for a minute think that the Right - hobbled as they appear to be right now- isn't working round the clock to kill us AGAIN in November '08. I want to fight this first battle of the long war in the here and now. We need to.

But I don't favor curling up in a cocoon and denouncing the political options we have now because they aren't everything I think we need them to be. I have ideals too, but they are mediated by reality. And I have no hope that the strategies listed on the initiatives amendments website (though credible and well thought through) will do much SOON enough. That's our long game.

I was hardly surprised to learn you were a Nader-ite. You and your leader value the ideal over the real. Your leader began his campaign in 2000 by speaking up for "the weak and unprotected" - I take that phrase from HIS announcement speech. But those were the first people he abandoned when America wasn't willing to accept his "vision" wholesale. Nader took his marbles and went home, decrying the intelligence of the American people and calling for an "elite" party to govern them. He preferred that to fighting the messy and chaotic business of democracy. Why did he find it so distasteful? Because it involves compromise ... and like all ideologues (like the neo-cons) compromise feels like defeat.

Where have I been indeed? Watching "progressive" egoists grandstand on the political forum for 25 years ... while soldiers die in war after war, while the sick get sicker and the poor get poorer.

More to the point where am, I now? Fighting these bourgeois excuses for not participating every day. On sites. At family dinners. At business meetings. Any way I can.

Most importantly where will I be in 17 months? Supporting the Democratic candidate even if her last name IS Clinton. Right now she has the best chance of swinging Indies and Republican defectors ...and consolidating non-elite progressives in the mainstream. Mostly her appeal is to people who feel the pain, not theorists, academics and spoiled kids, who will enjoy the same quality of life (+ or -) whatever candidate wins. If that doesn't change I'll fight for her. If it does, I'll fight for whoever has the odds. I see it as a moral obligation to overturn the neo-cons. So should you. It's infantile to argue that it doesn't matter. If you think it doesn't matter you are either rich or spoiled or otherwise isolated from the realities faced by millions of Americans. (And you have amnesia about 2000) It IS about winning, about reversing the threat of political fundamentalism and fascism. Not by "any means necessary" but by EVERY means necessary. Not theorizing. Not bitching that this politician fails my idealistic litmus test.

So I'll support whoever can help start to break these bastards down. Even a small victory matters. I feel this way because it's not about me, my ego, my vote. It's about Americans ... and my children.

Amusing, peeps here trying to teach me the economics of Ron Paul, a libertarian after my own heart and a follower of the Austrian School of Economics, the only economic theory that makes sense, matches the facts and makes realistic predictions.

"Unless, of course, you prefer foreclosures, bank failures, and unemployment."

Yes I do.

Banks that overlend SHOULD go bust, that's what free market econmics means.

It's likewise amusing that when defending fiat money liberals tend to switch between claiming the Fed is private or that it's government, depending on the way the argument is going.

Anything put in place and empowered by government is government, the fact it is kept semi-private merely proves that government and the fiat money system is corrupt - and always will be.

Try and get your head around this point - government does not control interest rates in order to fight inflation, government controls interest rates in order to control the visibility of the inflation that they create as a form of hidden tax.

You're all so concerned with the accumaltion of wealth at the top while utterly blind to how they do it.

Tip - if I could print my own money I'd be darn wealthy too...

Yes, under the current system an economy must keep growing, just to keep up with itself. In a real free-market economy prices GO DOWN. Yet despite your economy "growing", you keep seeing prices going up.

Doesn't that strike you as a little odd? No?

S.

Walt, where have you been?? Haven't you noticed that the Democrats have joined the enemy? That they are dancing to the corporate tune? That Ron Wyden of Oregon just surrounded himself with fat cat CEOs and announced his new health care insurance plan to their enormous satisfaction? That Hillary's campaign manager is a union buster? That her husband Bill threw welfare mothers and children out onto the streets? That Hillary is already hedging about getting out of Iraq? That the front runners already have $25 million of corporate money each, and nothing like that comes without strings?

