Ennui is gripping the left. It sits paralyzed, holding its breath, as it waits for its Messiah, Barack Obama, to step into a phone booth, shed his suit and leap out as Super Progressive who flies the country into the elysian fields of progressive glory.
It’s not going to happen for two reasons: Obama’s a centrist and phone booths have gone the way of the dinosaur.
But, the left still waits, hoping, discussing, analyzing, lamenting, and grousing while the shadow of economic misery spreads across the land.
It is time Karl Marx went evangelical. That’s where the action is. In other words, the Left has to climb down from its ivory tower and not only join the sweating throngs in their basement and storefront churches; it’s got to lead the goddamn revivals.
Murray Dobbin did piece on America’s radical rabbi, Michael Lerner, who believes the left is cursed by the dead albatross of secular fundamentalism, and advocates a more spiritual approach. However, as Dobbin points out, “Spiritualism seems to fly in the face of the kind of rationalism that has been at the core of socialist and social democratic theory for nearly two centuries.”
Yet, for all his talk of spiritualism, Dobbin and Learner still seems mired in a rationalist tar pit. Dobbin speaks of “engaging” people when the talk should be of inspiring and inflaming them. Lerner advocates a “politics of meaning” that “fosters ethically, spiritually, ecologically, and psychologically sensitive and caring human beings who can maintain long-term, living personal and social relationships.”
It’s a nice thought, but it lacks passion and poetry. Why not speak of the Workers Paradise as the Kingdom of God on Earth where they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and where:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of The Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9 RSV)
Dobbin asks, “Why do further millions identify with right-wing evangelical religion rather than the call for secular social justice?”
The “Religious Right” is a media invention, and Progressives, me included, have fallen into to this trap by heaping scorn on the very group that could well be the vanguard of a revolutionary movement. This has allowed a cynical rightwing media machine to redirect fundamentalism’s away from the Kingdom of God on Earth into meaningless culture wars over gay marriage and evolution.
These are people looking for meaning and community in their lives. They have rejected our fantasyland of go-go consumerism and are looking for more. All they need be shown is that their meaning lies not in the Book of Revelation but in Marx. Latin America is light years ahead of us with their Liberation Theology that blends Christ and Marx.
There is another reason to send Karl to the nearest bible college. A long-standing ruse of our oligarchs has been to split the dispossessed classes along racial and ethnic lines. They well understand that the poor will suffer in silence as long as there is another group they can look down on. This is why southern oligarchs maintained a rift between poor blacks and poor whites with their Jim Crow laws.
In spite of this, there is one common thread that unites poor Euromericans, Afromericans and Hispanomericans, and that is their fundamentalist faith. If the left could tap into that, we would be a power to be reckoned with. Sure, we’d have to lose our ideological prissiness, but that could be a plus.
Dobbin nails it when he reams Canada’s socialist party for failing to develop a radical vision for the future. Instead of addressing people’s need for a broader meaning, it “reduces that vision to a package of disconnected, minor reforms that doesn’t offend the media power brokers. Of course, it doesn’t’ inspire anyone either….”
Who remembers Martin Luther King’s “I have a plan” speech?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Hollowed Out Power
Sometimes it looks hopeless. The corruption is so ingrained that it is institutionalized. We have a Congress operated by K Street lobbyists and a White House that is a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. The beltway sits in a vacuum-sealed bell jar that mutes the cries of the poor and the suffering.
Corporate America had a lock on our republic and it’s not about to let the fetid fumes of democracy seep in and corrupt the heady air of pure power that is its aphrodisiac.
It is at times like this that we must remember that change, truly revolutionary change, the change that is deep and systemic, first forms in a tiny crack or seam buried so deeply in the shadows of a damp basement that neither the oppressed nor the oppressor are aware of its existence.
The sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Church was convinced it had a lock on power until, in 1517, an obscure monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
We have our own example here in America.
As World War II ended, MGM appeared to be untouchable. It was the biggest studio with the biggest stars, churning our movie after movie. Movie attendance was booming and MGM was riding the crest of the wave. Its momentum seemed unstoppable.
But even as its hits flooded the nation’s theaters, a flickering grey light in a darkened living room, probably somewhere on the east coast, was about to change all that. The light was coming from a large box topped by a tiny screen. It was one of the first televisions, and it was only a matter of time before the tube bumped the movie theater from its pedestal and MGM would never be the same.
It is when power is at its peak and seems invincible that is ready to crumble Power corrupts and rots from within until what appears to be a solid fortress is little more than a hollowed-out shell ready to collapse. We are discovering that Wall Street is not the impregnable castle we once thought it was. Its well-polished wingtips are feet of clay.
We have no way of knowing just what the catalyst of this change will be. Perhaps our empire will collapse because is bankrupt. It might be an obscure idea that gives rise to an insurrection. It might be something we can’t even comprehend at this point in time.
