The US has turned into one big Potterville. Junky food, junky buildings, junky stores, junky bars, junky everything. Everything on the cheap. One big Wal-Mart land. Gone forever are the days of well meaning George Bailey's. Everything's mega this and mega that. Little fish get snapped up by bigger and bigger fish to where there's no such thing as the mom 'n' pop stores we remember from our childhood. Even small towns are being denuded of their small businesses by the invasion of a Wal-Mart, usually just on the outskirts of town.

We have THREE, count 'em, THREE, Wal-Mart stores within a ten mile radius. Is it any wonder the small town downtowns around here are dying and bleeding to death and are full of empty storefronts that get filled with seedy tattoo parlors or bars? Who wants THAT kind of image for their once charming small town?

Yup, Potterville, indeed.

George Bailey moved to England

http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

You don't need a bank to have your own home .

THANK YOU, twoblueday, for one of the best posts (just above) that I have ever seen on Common Dreams. It's a gem and reflects some real introspective honesty too.

Forgive my typo above (undeducated). With about 1500 seconds left to edit, Common Dreams decided I couldn't edit either because I didn't write the piece, or because time had expired.

Time has not, indeed, expired even as I type this.

I got a wry laugh out of this piece. One of my younger brothers, relatively uneducated, and an irascible populist curmudgeon, gave me, essentially, this same speech several months ago in a small barroom. I, being educated, widely read, and, frankly, more prosperous gave my usual "well, both sides of this issue have merit" reply. As usual, the discussion had to be terminated to in the interest of filial peace.

It used to be called "common sense." I wonder if I have any left.

A couple of points: wasn't fascism in Italy the same as what's going on here with big business and the government in bed together. As for US debt, some is unnescary , but other's build roads, bridges, services such as Social Security etc. What makes the Republicans really laughable in Michigan when they talk about job losses is they don't mention the executives who keep on making S.U.V's and other huge errors.

Thanks, fccm, for helping us remember (above) the exact lines of Mr. Bailey in the movie. The nearest thing we have to a George Bailey in national politics is John Edwards. The next best is Barack Obama. Let's get one of them and look forward to some courage-speak coming from our White House. It won't be just the same, but it could be close enough to stir our souls just as does the annual showing of "It's a Wonderful Life."

(If we all weren't so nationally hungry for this, you know, they wouldn't bother showing this old movie each year.)

Apparently George Bailey never really did exist after all, since all I can see is Pottersville from coast to coast.

Lowes and Walmart just ran two more local George Baileys off 1 in State College PA(home of P.S.U.)and another in Mill Hall PA both old small town lumber yard/hdwr. I'm thinking O.W.Houts&Sons was serving the local community for 85 years Houts stood up to Sam Walton for about 10 years while Renningers fell in about 2.

But so long as the zombies ,or I mean consumers get cheap imported garbage they can bring home and throw in the trash ,well who cares right?

"Fascism should be called Capitalism"

Benito Mussolini

"Just a minute –– just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was . . . Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what's wrong with that? Why . . . Here, you're all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You . .. you said . . . What'd you say just a minute ago? . . . They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken-down that they . . . Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about . . . they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you'll ever be!"

****************BREAKING**************

Kucinich won the lawsuit!!! Judge ordered that Kucinich was to debate on NBC in Nevada tomorrow or debate would be canceled!!! WAHOOOOO...

balakirev:

Capitalism is a product of free markets. Market dominance is monopoly that destroys the competition for lower prices, product diversity, equilibrium and sustainability. The bull that fathers calves has to be fettered or it will kill.

It's a Wonderful life is a comedy on the order of Reefer Madness to the neocons. If they thought that the Americans would actually act like that it would be the biggest horror film for them. They also think that Dickens wrote about a worthy banker named Scrooge who had a mental breakdown and degenerated to a sentimental weakling.

Economists actually put a scientific shroud on the unholy unregulated capitalism religion.

Three things have destroyed civilization: the rise of the military culture, private ownership of wealth and resources, and monotheism. The deeply vested are unlikely to relinquish their hold.

