“Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”
By David Glenn Cox

The other night it was late and I couldn’t sleep. I was cruising the Internet looking for entertainment when I came across a website that offered only “classic” entertainment. I’ve always been a fan of old movies, even silent movies, because what they lack in special effects and computer-generated graphics is made up for by plot and story lines.

The movie “Key Largo” had just come on and I hadn’t seen that film in forever. The film stared Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Lionel Barrymore. Robinson played a counterfeiter and he and his gang had taken over a resort hotel during a hurricane.

Through dialog and acting ability you quickly discerned that the movie wasn’t about the hotel or the storm but about courage. Moral courage, physical courage, actual courage and hypothetical courage. Bogart was a former war hero who was thought to be a coward for refusing to fight Robinson. Robinson’s courage came from his gun and his gang. A tree crashes through a window and Robinson jumps and asks, “How bad can these storms get?” Barrymore begins to tell tales of storms and waves killing hundreds and just by the subtle looks on Robinson’s face you can see that his courage is failing him. Robinson’s alcoholic girlfriend needs a drink because her courage comes from a bottle.

The plot twists and turns as the storm raises in intensity; you never know for sure what will happen next. It was a hell of an entertaining film. Now it appears the genre of the movie with a plot is dead. I began to think of my favorite films, "Twelve Angry Men," "Treasure of Sierra Madre," "Gone with the Wind," "The General," and one that might surprise you, "The Wizard of Oz." For a film going on seventy-years-old it still has a lot to offer. The scenery, the costumes and songs, and above all the acting, still captivates. Yet it was a movie with a back-story and a plot. A little girl grappling with growing up and the questions that we all ask ourselves. Am I smart enough and loving enough or brave enough?

That got me to thinking about the Academy Awards and the new era of modern filmmaking. It is obvious to me at fifty-three years of age that I’m about forty years too old to go to the movies. Disney studios recently purchased Marvel Comics and their catalog of superhero stories with the intention of moving their core demographic to teenage boys.

I can’t afford to go to the movies anyway, so the movies I do watch, think three-corner hat with a patch over one eye and a parrot on my shoulder. I didn’t see all the Oscar winners but the few that I did see helped to convince me that writing screen plays is a dying art, like barrel making. I decided to come up with my own movie awards and I based them on the solid foundation that “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is the worst film ever made.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/112508/santa-cla...

I was one of the unfortunate nine-year-olds who conned my parents into giving me seventy-five cents for that movie ticket, popcorn and a drink. Even at nine I remember leaving the theater thinking, “Man, did that movie suck or what?” So, in having seen the worst movie ever made, I will use it as a basis for my Ralph awards. If a movie makes you ralph like a drunken frat boy, it deserves a Ralph. “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is five Ralphs, the worst score possible.

Now, before you get upset at my choices and start calling me names, understand that the basis for a Ralph is a story lacking credibility, over-dependence on special effects in lieu of plot, and just an otherwise dumb premise.

Best Picture from an idea created by a child’s toy designed for prepubescent boys.

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Giant robots return to earth to do battle because they discover the lack of intelligent life on Earth, especially in movie theaters.

{3 Ralphs}

Best Picture taken from a heavy metal song by a rock artist who once bit the head off of a bat.

“Ironman,” staring Explosions and more explosions! Explosions gave a strong performance, and even when you thought that there was nothing left to break, shoot or damage, you’re in for a big finish. So exciting that I could hardly put my transformer down. Great performances by pure good and pure evil, I’m waiting for the director’s cut, now available in two dimensions.

{2 Ralphs}

Best Picture from a great director, which missed completely.

“Inglorious Basterds.” I realize that this isn’t a popular choice, but I was traumatized by this film one night. I wanted to stop watching but couldn’t until I figured out if they were serious or putting me on. I love Quentin Tarantino, I loved “Pulp Fiction” and thought it was a great movie, but this was no “Pulp Fiction.” This was Ralph reality. Look, I loved Willie Mays, too, but even he struck out and dropped the ball sometimes. Look for Explosion's cameo in the closing scene.

{2 Ralphs}

Our special Aren’t Rich White People Wonderful Award goes out to “The Blind Side.”

"The Blind Side" depicts the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Tuohys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential.

Mr. Tuohy owns a string of fast food restaurants, lives his life in a mansion and drives expensive cars. The Tuohys send their children to expensive, lily-white private schools and they never stop to question why there are so many Michael Ohers in their town. Mrs. Tuohy, played by Sandra Bullock, is the tough-minded, white woman who isn’t afraid of the ghetto Negroes, no matter how menacing they appear to be. The Tuohys show that with love, kindness, and private tutors, that even a poor black child can excel academically.

They never stop to consider that maybe if they paid a little higher taxes or better wages that perhaps they could help hundreds if not thousands of Michaels. If you are a rich white person, it is the feel-good movie of the year. Remember that society can never have too many rich white folks.

{2 Ralphs} for no explosions.

The Best Picture for movies based on black light posters goes to…
The envelope please. Aw, you guessed it, “Avatar.”

Jake is a paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission. He becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. When the Marine wears his full-body robot suit he is somehow no longer paralyzed. I still haven’t figured that one out, but it is a minor point. The blue, nine foot tall, indigenous "Na'vi" don’t like humans, but somehow if they are wearing robot suits, they like them just fine.

It is a little known historical fact that Columbus used to don a leather thong and smear his body with brown dye and wear a native wig to negotiate with the indigenous natives in the Caribbean.

In his orientation Jake is warned that the "Na'vi" are fierce warriors and almost impossible to kill because of a substance in their bones, a naturally occurring carbon fiber. Okay, that’s one Ralph right there! Corporate and military interests seek to rob the Pandorians of their precious element, unobtainium. Unobtainium defies gravity and floats in midair, yet it never blows away or even sways in the wind. Okay, Ralph number two. There was an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle where Bullwinkle, the moose, and Rocky, the flying squirrel, were seeking upsidaisyium; same story, minus the blue folks.

Jake is captured and sentenced to death by the king when Pocahontas, er... um, Neytiri, the king's daughter, says please spare John Smith’s life and I shall teach him our ways and we shall call him Dances with Kevin Costner. The plot takes another interesting turn when the greatest source for unobtainium, those big islands that are floating in the sky all over the place, is found to be under the Na'vi's sacred tree. Sure, that makes sense, the mother lode of the floating element is under the giant tree. In the climactic battle scene these fierce and almost impossible to kill, nine-foot tall blue warriors are slaughtered by the hundreds by space-age attack helicopters.

The brave blue warriors fight back with homemade spears and bows and arrows. I guess they were hard to kill unless you happened to carry a gun with you.

The picture is one long special effect with a movie made around it. It leans heavily on the audience not paying attention to the story or dialog. Just tags of good guys, bad guys and trusting that the audience will be mesmerized by the special effects.

{4 Ralphs}

You Say You Want a Revolution?
By David Glenn Cox


We all want to save the world. Revolutions are relatively easy things to start; what is difficult is to successfully complete them. Most revolutions arise from societal instability, poverty or political upheaval.

The first American Revolution was a tax revolt, rich white men complaining about taxes levied from London. Lost in the American debate was that the taxes were raised to cover the Crown's cost of the French & Indian war. In London the Parliament was dismayed that the American colonists resented paying for the military services of the King’s Army which had protected the colonists' interests. The Crown learned something now well known, Americans want everything but rich Americans resent paying for anything.

The British lost the war, not by troops or cannons, but by the printing press. The taxes imposed on the press and printed goods created a media openly hostile to the interests of the Crown. No revolution can be successful without control of the media.

The second American Revolution was about several interests that, when combined, created a hot intensity that burst into flame. Conflicting mercantile laws compounded the question of states' rights. The Northern states were industrial and heavily populated, as well as the financial center of the country. The Southern states were rural and sparsely populated with an agrarian society. The question of slavery in the South was seen purely as an issue of property rights.

By adding more Senators backed by Northern interests, the Northern states could pass, through the House, legislation detrimental to agrarian interests. If the Northern states could limit the expansion of slavery, the South saw this as an attempt to marginalize and control them, both politically and economically. Most Southerners owned no slaves; they knew only what local politicians told them or what they the read in the local paper. To the average Southerner it appeared the Northern industrial states were trying to rob them of their freedom.

The Bolshevik Revolution, in a country as vast as Russia, involved small groups of intellectuals and masses of followers in a few cities. For the masses there was hunger and widespread unemployment; alternative plans always sound good to the hungry masses.

The Wiemar Republic was a living example of a democracy that could never work. With half a dozen political parties spread across class, religious, ethnic and commercial interests, all parties had to govern together as a coalition which guaranteed that most were unhappy with the outcome and little was accomplished. In 1925 a small nationalist party acquired the failing newspaper “Volkischer Beobacher.” The party filled the paper with nationalist sentiments and how Germany had been mistreated and that the weak Wiemar government would never deliver anything but misery. Despite the party's intimidation of newsstand owners and street corner paperboys, the paper sold poorly, until the economy went into the tank.

The party bought the "Der Angriff" in 1926 and then "Das Reich" and then the official newspaper of the SS, "Das Schwarze Korps" and then something for the intellectuals called "Der Sturmer." The party had effectively blitzed the newspaper marketplace. Now, add the strong-arm sales tactics towards newsstands that didn’t give the publications prominent locations, and the rest, as they say, is history.

By 1933 when the party took control of the government, all these efforts became unnecessary as the press officially came under control of the government. William Shirer, the author of the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," wrote another book titled “Berlin Diary” about his two years, from 1937 to 1939, when he was a CBS correspondent in Berlin.

Shirer witnessed, first hand, the antics and machinations of the third Reich. He was one of the first to recognize that Adolph Hitler was a master theatrical showman. Shirer wrote of Hitler reportedly throwing himself on the floor in a fit of rage, threatening the Czechoslovakian Prime Minister with total annihilation and earning the nickname "carpet chewer," and then seeing him in a hallway a few minutes later laughing and joking about it with confederates.