No matter how tight the corporate grip on power is, no matter how corrupt the system has become, it is important to remember one thing—nothing is forever. With power comes hubris and with hubris comes blindness. It is because of this blindness that power eventually stumbles off the edge of a cliff. The fall may take decades or generations, but it is inevitable.
Corporate America had a lock on our republic and it’s not about to let the fetid fumes of democracy seep in and corrupt the heady air of pure power that is its aphrodisiac.
It is at times like this that we must remember that change, truly revolutionary change, the change that is deep and systemic, first forms in a tiny crack or seam buried so deeply in the shadows of a damp basement that neither the oppressed nor the oppressor are aware of its existence.
The sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Church was convinced it had a lock on power until, in 1517, an obscure monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
We have our own example here in America.
As World War II ended, MGM appeared to be untouchable. It was the biggest studio with the biggest stars, churning our movie after movie. Movie attendance was booming and MGM was riding the crest of the wave. Its momentum seemed unstoppable.
But even as its hits flooded the nation’s theaters, a flickering grey light in a darkened living room, probably somewhere on the east coast, was about to change all that. The light was coming from a large box topped by a tiny screen. It was one of the first televisions, and it was only a matter of time before the tube bumped the movie theater from its pedestal and MGM would never be the same.
It is when power is at its peak and seems invincible that is ready to crumble Power corrupts and rots from within until what appears to be a solid fortress is little more than a hollowed-out shell ready to collapse. We are discovering that Wall Street is not the impregnable castle we once thought it was. Its well-polished wingtips are feet of clay.
We have no way of knowing just what the catalyst of this change will be. Perhaps our empire will collapse because is bankrupt. It might be an obscure idea that gives rise to an insurrection. It might be something we can’t even comprehend at this point in time.
No matter how tight the corporate grip on power is, no matter how corrupt the system has become, it is important to remember one thing—nothing is forever. With power comes hubris and with hubris comes blindness. It is because of this blindness that power eventually stumbles off the edge of a cliff. The fall may take decades or generations, but it is inevitable.
Friday, July 10, 2009
What happens now?
I do not subscribe to the Manichean philosophy that life is a constant struggle between the forces of evil and the forces of good. Too often this doctrine is used as a rationale for wholesale slaughter. This is not to deny the existence of evil in the world. To deny it is to slip into the error of believing that evil doesn’t exist; that there are only social and material conditions that cause people to behave in unacceptable ways.
For that matter, in our therapeutic age, evil is now defined as inappropriate behavior, as if all we need do with evildoers is send them to the principal’s office. One of the reasons for this change is that the face of evil has changed. Evil no longer wears a ferocious face, with drools of viscera hanging from its fanged grimace.
The face of evil is smooth and clean shaven; it is moisturized and Botoxed. Evil speaks softly and in measured tones. Instead of rack and stake it uses flawed premises from which it constructs strings of linear reasoning that trap and ensnare.
Evil is no longer a sneering devil; it is a smiling sociopath.
The evil of old dispatched with broad sword and halberd; today’s evil dispatches with a raised eyebrow that can send hundreds of thousands to their death.
Yesterday’s evil sought power and land; today’s evil wants only to maximize profits.
Yesterday’s evil destroyed villages and cities; today’s evil is destroying the earth.
The tragic truth is that this evil is facilitated by a sodden, passive grey mass that has been taught to behave and considers both protest and dissent as “unacceptable” behavior. Virtue is now equated as collaborating with evil through our silence.
The Indian writer Arundhati Roy describes this evil when she asks, “What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profits?”
A good question. What does happen now?
For that matter, in our therapeutic age, evil is now defined as inappropriate behavior, as if all we need do with evildoers is send them to the principal’s office. One of the reasons for this change is that the face of evil has changed. Evil no longer wears a ferocious face, with drools of viscera hanging from its fanged grimace.
The face of evil is smooth and clean shaven; it is moisturized and Botoxed. Evil speaks softly and in measured tones. Instead of rack and stake it uses flawed premises from which it constructs strings of linear reasoning that trap and ensnare.
Evil is no longer a sneering devil; it is a smiling sociopath.
The evil of old dispatched with broad sword and halberd; today’s evil dispatches with a raised eyebrow that can send hundreds of thousands to their death.
Yesterday’s evil sought power and land; today’s evil wants only to maximize profits.
Yesterday’s evil destroyed villages and cities; today’s evil is destroying the earth.
The tragic truth is that this evil is facilitated by a sodden, passive grey mass that has been taught to behave and considers both protest and dissent as “unacceptable” behavior. Virtue is now equated as collaborating with evil through our silence.
The Indian writer Arundhati Roy describes this evil when she asks, “What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profits?”
A good question. What does happen now?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The laundromat is open for business!