Even until the whole planet looks like Haiti.

Markets existed a couple of thousand years before the advent of capitalism.

What capitalism does is allow the market to:
1. swallow up the other institutions of society (family, polity, religion, education and media) and 2. allow international corporations to privately (with the support of various governments) control access to the most important resources.

It has always been a global system which destroys all other forms of social organization and economic behaviors.

Thus it has contributed to the destruction of kingdoms, agrarian feudalism, family-based production, craftwork, tribal peoples, nomads and, lastly, it is destroying the peasant farmer and, next, the factory worker.

Capitalism erodes all forms of independent production based on accumulated skills and strong communities.

It also destroys ancient cultures (ethnocide), bio-diversity, and other non-commercial forms of artistic, literary, and musical expression.

In other words, all cultural and material products, human relations, communities, and the eco-system have to be disposable, empty and meaningless...planned obsolesence.

FVHorn: Please do not confuse accountants with economists. I am a highly trained and experienced accountant. And it is a science, just like math. One plus one always equals two. And balance sheets MUST balance. I just follow the money and the assets and make sure that the numbers represent what is really happening in the real world. The problem lies with the number crunchers that distort reality and are willing to illegally misrepresent what really exists in the real world.

Instead of taking on the title of CFO, I prefered the title of "Chief Bean". I referred to my staff as "Brave Beans". It's all a matter of whether you follow the rules and are honest. There are really rotten people in every profession. But there are also honest ones that cannot be corrupted. The later, as in my case, often lose their jobs. Oh well......

Stephen Marglin is correct in seeing through the mirage of money to the truth of it. This is rare for an economist to do. They usually serve the privateers and buccaneers of this age.

Economists and accountants tend to think of themselves as part of a 'science' with the certainty of numbers. But this is a delusion. Money is only a social construction. And it has become more and more a mirage as the modern world has reduced money to electrons in tiny chips. These electrons can cross the planet at lightspeed, leaving real people far behind. You cannot eat the electrons or drink them or live in them or breathe them. But their symbolic value becomes real through the social value put on them.

This is magical thinking. This is religion. The religion of the god Money. Economists and accountants are the High Priests. The numbers are without meaning except for the real power they give to 'owners' of the right numbers.

It is apparent that currency is slippery, and it is also undefineable. The Bush solution to the China foreign debt problem makes this truth self-evident. The Bush plan is to let China's currency 'float' - this 'floating' has reduced the value of the American currency vis a vis almost all other currencies by half, thus during his term Bush has reduced the Apparent Value of America by Half, as seen from the outside. This is good only for transnational (state-free) corporations and transnational individuals (Halliburton being the prime example of the TN corporation, and the Bush family being the prime example of the TN individual.)

Bush wants to have China 'float' its currency. When he succeeds, the debt to China vs. the Yuan will be halved - their current stash of 'dollars' will buy only half the Yuans or any other worthwhile currency they do now. So China will have no choice but to buy up America with its devalued-everywhere-but-America dollars. (See the also-contrived Peso Crises of Mexico). However this also means in future the debt will be much more onerous and Chinese goods will be twice as much in American dollars. This serves the privateers that will sell America to China, and will sell Chinese goods to America, but the average American will wind up very much the worse off, and poorer and more powerless. Just what the American and transnational oligarchs want. Friedmaneque Shock Doctrine on Amercians.

So money is not real. Thus, as only a political creation, money should be used to structure a just society rather than as a force for privateering, privilege, selfishness and evil. The Trickle-Down Theory (piss-down theory) and the Idolatry of the Laffer Curve (the Laughable Curve - sheer idiocy masquerading as science) are examples of the lies we are fed by economists that have nothing at all to do with truth and everything to do with serving the powerful by giving obfusaction, and befuddlements to the common folk. As it is now, the US Dollar is backed only by US Firepower, and not much else. This is another reason for the current Bush Wars. They are in defense of the Dollar, not the nation.