Shirer’s job required him to meet with his boss, Edward R. Murrow, in London every six weeks. Shirer wrote of these meetings, that he knew that the German press was controlled by the Nazis, and that he was fully aware of the propaganda lies. What shocked him when he reached London was how much his worldview of the issues had been altered by the constant bombardment of Nazi propaganda.

Propaganda is like the rain; if you go out in the rain you will get wet. You can wear a hat and a raincoat and goulashes, but some of the water will still get through to you. You will see the world through the rain and it will inevitably affect you.

In Hitler’s memoir, “Mein Kampf,” Hitler explained in great detail that Germany’s future greatness depended on the taking of lands in the east. He lambasted the treaty of Versailles and the states that it created by executive fiat. It was clear to anyone who read Hitler’s book that Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia were in his cross hairs.

After he unleashed blitzkrieg warfare on the Poles and after bombing Warsaw unmercifully, Hitler unleashed his next campaign. The Nazi-controlled media took an apologetic stance; the German people had never wanted a war with the Poles at all. The Germans and the Polish people had a long history of friendship, and the war was brought about because of the Jews. It was a ludicrous argument and totally false on every level in both word and deed. But the media campaign continued, explaining that the calamities and suffering of the Polish people wasn’t the fault of their friends, the Germans; it was the fault of the Jews.

So successful was this campaign that six months later in Warsaw it was a majority opinion. When their German masters began to inflict their racial laws, there was little resistance by the Poles. After all, the Jews had brought this on themselves. Of course it wasn’t true, but there was no other opinion offered to counter it.

Most people don’t pay attention to issues every day. Many never realize the connection between politics and their daily lives. They say, “My boss is an asshole and we’re not getting raises again this year!” Then they turn on the TV and watch "American Idol" or "Fox News." They aren’t bad people or dumb people, they just believe what they are told by the media without questioning. Recently in the article that I wrote advocating that Dennis Kucinich run a primary challenge to the President, I got the following response, “Dennis Kucinich voted against health care reform so I think he’s a piece of shit!”

It is pretty obvious that this individual had never heard of Eugene Debs' “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.” Kucinich based his no vote on the fact the bill does nothing to control costs and gives $70 billion to the private insurance industry. He called it a foundation built on sand. I wonder where my commentator got his opinion?

You say you want a revolution? Call your cable or satellite providers and say, “This is me and this is you; this is fuck and this is off.” This would be a step in the right direction. Outside of the time and money you'll save to pursue more meaningful activities, you will find your own ideas emerging from what you read. You might have to buy gasoline from huge corporations but you don’t have to buy their opinions.

You will never overthrow a government such as this with guns and violence as long as they control the media. They can shoot you down like dogs in the streets while vilifying you in the press until before long the public will condemn you for stopping their bullets.

The media and the government spend billions of dollars each year trying to sell you things, wars, torture, Toyotas, bath beads, tax cuts, hemorrhoid creams and political ideas. The oil companies all have bloated TV budgets explaining how green they’ve become, and the sheep say, “Baa, baa.”

You say you want a revolution? Step one: Stop listening to them! Stop buying from them and stop giving them access to your most important possession, your mind.

Cheech and Chong Don’t Live here Anymore
By David Glenn Cox


I recently read an article written by a psychologist about how he talked to his children about marijuana. What I found most entertaining in the article was its dependence on stereotypes. He writes, “And you already know I wrote a book with 'marijuana' in the title, so you’re aware that I’ve inhaled.”

“There are three kinds of marijuana smokers. Visitors, Regulars and Stoners."
Stoners, huh?

All my friends know the low rider
The low rider is a little higher
Low rider drives a little slower
Low rider is a real goer

I never wrote a book with marijuana in the title, but I could have. For more than twenty-five years of my life I smoked marijuana. In that time I never had an auto accident or a ticket. I never missed a house payment or lost a job. In fact I was promoted again and again. I bought and remodeled two houses and restored classic cars. What I grew tired of was the high prices and operating on someone else’s schedule. So I began to cultivate and removed myself from the market.

Growing, I figured my costs at about six dollars an ounce. During this time I lived next door to a very sweet elderly couple and it was a mutual admiration society. I admired them as an older couple being retired and devoted to each other. They looked at my young family and could remember when they had babies and toddlers playing in their back yard.

One day, during one of our neighborly chats, Hugh told me his wife Martha had been diagnosed with cancer and had to begin chemotherapy. As time progressed I could see the worry and anxiety grow across his face. The chemotherapy was killing his wife. He complained that he couldn’t get her to eat and that she was wasting away. My conscience began to hurt me; I had something in the house that might help that woman to ease her suffering. It would cost me no more than a birthday cake from Kroger to give it to her.

I didn't dare do it though, because if I did and it were perceived wrong or discovered by the authorities, I could lose everything. My job, my house, my freedom and my future. To this day I feel that what I did was wrong, but that my government forced me to live in a secret society. I was criminalized like a Nazi or a Communist because I smoked the wrong brand of cigarettes.

For the first century and a half in this country there was no such prohibition, and in that time we defeated the British King, conquered the prairie, built a trans-continental railroad. We created an industrial revolution, fought a civil war, invented the airplane and defeated the Kaiser, and throughout all of my historical readings I have never found one reference to America’s path being hindered the least little bit by smoking marijuana.

It is said that the prohibition of marijuana came about due to the demands of the paper, pharmaceutical and chemical industry to make it illegal. Those economic theories don't take into account the social aspect that the illegalization was rather a result of racism directed towards American immigrants of Mexican and African descent. It was also a direct response to the prohibition of alcohol. After Bible-thumping prohibitionists in their righteous and religious zeal managed to outlaw America’s most popular recreational drug, they took a very dim view of any other recreational drug that rose to the fore to replace it. They wanted it banned, shouting, “Not on my watch, buddy! The book's agin' it!”

Since the beginning of recorded history there is a history of recreational drug use. From the Pharaohs to the Caesars, drug use and sales were common. Rome grew rich from the sales of wine. In the nineteenth century the patent medicine business grew into a mass industry based on refined drug products which caused health and emotional problems and addictions. Yet you must ask yourself, were most of these problems caused by the drugs themselves or by ignorance about the drugs?

Opium and cocaine were common ingredients, but the products weren’t called Vicks Cough Syrup, Now With Opium! Or Red Bull, Now With Extra Cocaine! They were called Dr. Pendrake's Mystery Elixir. People became addicted to these products because they didn’t know any better, and what’s more the products worked. Old Abe Lincoln’s favorite remedy for his headaches was a steaming bowl of water with opium powder poured in. The President would breathe in the vapors with a towel over his head.

Today if Barack Obama were to try using the same treatment he would be out of the White House faster than you can say “Bill Clinton’s Intern.” On top of the legal stigma of recreational drug use is also a moral stigma that is new and was created right here in the good old USA. Recreational drug users are described and depicted in the media as defective people. In over two decades as a business manager I have dealt with employees with drug problems. Oh yes, I fully accept that people can get into trouble with recreational drugs. Some had a problem with their drug use, others just had problems and were medicating themselves with drugs. Eliminating the drug use in this group didn’t solve the problem; in some cases it made it worse.

Drugs can cause problems, but so can alcohol, cigarettes and even food. Imagine dragging people out of their houses in handcuffs. “That lousy fat slob was feeding ice cream to children! I hope they throw the book at him.” Obesity and childhood obesity is a major problem in America today, yet employers aren’t encouraged to hold random body fat screenings. There are no T-shirts or programs in schools like “Just say no to Dairy Queen.” One of the founders of the Dairy Queen empire died from a heart attack at an early age. Go figure.

For many years I played music and you would be surprised by the number of longhaired, hippie-looking rock musicians that didn’t smoke marijuana. You’d be even more surprised by the number of calm, sedate, middle class, hard working ministers, policemen, firemen, mechanics and just plain Joes and Janes that do. They are not defectives or people with problems. They aren’t child molesters or rapists. They are your neighbors, that nice man down the street or that sweet little old lady that brings cookies to the homeowners association meeting.

As for the visitors, regulars and stoners, I have known them all. The visitors might take a toke or two at a party. The regulars might smoke the whole joint. The stoners who the doctor described as folks "whose lives have slowed, and then stopped. For them, smoking weed results in gravity turning up -- it takes enormous effort for them to do anything, so they don’t. Ambition – even once fierce ambition -- evaporates and a creeping sadness replaces it.”

I have known them, as well, sitting on the couch all day eating Cheetos and watching TV or playing video games. Do you know what they were doing before they were smoking marijuana? They were sitting on the couch all day eating Cheetos and watching TV or playing video games. I have never known an ambitious person slowed by marijuana or a lazy person that developed new energy after smoking marijuana. It is more a symptom of the personality than a symptom of the drug.

The wheels of medical science turn slowly and sometimes turn backwards. Cigarette smoking does not cause tuberculosis and Dr. Kellogg’s corn flakes do not increase male potency. Such were the claims; swimming pools were once closed to prevent the spread of polio. During prohibition the hospitals were filled with those sick on bad liquor and the jails were full of junior hoodlums given a leg up into crime through bootlegging. America then tried a noble experiment. We left it up to individual citizens whether to consume alcohol or not, rather than making it a function of government.

Recently Joe Bageant wrote about American expatriate retirees living in Mexico. “An American never quite gets over the sight of half a dozen retired middle class seventy year olds in puffy white velcro strap tennis shoes, nonchalantly passing a fat bomber."

A study was recently published in Australia that warned “Young adults who used marijuana as teens were more likely than those who didn’t to develop schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms including hallucinations and delusions.

“This is the most convincing evidence yet that the earlier you use cannabis, the more likely you are to have symptoms of a psychotic illness,” said McGrath, a professor at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia.

“Researchers in the study were looking for causes of schizophrenia, McGrath said. The researchers included 3,801 young adults who were born in Brisbane from 1981 to 1984. At the 21-year follow up, the participants, whose average age was about 20, were asked about marijuana use. The researchers also measured whether those in the study had psychotic symptoms.