It’s an interesting commentary on America’s moral turpitude when the United States Treasury announces that it is going to launder tainted money. An individual can go to jail for laundering drug money; Treasury gets a free pass for laundering Wall Street’s toxic assets. The difference between the two types of assets is negligible.
Yes, taxpayer money is on the cusp of taking $30 billion in “distressed” assets off the banks books. These are the “soured mortgage-related assets” scammed from an unsuspecting public through subprime mortgages, interest only loans, and teaser ARMs. (This assumes they can squeeze an additional $10 billion from private investors.)
The AP article dutifully repeats the official line that these toxic assets “have made banks reluctant to lend freely to businesses and consumers.” The truth is that when people lose their jobs and when the businesses they no longer frequent are in danger of going under, nobody is crowding bank lobbies looking for loans. The problem isn’t with the supply, it’s with the demand, and even scouring the banks’ books of all their toxic assets will do nothing to increase this demand.
The original plan had been to buy $1 trillion in toxic assets. However, according to the AP, “The program has been scaled back partly because many banks’ financial situations have improved in recent weeks, reducing their need to sell the troubled assets.”
What the article fails to mention is that this “improvement” is the result of an accounting gimmick and not an actual improvement in the banks’ financial picture. Instead of marking these assets to their market value—what people would actually pay for them—the banks are now marking them to “model”—what the banks think their worth regardless of what the market is willing to offer.
The market is offering 10 to 20 cents on the dollar, while the banks want 60 cents on the dollar.
Experts doubt Treasury's laundromat will make any real difference in the banks’ overall financial health. It seems $40 billion could be compared to the amount of cotton it would take to Kotex a gnat’s ass in relation to the world's total cotton production. “The real hit lies in the trillions of dollars in residential home loans and commercial loans banks hold in whole-loan form on their balance sheets,” said Daniel Alpert, managing director of the investment bank Westwood Capital LLC.
So even after Geithner hands them more of our tax dollars, the banks will remain as insolvent as ever, though they will manage to maintain the illusion of a Never-Never Land solvency until the public finally realizes that the cupboard is bare.
Yes, taxpayer money is on the cusp of taking $30 billion in “distressed” assets off the banks books. These are the “soured mortgage-related assets” scammed from an unsuspecting public through subprime mortgages, interest only loans, and teaser ARMs. (This assumes they can squeeze an additional $10 billion from private investors.)
The AP article dutifully repeats the official line that these toxic assets “have made banks reluctant to lend freely to businesses and consumers.” The truth is that when people lose their jobs and when the businesses they no longer frequent are in danger of going under, nobody is crowding bank lobbies looking for loans. The problem isn’t with the supply, it’s with the demand, and even scouring the banks’ books of all their toxic assets will do nothing to increase this demand.
The original plan had been to buy $1 trillion in toxic assets. However, according to the AP, “The program has been scaled back partly because many banks’ financial situations have improved in recent weeks, reducing their need to sell the troubled assets.”
What the article fails to mention is that this “improvement” is the result of an accounting gimmick and not an actual improvement in the banks’ financial picture. Instead of marking these assets to their market value—what people would actually pay for them—the banks are now marking them to “model”—what the banks think their worth regardless of what the market is willing to offer.
The market is offering 10 to 20 cents on the dollar, while the banks want 60 cents on the dollar.
Experts doubt Treasury's laundromat will make any real difference in the banks’ overall financial health. It seems $40 billion could be compared to the amount of cotton it would take to Kotex a gnat’s ass in relation to the world's total cotton production. “The real hit lies in the trillions of dollars in residential home loans and commercial loans banks hold in whole-loan form on their balance sheets,” said Daniel Alpert, managing director of the investment bank Westwood Capital LLC.
So even after Geithner hands them more of our tax dollars, the banks will remain as insolvent as ever, though they will manage to maintain the illusion of a Never-Never Land solvency until the public finally realizes that the cupboard is bare.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Neofeudalism and the Middle Class
Addendum, 7/9: I read this morning that the Obama administration is suspending military aid to Honduras because of the military coup that outsed President Manuel Zelaya. The administration didn't have much choice since Latin America has put up a united front agianst the coup that bridges the area's left/right divide. We seem to have a watershed here in which Latin America has declared zero tolerance for coups. While that may put a crimp in our foreign policy, it will do a great deal for international stability.
Now the question is how vigorously Obama will oppose the military rulers. Will his opposition be real, or will it be mere lipservice?
In the past, the Beltway’s inbred fear of Communism and the Soviet Union was used as an excuse to topple democratically elected governments in Latin America and the Middle East. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it appeared that they’d run out of excuses. However, this interpretation is based on the assumption that their meddling was driven by anticommunism.
Such was not the case.
We put into power military dictators at a time when America was becoming increasingly militarized. In other words, our leaders were creating governments in other countries that mirrored what they wanted ours to become. We taught oppression because we were in the process of oppressing our citizens and doing so abroad desensitized our oligarch to doing the same here. Neither the legitimization of torture nor the Patriot Act would have been possible had our leaders not encouraged the same in our client countries.