We lost this war against the corporate takeover of the Democratic party. Ralph Nader warned us 15 years ago it's too late, the Democrats are hopelessly corrupted with corporate money. It's only gotten worse. How many times do people need to choose bad over worse to see all they get is worse and worse? We need to take it back from the bottom up. Go to http://www.initiativesamendment.org/ and join the fight to take back our country from the corporations. I don't recommend leaving it up to the Democratic party. They haven't shown themselves to be trustworthy.

Smurfy,

Ahhh... the beauty of the simplistic view.

Of course the president is privatised. Life lesson - "When buying and selling is leglislated, the first thing bought and sold is the legislators".

... a task made much easier for the buyers and sellers by our current system of election campaign financing...

Try and keep that in mind next time you're crying for more government power.

Where have all the stetesmen gone? (Sung to the tune of "Where have all the flowers gone").

Capitalism is like a force of nature, there's no escaping it. You can harness it, work with it but you'll never make it go away.

You seem to be confusing market economics with capitalism. No matter. No one is advocating the abolition of either. Just the proper regulation to see to it that the economic system fits in with other societal goals.

Someone mentioned interst rates - another life lesson coming up:

The interest rate is the price of money, capital, cash, good now instead of later. Like any other price it should be left the heck alone.

Ummm... OK, that's the standard dogma. However, usury has a downside when combined with fractional reserve requirements once the proportion of credit in an economy reaches a certain proportion of the total money in circulation. At the moment, credit accounts for well over 90% of all money in circulation in the US. The downside, of course, is that the loan amount must be paid back with interest, and the only way the interest can be covered by the borrower is to obtain it from the larger economy. This, in turn requires an economy that is continually expanding at a rate that is the difference between the interest rate and the rate of inflation, times the fraction of the total money supply due to credit instruments. In our case, we might be looking at 6% interest rates minus 2% inflation rate times 90%, or about 3.6%.

Needless to say, a continually expanding economy implies a continually expanding demand for resources. This is clearly incompatible with a finite world. The alternative, of course, is that the economy will fail to grow at the required rate, in which case someone's gonna default on their loan...

But noooo, we need government to print money at will, then try and slow-down the bubble with interest rates, then we can all blame "capitalism" when the bubble bursts…

The amount of money printed by the government is pitiful fraction of the money conjured into existence by creditors. There are fairly strict rules governing the printing of money, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the integrity of the currency, but more likely put in place at the urging of capitalists who wanted to lend money for profit, a practice greatly facilitiated by having a restricted federal money supply.

Of course there was a downside. The US had monetary panics in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1890, 1896, 1901, 1907, 1910, 1911, and the great depression. Each resulted in widespread foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and slumps in agriculture and manufacturing. In nearly every case, a major contributing factor was a great expansion of credit which the resulting economic expansion ultimately proved inadequate to cover.

Interestingly enough, the lenders ended up with the real property used as collateral for the failed loans. Every panic has resulted in a massive transfer of real wealth to the capitalist class, even though the amount of total money capital has declined in such episodes.

What the government is actually trying to do by adjusting the prime lending rate is to slow down (or speed up) the amount of money created via credit instruments. In my view, this is clearly the government's perogitive, as it is constitutionally responsible for regulating currency.

Unless, of course, you prefer foreclosures, bank failures, and unemployment.

JP. Sorry we failed to connect on this. Perhaps it was my muddled prose or maybe you read my comment too fast, but by "misguided fantasies" I never meant the commendable list of social actions you identify - ending the occupation of Iraq, renouncing torture, restoring habeus corpus, vigorously fighting to restore all constitutional protections against a tyrannical fascist government, taking aggressive action to decrease climate change, ending political corruption, etc.

Indeed those are the very issues that I believe we must be focused on. What robs me of sleep is the lack of focus.

The "fantasies" I'm referring to are candidates chosen to flatter our egos instead of get the job done, demands that we hear them say what we want them to say rather than what should be said for the good of the nation (and everyone in it).