"Of the 1,272 participants who had never used marijuana, 26, or 2 percent, were diagnosed with psychosis. Of the 322 people who had used marijuana for six or more years, 12, or 3.7 percent, were diagnosed with the illness. Overall, 65 people were diagnosed with psychosis, according to the study.”

If you look for it you will find it. You have a 1.2% chance of developing schizophrenia in Brisbane, Australia. This has been going on for so long that it grows tiresome. It is a known medical fact that most people who drink water die within seventy years and those who refrain from drinking water die quicker. Scientists found that if you sew a dime into a rat’s stomach, it will develop tumors. It proves conclusively that many scientists have way too much time on their hands.

What did I tell my children about marijuana? I told them that it’s something that adults do like drinking alcohol. I worried about them experimenting because I was more afraid that they did not have the skills needed to not get caught. My son told me about his friend getting busted with a pipe in the car and I slapped my forehead. Son, you never carry a pipe in a car, you roll a joint. “But that’s a waste,” he countered.

“So is getting busted.”

My son is a grown man now and he doesn’t smoke marijuana. He made that decision himself, not because Dad gave him lectures about, “My friend the doctor says,” or, "you could end up a stoner, a junkie or even worse, a Republican!" Dad told him it’s something that adults do to enjoy themselves, and when you get older you can make that decision for yourself.

Long Ago and Far Away
By David Glenn Cox


Once upon a time in a land far, far away there was a mythical kingdom. Its people were hard working and industrious. They lived, for the most part, on farms and they began working as small children and worked until the day they died.

When they became too old or too sick to work they became Jesus’ problem. If they had no family to take care of them they starved or lived on charity, or they froze in their beds as Jesus would call them home in the winter by the thousands. The illness known as pneumonia was called the old people’s friend because it delivered them up to Jesus so quickly.

Things were changing in the magical land; industry was replacing farming and the children were leaving their parents behind for the bright lights of the big city. Jobs were plentiful and for the first time ever working people could buy stocks and get rich just like the tycoons and captains of industry. On the farms manual labor was being replaced by tractors and machinery. The farmers were encouraged to buy more land as these conveniences made it possible for them to double or triple the amount of land one man could farm. Only that to do that the farmer had to go into debt to buy the land and the tractor.

Being in debt wasn't so bad, as it could be paid off with the increased profits from farming more land. Then one day it all fell apart and the kingdom was thrown into ruin. The King suggested giving loans to the tycoons and speculators, but when asked what he should do about the poor farmers and those out of work, the King said, “Nothing! Our people are proud and industrious; it would damage their spirit forever if I, as King, were to assist them now.

One of the richest tycoons in the kingdom added, “This depression is a good thing. A working man wouldn’t do a good day's work if he could get out of it.”

The King soon abdicated in shame and the people chose a new King. The new King faced an economy crushed flat, millions of unemployed and millions of hungry and millions of elderly.

The new King proclaimed, in a grand proclamation from the castle balcony, “Whereas all of the Kingdoms across the great ocean have developed a scheme for taking care of their elderly through a payroll deduction, so shall we in our kingdom."

The King's advisors were pulling out their hair and gnashing their teeth. “Sire, our economy is flat. We cannot afford such a program as this with so much unemployment.”

The King just smiled at them and answered, “I just created millions of jobs! These elderly will now leave the working economy and their jobs will be taken by young workers.”

As the years went by something magical happened. It was just as the king said. Instead of working until the day they died, the elderly could retire, opening jobs to younger workers. Because the elderly no longer had to depend on their meager savings alone, they could buy food and a decent home. The elderly were no longer the poorest citizens in the kingdom; they began to buy retirement homes in the warmer parts of the kingdom. Land values soared. Construction boomed in these parts of the kingdom. Whole cities sprang up to service the needs of the elderly.

These elderly bought recreational vehicles and traveled the kingdom. They took cruises and spent their money throughout the economy. Their prosperity created more jobs than their numbers and because of the wise King the elderly went from the poorest demographic in the kingdom to one of the wealthiest. For generations the elderly venerated the memory of the wise King who had showered them with this wonderful proclamation. Few ever realized that their retirement program wasn’t about helping the elderly; it was about helping the young and about creating jobs.

So it goes in magical kingdoms; back here in reality we count shekels and praise Jesus. When our economy turns sour we consider what we can tear down to protect us from the storm. We sell our pocket watch to buy bombs and missiles or we sell our hair to buy a new watch fob.

Last month Barack Obama named a committee to study ways to get the federal budget deficit under control. Obama named a Republican and a Democrat to co-chair the committee. He tasked them to look at every option to lower the deficit except, of course, the defense budget.

Co-chairman Erskine Bowles said yesterday that entitlement programs such as Social Security will turn the nation into a "second-rate power" if their costs aren’t reduced. “We’re going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because if you take those off the table, you can’t get there,” Bowles said in a speech to North Carolina bankers in Greensboro. “If we don’t make those choices, America is going to be a second-rate power and I don’t mean in 50 years. I mean in my lifetime.”

Folks, this isn’t some raving, wild-eyed, neo-con Republican; this is the Democrat that Obama appointed to co-chair the committee. When the Democrat in charge begins by saying, “We’re going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.” Republicans have a hard time hiding the erection in their pants and the working people in this country had better get out the KY jelly because you’re going to have a painful time sitting down.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are programs with no cap on them. If you live to be a hundred and seven you still get your retirement check and health care. So, if there is no cap on services why is there a cap on paying into the system? Do private health insurance providers say to their customers, “No, you’ve paid enough”

Currently, after earning $106,000 a year, payroll deductions cease for the wealthy. The Federal Government says, “No, you’ve paid enough. Don’t worry, we’ll just appoint a committee to cut benefits for the people that depend on these services.”

Bowles currently serves as the President of the University of North Carolina and was a former chief of staff at the end of the Clinton Administration. He was a Clinton fundraiser and an investment banker helping to found Carousel Capital, an investment bank. Bowles splits his time at the university and currently sits on the board of directors of General Motors, Morgan Stanley and North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Bowles knows about working people like John Wayne Gacy knew about being a lady's man.

“All of our revenue is completely consumed by entitlements,” Bowles said. “This is today, not some forecast into the future. Every dollar we spend on the military, homeland security, transportation, education and research is borrowed, and half of that comes from foreign sources," he said. “That is a recipe for disaster.”

With the wealthy paying around half of the tax rate that they paid in the 1950s, Bowels has it all backwards, All of our entitlements are under-funded because the wealthy don’t pay enough to support them. We need to cut the military budget, eliminate the Department of Homeland Security, and instead spend the money creating jobs by improving transportation and the availability to a good education, or it will be a disaster.

We need to build our economy up, not tear entitlements down. If you want to judge a country just by its military prowess then America is a raging success. North Korea has a large military as well, but can’t feed its people or keep them warm in the winter. France and Germany can’t match America’s military strength but do a pretty good job of taking care of their people. I guess it all boils down to what your definition of a second-rate power really is.

It's also depends on your definition of what a real Democratic administration is supposed to be. Or your definition of what a Judas goat really means. Best pray to Jesus because working people will get more help from Jesus than from this administration.

Living in the Limelight
By David Glenn Cox


Media is a function of government. No matter what they told you in social studies class about a free press, unless you actually own a press then it isn’t free. Since media is a function of government, you can take it to the bank that anything you see in domestic media is the sanitized, government-approved version of events.

When I lived in the confines of Montgomery, Alabama, we had a cigar-chewing, gun-toting mayor. He reveled in flaunting his power and getting his face in the media. One night the police arranged for a big drug bust. This was back in the days when “Cops” was a hit TV program, so the police and mayor arranged for all the local TV stations and newspaper to be invited to the big bust.

But something went wrong. There were no drugs and there were no criminals. Instead there were innocent men, handcuffed, face-down on the lawn with their wives screaming and their babies crying. Oh, it was a spectacle all right, just not the one the mayor and police had hoped for. After a few words of explanation the media was sent home. The newspaper printed just a small tid-bit about drug bust comes up empty. But one TV station took their footage and aired the whole story of the debacle, complete with women screaming and babies crying.

The mayor was enraged. You could have lit cigarettes off of his forehead, and even though the story didn’t get much notice the mayor called a press conference to give his side of the story. He first defended the police and then defended himself then he did something hot heads and non-astute politicians do, he said what he meant rather than what politicians say in public. “Perhaps the next time we have a news event, maybe we’ll just forget to call the reporters at WXYZ.”

It was a political threat against a media outlet that had dared to tell the unflattering truth. After the Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy accepted the blame saying that his administration welcomed criticism. You believe that one, don’t you? For the media to gain access they must curry favor; access means stories, stories mean promotions and promotions mean riches. It was Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” fame who once said, “Integrity is for paupers.” Some of Russert’s favorite guests on the show were Bob Dole and Dick Cheney. No Howard Zinn, no Noam Chomsky or Amy Goodman, it was sanitized for your protection.

Does the name April Glaspie ring any bells? She’s the woman responsible for the first gulf war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been an ally of the Reagan administration but the Bush administration appointed a woman ambassador to Iraq. While that was perceived as all warm and fuzzy here in America, it was seen as an insult in Iraq. It was culturally insensitive and a signal that the new administration wished to distance itself from Iraq.

Saddam summoned Ms. Glaspie for talks. Remember now that Saddam was a crazy lunatic and a murderous thug, but that he only became those things after he stopped being our ally.

HUSSEIN: Your stance is generous. We are Arabs. It is enough for us that someone says, "I am sorry. I made a mistake." Then we carry on. But the media campaign continued. And it is full of stories. If the stories were true, no one would get upset. But we understand from its continuation that there is a determination.

GLASPIE: I saw the Diane Sawyer program on ABC. And what happened in that program was cheap and unjust. And this is a real picture of what happens in the American media -- even to American politicians themselves. These are the methods the Western media employs. I am pleased that you add your voice to the diplomats who stand up to the media. Because your appearance in the media, even for five minutes, would help us to make the American people understand Iraq. This would increase mutual understanding. If the American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier.