It wasn’t a grand conspiracy; it was simply the collective deadness of habit and momentum. Scratch a ruler and you find a control freak.
Just as governments evolve, so do motives. The recent military coup in Honduras that deposed the country’s elected president, Manuel Zelaya, illustrates this shift.
Writing about the coup, Ken Silverstein says, “The intensity of the reaction against him (Zelaya) by the Honduran elite—as seen in the coup—reflects the feudal mentality of the traditional economic and political leadership, not Zelaya’s politics.” (Emphasis mine)
The middle class destroyed feudalism in Europe. For that matter, the middle class has always been meddlesome to those in power. It is a hotbed of reform movements as our leaders discovered in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Progressivism. It’s been said that no reform movement or insurrection of any kind can succeed unless the middle class in on board.
Our oligarch thought they had come up with a way to neutralize the middle class by offering it secure jobs that paid well. The civil rights movement proved them wrong. To add insult to injury, the cushy salaries were cutting into their profits.
All of a sudden, feudalism starting looking pretty good to them.
How do you bring back feudalism? You gut the middle class. And we did just that with our invasion of Iraq. Its middle class is either dead or exiled and we are left with a neofeudal society that is much easier to control.
The same process is at work in our country as an economic meltdown takes the middle class with it and America increasingly becomes a country made up of two classes—a rich nobility and impoverished serfs.
This is all a bit of a stretch, but what the hell! Stretchies can be fun.
The authors of The Coming Insurrection (the book that has Glenn Beck’s knickers in a knot) point out that dying institutions gut their content in order to preserve their form. In other words, our leaders are in the process of destroying our democratic content so we can maintain the illusion of democracy.
You can always tell an oligarch—he’s the one who calls democracy “mob rule.”
Now the question is how vigorously Obama will oppose the military rulers. Will his opposition be real, or will it be mere lipservice?
In the past, the Beltway’s inbred fear of Communism and the Soviet Union was used as an excuse to topple democratically elected governments in Latin America and the Middle East. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it appeared that they’d run out of excuses. However, this interpretation is based on the assumption that their meddling was driven by anticommunism.
Such was not the case.
We put into power military dictators at a time when America was becoming increasingly militarized. In other words, our leaders were creating governments in other countries that mirrored what they wanted ours to become. We taught oppression because we were in the process of oppressing our citizens and doing so abroad desensitized our oligarch to doing the same here. Neither the legitimization of torture nor the Patriot Act would have been possible had our leaders not encouraged the same in our client countries.
It wasn’t a grand conspiracy; it was simply the collective deadness of habit and momentum. Scratch a ruler and you find a control freak.
Just as governments evolve, so do motives. The recent military coup in Honduras that deposed the country’s elected president, Manuel Zelaya, illustrates this shift.
Writing about the coup, Ken Silverstein says, “The intensity of the reaction against him (Zelaya) by the Honduran elite—as seen in the coup—reflects the feudal mentality of the traditional economic and political leadership, not Zelaya’s politics.” (Emphasis mine)
The middle class destroyed feudalism in Europe. For that matter, the middle class has always been meddlesome to those in power. It is a hotbed of reform movements as our leaders discovered in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Progressivism. It’s been said that no reform movement or insurrection of any kind can succeed unless the middle class in on board.
Our oligarch thought they had come up with a way to neutralize the middle class by offering it secure jobs that paid well. The civil rights movement proved them wrong. To add insult to injury, the cushy salaries were cutting into their profits.
All of a sudden, feudalism starting looking pretty good to them.
How do you bring back feudalism? You gut the middle class. And we did just that with our invasion of Iraq. Its middle class is either dead or exiled and we are left with a neofeudal society that is much easier to control.
The same process is at work in our country as an economic meltdown takes the middle class with it and America increasingly becomes a country made up of two classes—a rich nobility and impoverished serfs.
This is all a bit of a stretch, but what the hell! Stretchies can be fun.
The authors of The Coming Insurrection (the book that has Glenn Beck’s knickers in a knot) point out that dying institutions gut their content in order to preserve their form. In other words, our leaders are in the process of destroying our democratic content so we can maintain the illusion of democracy.
You can always tell an oligarch—he’s the one who calls democracy “mob rule.”
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
A Simple Idea
This blog is a work in progress, and this post gathers several themes that have appeared in previous posts and weaves them into a whole. My apologies for its length, but a lot of stuff has come together. A revised version of this post appeared last year on several sites. At that time, it didn’t have much traction. This year, the world has changed, so who knows…?
In an age when it’s not only necessary to think outside the box but to reduce the box to kindling, a paralysis has gripped the Beltway as our leaders try to figure out if we’re in a box, to begin with, and, if so, how big the box is, what color is it, and is it really necessary to think outside the box when we could easily build an addition, provided we could get the financing necessary to begin construction.