The fantasies are refusing to vote for a front runner like Obama or Clinton and casting (wasting) a vote on a sure to lose candidate like Kucinich. For what? The self satisfaction of being ... right? Or is that self righteousness? Because in my world only a Democrat will end this war quickly and only a front runner can beat the leading Republicans. Kucinich sadly can't. And in my world, as long as a Democrat doesn't win, troops continue to die by the dozens and for years to come.

I long to hear the voices of those who have a stake in the game. Working people. Average people. Not David Geffen (David Geffen?) He becomes some kind of king maker for contributing his money and his argument is Hillary doesn't "inspire" him. But Hillary (according to all recent polls and despite her on again off again declines) can beat Guiliani, McCain, Romney etc.

That, Mr Geffen is what I call inspiring. Tossing these assholes out on the street and starting to undo 15 years worth of damage they've done to OUR Republic. For the poor. The Uninsured. The Unemployed. Gays. Minorities. Women's Bodies, Immigrants. The Constitution. The God Damned Planet!

If a Democrat fails again Geffen and Arianna Huffington and all the rest of the "untouched" will just have something to bitch about at cocktail parties and fund raisers. But to the weakest and least protected, well it means misery, maiming and in some not too rare cases, death.

It IS the Democratic party whose charter it is to protect the weak just as the Republican party's charter is to protect capital assets. Always has been. Those individuals you talk about JP, the non-political actors who are pressing the kinds of issues you read in these forums ARE the Democratic Party ... the agitants, voters and registered members that drive politics and policy. That's the very thing I'm talking about. Where is that unified group of people who believe in a higher political purpose and put their egos aside and their asses on the line for the good of all of us?

You've heard this famous joke of Will Rogers. "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat."

It's not funny anymore.

Smurfy May 10th, 2007 2:29 am

"But noooo, we need government to print money at will, then try and slow-down the bubble with interest rates, then we can all blame "capitalism" when the bubble bursts…"

Smurfy: It's capitalists who control monetary policy, not the government.

Here's a quote from Rep. Ron Paul: February 19, 2007

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies twice every year before the congressional Financial Services committee, and I look forward to these opportunities to raise questions about monetary policy. I believe monetary policy is critically important yet overlooked in Washington. Money is the lifeblood of any economy, and control over a nation's currency means control over its economic well being. Fed bankers quite literally determine the value of our money, by controlling the supply of dollars and establishing interest rates. Their actions can make you richer or poorer overnight, in terms of the value of your savings and the buying power of your paycheck. So I urge all Americans to educate themselves about monetary policy, and better understand how a small group of unelected individuals at the Federal Reserve and Treasury department wield tremendous power over our lives."

You can also visit this website to learn more about this issue: http://honestmoneyreport.com/archives/2005/1215.html

Decades ago I arrived in the United States as a visitor. I saw a land of opportunity. I saw a relatively large, comfortable middle class. I saw that workers had many benefits such as Social Security, unemployment and sick leave benefits, job training, employer-paid insurance, etc. An average working class pay seemed sufficient to have a comfortable life, without the need to take a second job. A bachelor and a single bedroom apartment rented about $50 and $100 a month, respectively. A herd of Camels (a box of Camel cigarettes) was only 20 cents, and gas was also 20 cents per gallon, and the majority of workers were unionized. America looked more like a socialist country than a capitalist one. It then dawned on me that those communist leaders were stupid with their propaganda. Who would want to go communist in a place like this?

But now America has changed a lot. The middle class is depressed and fast diminishing. A single bedroom rents around $800 to $ 1600, in that same area. And everyone knows how much a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarette is now. When I stared working there, I used to make $1.55 /hr, now I make $7.80/hr. When I could buy 8 packs of cigarette with an hour's wage, I can now hardly buy two packs, and I cannot now afford a bachelor's rental. Why is the working class under so much pressure now? Is it because the threat of the rival communist has almost disappeared and it has left no incentive to better the living conditions of the people here? With privatization and income gap ever increasing, people may not even need communist or socialist propaganda—they would go wholeheartedly for it when the day comes that they can't take this any longer. One does not need to be too smart to feel that with living conditions worsening, a drastic upheaval and change is inevitable.