Saddam then spent the better part of an hour explaining to Glaspie that the Kuwaitis were infringing on the Iraqi border and that they were slant drilling for oil into Iraq. He made the point that it was Kuwait and the U.A.E. that were driving down the price of oil making it impossible for Iraq to pay back its debts.

HUSSEIN: But when planned and deliberate policy forces the price of oil down without good commercial reasons, then that means another war against Iraq. Because military war kills people by bleeding them, and economic war kills their humanity by depriving them of their chance to have a good standard of living. As you know, we gave rivers of blood in a war that lasted eight years, but we did not lose our humanity. Iraqis have a right to live proudly. We do not accept that anyone could injure Iraqi pride or the Iraqi right to have high standards of living.

GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

This was a first-class screw up on Glaspie’s part. Here was Saddam all but drawing her a picture and she failed to put two and two together. The Glaspie story was covered up in the media. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was portrayed as the work of a deranged lunatic. What we got to back that up was heart-wrenching congressional testimony about Kuwaiti babies thrown onto hospital floors by Iraqi thugs. Who told these stories of the terrible atrocities? The daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. And where did she live? She lived in New York.

When the Glaspie story reached the public it was effectively covered up by another major scandal, Vice President Dan Quayle had mis-spelled potato on camera. This is called falling on your sword and Dan Quayle was perfect for the job because he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

Before the era of Darth Cheney, Vice Presidents cut ribbons and attended state funerals. Quayle was barely qualified for these tasks, so how did he rise so high so quickly? His family owned a string of newspapers across the Midwest. He was groomed from childhood for a political career but he wasn’t a great thinker nor was he a great speaker.

His claim to fame was his staunch family values and his one true talent was being a scratch golfer. Do you know what it means to be a scratch golfer? It means that you don’t have a handicap and would give Tiger Woods a run for his money on eighteen holes. Do you think you get to be that good by spending weekends with the wife and kids?

The media can make you and they can break you. Do you think that no one in Washington knew that Larry Craig was gay? When California anti-gay legislator Roy Ashburn was pulled over for DUI he was driving a car with state license plates on it. It had been seen parked in the parking lot of a gay nightclub. It wouldn’t take Woodward and Bernstein to crack this case.

One of my favorites was Ann Coulter’s appearance on the "Today" show. Coulter does the appearance in a black cocktail dress at seven in the morning, Eastern Time. Logistically she had to be there at least an hour early, if not two. So when the guest shows up in a black cocktail dress at say five or five thirty in the morning, chances are she’s been wearing it all night in the city that never sleeps. I’m sure she was at the Christian Science reading room doing research.

Coulter’s, shall we say, erratic behavior has discouraged her TV career, but her books and articles are still beloved by the right wing reactionaries. I try to stay away from writing about the Coulters, Limbaughs and Becks because I don't think they deserve the attention, and like monsters under your bed, if you ignore them they will go away.

Today we have tea parties that are treated as real political movements when they aren’t. This disparate group of white rednecks has no more political influence than the Girl Scouts. Then there’s Sarah Palin who could barely manage a book tour without pissing off the faithful. She's inarticulate, one-dimensional and poorly-educated, yet the media faithful ask, “Will she run?” Even when the polls show that most Republican’s wouldn’t vote for her, the media still ask, “Will she run?”

Why does the media focus on potatoes and tomatoes? The President of Afghanistan is rapidly becoming the most corrupt political figure on the world stage since Ferdinand Marcos. Through friends and family, estimates run as high as one billion dollars siphoned off by Karzi and his ring of cronies. They purchase multi-million dollar condo’s in Dubai and control the concrete industry so that every dollar spent to rebuild Afghanistan goes through the fingers of Karzi.

The election in Iraq is hailed as modern democracy in action but hundreds of candidates were ruled ineligible because of their past affiliations. Only the approved and sanitized may run for office, as BP and Amoco begin drilling for oil for the first time since 1972 when Saddam nationalized the oil interest of Iraq.

And so it goes and so it goes. If the media makes a mountain out of a molehill it is only to cover up the mountain growing behind it. When the media suddenly grows quiet on the issue of, say, the public option, it means the fix is in. If you want to learn the truth about what is going on, read what other countries say about you and then split the difference. Nothing new under the sun.

Letter writing seems to be the item dejour this weekend so here is mine.


March 6, 2010

To the Honorable Dennis Kucinich



Dear Congressman Kucinich,

It was Winston Churchill who observed, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” I think that it is apt to quote Churchill because Sir Winston spent over a decade warning his countrymen about the dangers of fascism. For his efforts Churchill was vilified in the press, and when he pushed for increased appropriations to build more radar stations and more Spitfire and Hurricane fighter aircraft he was called a warmonger. The press argued that Churchill was a politician in search of an issue and that Chamberlain was the true statesman, intelligent and wise a man who kept a cool hand on the throttle.

You, sir, have spent the last decade in the House of Representatives and in that time you have championed human rights, workers' rights and constitutional rights. You have been an outspoken critic against globalism and Free Trade pacts and you have warned what would come from them. Then, even in the face of defeat, you have picked up your lance to begin again to champion the right of American workers to earn a decent living.

During this year of healthcare upheaval and rhetoric you have chosen the most simple and logical of positions, Medicare for All, except this wasn’t a position that you took this year. This was a position that you took in 2001 when you proposed this program as part of the briefing for the Physicians for a National Health Program where you presented this proposal for a national, single-payer health plan.

You have championed the cause of peace; you voted against appropriations for war. You have steadfastly voted against wasteful military spending such as missile defense shields and space-based lasers, pointing out, I believe correctly, that we have much that needs to be done at home instead. You refused to be buffaloed by the past administration's scare-mongering tactics by voting against the Patriot Act and voting for bringing articles of impeachment.

To a great degree the media ignored your efforts or claimed them to be the partisan efforts of a politician looking for an issue. I think that they were wrong and you were right. An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. I have come to depend on you as one of a very few members of Congress with whom I still hold trust.

While the President was explaining that Wall Street bonuses were like athletes' bonuses you said the following, “Wall Street bankers have been lucky. They have been able to preside over, not create, record profits for their banks during these times because they have gotten record assistance from the government. Taxpayers are justifiably upset to see the financial elites pocket millions, while the rest of America worries about losing their homes, losing their jobs, and providing economic security for their families.

“It is noteworthy that with an estimated $145 billion in bonuses in the offing, Wall Street is not interested in using the money to create jobs, put it back in the economy, or to give to shareholders as dividends. The financial titans are taking the money for themselves. It is time for the Congress to temper the greed of Wall Street, and my bill, HR 4114, the Responsible Banking Act, would do just that. HR 4114 would impose a 75% bonus tax on the bonus pools of Wall Street institutions, creating an incentive to spend their profits to help Americans. This is not just an issue with banks that took TARP funds; this is an industry-wide problem that requires an industry-wide solution.

“Many on Wall Street and in the government would have us believe that the near economic collapse was a minor miscalculation; that Americans need to simply accept their losses and let Wall Street continue its business as usual. Congress now wants to discuss fiscal discipline. A good place to start is Wall Street. Let's show Wall Street that we will not stand by and let it reward itself with billions of dollars in bonuses for dragging our economy to the brink.”

In 2008 the Democratic Party nominated for President a candidate with great charisma, a great orator who promised the American public hope and change. The American public was enthralled by the prospect after eight years of needless war, wasteful tax cuts and deregulation that created the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Watching the inaugural ceremonies, who wasn’t moved by the sea of Americans cheering on the National Mall? That is now the same number of Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosure in the last three months.

Our "hope and change" included a Defense Secretary holdover from the Bush administration and a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street. We were given a mortgage assistance program for troubled homeowners that is completely run by the same banking interests that created the debacle in the first place. The President’s first defense budget increases military spending on par with Bush budgets. It calls for a spending freeze in other departments while the nation is in the depths of a new depression. In the same breath the President appoints a committee to look for ways to bring down the budget deficit while specifically including Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.

The President's stimulus program was 35 percent tax cuts, and the Senate’s new jobs bill that the President hailed as a great step forward is 95 percent tax cuts. Cut from the House jobs bill by the Senate was an extension of unemployment benefits, infrastructure programs, and state aid to keep teachers, police and fire departments staffed. Yet this is what our President calls hope and change and a great step forward. On every issue this President has capitulated to corporations and special interests until it begins to resemble a McCain administration.

I was raised in my father’s house as a Democrat; my grandfather was a union organizer in the 1930s and my father worked in the Democratic Party for over twenty years. Because of this background I understand that Democrats do not always have to agree on issues. There is nothing wrong or disloyal in disagreeing with a sitting President of my own party. On the contrary it is proof of a vital democracy and right now it is our only choice other than capitulation. I am not ready to accept another Republican Congress but by the same token I am not ready to accept a President that runs left and votes right. If I had wanted a Republican I would have voted for one.

At a time when the issues and crises of the day toss our ship of state, the American public cries out for progressive solutions. The administration proposed healthcare reform and then pulled the old switcheroo and deleted the public option favored by 70 percent of the population. Left in is the first-ever mandate for the public to buy a product from a private company or face a tax penalty. This centerpiece of the administration is going to bring us a bloody nose at the ballot box in November.

Or, as Sir Winston said, “It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

Our American nation is in great peril; the populace is rapidly losing faith in the institutions of government. They are losing faith in both major political parties. They are losing faith in the Republicans because in the face of policy disasters they propose more of the same disastrous policies. Yet, more to the point, they are losing faith in the Democratic Party because it has become too much like the Republican Party.

What is needed and what is required is a true Democrat to lead the party with Democratic ideas and ideals. A scourge for Wall Street and the special interests, one who understands, as Hubert Humphrey once said, “The President is the lobbyist for the American people.” Most of the time we choose what we do in life and then sometimes life chooses us. I ask that you come in from the wilderness and make the efforts necessary to begin a primary challenge for the office of the President of the United States.

“Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.” (Winston Churchill)

Thank you for your time and efforts,

David Glenn Cox

And So It’s War!
By David Glenn Cox


"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain." Mark Twain


As we look to the economic crisis in Greece, we must first look to the economic crisis in the United States. They are one and the same and the answers and corrective actions recommended are one and the same, as well. Raise taxes, cut services, pay bankers.

Strange, isn’t it, that economic troubles on opposite sides of the Earth would have identical cures. Or perhaps all economic crises have the same cure. In September of 2008 the Icelandic government took a 75% ownership stake in Landsbanki bank after the bank faced liquidity problems. Landsbanki had been on the cutting edge of the “new banking” industry, offering high interest, online savings accounts called “Icesave.” The lure was irresistable and 300,000 British citizens deposited their savings worth almost five billion dollars.

Many -- most, if not all -- forgot to read the fine print where it said that the deposits were not insured, as regular accounts would be. So, when Landsbanki went in the tank, the British government looked to the Icelandic government and said, “We want our money back!”

The Icelanders answered, "We don’t have your money, and besides, the accounts were uninsured." They were covered under a little known provision called “top-up” rules and would have to depend on Icelandic Compensation Scheme. Landsbanki was the second of three Icelandic banks to fail so the ICS was done.


What happened next was a page out of European history from 1914. The British government and the Bank of England began seeking alliances to prevent Iceland from receiving any further international loans until they agreed to pay back the British for their uninsured bank accounts. Iceland’s economy was on its back and the British organized an economic blockade that wasn’t much different than the German U-boat blockade of 1940.

In October, British officials tried to use anti-terrorism statutes to freeze Icelandic assets in the United Kingdom. Iceland filed a complaint with NATO, and Iceland’s Prime Minister answered by hiring a high-profile British law firm to represent Iceland in legal matters. What was going on there was a proxy war; rather than governments mobilizing troops and navies, banking interests were mobilizing governments and lawyers.

The bankers and the UK government came up with a repayment plan for Iceland. Under its terms Iceland would repay with up to 40% of the island's gross domestic product, costing every household in Iceland $61,000. Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson refused to sign the plan, putting it instead to a public referendum. Not since the treaty of Versailles has there been a more punitive treaty to punish the many for the deeds of a few.

When the financial crisis came to the United States, the banking interests simply went to Hank Paulson and said, “If we don’t get new money, and quick, the economy will fall down.” Paulson relayed that message to President Bush and the banks were bailed out. Iceland is the same scenario in reverse. Due to the blockade Iceland was forced to borrow money from the world’s loan shark, the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF will lend money but always attaches conditions and stipulations that hamper and hamstring the borrowing nation. They become, in effect, a co-equal, unelected government. So Iceland is being financially conquered by an economic war, run not by generals but by bankers.

The problems in Greece have been a long time in coming. In November of 2009 the new Greek government revealed that its debt level was 12.7% of GDP, twice what had been previously announced. The new government's budget was designed to address the budget shortfall, bringing its deficit down to 8.7% of GDP. The new budget promised a 10% cut in Social Security spending, abolished bonuses at state-owned banks and added a 90% tax on all private bank employee bonuses. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou also promised to strenuously fight corruption and tax evasion

In December, Standard & Poors put the country's A- sovereign rating on negative watch, and the Fitch rating agency, which had cut the Greek credit rating to A- on the higher deficit announcement, cut the sovereign rating again to BBB+ on the government's austerity promises. On December 16, S& P cut the Greek credit rating again to BBB- saying, “Austerity steps announced by Prime Minister Papandreou are unlikely to produce a sustainable reduction in the public debt burden.”

The yield spreads between Greek and benchmark German 10-year bunds widened to an average 272 basis points in mid-December, their the widest margin in over eight months. The bankers were skeptical and continued to sell off Greek government bonds and stocks.

In January Prime Minister Papandreou said the following, "There is only one dilemma: Will we let the country go bankrupt or will we react? Will we let the speculators strangle us, or will we take our fate in our own hands?"

The world of hedge funds is like betting on the line at a crap table. You can bet that the shooter will make their point or you can bet against them making their point. Yet, in this world, the banks control the dice. As the large financial institutions sell off Greek debt it creates pressures to raise interest rates on future Greek loans, meaning more profits for the banks. This situation, however, is like Iceland's in that more profits are nice but not nearly as nice as control.

They are leveraging the elected government to do what the bankers want rather than what the people want. The austerity plan proposed was not good enough, so the banks want to dictate the terms of the bailout to the Greek people. Does all this begin to have a familiar ring to it?

In the meantime each downgrade pushes the Greek people and government into a deeper financial hole and exacerbates the financial crisis. This is no less than blitzkrieg by bankers. Rather than destroying democracy with panzers and Stuka dive-bombers, the bankers are using interest rates, lawyers and credit rating agencies.

Papandreou has argued correctly that California is a greater threat to default than Greece. But California is not the takeover target, not yet anyway. On January 14, the Greek government unveiled another austerity plan. This one is promising to bring down the Greek debt to 2.8% of GDP by 2012 from 12.7% in 2009. Do you know how you manage to do that? Think Iceland, you raise taxes and you cut services. You cut services for the elderly and for students and then you take those savings and you pay the bankers.

You cut wages for public sector workers and add 2% to the national sales tax that is already at 19%. You raise taxes on fuel, alcohol and cigarettes, then you freeze pensions. The European Union Commission says that it backs the new Greek plan to reduce its budget deficit below 3% of GDP by 2012. But wait, something is missing from the new plan: abolishing bonuses at state-owned banks and the added 90% tax on all private bank employee bonuses.

The European Union mission to Athens, along with the IMF experts, sing the now-common refrain. A deeper than expected recession along with higher borrowing costs will make it difficult for the government to meet these targets. If the Greeks fail to meet their targets I’m certain the bankers will recommend even more draconian budget cuts.

Papandreou was absolutely correct in pointing out that California is in far worse shape than Greece. In the United States, however, the bankers already call the tune, so why would they want to rock the good ship lollypop? They don’t need to pressure the government; the banks can borrow money for a quarter of a percent from the Federal Reserve and lend it back out on credit cards at 28% interest. The banks can write off all of their bad real estate loans and take it off their tax debt. The banks control Obama’s home mortgage rescue plan and the banks killed Obama’s consumer protection agency.

Last week the kindly old IRS ruled that it would extend the moratorium on penalties until June 1 for failing to report transactions considered tax shelters. “The rule applies to individuals or other taxpayers that fail to disclose transactions the IRS deems as potentially tax evading, such as employer contributions to post-retirement benefit funds. The levy is as high as $100,000 a year for individuals and $200,000 for all other taxpayers," according to the IRS.

It is assessed for each year a transaction is not reported, and may be charged to both a business and its owner. The department will also “hold off” filing new lien notices on amounts owed, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told Congress yesterday. “The penalty has ended up snagging small businesses that weren’t advised of their responsibility to disclose,” Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, said in a statement last month.

"The provision was designed to crack down on tax shelters for big corporations and wealthy individuals, and has been applied to small-business owners who’ve paid into retirement accounts for themselves and their employees without following IRS disclosure requirements," said Kathleen Pakenham, a New York- based partner at White & Case LLP, who represents 30 such clients.”

Now what was Papandreou saying about fighting corruption and tax evasion? So, you see, the banks have it all going their way and have no need to rock the boat.

Last month Barack Obama signed an executive order to establish a bipartisan panel to seek ways of cutting the US budget deficit. The goal of the President’s budget cutting panel is to make recommendations that may require a mix of tax increases and spending cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars to bring the budget deficit down to 3 % of the economy by 2015. That would put the budget in balance except for payments on debt.

“Everything’s on the table, that’s how this thing’s going to work,” Obama said in response to a question after his remarks.

Three percent, now where have I heard that number before? Everything's on the table; Social Security, Medicare, tax increases for the middle class, freezing wages, even a national sales tax has been suggested. You don’t need panzers and Stukas when you have a Quisling. A government by the banks and for the banks, it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “It’s Greek to me.”

These things are not mere coincidence or accidents. This is war, a war on democracy and free society being waged by banking interests, and only one will survive.

Lies in Real Time
By David Glenn Cox


Last month many House Democrats were not on board with the Senate version of healthcare reform. Then President Obama held his healthcare summit and incorporated just a few more Republican ideas and now the bill is off to the races.

No public option, restrictive abortion language, forced purchases from private health insurance companies with an increase in the tax penalty from 2% to 2.5%. Why aren’t I cheering? Thirty-five Democrats claim to be on board with a public option passed in reconciliation, but you want to bet on that happening?

Let’s see, the average American family income is around $48,000 dollars, so 2.5% of that would be $1,200. The average American family tax refund is around $3,000, so half for you and half for the government. A win, win situation, for the government, that is. In the words of Winston Churchill, "We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat...you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months.” All that is left of the bill once known as health care reform is a smorgasbord of special interest toppings.

The biggest disappearance is discussion from the news media. Other than Olbermann the public option issue is mostly gone, ditto debate over abortion language and the tax penalty. It’s all one big happy family now. Hosanna, we have the most all-encompassing healthcare reform in a generation, so rejoice, ask no questions and ignore that a solid majority of the benefit goes to the insurance and hospital industries.

“Fed Says Economy Improved at ‘Modest’ Pace in Regions”

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- "The U.S. economy improved in nine of the Federal Reserve’s 12 regions in January and February while being hampered by snowstorms in the eastern U.S., the central bank said today.

“In most cases the increases were modest, the Fed said in its Beige Book business survey, published two weeks before the Federal Open Market Committee meets to set monetary policy. Consumer spending increased in many regions, while commercial real estate and loan demand were weak and labor markets soft, the Fed said.”

So, the economy got better except it didn’t. Which is it? The Fed says consumer spending improved slightly in many districts, except for the ones where it didn’t. The economy trimmed payrolls by another 63,000 but the Fed blames that on snowstorms. “Well, Bob, as you can see it snowed quite a bit so we're going to have to lay you off.”