Meanwhile, the Left loudly proclaims that, “Something must be done! Systemic change is needed; reform is called for!” And, there it ends as the Left fragments into a spray of mini issues--gay rights, women’s rights, peace, the environment, animal liberation, universal health care—each droplet suspended in space independent of the others. Each of these issues is important, but each is made all the more difficult because we are confronting a system that is decayed and corrupt, and until this tottering superstructure is addressed, the above issues will simply limp along without any satisfactory resolutions.
The counterrevolution began by Ronald Reagan has run out of steam. Now, we must regain the ground we lost. It’s time for something totally off the wall, something bazaar, a wild cockamamie idea so screwed up it just might work.
My suggestion is a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that strips our corporations of their personhood. Such an amendment would not be a solution; it would be a point of departure. The net effect would be that our corporations would have no rights; they would only have privileges granted them by the state.
Today, such an amendment stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing. However, as our economy continues to tank, and as Wall Street bankers continue to get trillions in bailouts while the disempowered class in America, which increasingly includes the Middle Class, continues to slip down the economic ladder, the temperature in Hell is starting to fall.
Besides, think of the fun we could have with such a movement!
The drive for a 28th Amendment would serve two immediate purposes.
Dissatisfaction in America is badly fragmented. We are so isolated in our discontent, which is why we seek escape in Sanford’s infidelity and Michael Jackson’s canonization. The drive for a 28th “Amendment could well be the lightening rod that would unify this discontent into a viable movement.
The radical left has a millstone hanging around its, neck: a vocabulary straight out of the nineteenth century that, in today’s world, is devoid of both meaning and relevance.
The struggle is no longer between capital and labor.
Capitalism is dead; it’s been dead for decades. A CEO is not a capitalist; he is an employee. A capitalist grew capital by the sweat of his brow and the blackness of his soul. A CEO plays without other people’s capital while absorbing as much of it as he can through executive salaries, bonuses and stock options. A CEO's soul is a bland beige.
We no longer have a working class; we have a dispossessed class that grows larger every day. It is an inclusive class claiming as it members not only workers but the poor, the working poor, undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, the employed who are squeezed for three hours of productivity for one hour’s pay and, increasingly, the middle class. It is just waiting to be mobilized by the right issue.
If there is to be any systemic change in the country, the corporation must be demonized, and the movement for a 28th Amendment would present the perfect platform from which to do just that. Let’s face it, the corporation is an anachronism, a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness and is in the process of devouring itself as it takes the country down with it. That is the box that must be reduced to kindling! The corporation served its purpose; it gave us all sorts of nice toys and technological advances, many of which are destroying the earth, but it’s time it was put out to pasture before it ruins us completely.
The amendment would raise the possibility of doing something about our corrupt Congress. Cynics tell us Washington D.C. is an open septic tank overflowing with the raw sewage of corruption. In truth, it is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Granted, raw sewage is pumped into the beltway via open trenches that run from the nation’s power centers. But, instead of pouring into the Capitol, it is first pumped into the K Street Sewage Treatment Plant. There it is sanitized and deodorized before being piped into the Halls of Congress disguised as campaign contributions. It is still sewage, but, it smells sweeter.
The short answer to this mess is public funding of election campaigns. On the surface it seems to offer much. By freeing the congress from the multiple snares of corporate purse strings, Congress might start representing the public interest. As it stands now, every time an elected official speaks of our national interests or national security, “national” is simply a code word for “corporate”. The system is gamed to minimize public influence on policy.
Let us assume that Congress was struck blind on the road to Damascus and was seized with such an intense desire to serve to the public interest that a campaign reform bill was actually passed and was signed into law.
Before the ink was even dry on the bill, our corporatist oligarchy would go weeping to the nearest federal court claiming that the bill violated its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Money talks, and if our corporate patrons aren’t allowed to speak through their wallets, they are being unconstitutionally silenced.
The argument would win the day, because under our current system, a corporation is a person.
People assume that corporate personhood was the result of a Supreme Court decision. In truth, the court made no such decision. The question of personhood arose when the court considered an appeal[1] of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The focus of the case was the taxation of railroad properties. As the case worked its way through the lower courts, the question of whether corporations were persons protected by the 14th Amendment was argued.
However, before oral arguments began before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.”
Because formal arguments had not begun, Waite’s remark was a non-binding obiter dictum that had no bearing on the outcome of the case. The question of corporate personhood was never mentioned in the court’s written decision. The court limited its decision to the question of taxing corporate property.
However, the court clerk, when writing the header, or summary, of the case stated that, “defendant corporations are persons…”
Thus, was corporate personhood born.
The principle is so engrained in legal precedence that a judicial reversal is virtually impossible. That is why only a constitutional amendment could solve the problem.