Our only true vote is with our dollars. If we continue to spend as freely as we breath, the status quo will remain. the Powers that Be only understand dollar bill y'all. There's no compassion, no concern for the earth, children, the elderly unless they can squeeze a buck from it.

Think of Imus. He's been saying derogatory comments for what...ever and only when the corporate sponsors decided to pull their support did he lose his job. I don't feel one bit sorry for him, however it's amazing that in this country, what you say is worse that what you do. Imus, you've been a bad boy -- need your mouth washed out with soap, but Bush, you can continue to kill children, men, women, babies, as long as they are not in utero (of course if you're an Iraqi, you're not safe in utero). He can continue to destroy the very way of life that he's claimed that terroists want to destroy and yet he continues to rule.

Money makes the world go round, not People. We must find a way to pull our resources. Those privatizing our institutions already know this lesson. Even after paying taxes we still have power in our wallets. I don't know what we can do boycott, stop spending, stop watching crap or at least threaten to... But giving up is not an option.

Regarding the "commons" - Where I live, there were far less fences as well. People didn't seem to have the need to rope off their property lines exactly. I wonder why that was?

Some people say privatization is good because corporations are more "efficent".

I worked in the government many years ago, and thinking back, government may have been "inefficent" from a corporate persepective, but its inefficency was a result of a structure where there is a great density of middle management that limits power of individuals in the bureaucracy, and being that the guiding philosophy is "service to the public", sometimes objectives change right in the middle of a project, due to change of elected officials, etc... A deeper look shows it to be inefficient only from the "corporate minimum cost/maximium profit persepective".

If a corporation was put in charge of facilities that are "common", how do we ensure that the guiding philosophy of "service to the public" is above the profit motive?
Laws, regulations, inspectors,... only a bureaucracy could look at the details to ensure quality of public service. That brings us back to the same structure we started with.

The privatization of the commons is occurring more frequently. It's not only the roads and byways that are being turned over, but our water supplies also. See www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/general/whyoppose/ for a general synopsis of, yet, another example of the incremental stealing of the commons from the American people.

Thom Hartmann's excellent book, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and The Theft of Human Rights, devotes Chapter 2 to the rise (and fall) of the commons from pre-colonial, through colonial, and to the present. If you haven't read this book you owe it to yourself to invest a few dollars at your local bookstore, or pick it up through your public library (which is another example of our dwindling commons).

At one time telephone service was considered part of the commons, as were the tracks of the railroads, as was our banking system, and also electrical service in many communities. Our police, fire, and prison systems are still part of the commons, albeit there's room for much improvement. But, could you imagine if private enterprise took all of those services over? What would it be like? I'm afraid I don't want to know.

Of course the president is privatised. Life lesson - "When buying and selling is leglislated, the first thing bought and sold is the legislators".

Try and keep that in mind next time you're crying for more government power.

Capitalism is like a force of nature, there's no escaping it. You can harness it, work with it but you'll never make it go away.

Someone mentioned interst rates - another life lesson coming up:

The interest rate is the price of money, capital, cash, good now instead of later. Like any other price it should be left the heck alone.

But noooo, we need government to print money at will, then try and slow-down the bubble with interest rates, then we can all blame "capitalism" when the bubble bursts...

S.

Well, well, well. There isn't much left to privatize these days, is there?

I guess we should all get with the times and privatize our tax dollars.

Has anyone heard from Move-On.org lately? I haven't gotten any emails from them in a long time. Are they doing anything constructive like organizing people to "Hit the Streets" or have they have become corporatists?

"The buyout artists at outfits like Goldman Sachs, analysts estimate, will soon have $500 billion to wave before governors and lawmakers "scrambling for cash to solve short-term fiscal problems.""

