Status Anxiety: Alain De Botton

Episode 1

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3990041308783281409&q=status+anxiety&ei=0k8eSJKVE4XorgLfiY3DAg

Episode 2

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Episode 3

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Recession, Suppression and the Class Question

Like many Americans I'm experiencing Bush fatigue. I'm just sick of bitching about the guy. We all know he's a useless, malevolent douche-slinger, and nobody's positive why he, Cheney, Condi and the gang haven't been Saddam-ed themselves as their death toll places them amongst the elite mass killers of the modern era. There's already been a substantial amount of commentary written about him and his calamitous presidency, and one of the popular themes of this new genre is a range of comparisons to Presidents past. Nixon and Reagan seem to be the two major touchstones, however, I'd like to submit Hoover to the list.

Both executives appeared callous to the needs of the public. Both presided over economic hardship from an icy distance. Both administrations resulted in make-shift shanty towns and tent cities. Hoover used the military to attack homeless Veterans in Washington. Bush leaves veterans on the street to die or in hospital rooms to disintegrate. And I don't want to say Bush might be a transvestite but he was a cheerleader in high school. When failure becomes this ponderous the only response must be defiance.

On April 1, a small grassroots organization of around 1,000 truckers will be striking against the rising cost of diesel. As one driver stated: "Our federal government is subsidizing railroads, airlines, banks and farmers. Meanwhile, we’re being taxed to death." (source)

The strike is largely symbolic and is not expected to result in any significant dip in prices. Yet, it does display two exciting features: 1) it circumvents the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the truckers' trade union, who actually denounces the pending strike for legal reasons, and 2) the event was organized over the internet -- the future of resistance.

Now, I can't let it go unmentioned that this is an election year a time when the fetishized act of voting gets moved to the front of the national conversation. A lot of time and money goes into convincing us that all of our energy needs to be drained into voting, not conservation or community activism, demonstrating or tax resistance. We're supposed to elect someone to solve our problems with their charming, mega-watt smile. The dirtiest little secret of our age is synergic movements against both business and government, such as striking, trump the suggestion of action, like voting, every time.

With everyone treading water it's no wonder at least one other group, the West Coast Dockworkers, is planning to strike this summer. As more and more of us are pulled under we'll see a ground swell of activism. The spirit of resistance might be atrophied from lying coiled beneath the surface, but it won't take long for more workers to slowdown or stop all together. Like in the 1930s, people recognized their reliance on each other and fought against the police (in some cases, like the Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike of 1936, they actually won), launched general strikes which shut down large metropolises like Seattle and San Francisco, and came close to wresting power away from the ownership class until FDR introduced a series of reforms that placated many laborers. And we'll probably see the same type of actions under an Obama or Clinton presidency. Not that I'm a reformophobe. I want people to live better. But let's not lose our radical edge. Let's keep thrusting forward inch by inch, and not settle for what they give us.

The Shape of US Populism (pt. 2)

THE SHAPE OF US POPULISM, Part 2
Long-term effects of the Civil War
By Henry C K Liu

(Part 1: A rich free-market legacy - for some)

The long-term effect of the Civil War on the US economy was to accelerate the development of big business manufacturing in the North initiated by the demands of war production. The shortage of labor created by the war pushed industrialization in the Northeast and the spread of mechanized farming in the Middle West and the opening of new farms and mines in the West, with post-war decommissioned soldiers facing unemployment.

Inflation reached 117% during the war years but wages rose only 43% in the name of patriotic sacrifice, yielding high war-profit margins for corporations. War speculation fueled the rise of the finance sector, causing sharp disparity of income and wealth between financiers and workers hitherto unknown in the US economy.

Protectionism and corporatism
The Republican Party before Lincoln raised tariffs with the Morrill Tariff Act to 47% to protect domestic industries from foreign competition, and after Lincoln to provide revenue to help finance war costs. In 1862, keeping the promise made by the Republican platform of the 1860 election, the Homestead Act had become law. It granted all US residents, citizens or aliens who had declared an intention to become naturalized the right to receive ownership title to 160 acres of free public land after he had lived and worked on it for five years.

From the inception of the United States, there had been a clamor for ever-increasing liberalism in the disposition of public lands. From 1830 onward, free distribution of public lands became a demand of the Free-Soil Party, which saw such distribution as a means of stopping the spread of slavery into the new territories, and the policy was subsequently adopted by the Republican Party in its 1860 platform. The Southern states had been the most vociferous opponents of the homesteading policy, and their ill-fated secession cleared the way for its adoption by the victorious North.

In the arid region west of the Rocky Mountains, 160 acres was generally too little land for a viable farm or range. In these areas, homesteads were instead used for strategic control of scarce resources, especially water, by big business. Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270 million acres of public land were privatized between 1862 and 1964, a total of 10% of all lands in the United States. Much of this land ended up controlled by big business.