But, why stop at stripping corporations of their personhood. It is not enough to pump out the sewage. We have to disinfect the place as well.
For twenty-three years, Robert Hinkley[2] was a corporate attorney. He left corporate practice because he’d become convinced that corporate law makes it impossible for corporations to behave responsibility. The law says that a corporation has but one obligation, and that is to make money for its shareholders. Consequently, shareholders could sue the corporation were it to behave responsibly by paying its workers a living wage if this ate into shareholder dividends. Hinkley’s proposal is to change corporate law to read:
The duty of directors henceforth shall be to make money for the shareholders, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, dignity of employees and the welfare of the community in which the company operates.
Let's add this wording to our 28th Amendment!
That our amendment would raise some corporate hackles is an understatement. Already, I hear lamentations about the sanctity of private property, etc. However, a very compelling argument could be made that the ownership of corporate property is so diffused amongst shareholders that it is a misnomer to call it private property. Since corporate property exists at the pleasure of the State through the granting of a corporate charter, it is more akin to quasi-public property than private property.
I admit this is heresy, but given rate at which corporations are eating us alive, I think some healthy heresy is called for.
This brings us back, in a full circle, to our corrupted Congress. If corporations were stripped of their personhood, a campaign finance reform bill that eliminated corporate money from the electoral process would be better protected from a court challenge. There is no guarantee this would clean up the system. All it would do is increase the probability that it would be cleaner than it currently is.
Granted, the idea of a 28th Amendment sits way out there in the foggy fringe, but if our Neocon colleagues taught us anything, it is that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream.
I see the makings of wonderful guerilla campaign as young people spray paint the number “28” of walls and signs; I see pin and bumper stickers sporting the number “28” along with a line of T-shirts and hoodies displaying the same. This is a movement that could cut across class, gender and ethnic divisions because if there is one thing unifying America, it is our economic misery. And if nothing else, the drive for a 28th Amendment would make our oligarchs and plutocrats sweat. That, alone, would make the effort worthwhile.
Sure, it looks hopeless, but as I.F. Stone wrote:
The only fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.
It’s time to bring back the Merry Pranksters, but instead of promoting psychedelic drugs, they will promote the decorporatization of America.
Peace.
[1] http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCv.SPR1886.html
[2] http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/hinkley213.htm
In an age when it’s not only necessary to think outside the box but to reduce the box to kindling, a paralysis has gripped the Beltway as our leaders try to figure out if we’re in a box, to begin with, and, if so, how big the box is, what color is it, and is it really necessary to think outside the box when we could easily build an addition, provided we could get the financing necessary to begin construction.
Meanwhile, the Left loudly proclaims that, “Something must be done! Systemic change is needed; reform is called for!” And, there it ends as the Left fragments into a spray of mini issues--gay rights, women’s rights, peace, the environment, animal liberation, universal health care—each droplet suspended in space independent of the others. Each of these issues is important, but each is made all the more difficult because we are confronting a system that is decayed and corrupt, and until this tottering superstructure is addressed, the above issues will simply limp along without any satisfactory resolutions.
The counterrevolution began by Ronald Reagan has run out of steam. Now, we must regain the ground we lost. It’s time for something totally off the wall, something bazaar, a wild cockamamie idea so screwed up it just might work.
My suggestion is a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that strips our corporations of their personhood. Such an amendment would not be a solution; it would be a point of departure. The net effect would be that our corporations would have no rights; they would only have privileges granted them by the state.
Today, such an amendment stands a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing. However, as our economy continues to tank, and as Wall Street bankers continue to get trillions in bailouts while the disempowered class in America, which increasingly includes the Middle Class, continues to slip down the economic ladder, the temperature in Hell is starting to fall.
Besides, think of the fun we could have with such a movement!
The drive for a 28th Amendment would serve two immediate purposes.
Dissatisfaction in America is badly fragmented. We are so isolated in our discontent, which is why we seek escape in Sanford’s infidelity and Michael Jackson’s canonization. The drive for a 28th “Amendment could well be the lightening rod that would unify this discontent into a viable movement.
The radical left has a millstone hanging around its, neck: a vocabulary straight out of the nineteenth century that, in today’s world, is devoid of both meaning and relevance.
The struggle is no longer between capital and labor.
Capitalism is dead; it’s been dead for decades. A CEO is not a capitalist; he is an employee. A capitalist grew capital by the sweat of his brow and the blackness of his soul. A CEO plays without other people’s capital while absorbing as much of it as he can through executive salaries, bonuses and stock options. A CEO's soul is a bland beige.
We no longer have a working class; we have a dispossessed class that grows larger every day. It is an inclusive class claiming as it members not only workers but the poor, the working poor, undocumented immigrants, the unemployed, the employed who are squeezed for three hours of productivity for one hour’s pay and, increasingly, the middle class. It is just waiting to be mobilized by the right issue.