Well, isn't that nice. I'll look forward to sitting in line and paying a toll to the Federal Reserve "buyout artists" before I can cross the 10 foot bridge in front of me. And I have no doubt that the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, now Secretary of the Treasury, will be more than willing to convince Congress that "privatization" of our infrastructure is in our National Security interest.

We first paid to build those roads in the first place. With our gas taxes, we have paid for upkeep and maintainance on them. And now the republicans turn around and give them to their rich buddies. They are giving away things that do NOT belong to them.

I'm still waiting for George Bailey to decide he wants to live and we can all go back to life the way it's SUPPOSED to be. I hate living in a republican world. It stinks.

Warning! I offer optimism here

Let us acknowledge that we are about the first society to have a voice in what goes on.
Never before in history have the rulers ever had to listen to mere people (unless they were outside banging on the door, with torches and pitchforks).
Let us use our wonderful brains and the tools we have and will invent to cooperate and unite to accumulate enough power, enough knowledge, to accomplish our common dreams.
Smurfy, that's what this is about-not mere carping or howling in the dark, but the beginnings of a movement of peoples, an internet if you will, where the whole world can bring secrets into the light, inform and cheer on each other in our struggles, and perhaps, just perhaps, hold back the forces of darkness long enough to see tomorrow's dawn.
Peace, love and hope to you all.

Walt, I have been saying this about the candidate for months. Pick one and run with him.

Ahhhh Smurfy, Smurfy, Smurfy...

Pointing the finger at the government mint for the nation's financial problems while not even giving a not to the role if interest rates, not to mention the ability of financial concerns to manufacture money (but not wealth) at the stroke of a pen.

The rich get richer because they have the clout to tilt the playing field in their direction. You seem to be advocating for a society in which the rich own everything and the masses live out lives of toil to make the rent. Is this really what you're advocting?

Democrats raise taxes.
Republicans raise prices.

...along with fees, interest rates, surcharges, tolls, tuitions, premiums, sales taxes, tariffs, etc, etc.

They really are determined to turn us into a nation of "tax sharecroppers", trapped in perpetual debt to the folk who live up in the big house.

I'd like to know how much of the Bush tax cuts went toward investing in risky new factories, and how much got invested in safe government bonds. Just think, the rest of us now pay interest to the "one percent", for the very same money that they used to pay to us as income tax! And if we miss a payment, the IRS collects for them, free of charge!

Sure, they had to siphon off a small part of their cut to the Republican National Committee. But that's just a mere broker's commission.

I say, better a "tax and spend" Democrat than a
"borrow and spend" Republican.

...on the brighter side - higher road tolls will help reduce global warming and dependence on foreign oil ;)

Chicago: We have privatized the presidency. He is an expensive product that appeals to consumers because he is someone they would like to hang out with at a barbecue. He has proven to be very profitable to the corporations that produced and sold him.

Walt: I understand your plea for unity, but the reason there are politicians who are for the "unprotected" is because there is now and always have been non-political (and therefore less inhibited by the kind of merchandising issues that face politicians) actors who are pressing the kinds of issues you read in these forums. We all understand that we will be voting for the lesser of two evils, but that shouldn't stop us from doing our jobs: agitate, articulate, educate about all the critical issues, such as ending the occuaption of Iraq, renouncing torture, restoring habeus corpus, vigorously fighting to restore all constitutional protections agains a tyrannical fascist government, taking aggressive action to decrease climate change, ending political corruption, etc. which you describe as "misguided fantasies." Indeed, many of these fantasies are what will be required to save our miserable asses in the not too distant future.

Maximizing profit, minimizing labour costs.
Once the corporations get involved in areas previously the realm of public institutions it will be:
Maximize tax revenue.

Years ago in arguing against deregulation we talked about the problem of control and who would be in charge of seeing to the interests of the public good.

Now as we find that our world is out of control and getting more and more dangerous for working people, we must once again assert that the common good is paramount to us.