“The U.S. has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession in December 2007, the most of any slowdown in the post-World War II era. U.S. companies last month cut 20,000 jobs, the fewest in two years, according to data today from ADP Employer Services.”

Good news, the economy only shrank by 20,000 jobs last month. Of course that’s on top of the 8.4 million already unemployed and the millions more underemployed or no longer counted as unemployed. Just think, when it gets down to a hundred people working full time nationwide then the Fed can say the economy only shrank by sixteen jobs.

These statistics ignore that as the economy shrinks the job pool shrinks with it. Those 20 or 63,000 jobs lost means 20 or 63,000 fewer chances to find employment for the other 8.4 million unemployed. It is a lie in real time, a headline that is demonstrably false. Happy talk, whistling past the graveyard.

“The U.S. economy expanded at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the most in six years, as the country recovers from the worst recession since the 1930s.” There was no recession in the 1930s; there was a depression known to scholars as the Great Depression. That expansion number was based on cash for clunkers and tax credits for homebuyers and rental car fleet purchases. That good fourth quarter economic number didn’t just happen, it was created in Washington. However, they’ve now shot their bolt and can’t do it again. Tax credits for homeowners failed to stop the second largest decline on record in new home purchases last month .

The tax credits are still there but the purchasers aren’t. Like the employed the pool is shrinking. Couples with one spouse unemployed or underemployed aren’t going to buy cars or homes. Tighter mortgage qualifications thin out the pool of available purchasers even further. So no recovery for builders, suppliers, mortgage bankers, carpenter, masons, roofers, etc.

“Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, last month projected comparable-store sales will climb 2.5 percent from February 2010 to January 2011 after dropping 6.6 percent last year.”

Let the good times roll! Up 2.5% after being down 6.6%. Say you’ve got a dollar, one hundred pennies, and you lose 6.6% of your pennies. You’ve now got 93.4 pennies; then you gain 2.5 % on your 93.4, which is 2.3 pennies. You haven’t recouped your losses and you're counting your new pennies based on a percentage of what you have left. Last year Home Depot closed underperforming stores and laid off over 7,000 employees. Underperforming does not mean stores that were losing money but stores not making enough money.

“Cincinnati-based Macy’s Inc. said sales at established stores will grow by as much as 2 percent after slumping 5.3 percent in the 12 months through January.”

The Sacramento Bee January 6, 2010- "Macy's announced Tuesday it will close five underperforming stores across the country. The stores are in Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Montana and New Jersey. About 300 employees will be affected, but the company said it will try to reassign some of them."

So the 2 percent number is dependent on closing underperforming stores. Gosh, that’s good news. I guess the economy really is turning around.

Other stores closing in 2010:

760 Movie Gallerys (Hollywood Video, Game Crazy)
200 Waldenbooks (Borders)
196 Jones Apparels
149 f.y.e.s
117 Foot Lockers
117 The Walking Companys
79 Penn Traffics
50 B. Daltons (Barnes & Noble)
50 Gaps
48 Destination Maternitys
28 Crabtree & Evelyns
30 Jo-Anns
28 Disney Stores
24 Pier Ones
20 American Eagles
20 Kirkland's
15 Food Lions
14 Basha’s
12 Papa John’s
10 Sam's Clubs
9 Home Valu Interiors
8 Albertson’s
8 Pearl Art and Craft Supplies
8 Synders Drug Stores
7 Tuesday Mornings
4 Hallmarks
4 Ken Crane’s
4 Targets
3 Home Depots
3 Kmarts
2 Brookshire’s
2 El Pollo Locos
2 Lambda Risings
2 Nokias
2 Pizzeria Unos
2 Simmons Comfort Worlds
2 Zumiezs
1 Benjamin Franklin
1 Big Y Foods
1 Bloom
1 Braum’s
1 Burger King
1 Cartier
1 CB2 (Crate & Barrel)
1 Chico’s
1 Coldwater Creek
1 Dairy Queen
1 Daphne’s
1 Lighthouse Christian Stores
1 L.L. Bean
1 Margarita’s Mexican
1 Marsh Supermarket
1 Nine West
1 Old Navy
1 Popeye’s
1 Ream’s
1 Reebok Outlet
1 Safeway
1 Salvation Army Thrift Store
1 Sports Authority
1 Trade Secret
1 True Value

This is a list of company stores and does not include franchise locations. From the Salvation Army to Cartiers, stores closing from the top of the economy to the bottom.

“Fed Says Economy Improved at ‘Modest’ Pace in Regions”

Lies in real time.

With Friends Like These
By David Glenn Cox


By God, it’s nice to be noticed. It is comforting to have someone say, "I feel your pain." It is, however, essential that the being noticed and the commiseration over the problems of the American people be done in the light of dignity. We are not pawns or kulaks, nor are we a peasant class to be cared for and overseen like a herd of sick livestock.

We are the owners of this country; our problems are this country's problems and they are important because we are vested in this country. I read an editorial today titled “Getting Americans Back to Work,” and my first thought was that finally the message is sifting up through the bureaucracy, the need and importance for us all to have jobs. The editorial was written by Rosabeth Moss Kanter and published by HavardBusiness.org, and Ms. Moss Kanter begins:

“For all my can-do optimism, upbeat outlook, and global scope, I feel dragged down by the U.S. jobs challenge. High unemployment coincides with eroding competitiveness and lack of consensus about how to help people in tough times.”

What? Well, Ms. Moss Kanter, come live on my side of town for a while and bring your can-do optimism along because I’ll school you about unemployment and a lack of competitiveness. There's a lack of consensus about how to help people in tough times? You’re dreaming, lady! You’re living in some academic Elysian Fields on west Mars, so deaf, dumb and blind as to be able to star in the rock opera "Tommy." Let me introduce you to my new friend who waves the signs in front of the stereo store and sleeps in a tent. Maybe you can explain to him about competitiveness.

I know what you’re saying when you say competitiveness, even though you lack the backbone to say it to our faces and prefer using a euphemism. You mean corporate America’s ability to find the least expensive workers on the planet with the least restrictive environmental laws and least expensive taxes. Then you sell this through bought-and-paid-for politicians and tell us that it is good for us. Then, when it all hits the fan, you mourn, "Aww, that’s too bad, gee. But what can we do?"

“I feel dragged down by the U.S. jobs challenge.” Dragged down? Is that worse than cold? Is that worse than watching the repo man take your car at three in the morning? Is it worse than being put out of your house and having nowhere to go? Come on, Ms. Moss Kanter, tell us of your travails in the ivy-covered Harvard walls.

Ms. Moss Kanter then places a straw man and whipping boy on display to show us that she is just plain home folks like the rest of us. “Last week, Senator Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) refused to let the Senate consider a bill — already passed by the House — to extend unemployment benefits, meaning that thousands of people will lose financial support.”

Former major league pitcher Jim Bunning is nuts, and most observers of the Senate already know that. Other Republicans had even asked him not to run for re-election. You seem to have forgotten one thing, Ms. Moss Kanter. You’re on the same side as Jim Bunning, only he’s not as articulate at expressing himself as you are because your very next words were:

“Policy-makers nationally and in the states know that small businesses are key to job creation, yet new constraints make lenders cautious about giving them loans. Meanwhile, China’s sovereign wealth fund has shifted investment from the U.S. to emerging markets, one sign that America is a less attractive place for investment. Moreover, China has a reputed labor shortage in its industrial heartland while the U.S. has a labor surplus.”

Now you’ve touched a nerve; there needs to be a redefinition of the term small business in our public discourse. Again, it’s a euphemism. Most people think of small business as the neighborhood florist or mom and pop dry cleaners. A truer definition is a mine that employs less than five hundred workers or a construction company with less than thirty million dollars in annual revenues. Franchised fast food outlets are, in many cases, small businesses.

“Yet new constraints make lenders cautious about giving them loans.” Try this on for consensus, American people without income or without discretionary income don’t buy hamburgers or houses or shop at new shopping centers, so there is no need for construction companies or new hamburger stands or strip malls. Really, Ms. Moss Kanter? Do you really believe that the problem is on our end of the economy?

China’s sovereign wealth fund has shifted investment from the U.S. because they aren’t stupid. They never planned to buy everything in the store, only what they needed. Daimler sold Chrysler in 2007 because they saw the handwriting on the wall, too much capacity in a shrinking market. We had an administration that, along with Jim Bunning and yourself, would do nothing to defend American jobs from Asian workers earning a little more than half of the American minimum wage.

Chrysler was bundled off to Fiat, and Fiat’s plans are to build cars in Mexico and market them through the surviving Chrysler dealers. Chrysler skipped the auto show circuit this year because they had no new models to show.

“The American labor surplus includes well-educated middle class professionals and managers who have watched their jobs disappear. Many of them are no longer counted in national unemployment statistics because they have given up.”

Dear Clueless in Massachusetts, you just don’t get it do you, dear? These well-educated middle class professionals are unemployed because you have advocated having a “global scope;” this is the whirlwind that we have inherited from your beliefs. Germany has a strong and vibrant automotive industry because they don’t import millions of cars from Asia manufactured by workers earning five dollars an hour. Germany also has a steel industry. Did you know that Germany must import fuel for it’s steel industry and yet it is still profitable? They don’t allow dumping from China to destroy their domestic markets.

Did you also know, Ms. Moss Kanter, that the French recently constructed the largest aircraft factory in the world? The factory will employ 11,500 French citizens and pay them union scale wages. These French citizens can afford to buy a hamburger or a house and shop at newly built shopping centers. They can afford to buy a car manufactured in France, and if they become sick or injured they can drive it to the hospital for state-sponsored, single payer health care.

You are really a piece of…work Ms. Moss Kanter.

“What do I tell these jobless professionals who are holding their lives together with duct tape? I can say: Hang in there. Don't give up hope. Develop a big idea to use later. Start your venture. Volunteer at a community organization. Find partners. Think internationally. Befriend immigrants with ties to an emerging market. Restore your sense of purpose. Remember what truly matters.”

