Karma and Getting it Right
Twelve hours out of Mackinaw City stopped in a bar to have a brew
Met a girl and we had a few drinks and I told her what I'd decided to do
She looked out the window a long long moment then she looked into my eyes
She didn't have to say a thing, I knew what she was thinkin'
I was never prone to supporting panhandlers. But I have fairly routinely bought copies of "Real Change," the newsletter proffered by street folks downtown ($1: they might make 65c per sale). Occasionally more than one copy.
I awoke last night with the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
But I find I am reaching into my pocket a lot more frequently these days. At times even, when I can get a little outside of my narcissism, watching and preparing for the opportunity. Those prior excuses (this isn't going for food, your aggressiveness offends me, don't encourage them, I was burned by a fake bus-ticket story before, etc.) somehow have grown lame when it comes to the concept of folks despairing enough to ask for help. For whatever reason.
Not that I don't still semi-stoically walk by many opportunities for charity - persons in need of help are not hard to find downtown.
But in the spirit of and due to a key line from one of my favorite tunes of all time, i.e.,
What to leave in, what to leave out
Our new President seems to be facing on many levels what I believe are at least metaphorically similar dilemmas.
And my concerns are pretty small-change of course compared to "that guy" when it comes to an astonishing assignment in deciding what's in and what's out and "so much more to think about."
Nevertheless, I think this critique is well in order:
Only weeks ago, the political world was buzzing about a "team of rivals." America was told that finally, after years of yes-men running the government, we were getting a president who would follow President Abraham Lincoln's lead, fill his administration with varying viewpoints, and glean empirically sound policy from the clash of ideas. Little did we know that "team of rivals" was what George Orwell calls "newspeak": an empty slogan "claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts."
Obama's national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq war opponent. The president has not only retained President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, but also 150 other Bush Pentagon appointees. The only "rivalry" is between those who back increasing the already bloated defense budget by an absurd amount and those who aim to boost it by a ludicrous amount.
Of course, that lockstep uniformity pales in comparison to the White House's economic team - a squad of corporate lackeys disguised as public servants.
At the top is Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama's National Economic Council. As President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary in the late 1990s, Summers worked with his deputy, Timothy Geithner (now Obama's Treasury secretary), and Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel (now Obama's chief of staff) to champion job-killing trade deals and deregulation that Obama Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg helped shepherd through Congress as a Republican senator. Now, this pinstriped band of brothers is proposing a "cash for trash" scheme that would force the public to guarantee the financial industry's bad loans. It's another ploy "to hand taxpayer dollars to the banks through a variety of complex mechanisms," says economist Dean Baker - and noticeably absent is anything even resembling a "rival" voice inside the White House.
That's not an oversight. From former federal officials like Robert Reich and Brooksley Born, to Nobel prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to business leaders like Leo Hindery Jr., there's no shortage of qualified experts who have challenged market fundamentalism. But they have been barred from an administration focused on ideological purity. In Hindery's case, the blacklisting was explicit. Despite this venture capitalist establishing a well-respected think tank and serving as a top economic adviser to Obama's campaign, Politico.com reports that "Obama's aides appear never to have taken his bid (for an administration post) seriously." Why? Because he "set himself up in opposition" to Wall Street's agenda.
The anecdote highlights how, regardless of election hoopla, Washington is the same one-party town it always has been - controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by Kleptocrats (i.e., thieves). Their ties to money make them the undead zombies in the slash-and-burn horror flick that is American politics: No matter how many times their discredited theologies are stabbed, torched and shot down by verifiable failure, their careers cannot be killed. Somehow, these political immortals are allowed to mindlessly lunge forward, never answering to rivals - even if that rival is the president himself.
Remember, while Obama said he wants to slash "billions of dollars in wasteful spending" at the Pentagon, his national security team is demanding a $40 billion increase in defense spending (evidently, the "ludicrous" faction got its way). Obama also said he wants to crack down on the financial industry, strengthen laws encouraging the government to purchase American goods, and transform trade policy. Yet, his economic team is not just promising to support more bank bailouts, but also to weaken "Buy America" statutes and make sure new legislation "doesn't signal a change in our overall stance on trade," according to the president's spokesman.
Indeed, if an authentic "rivalry" were going to erupt, it would have been between Obama's promises and his team of zombies. Unfortunately, the latter seems to have won before the competition even started.
It is ever-so-obvious that those who actually care about our nation and the constitution and personal rights at it's heart (vs. limbaugh lemming-sheep and captive unjournalists) must if anything jack up our agitation and circulation of contrarian works as never before. Aside from the rare ones like Maddow, Greenwald, Froomkin, and an occasional Nobel prize winner (!), who speaks for us better than us?
Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run!
Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone
Stood alone on a mountain top, starin' out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin' and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin'
This time let's get it right! All of us, together.
I am suffering some internal lashing for having passed by a downtown sidewalk scene this afternoon that included at least three (male) police officers and a woman being detained. As I approached, what caught my attention was the backpack and assorted materials being casually explored on the sidewalk. It was only as I looked back that I realized that the woman was handcuffed. That shocked me, and my inner voice says I should have backed up and calmly asked the cops about the circumstances, and I have regretted ever since that I did not. If I could have.