"Working people and capital have nothing in common."

PS sorry about the typos. I'm not that illiterate just an awful typist. Anyhow best of luck to us in our efforts to reclaim our Democracy

More and more, reading articles like this, on sites like this, fills me with despair. These pieces all seem like another brick laid opon a wall that is becoming insurmountably high. I begin to womder if I read all this to be informed ... or discouraged.

I don't need to read yet another peice about how the Republic has been taken over by the wealthiest -1%. Worse, I don't need to read more comments from readers whose only sentiment seems to be "I told you so" as of they have nothing at all at stake in this.

What I wnat to know is realistically ... pragmatically ... what can we do to stop this madness before it's too *****ing late!

I wonder often about those who read and comment on these sites. What in fact do they have at stake? Will it matter to them if the Republicans are allowed to continue their wholesale assualt on Liberalism? I mean will their mlives be detrimentally effected the way the lives of the 50 million uninsured and the thousands of men and women in our military will be effected? It doesn't seem so to me. Everyone I read, whether an author or a reader making a comment seems to view it all as some sort of spectator sport. They seem to be detached from the outcomes of a further Liberal defeat, as if it really didn't matter. It's just a feeling but I can't believe any other.

We pick our candidates like consumer brands wanting them to flatter our egos and maintain "our" politics as if this were not a pluralistic nation. We endorse them when we hear them say what we want them to say and attack them when we catch them lying. (Though we force them to) We and punish them for a lack of ideological purity, which is impractical in a pluralistic democracy. Worst of all, we promote doubts about our form of government. We toss our support behind long shots with no chance of winning and many of us even long for third party alternatives, which cannot win). Still other long for the "revolution" as if we were not in the throes of one wright now. Dear Revolutionaries: The revolution happened. It was a right wing, uber-capitalist revolution and they won! We can see how good that was for the country.

Meanwhile the pragmatic Republicans laugh (All the way to the bank). They have a pathetic list of candidates (as they have before by the way) but they rely on the disorganization and fragmentation of the opposition to make it happen for them. That's how they can steal a 49/51 election with a supreme court judgement or a crooked polling method. They could never do any of that with stronger majoriites. But we will deny them that.

The Republicans may still win if Democrats continue to eat their own and long for something other than what is right here in front of them. David Geffen wants to be inspired. Well hell he a millionaire that's all it is to him. What is the election to the poor?

I hate to quote Rummy but he's right about one thing: You fight with the Army you have, not the one you would dream of.

The key to the next election will not be Democrats. It will be defecting Republicans who swing their votes and independents. That should be our strategy. Are we developing candidates that will appeal to them? Or are we interetsed in some kind fo ideological candidates that fulfills our misguided fantasies about what the Democratic party is. It's not the 60's or anti-war or anything that recent history might tell you. Those were campaigns in the Democratic Party's long struggle to filfill its mission. That mission is to protect the unprotected. Full stop.

Who will better protect the unprotected, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? Rudy Guliani or Hillary Clinton? That is the battle we should focus on. If the polls say Edwards can win, it's Edwards regardless of what you as an isolated individual thinks. Same is true for Barack and whether you like it or not the same is true for Clinton. If she can win we should support her. To throw away your vote because you don't like her is the ultimate in bourgeois vanity ... because it's not about you ... it's about America and the weakest among us.

Smury,
Going to bed at 1pm. You must be writing from Europe. So, you must know many governments over there that actually do the bidding of the people and still find balance between private and public wealth. You must be talking about corrupted governments that steal from the public coffers...kind of like our current Government in the US, right? Please elaborate 'cause Governments are here to stay...

:D
A

While we privatize everything that is possible, why not privatize the president? Could we do any worse then we are? Maybe money is the new USA god? As long as we see everything as a way to make profit, even off of our own selves, we will never change. Everything is now for sale to the highest bider and we may not pay tax's as we now know it, but we will pay more in the long run, just so a few at the top can be rich beyond our wildest dreams! The rest are there to serve. We are a service economy now, remember? This is how you serve, poor wages, bad jobs and no benefits!