If there is to be any systemic change in the country, the corporation must be demonized, and the movement for a 28th Amendment would present the perfect platform from which to do just that. Let’s face it, the corporation is an anachronism, a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness and is in the process of devouring itself as it takes the country down with it. That is the box that must be reduced to kindling! The corporation served its purpose; it gave us all sorts of nice toys and technological advances, many of which are destroying the earth, but it’s time it was put out to pasture before it ruins us completely.
The amendment would raise the possibility of doing something about our corrupt Congress. Cynics tell us Washington D.C. is an open septic tank overflowing with the raw sewage of corruption. In truth, it is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Granted, raw sewage is pumped into the beltway via open trenches that run from the nation’s power centers. But, instead of pouring into the Capitol, it is first pumped into the K Street Sewage Treatment Plant. There it is sanitized and deodorized before being piped into the Halls of Congress disguised as campaign contributions. It is still sewage, but, it smells sweeter.
The short answer to this mess is public funding of election campaigns. On the surface it seems to offer much. By freeing the congress from the multiple snares of corporate purse strings, Congress might start representing the public interest. As it stands now, every time an elected official speaks of our national interests or national security, “national” is simply a code word for “corporate”. The system is gamed to minimize public influence on policy.
Let us assume that Congress was struck blind on the road to Damascus and was seized with such an intense desire to serve to the public interest that a campaign reform bill was actually passed and was signed into law.
Before the ink was even dry on the bill, our corporatist oligarchy would go weeping to the nearest federal court claiming that the bill violated its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Money talks, and if our corporate patrons aren’t allowed to speak through their wallets, they are being unconstitutionally silenced.
The argument would win the day, because under our current system, a corporation is a person.
People assume that corporate personhood was the result of a Supreme Court decision. In truth, the court made no such decision. The question of personhood arose when the court considered an appeal[1] of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The focus of the case was the taxation of railroad properties. As the case worked its way through the lower courts, the question of whether corporations were persons protected by the 14th Amendment was argued.
However, before oral arguments began before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.”
Because formal arguments had not begun, Waite’s remark was a non-binding obiter dictum that had no bearing on the outcome of the case. The question of corporate personhood was never mentioned in the court’s written decision. The court limited its decision to the question of taxing corporate property.
However, the court clerk, when writing the header, or summary, of the case stated that, “defendant corporations are persons…”
Thus, was corporate personhood born.
The principle is so engrained in legal precedence that a judicial reversal is virtually impossible. That is why only a constitutional amendment could solve the problem.
But, why stop at stripping corporations of their personhood. It is not enough to pump out the sewage. We have to disinfect the place as well.
For twenty-three years, Robert Hinkley[2] was a corporate attorney. He left corporate practice because he’d become convinced that corporate law makes it impossible for corporations to behave responsibility. The law says that a corporation has but one obligation, and that is to make money for its shareholders. Consequently, shareholders could sue the corporation were it to behave responsibly by paying its workers a living wage if this ate into shareholder dividends. Hinkley’s proposal is to change corporate law to read:
The duty of directors henceforth shall be to make money for the shareholders, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, dignity of employees and the welfare of the community in which the company operates.
Let's add this wording to our 28th Amendment!
That our amendment would raise some corporate hackles is an understatement. Already, I hear lamentations about the sanctity of private property, etc. However, a very compelling argument could be made that the ownership of corporate property is so diffused amongst shareholders that it is a misnomer to call it private property. Since corporate property exists at the pleasure of the State through the granting of a corporate charter, it is more akin to quasi-public property than private property.
I admit this is heresy, but given rate at which corporations are eating us alive, I think some healthy heresy is called for.
This brings us back, in a full circle, to our corrupted Congress. If corporations were stripped of their personhood, a campaign finance reform bill that eliminated corporate money from the electoral process would be better protected from a court challenge. There is no guarantee this would clean up the system. All it would do is increase the probability that it would be cleaner than it currently is.
Granted, the idea of a 28th Amendment sits way out there in the foggy fringe, but if our Neocon colleagues taught us anything, it is that today’s fringe is tomorrow’s mainstream.
I see the makings of wonderful guerilla campaign as young people spray paint the number “28” of walls and signs; I see pin and bumper stickers sporting the number “28” along with a line of T-shirts and hoodies displaying the same. This is a movement that could cut across class, gender and ethnic divisions because if there is one thing unifying America, it is our economic misery. And if nothing else, the drive for a 28th Amendment would make our oligarchs and plutocrats sweat. That, alone, would make the effort worthwhile.
Sure, it looks hopeless, but as I.F. Stone wrote:
The only fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.
It’s time to bring back the Merry Pranksters, but instead of promoting psychedelic drugs, they will promote the decorporatization of America.
Peace.
[1] http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCv.SPR1886.html
[2] http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/hinkley213.htm
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Theology of Gravity
There is no “law of gravity; there is only a Theology of Gravity as those of us who are followers of the true Creator of the Universe, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), know.