Since money is a creation, who is in control of Creation Itself? Our money is created by the Federal Reserve... you can see Federal Reserve Note (meaning a veritable 'check' written from the Fed to the bearer) printed on each piece. This is a Private Bank run by and for Bankers and their fellow travelers and cronies in the corporate neo-con world.

The last chairman, Greenspan, just 'made up' some ten trillion dollars to give to banks at the Decreed Rate of 1%. With this, banks pumped up housing prices far beyond reason, given Americans' income levels (especially also enabled with new banking rules Decreed by the Fed) to save the Republicans from electoral defeat from the last debacle caused by the Fed, the stock-market bubble. We now see the unraveling of THIS bubble in housing prices caused by the Fed. But the pain, like that of the stock-market meltdown, will not be borne by the kings of the corporate world, it will be borne by 'the taxpayer' and the millions of Americna families who will lose their homes and be impoverished.

And our US government is now some $66 thousand-billlion dollars in accrued-debts-forward. So American Federal, State, County governments and American households are some $100 Trillion dollars in debt right now. But to whom? And this is why Bush always says the economy is strong (his and his cronies' economies).

As money is just a mirage, and the Totality of accounting is so convoluted it makes Arthur Anderson's Enron accounting look like kindergarten crayon addition (so no one knows what is really going on), we the people must take money back from the economists and accountants and privateers and corporatists. Money has become meaningless and debased and is just a tool for imperialism and greed and corporatism and power over others. Economics and accounting and money have a place, but they have been allowed Pride of Place when they are just tools. Down with Money and Economics (especially Neo-Con, No-Tax-No-Government, Capitalist-Privateer, Chicago-Gangster-School Economics) being the Religions they have become in America today.

George Bailey went where honest hard working people who refuse to cheat and harm others always go, to the bottom. Honesty does not float in a sea of corruption, it sinks. Welcome to your affluent dystopia where corruption reigns and the cost of freedom is just too high to pay. Nope, there's no community in sight.

We need a George Bailey. We need a bunch of him. That means we need a community from which a George Bailey could come. Then we need a community that can help sustain a George Bailey.

If you expect God to do these things for you, look at your hands. Where do you think every good action goes through?

Note: you might check out Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Well put kivals. Good points hazmat and luckylefty. Interesting view Siouxrose. Is anybody listening?

Rabbi Hillel is dead. So is Rabbi Akiva. But the Jews learned one thing about surviving in a world run by predatory, cannibalistic Goyem (our Masters) - form tight communities and take care of each other. Goyem never learned that. Master's like human flesh on the spit, they call it "profit taking" and they'll cook anybody. Step right up.

George Bailey jumped.

Peace.

The dangers of a "numbers game" is also seen in the practice of medicine and how insurers hedge their bets against which procedures and practices they will give the nod to, and which not. In my view, any society that cleaves towards the mean (law of averages) sacrifices diversity. Growth tends to happen at the fringes!

one of my guiding principles is that it really doesn't matter what the rules are, as long as they're the same for everybody (children barely able to stand unaided have an innate sense of this---when the outraged howls of "that's not fair!" echo across a schoolyard, you can bet that principle has just been violated).

"privilege" (from the latin, literally a "private law") is the problem. it must be vigilantly guarded against and uprooted whenever and wherever it appears.

One fundamental problem with the market-based approach is that markets will always be rigged by the powerful players in the market, often with government help, as those players follow their self-interest. And that prevents markets from ever fulfilling their utilitarian promise.

And the market-based ideology emphasizes individual consumption and possessions, which shapes the interests and outlook of the individuals, and makes them focus on short-sighted, short-term, and limited connections, and puts them at cross purposes with each other and ignores sustainability issues. They tend to only share interests with small groups and like-situated individuals. This may have been somewhat utilitarian for sparsely populated areas with an abundance of resources, but it leads to unnecessary conflict and a fatally flawed distribution of resources with a dense population and dwindling resources.

Very good article. It is as clear as economics can be made, and it points up one of the major problem with the U.S. There is much too much individualism and there is way too little community thought ans spirit.