The Federal Land Policy Act of 1976 ended homesteading with the recognition that the best use of public lands can only be achieved under government control. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.

In 1862, Congress further promoted agricultural development by passing the Morrill Land-Grant Act to set aside public land in every state for the support of colleges to provide scientific training in agriculture. While this was a populist program, much of the research aided the development of large-scale agribusiness.

The year 1862 also saw the passage of the legislation for government subsidy for building a transcontinental railroad starting from the west in California and the east at Nebraska, which linked up in Utah in 1869. Railroad lines were given public land up to 40 square miles for every mile constructed, to be located in alternative sections on each side of the track. The total federal acreage awarded to railroads exceeded 100 million plus another 50 million acres from the states, adding to an area as large as the state of Texas falling into private hands. The 30 years following the Civil War have been called the railroad age, with a five-fold increase in mileage. There is another meaning for the phrase "the railroad age". It described an era when the government was controlled by the railroads.

Government becomes a ward of big business
The sale of war bonds pushed the passage of the National Bank Act of 1863, which allowed banks of a certain capital minimum to qualify for a Federal charter if they used at least one third of their capital in the purchase of war bonds. In return, the Treasury would give them national bank notes up to the value of 90% of their bond holdings.

The measure was profitable to the banks, which could collect interest on their capital form the treasury and simultaneously lend out the bank notes at higher interest rates. Since the quantity of bank notes in circulation was limited by the war bond purchases, the effect was a stable paper currency. The influence of banks on government policy increased to change the dynamics of national politics.

Final defeat of Southern agrarianism
Civil War era legislative commitments laid the groundwork for rapid economic expansion of the US economy via the private sector in the later decades of the 19th century. By attempting to secede from the Union to preserve its agrarian economy, the agricultural South brought about the final defeat of the agrarian principles she sought to protect and assured the final victory of industrialism based on the centralized ideals of Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) and the economic nationalism of Henry Clay (1777-1853), reigning triumphant over the popular democracy of Thomas Jefferson (president 1801-09) and the populist politics of Andrew Jackson (president 1829-37).

The post-war South came under the rule of the "Bourbons", the mercantile elite of the Confederacy who shared more affinity with Northern moneyed interests than with the plantation aristocracy of the old South. The pejorative term was analogous to the restored bourgeois French monarchists after the fall of Napoleon. The Southern Bourbons adopted a laissez faire economic policy, reduce taxes and cut public spending on education and social welfare. Their ill-considered policies revived the collapsed Southern economy minimally in the short term but condemned the South to the fate of an underdeveloped region for more than a century.

After the war, with the abolition of slavery, cotton production in the South increased dramatically, doubling the size of the pre-war crop and doubling again by 1914. This historical fact is often ignored by neo-liberal economists who insist that high wages depress growth. New plantations worked by small tenant farmers were established in Arkansas and Texas while the worn-out soil from single crop planting in Georgia and South Carolina was revived with fertilizers. The average white tenant farm had 84 acres while the average newly-freed former slave tenant farm was less than half in size.

Still, the expansion of cotton growing did not bring prosperity to the small tenant growers, black or white, as they were perpetually in debt to cotton merchants in the North, who would charge interest at rates up to 40%. The merchants in turn were exploited by large wholesale houses linked to British capital. The debt economy not only drained wealth from the South to the North, it also prevented the development of a diversified agriculture in the South. Creditors in the North insisted on cotton as the only exportable cash crop and the surplus of low-wage Southern labor prevented any market incentive for industrialization.

Many Southerners realized the need to develop industry but the South had to depend for capital on the North, which preferred to keep industry up there and to use the South as a source of raw material. As a result, even the profit from industrialization of raw material production did not stay in the South.

Moreover, typical of conditions of the early phases of industrialization, wages stayed low, working hours were long and working conditions were unbearable in both the South and the North. Workers, often all members of a family, including women and children, were required to routinely work 75-hour weeks at below living wages. Children under 16 constituted over 30% of the work force. Even though corporate profit remained consistently high, wages and benefits stayed low and working condition inhumane, justified by the need to compete with more advanced foreign factories. Nothing was done to correct the situation until the Great Depression, which brought into being progressive New Deal legislation of the 1930s.

By the late 1880s, the small farmers of the South and the West began to resist the oppression of the landlords, the industrialists and the financiers. They wanted increased government spending on education, infrastructure and social welfare.

More...

Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class

Narrated by Ed Asner

Based on the forthcoming book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows.

Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV's disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants -- stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.

Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television's often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people.

Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz, (City University of New York); Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich; Herman Gray (University of California-Santa Cruz); Robin Kelley (Columbia University); Pepi Leistyna (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Michael Zweig (State University of New York-Stony Brook). Also with Arlene Davila, Susan Douglas, Bambi Haggins, Lisa Henderson, and Andrea Press.