Befriend immigrants? And Harvard pays you money? That’s your plan?

“I feel ever-greater urgency to tell everyone who can create a new job to do it quickly. A professional I know was asked for a loan by a client, a builder behind in his payments. My friend instead hired him to complete repairs he had been deferring. Another job-creation strategy is mentoring. The unemployed engineer mentioned earlier is helping several startups to launch new products more effectively as a volunteer or for equity. If the startups succeed, he might mentor himself into a job.”

There's some Republican genius for you, work for free and maybe someone will give you a job if they eventually get lucky. Obviously Jim Bunning wasn’t the only one playing the game without a batting helmet. You remind me, Ms. Moss Kanter, of Percival Lowell, the early twentieth century astronomer. He, too, had his theories, about a mystery planet beyond Neptune. Lowell called it Planet X and every fact that came to light that agreed with Lowell’s theory, he claimed as validation of the existence of the mystery planet. Every fact that argued against Planet X was ignored or explained away.

There was no Planet X. Lowell was wrong. He spent his career postulating a theory of a solid planet reality that was, in fact, empty space. Cold, empty, lonely, pitiless space, just like you, Ms. Moss Kanter. You should find out what your maximum unemployment benefit is and then you should try and live on it.

Then maybe after you’ve had a few months of deciding between the power bill and buying groceries. Or of telling your children no, regardless of what they ask for, and watching them wear out shoes that you have no money to replace, then you can come back and tell us about competitiveness and global scope. Tell us how you get to work with your car repoed and about the shelter you live at or relative's couch that you sleep on because until that time you know nothing. You have a degree in being an over-educated idiot; you are part of the problem and not the solution. So don’t you try to tell me how sad it all is and how you wish you could make all better, because you can’t. What you can do is just step the hell off!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/harvardbusin...

Where's "Honest Services" from the Supreme Court?
By David Glenn Cox

Our great, all-knowing, all-seeing founding fathers founded a government based on three equal branches with the logic that any one branch that became too extreme or out of bounds could be curtailed by the other two. A power-hungry president could be cut off at the knees by a balking Legislative Branch or Supreme Court. An extreme Legislative Branch could be battled with a veto pen. A Supreme Court gone off the rails could be hamstrung by new legislation written to address judicial decisions.

At least that’s the way it is supposed to work, on paper. In the decision in the case of Bush vs. Gore, the Supreme Court chose to overrule the Constitution and to vote in favor of Governor Bush. This despite two court justices having immediate family members working for the Bush campaign. The Court then ruled to cover up its mangling of the Constitution by adding that its ruling was to apply just this once. Have you ever heard of justice applying just this once?

But I’m not writing to drag up the Court’s turds from its cat box, only to point out that they make the rules up as they go along. President Obama called out the justices during his State of the Union Address for their ruling that unleashed, unlimited corporate spending in campaigns was, in effect, the corporations' right to free speech. The Court chose to go farther in their ruling than the plaintiffs ever dreamed or asked. The President offered that he would propose legislation to put corporate spending limits back into place, but I won’t hold my breath.

The President has proposed a stand-alone agency to represent consumers against the slings and arrows of outrageous corporate capitalism. Two points for Obama for suggesting it in the first place. However, you have to ask yourself just how serious the administration was in its suggestion. When the administration wanted a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, they tacked it onto the jobs bill. The stand-alone consumer bill, otherwise known as the David versus Goliath act of 2010, had its neck wrung on the Senate floor like a sick chicken.

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- "Senate Banking Committee negotiators, working through the weekend, agreed to drop the stand-alone consumer agency sought by the Obama administration and opposed by the banking industry, removing an obstacle that has stalled new U.S. financial rules."

Senate Banking Committee Chairman, Democrat Chris Dodd, joined with the Republicans in seeking an alternative. One Republican plan is to place consumer oversight with the Treasury, while another Republican plan is to invest the Federal Reserve with the power to protect consumers. In effect Republicans, along with Chris Dodd, think that Al Capone ought to be in charge of protecting tavern owners from exploitation.

If I was Barack Obama and one of my pieces of legislation was drawn and quartered and the lead henchman was from my own party, I think that I would be pretty angry. Wouldn’t you? Dodd proposed to the White House a Bureau of Financial Protection in the Treasury to be given regulatory powers. Of course if that President was, say, George W. Bush or Herbert Hoover, then you get a pretty realistic understanding of the basic flaw in the plan. But what does this White House say about its plan being kicked to the curb with such short shrift? Nothing!

When you say nothing in Washington it means, okay, whatever you guys want to do is fine with me. The President has been called a lot of names but Fighting Barack isn’t one of them. Since he refuses to fight for what he says he supports, it leads to a lack of credibility. Or in the words of comedian Ripp Taylor, “You better laugh at the jokes, folks, this is the act. I don’t dance!”

Just what is Obama waiting for? To prove his grace and dignity while his claimed agenda is shredded like hamburger by members of his own party? Vince Lombardi said it best, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” I’m still waiting anxiously for that Legislative Branch to rein in the Supreme Court because, you'd better hold your nose, they’re just getting started.

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- "Four years after a Houston jury found Jeffery Skilling guilty of leading the accounting fraud that drove Enron Corporation into bankruptcy, that signature prosecution victory may be in jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court today will consider the former Enron chief executive officer’s appeal, having already hinted that it will throw out at least one count of his conviction for so-called honest services fraud."

Attorneys for Skilling are looking to overturn all nineteen charges for which Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. Skilling's attorneys contend that the trial judge erred when he moved the venue to Houston, and they also contend that the law titled “Honest Services” is unconstitutionally vague. Skilling's conviction was recently upheld by a Federal Court, but it's great to be on the Supreme Court where you can pick and choose the cases to hear.

Poor Jeffery Skillings claims that after Enron was bankrupted, costing over 5,000 jobs and a billion dollars in retirement funds, that he couldn’t get a fair trial. His attorneys point to a negative editorial in the Houston Chronicle and a local rap song, “Drop the S Off Skilling.”

“The degree of hostility and animus that existed in Houston against the defendants - Mr. Skilling in particular -was far more intense than other venues,” said Skilling’s lead attorney, Daniel Petrocelli of O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Los Angeles. Last time I checked Houston was in Texas where they executed a mentally retarded man and a man convicted of arson even after the evidence against him was proven to be false. So now the Supreme Court is considering giving Skilling a new trial because of a newspaper editorial and a local rap song?

Skilling’s appeal claims the atmosphere in Houston, when the trial began in 2006, was one of hostility toward him, fed by "unrelenting and searing” media coverage. Following Skilling’s logic anyone unpopular in the media should be immune from prosecution. Poor, poor Bernie Madoff pled guilty when he could have waited and used the Skilling defense. Skilling isn’t arguing that he didn’t commit the crimes; he’s arguing that he couldn’t get a fair trail because the public didn’t like him.

The Supreme Court, by a willingness to hear the case, is again stepping over the line. Judge Sonya Sotomayor expressed sympathy towards Skilling's plea. If Sotomayor sides with the other conservatives on the bench, the deal is done. You can’t be convicted by a jury if you have the money to prove that the public at large didn’t like you. Federal Solicitor Elana Kagan argued, “Whatever the beliefs of Houston residents generally, the particular individuals selected for petitioner’s jury neither knew nor cared much about Enron’s collapse or the resulting media coverage.”

Where are the complaints from conservatives about judicial activism? This is judicial extremism to the point of judicial fascism. It will strip any meaning from a jury trial, leaving one standard for the wealthy and another for everyone else.

Thank goodness we’ve got Fighting Barack on our side, huh?

Walking Wounded
By David Glenn Cox


“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Winston Churchill wrote those words as a young lieutenant. He was in a Calvary charge where the men on either side of him were killed. It can be seen as the ultimate adrenaline rush in the most inhumane of sports.

Prohibition made the 1920s come to life but it was the thousands of combat veterans that really made it roar. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris? How you gonna keep 'em working at the hardware store after they’ve had that adrenaline rush of gun play?

William Tecumseh Sherman observed that “War is hell” and modern war is even more so. Now we have high-powered, high-tech weaponry that increases the distance between friend and foe with the promise of an almost certain kill factor. Unless they miss, in which case the innocent die and the guilty live. Before WW1 it was unusual for civilians to become fatalities in combat. There are, of course, cases of atrocities but the general battle plan was for the armies to meet in a field somewhere outside of town.

In WW1 ten million soldiers died and seven million civilians died. In WW2 the numbers escalated to the point where they can only give a range of between fifty to seventy million dead and civilian deaths accounted for forty to fifty million. In Vietnam, villages were declared hostile and burned. In Iraq, Fallujah was declared hostile and was surrounded and then cleared house by house and civilian casualties weren’t even counted as the town was bombed and blocks were razed.

The increased lethality of war directs impact on the psychology of war. During WW2 the US Army determined that after thirty days on the line the combat efficiency of a unit declined. In WW2 one in six discharges were for combat fatigue. These were soldiers who had no bullet holes in them or visible scars of battle damage but soldiers whose minds were wounded just the same.

Combat soldiers develop a tough outer callus; they bond with the men around them and lose much of their respect for authority, military or otherwise. What was the most common crime for a WW2 G.I.? The army lost over 20,000 jeeps, lost, stolen or otherwise misplaced. When you live constantly in a life or death situation what can you do to sanction a soldier?

My uncle lived through four years of fighting in the South Pacific and when he went to school on the G.I. Bill he said, “When you live in the mud with people trying to kill you every day, homework or a term paper doesn’t seem like much of a challenge.” He was an outgoing and gregarious man, but his wife explained that he re-fought that war in the jungle every night for the rest of his life. For better or worse he was able to compartmentalize his experiences but was unable to exorcise them.

These horrible experiences cannot be removed from the minds of the young men that we send into combat. It is only one more reason that we must always measure the need for war against the damage by a loss of peace. Not just out of respect for the dead but because of the walking wounded who, like Manchurian candidates, come back and explode upon the innocent. My son had a friend from high school, just an all-American boy who joined the Army right out of high school.