May I do better next time.
Met a girl and we had a few drinks and I told her what I'd decided to do
She looked out the window a long long moment then she looked into my eyes
She didn't have to say a thing, I knew what she was thinkin'
I was never prone to supporting panhandlers. But I have fairly routinely bought copies of "Real Change," the newsletter proffered by street folks downtown ($1: they might make 65c per sale). Occasionally more than one copy.
I awoke last night with the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
But I find I am reaching into my pocket a lot more frequently these days. At times even, when I can get a little outside of my narcissism, watching and preparing for the opportunity. Those prior excuses (this isn't going for food, your aggressiveness offends me, don't encourage them, I was burned by a fake bus-ticket story before, etc.) somehow have grown lame when it comes to the concept of folks despairing enough to ask for help. For whatever reason.
Not that I don't still semi-stoically walk by many opportunities for charity - persons in need of help are not hard to find downtown.
But in the spirit of and due to a key line from one of my favorite tunes of all time, i.e.,
What to leave in, what to leave out
Our new President seems to be facing on many levels what I believe are at least metaphorically similar dilemmas.
And my concerns are pretty small-change of course compared to "that guy" when it comes to an astonishing assignment in deciding what's in and what's out and "so much more to think about."
Nevertheless, I think this critique is well in order:
Only weeks ago, the political world was buzzing about a "team of rivals." America was told that finally, after years of yes-men running the government, we were getting a president who would follow President Abraham Lincoln's lead, fill his administration with varying viewpoints, and glean empirically sound policy from the clash of ideas. Little did we know that "team of rivals" was what George Orwell calls "newspeak": an empty slogan "claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts."
Obama's national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq war opponent. The president has not only retained President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, but also 150 other Bush Pentagon appointees. The only "rivalry" is between those who back increasing the already bloated defense budget by an absurd amount and those who aim to boost it by a ludicrous amount.
Of course, that lockstep uniformity pales in comparison to the White House's economic team - a squad of corporate lackeys disguised as public servants.
At the top is Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama's National Economic Council. As President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary in the late 1990s, Summers worked with his deputy, Timothy Geithner (now Obama's Treasury secretary), and Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel (now Obama's chief of staff) to champion job-killing trade deals and deregulation that Obama Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg helped shepherd through Congress as a Republican senator. Now, this pinstriped band of brothers is proposing a "cash for trash" scheme that would force the public to guarantee the financial industry's bad loans. It's another ploy "to hand taxpayer dollars to the banks through a variety of complex mechanisms," says economist Dean Baker - and noticeably absent is anything even resembling a "rival" voice inside the White House.
That's not an oversight. From former federal officials like Robert Reich and Brooksley Born, to Nobel prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to business leaders like Leo Hindery Jr., there's no shortage of qualified experts who have challenged market fundamentalism. But they have been barred from an administration focused on ideological purity. In Hindery's case, the blacklisting was explicit. Despite this venture capitalist establishing a well-respected think tank and serving as a top economic adviser to Obama's campaign, Politico.com reports that "Obama's aides appear never to have taken his bid (for an administration post) seriously." Why? Because he "set himself up in opposition" to Wall Street's agenda.
The anecdote highlights how, regardless of election hoopla, Washington is the same one-party town it always has been - controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by Kleptocrats (i.e., thieves). Their ties to money make them the undead zombies in the slash-and-burn horror flick that is American politics: No matter how many times their discredited theologies are stabbed, torched and shot down by verifiable failure, their careers cannot be killed. Somehow, these political immortals are allowed to mindlessly lunge forward, never answering to rivals - even if that rival is the president himself.
Remember, while Obama said he wants to slash "billions of dollars in wasteful spending" at the Pentagon, his national security team is demanding a $40 billion increase in defense spending (evidently, the "ludicrous" faction got its way). Obama also said he wants to crack down on the financial industry, strengthen laws encouraging the government to purchase American goods, and transform trade policy. Yet, his economic team is not just promising to support more bank bailouts, but also to weaken "Buy America" statutes and make sure new legislation "doesn't signal a change in our overall stance on trade," according to the president's spokesman.
Indeed, if an authentic "rivalry" were going to erupt, it would have been between Obama's promises and his team of zombies. Unfortunately, the latter seems to have won before the competition even started.
It is ever-so-obvious that those who actually care about our nation and the constitution and personal rights at it's heart (vs. limbaugh lemming-sheep and captive unjournalists) must if anything jack up our agitation and circulation of contrarian works as never before. Aside from the rare ones like Maddow, Greenwald, Froomkin, and an occasional Nobel prize winner (!), who speaks for us better than us?
Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run!
Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone
Stood alone on a mountain top, starin' out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin' and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin'
This time let's get it right! All of us, together.
I am suffering some internal lashing for having passed by a downtown sidewalk scene this afternoon that included at least three (male) police officers and a woman being detained. As I approached, what caught my attention was the backpack and assorted materials being casually explored on the sidewalk. It was only as I looked back that I realized that the woman was handcuffed. That shocked me, and my inner voice says I should have backed up and calmly asked the cops about the circumstances, and I have regretted ever since that I did not. If I could have.
May I do better next time.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:14 PM
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