A humble reminder about the Constitution

There's a little "trick" interviewers like to play, most recently Stephen Colbert, on right-wingers advocating the display of the Ten Commandments in public spaces. They ask these nearsighted evangelicals to simply name them. All ten. It's a fair enough question. If these precepts are literally gospel truth you shouldn't have too much trouble memorizing them before shopping them around to everyone else. Yet, as Colbert revealed, they can't do it. The same goes with politicians and the Constitution. If a candidate evokes our Nation's most esteemed document in an interview or on the campaign trail one of the first questions that should be asked is can you name the Bill of Rights? I doubt if McCain or Romney could. Obama and Clinton probably, although I doubt if they believe in them. I guess that's the general difference between the two parties in a nutshell. The majority of Democrats pay lip service to the Constitution. The majority of Republicans do not.

But this is a new phenomenon, right? If we take a trip in the way-back machine we'd find a true reverence for the Constitution. Or will we? Was Woodrow Wilson worshiping at the feet of the first amendment when he championed the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act? Or did FDR embody personal freedom when he interned the nation's Japanese-American population (but not Germans or Italians)? How about our third President, John Adams, who, out of paranoia over Irish Immigration and the French Revolution, passed the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798? These are some of the most famous examples, but there are vulgar violations through out history, often committed without remorse.

In fact, the Bill of Rights was a controversial addition to the Constitution in the first place. Alexander Hamilton opposed it saying the Constitution was enough and did not restrict anyone's freedom. But the people fought for its inclusion. Maybe that's why those first amendments have been so flexible in the minds of our leaders. The body of the Constitution, which defines governmental powers, inspires a little more obedience. Freedom of speech and assembly are beautiful concepts with pretty words, but when the Constitution grants the Congress the power to tax or to honor voluntary contracts or to suspend habeas corpus these passages by comparison are divine and immutable.

It was in the interest of the Framers -- white, land-and-slave-owning rich men -- to first liberate themselves from King George then create a solid federal government in order to secure foreign investment. Madison and Monroe, for example, wanted to buy land from the Indians but didn't possess the start-up capital. No foreign investors, such as France, wanted to take the risk of lending money because no mechanism like a judicial branch existed to ensure the cash would be returned. But the Founders couldn't do it alone. They needed to acclimate the middle class to there revolution. They needed soldiers and a buffer from the property-less poor who had carried on a protracted campaign of rebellion against our ruling class. Their solution was to include language of liberty, equality and protection.

Even a cursory glance tells you they didn't mean it. The wealthy doesn't want equality, especially during the time of the Constitution's writing. Black men were property, Indians were something less than human and so were women. You couldn't vote unless you had property which means the interest of renters were rarely represented.

This is why the Constitution provides for a republic and not a democracy. Madison distanced the decision-making powers from the people after looking at how uppity we get when charged exorbitant prices or denied paper money. Madison wrote:

"In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body."

It is obvious who the minority was, and Madison along with many of the Founding Fathers, didn't have any use for the functions of democracy with its system of discussion, proposal, counter-proposal, decision and dissent. They preferred an electoral college and representation of the remaining number of men who were allowed to participate in the system.

It took centuries of blood to enjoy the luxuries of today. The Bill of Rights set the standard and we have yet to achieve its ideals. A great companion to the Constitution is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The language of the Constitution may have been insincere but it remains a terrific destination. Remember, no piece of paper gave you your rights, no matter how many times you're told just that in the year to come.

See also:
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Wealthy Human Rights Abusers Welcomed in Britain by a Rich Octogenarian in a Red Hat

BBC online news at 2.30 pm today reported:

"King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has been welcomed ceremonially to Britain by the Queen . . . The Queen greeted him on Horseguard's Parade at the start of his first visit to the UK in 20 years . . . Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Minister for the Middle East Kim Howells joined dignitaries to welcome the king as he arrived at the central London parade ground with the Prince of Wales".

Nothing wrong with this you may think; perfectly normal high level diplomacy that goes on, week-in, week-out, without comment. That is until you recall the words of Gordon Brown at the Labour Party Conference just over a month ago. Speaking of dictatorial regimes, the prime minister said: "A message should go out to anyone facing persecution, anywhere from Burma and Zimbabwe: human rights are universal and no injustice can last forever."

By comparison Saudi Arabia is arguably a far worse human right abuser than the ruling juntas in Burma and Zimbabwe. So what's going on here? Why is the British ruling elite kowtowing to some of the world's worst human rights abusers?

Well, perhaps human rights activist Peter Tatchell hits the nail on the head when he says: "The Killer King''s visit is about business, very big business. And under Labour, as with their Conservative predecessors, money-making trumps human rights every time."

