January 2010 archive

The United States Is Now Owned By The Corporations  

Taxpayer $  –> TBTF $ –> campaign finance…

Where does this end?  They will own every milliliter of your blood, every angstrom of DNA.

They own the law.

Welcome to reality, Democrats.

Original article, by Tom Carter, via World Socialist Web Site:

In a profoundly anti-democratic decision with far-reaching implications, the US Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a law limiting the ability of corporations to spend money in support of political campaigns.

Open Thread

ProPublica Unemployment Insurance Tracker:

The unemployment insurance system is in crisis. A record 20 million Americans collected unemployment benefits last year, and so far twenty-five states have run out of funds and been forced to borrow from federal government, raise taxes, or cut benefits. In many other states the situation is deteriorating fast. Using near real-time data on state revenues and the benefits they pay out, we estimate how long state trust funds will hold up.

(Hover your mouse over states on the map to see the current Trust Fund Balance for each state, and the Future Prediction of the balance, or the current Borrowed Amount if a state is in the red)

Click on a state [below] to find the latest, plus detailed historical data and charts, and details on tax increases and benefit cuts.

AK – AL – AR – AZ – CA – CO – CT – DE – FL – GA – HI – IA – ID – IL – IN – KS – KY – LA – MA – MD

ME – MI – MN – MO – MS – MT – NC – ND – NE – NH – NJ – NM – NV – NY – OH

OK – OR – PA – RI – SC – SD – TN – TX – UT – VA – VT – WA – WI – WV – WY

Dear Friends,

It has come to my attention that Bob Johnson, a stalwart Democrat heretofore unknown, indeed unknowable as a political shrinking violet, has succumbed to the ululating horror.  The world promised to him in the murals was found to be uninhabitable.  He was last seen entering the Mouth of Madness in the Maelstrom of Irrelevance.  He begs the planners of the next proposed Antarctic expedition to stay away from things that should not be loosed on this Earth.  Please consider contributing to his undying cause of cracking Bill Kristol on the beak.  

Welcome to the Two-way Mirror Mountains!  Welcome to the Agony!   Welcome, Dread Shoggoth.

I would imagine anyone under the age of 40 hasn’t bothered to read the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962 .  I submit it’s worth a quick read.

Much of the document is outdated, much of it is naive, some of it is foolish, but there’s some meat there and a ‘sense’ that, I think, is too often missing from Left Wing discussion today: Hope.  Hope in what people could do for themselves when they got off their asses and did it.  Hope that is summed-up in the old New Left saying, “Have a little patience.  Have a little faith.”   And I’ll point-out it was when the New Left lost its patience, rejected faith for turgid authoritarian Old Left dogmas that it dwindled into irrelevance.

Anyway, take ten minutes, or so & read the thing.  At worst you’ll get a smug sense of superiority over those dummies who wrote the thing; at best you’ll learn something.

I was inspired to reflect on this by paradox over at the left coaster.

However, Mr. President, I’ve heard your pronouncements and speeches before, and even though I watch television frequently I did not take on the asinine presumption of that ludicrous medium, I have a memory, I forget very little. The past is indeed relevant in evaluating your proposals, oh yes, and what I’ve repeatedly seen is a great speech to start good politics and then total failure as no leadership fight evolves to make it happen.

My minor point is-

Television and Radio are a serial medium of communication.  Even as you are processing the information they provide, new information is coming in all the time and I find myself frequently sitting there after an hour or a day of mind numbing novocaine saying to myself-

What the fuck?

What did I just see?

Seriously, I can’t remember.  It washes over me and through me with no point of reference, bobbing up and down in the middle of a vast ocean like Spalding Gray in Swimming to Cambodia.

Print on the other hand is random access.

No only can you absorb it at your own pace, but you can go back and review in light of new information and confirm what you think is true.

Blogging is kind of a hybrid.  You can review it if you can find it and good luck with that.

The perfect form is a book, condensed and easy to carry.  Indexed with page numbers.

News papers are much more messy.  Not only does the ink rub off on your hands, if you collect too many of them you’re in danger of suffocating under a collapsing pile of the past.