Ah, nothing like a good giggle before bedtime...

"Leases to run toll roads and bridges amount to licenses to print money."

And YET.. point out to left or right that the government does indeed already print money and that is at the root of most of your problems, possibly all of them, and you go into denial and blibber about how we NEED government to, well print money, you know, "stabilize the economy" and other such gibberish.

Awesome.

And then..

"In a deeply unequal America, with ever-greater pools of wealth concentrating at the top, they so far seem to have the dollars—and the power—to get it."

Yeah, funny that? Create a powerful government, with the ability to print money at will (constitution? pah!) and then gaze in dismay as the government prints money which flows straight to their best buddies, who in turn finance the campaigns and buy up the public's assets.

Who would have ever thunk it?!!?

Apart from "losertarians" who've been telling you this stuff for decades?

Will you ever learn?

Oh stoppit, me ribs, me ribs!

:oD

S.

Without restraints or limits capitalism will merely be true to itself and buy up everything that can be given value (think venture-capitalist Borg [Star Trek reference]).
Everything that anyone can think of or imagine can be given value, of course.
Individual humans cannot concentrate enough power to stand against the accumulated power of corporations.
We must continue to find ways of uniting to increase our own collective power to fight in this hopeless cause (the only causes truly worth fighting for) of reining in uber-capitalism.
Good luck to us all.

Welcome to 1984. This, coupled with the corporate solution to healthcare: to force us to purchase insurance or be breaking the law. So anyone who can't afford insurance should just go crawl into a ditch and die. Sounds like a Republican wet dream.

Fight back! Check out the article by Ralph Nader: Let the People Make the Laws and go to this link: http://nationalinitiative.us

In the good old days, weren't things like this left up to voters?

Welcome to the new fascist state.

Mr. Pizzigati has touched on an issue of enormous importance to the world. Privatization of public works equals diminished public control over same. Public control means you and me. Roads, prisons, mail services, schools, national defense, law enforcement, even the quality of the air we breathe, all are current and future targets of corporate control. Few people realize that the Fed is a private organization owned and controlled by anonymous private banking interests. This is one reason, perhaps, that banks are doing so well while joblessness (real jobs, not the kind where you've got to wear a funny hat)spreads unabated. Another reason of course is that banks underwrite wars and war spending and war borrowing.

But that's a separate issue, kind of. The tolls which we will be paying, for use of privatized roadways, are prime examples of regressive taxation, i.e., taxes which are levied in equal amounts upon the rich and the poor. A Republican dream. And we have seen the issues surrounding Blackwater, the privatize militia, who murder Iraqis with impunity and who rolled through New Orleans after Katrina like a marauding band of gestapo thugs. When a questioner asked President Bush whether these private armies were subject to American law, Bush claimed not to know (or, apparently, care).

Prof. Chomsky defines corporations as "unaccountable totalitarian organizations", amoral, self-contained, self-interested, profit-driven. One day, they will control every centimeter of your physical, legal, and psychic existence. If you let them.

Hey Manchild . . . What makes you think slavery isn't already here. Have you checked out the job, pay, benefits and working conditions at your local MacDonalds, Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy's. What would you call that situation . . . Certainly not a career with a future. Yet they continue to grow? Denial does not discribe what is going on . . . Sleep walking the sheep seems like a more complete discription.

It won't be slavery, as such, more like 'indentured'.

Public schools turned over to private companies, prisons run by private firms, even private armies. Now public infrastructure is becoming private. Soon there will be no public left. How long before we revert to private ownership of other humans, aka slavery. What euphamisms will the free market create for slavery?

Before rushing into these private arrangements, can we at least evaluate the pros and cons of the schools, prisons, and armies that have been privatized? We may not like the results so far.

Well said arjay8, I am from a third world country, and this is exactly the kind of corruption going on. Too bad most people in the US are in denial.

Welcome to the third world.