This “law of gravity” nonsense is a Vatican plot designed to undercut the one true faith, Pastafarianism. Evolution and Intelligent Design serve the same purpose. Christianity sweats as Pastafarianism swells in the heat of its slightly salted cooking water.
The truth is that the universe was created by FSM’s Noodly Appendages. "Gravity" is nothing more than these same Appendages that keep us from flying into orbit by maintaining a gentle pressure on the tops of our heads.
Tragically, this explains why we’re seeing more and more madness in the world.
After he created man out of two tomatoes and a tablespoon of basil, the FSM has no trouble keeping everyone in place with his Noodly Appendages, with plenty to spare for future generations.
Unfortunately, the population explosion that began in the nineteenth century outstripped his Appendages. He simply didn’t have enough to keep everyone in place 24/7.
He has solved this problem by flipping his Appendages from head to head. He’s so fast that his Appendage only vacates a given head for a nanosecond, which is why the Earth isn't circled by a belt of orbiting human beings.
However, that nanosecond is just enough time to allow the brain to slam against the top of the cranium. Repeated collisions between brain and cranium mean that everybody on earth is crazy.
Except for the elect.
Like all organized religions, Pastafarianism has its elite, those of us who are Knights in the Order of Al Dente. This is an honor reserved for pirates who are the only ones to whom the FSM speaks. While I never sailed under the Jolly Roger, I did work in insurance, which is close enough.
Many people believe that the device I wear in my left ear is a hearing aid. They are wrong; it is a radio receiver that keeps me in contact with the Martians. You see, just before his Appendage leaves a head, it gives an orgasmic throb. The Martians have the angle to see this throb, so as soon as our receivers beep, we Al Dentians cry “Arghhh!” and slap the tops of our heads as hard as we can. The force of the blow keeps the brain in place until the Appendage can return.
Now, one would think that everyone who worked on Wall Street and the Beltway would be Knights of the Order of Al Dente. But, it’s not enough to be a pirate; one has to be a believer, as well. Wall Street believes in Mammon and the Beltway believes in the God of Eternal Strife and Slaughter. This really pisses FSM off, so their collective brains spend a lot more time smashing into their collective craniums, which goes a long way towards explaining the state of the world and the economy.
There is hope! If you ever see an elderly gentleman with a “hearing aid” in his ear slapping his head and crying “Arghhh!” do the same. If you’re quick enough, it might keep you relatively sane.
This “law of gravity” nonsense is a Vatican plot designed to undercut the one true faith, Pastafarianism. Evolution and Intelligent Design serve the same purpose. Christianity sweats as Pastafarianism swells in the heat of its slightly salted cooking water.
The truth is that the universe was created by FSM’s Noodly Appendages. "Gravity" is nothing more than these same Appendages that keep us from flying into orbit by maintaining a gentle pressure on the tops of our heads.
Tragically, this explains why we’re seeing more and more madness in the world.
After he created man out of two tomatoes and a tablespoon of basil, the FSM has no trouble keeping everyone in place with his Noodly Appendages, with plenty to spare for future generations.
Unfortunately, the population explosion that began in the nineteenth century outstripped his Appendages. He simply didn’t have enough to keep everyone in place 24/7.
He has solved this problem by flipping his Appendages from head to head. He’s so fast that his Appendage only vacates a given head for a nanosecond, which is why the Earth isn't circled by a belt of orbiting human beings.
However, that nanosecond is just enough time to allow the brain to slam against the top of the cranium. Repeated collisions between brain and cranium mean that everybody on earth is crazy.
Except for the elect.
Like all organized religions, Pastafarianism has its elite, those of us who are Knights in the Order of Al Dente. This is an honor reserved for pirates who are the only ones to whom the FSM speaks. While I never sailed under the Jolly Roger, I did work in insurance, which is close enough.
Many people believe that the device I wear in my left ear is a hearing aid. They are wrong; it is a radio receiver that keeps me in contact with the Martians. You see, just before his Appendage leaves a head, it gives an orgasmic throb. The Martians have the angle to see this throb, so as soon as our receivers beep, we Al Dentians cry “Arghhh!” and slap the tops of our heads as hard as we can. The force of the blow keeps the brain in place until the Appendage can return.
Now, one would think that everyone who worked on Wall Street and the Beltway would be Knights of the Order of Al Dente. But, it’s not enough to be a pirate; one has to be a believer, as well. Wall Street believes in Mammon and the Beltway believes in the God of Eternal Strife and Slaughter. This really pisses FSM off, so their collective brains spend a lot more time smashing into their collective craniums, which goes a long way towards explaining the state of the world and the economy.
There is hope! If you ever see an elderly gentleman with a “hearing aid” in his ear slapping his head and crying “Arghhh!” do the same. If you’re quick enough, it might keep you relatively sane.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