Mr Brown and Mrs Windsor, like the true representatives of British capitalism plc that they are, will grovel in front of King Abdullah and his hangers on knowing full well that in Saudi Arabia people are detained and tortured without trial, that gays are beheaded, that women who commit adultery are executed, that trade unions and non-muslim religions are proscribed and that the death penalty awaits those alleged to be guilty of a hundred "crimes".

Of course, Saudi Arabia has a lot of what Zimbabwe has not - namely oil. It is also a big purchaser of British weaponry, a very big purchaser, and where there are mega profits to be had you can bet your bottom dollar those human rights abuses can be quietly brushed under the carpet. Brown might honestly hate what he is doing, but he's "batting for Britain" here. He simply has to bite his lip because his job as the front man for the executive of British capitalism is to represent the interests of big business.

As Johann Hari wrote in yesterday's Guardian: "The truth is that the British Government – and all Western societies – are so addicted to Saudi Arabia's oil that they feel they can't speak back. They are terrified of seeing the petrol that lubricates our economy (or the arms deals that butter it) being turned off, as it was in 1973 oil crisis."

And with this in mind you begin to appreciate why, in December 2006, the Labour government shut down a Serious Fraud Office investigation into the £40 billion al-Yamamah arms deals, which purportedly involved backhanders of £1 billion being paid to Saudi government representatives.

Again, last month the Saudis arranged to buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter planes from Britain at a cost of almost £4.5 billion - the biggest export order yet for the aircraft, and a lot of that is sheer profits, and if you want to stay in power, if you want big business supporting your election campaigns, then you shut your mouth and don't mess with those profits.

So while the human rights campaigners demonstrate and newspaper columnists kick off about more Labour Party hypocrisy, the truth is that this is the business world functioning normally; this is what it does.

And of course, chumming it with fascists, dictators, state terrorists and human rights abusers is nothing new. Blair had a very close working relationship with the leader of the world's number one rogue state George W Bush. Margaret Thatcher thought the moon shone out of General Pinochet's arse.

Go back in time and we find Churchill saying this of Hitler's coming to power: 'The story of that struggle, cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy conciliate or overcome, all the authority of resistances which barred his path'.

And commenting on Spain in 1937, Churchill, Brigadier Packenham Walsh, said "Winston says at heart he is for Franco'".

And, Edward VIII, after giving up the throne to marry divorced American Wallace Simpson in 1937, visited Germany and met Hitler, voicing admiration for his policies. He once remarked while on a visit to the USA: "It would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were overthrown."

Even the late Queen Mum, sending a copy of Mein Kampf to a friend in the pre-war years, commented: "Even a skip through gives a good idea of his obvious sincerity."

If you want to get to the core of the problem then campaign to abolish the damned profit system. Don't whinge about the flies hovering about the shit - get rid of the damned turd. At the end of the day big business, profits and class privilege go hand in hand with corruption, hypocrisy and human rights abuses.

John Bissett

Nickel and Dimed from The American Ruling Class

Brainwashing is easy

The government's corrupt - get over it

Everybody seems so astonished at the corruption of this administration - but not me, not anymore. Take a look at where they all got their start.

Condi: she's switched giant firms more times than Van Halen switched lead singers.
Dick Cheney: this guy helmed Halliburton, a company that's not exactly known for their charitable nature.
And, of course, Dubya: Texas oil man through and through.

And when they're elected into office guess what they do. Surprise! They protect their interests at our expense. The only thing that's startling is why anyone thought they'd take care of us in the first place.

The trend has been to pluck people out of the business world and install them in positions of immense power. To paraphrase an old addage - you can take the man out of the business but you can't take the business out of the man.

These people probably started out their lives as good, decent folk, but they have been corporatized. I can't help but think about how bloodless they had to be in order to achieve their status. So when they strike out as public servants it's no wonder they treat government like a business.

That's how we get cronyism, no bid contracts and a complete lack of accountability. This is how a corporation functions, not a government. It's all about the bottom line, if someone or something is a casualty to profits lay them off. This can be said of the homeless whose numbers are rising and are politically worthless.

Accountability (or the absence thereof) seems to be the biggest carry-over from corporate life. Nobody at the top of the power ladder bows to any man. We have no say as to who will be the next CEO of Exxon Mobile or if Wal-mart will bust up another union. This, in theory, is the antithesis of government. Government exists solely to be accountable to the people, we're supposed to be the overseers, the fourth branch of government, and place our leaders' feet to the fire. How can that happen when the most important decisions made on our behalf happen in secret?

The obvious, yet softly-uttered, solution to this problem is to develop an adversarial relationship between government and business. I've said this once and I'll say it again, this is attainable by sending members of the lower classes to Washington. Do you really think the upper classes can offer better leaders than the middle and lower classes? If so, take a look at President Bush and just think of all the people you pass in a single day who're smarter than the most powerful man in the world.