Never been in any trouble, he was from a nice home and family. After three purple hearts and two tours in Iraq he returned home on leave. He had adapted to a combat lifestyle but could not adapt back to a peaceful one. He stayed with his parents for a day or two, then went on a month-long drinking binge. He got into fights and was arrested twice and released by compassionate judges due to his war record. The last time my son saw him he rode up on a stolen Harley-Davidson motorcycle and announced that he wasn’t going back to the Army.

He was later arrested and returned to Texas where he sits in the military stockade. It is obvious that this young man's fighting days are over and that what he needs is help, not prison. He is among the walking wounded; he has a psychological brain injury not unlike a concussion. His young mind was bombarded by horrible images and it adapted to that by trying to filter out the gore and feeding off the adrenaline. While living on the battle field he could cope but once returned to mom and apple pie his mind could no longer cope with killing experiences.

All across America are stories of Iraq veterans killing wives and girlfriends and even other veterans. The New York Times reported 121 cases where Iraq or Afghanistan veterans have been charged with a killing. This while the murder rate overall has declined and fewer soldiers are stationed in country, I’m old enough to remember these same stories from the Vietnam era. Combat veterans whose very lives depended on the ability to dispense violence on a moment’s notice returned home to live in a now alien world.

The Army says the same thing that it always says. Colonel Melnyk of the Department of Defense questioned the validity of comparing prewar and wartime numbers based on news media reports, saying that the current increase might be explained by “an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.” He also questioned the value of “lumping together different crimes" such as involuntary manslaughter with first-degree homicide.

“Given that many veterans rebound successfully from their war experiences and some flourish as a result of them, veterans groups have long deplored the attention paid to the minority of soldiers who fail to readjust to civilian life.”

He is saying it’s an unfair analysis because it’s not happening as you say it is and besides, since it doesn’t happen to most veterans, it should be ignored. Most people won’t catch the flu either but we spend a lot of money on prevention. I remember my uncle explaining that when the war ended his unit sat in an R & R camp for about a month because the war had ended suddenly and there were no plans for how to get the troops home quickly. Then they spent two weeks on a slow boat home where he and his fellow vets talked about what they would do when they got home.

There was time for decompression; many combat vets are in Iraq and Afghanistan on Monday and at mom’s house on Wednesday. My former brother-in-law was stopped in full fatigues returning home from Iraq because an airport security sniffer detected explosives on his clothes. Duh! I wonder why that is? Suddenly his rank and service meant nothing. “You got some 'splaining to do, boy.”

Families repeat the popular refrain, “He came back different.” Many vets are returned to civilian life with a rudimentary psychological evaluation and for some the demons don’t emerge until later. These men want to fit back in; they want their civilian life back but just don’t know how to return to it.

The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that 15% of veterans still suffered symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress a decade after their service. My father-in-law, a two tour Vietnam vet, once told me that the sound of helicopters still made his spine quiver and made him break out into a cold sweat.

The military and the VA have made genuine efforts to combat the problem, but there still remains the military culture that big, macho Marines or soldiers don’t cry and don’t whine. There is an answer; it is the same answer that we hear from right wing pundits in answer to social programs. The answer is to just say no, just say no to war. Just say if you break it, you buy it; that the military is just as liable for PTSD injuries as any other injuries. Maybe that means one or two less bombers or an aircraft carrier, but this debt must be paid to these vets, we owe it to them.

'Yes, but where's Mr. Hoover?'
By David Glenn Cox


Suppose that I was a candidate for President and the centerpiece of my campaign was to create jobs. After being sworn in I proposed to Congress a plan by which any American who purchased a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for ten billion dollars would earn a one billion-dollar tax credit. Why, it would be a wonderful plan; the steel industry would benefit, the ship building industry would benefit, the nuclear power industry would benefit, and the aircraft industry would benefit, as well. It would create tens of thousands of jobs. Only there isn’t anyone out there who could afford to buy such an aircraft carrier.

So, what would the cost be to the Treasury? The cost to the Treasury would be zero, but as a politician I could attach any number I liked to the program. I could go out on speaking tours and say, “You know, my fellow Americans, I recently proposed a plan for a thirteen billion dollar program to create new jobs because as your President I really care about creating new jobs!”

But the actual fact is that until someone purchases an aircraft carrier I haven’t offered one dime towards job creation. The recently passed Senate jobs bill offers thirteen billion dollars in tax credits in the form of a 6.2 percent Social Security waiver. Thirteen billion dollars in job creation, but until somebody actually hires someone for a job how much did the Senate spend? Not one dime. This is job creation by passing the buck.

This type of political bait and switch has become commonplace, but in a time of economic crisis it is hard to fathom. It reeks of Caligula naming his horse as pro-counsel or Napoleon declaring himself Emperor of the Island of Elba. It is a swirling detachment from a dangerous reality. The President and Senate are so proud of the Senate jobs bill that they proclaim it as a giant step forward. Last week the Obama administration announced that they may expand efforts to stem home foreclosures by mandating that all potential home foreclosures be reviewed by the administration's HAMP program before foreclosure.

Mark Twain once said, “God knows when even the little sparrow falls, but what good is that if the sparrow still falls?” HAMP (Home Affordable Loan Program) has offered temporary loan modifications to 830,000 applicants and permanent modifications to only 116,297. The program is administered through the banks themselves and only overseen by government officials. Wow, 116,297 permanent modifications and for the other 830,000, they wait on tenter hooks; they aren’t off the hook but swing in limbo. One late payment or form not properly filled out could eject them from the program and the home foreclosure process begins again.

How small is the number 116,297? Last year there were 2.82 million home foreclosures and for 2010 the number is expected to reach 4.5 million more. The Obama administration predicts that up to four million loans might be eligible for modification by the program they began last February. So in one year only 116,297 loans were permanently modified out of almost three million cases. With those odds the administration might as well advise troubled homeowners to buy lottery tickets.

It would be one thing if homeowners were just asking for a self-serving bailout, but the high number of foreclosures affects the economy as a whole. Sales of existing homes fell in January by 7.2 percent; the decline was the second largest drop on record. When was the worst recorded drop on record? December, the month before when sales of existing homes fell by 16.2 percent. All this with the Obama administration's offering of tax cuts for home purchasers. However, as we’ve learned, if no one purchases anything the cost to the treasury is zero!

New homes sales also fell to a record low of 309,000 annually, and how low is 309,000? It is a 23 percent drop from 2009, the second worst year on record! The lowest level in nearly fifty years. In 1996, for example, there were 1,128,500 new homes built, and we’re on pace this year for 309,000 new homes. This is the point where anyone serious about repairing the economy steps forward, because tax cuts just ain’t cutting it, Bob!

Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but in this situation I think it is more a case of the only thing we have to fear is inaction itself. Or pretend action, butt-covering, buck-passing, tax-cutting programs that pay someone else to do something.

“It is high time to get back to fundamentals. It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it.” Franklin Roosevelt

Imagine if this crisis were being treated as an emergency equal to that of war and the Congress and the administration proposed tax cuts for private industry to raise an army to protect us. That is the insanity of what is going on today; the Kerry-Lugar bill offers up $7.5 billion in cash to Pakistan to build new schools and infrastructure. For the states of this union, they are given permission to print bonds and Americans are offered tax cuts to buy new homes and cars.

Coca-Cola recently announced plans to purchase Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., its North American bottler. The plan is a retrenchment to take more control of the franchise and to keep the profits in-house. You see, Coca-Cola is a business once thought to be recession proof, but it is now struggling. In a perverse example of just how bad the economy has become, H&R Block, the nation's largest tax preparer, has reported weak sales because of high unemployment. You don’t need much help with your tax return when your income is zero.

Ford Motor Company is on a pace to become the second largest automobile manufacturer in the world and has announced a $155 million retooling of its Cleveland, Ohio engine factory. The move will create sixty positions to be filled from the ranks of 900 to be laid off in July. The company is taking advantage of tax cuts and accelerated write offs offered in the President's stimulus plan. The company is also planning on spending $1.8 billion to upgrade factories in Canada and Mexico, so don’t say that tax cuts don’t have any benefits.

“If sales volume goes up and they don’t hire, they will become extremely profitable,” said Van Conway, senior managing director of restructuring firm Conway MacKenzie. “If volumes go up 10 percent, there will not be 10 percent more people hired. It will be closer to zero.”

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) – "Ford Motor Co.’s finance unit said it is eliminating 1,000 jobs this year, a 20 percent reduction, after the automaker announced plans last week to cut 900 positions at a Mustang factory amid weak demand.

“Employers took 1,761 mass layoff actions in January that resulted in the separation of 182,261 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer.”

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- "Consumer confidence fell sharply in February as Americans turned more pessimistic about job prospects and the U.S. economy, the Conference Board reported Tuesday. Just a month after touching a 16-month high, the research group's Consumer Confidence index sank 11 points to 46.0 from an upwardly revised 56.5 in January. It's the lowest reading since April 2009."

Perhaps consumer confidence fell because, unlike Congress and the administration, they read what passes for want ads in the newspaper and online jobs sites each day. There are no jobs; many of the jobs posted are illusionary, commission-only jobs or out and out fraudulent jobs. Maybe consumer confidence fell because consumers feel the heat of the flames while Congress and the administration name themselves Emperor of Elba or name their horse pro-counsel.

"As we were driving past a grade school some of the tots in the littlest end of the row wondered what it was all about. And one of the teachers leaned over to one of them and said: 'There's Mr. Roosevelt.' And the little tot looked up to her and said: 'Yes, but where's Mr. Hoover?'

"The great warmth of your welcome reinforces the obvious fact that so far as carrying on a campaign to get votes, my visit to this state has not been necessary. However, the purpose of coming down here is not to get votes. My visit to the south is to carry out the purposes of my trips to the west, to the coast and indeed throughout the country, which is not so much to be heard as to hear, and not so much to talk to you as to let you talk to me.

"I want to know about the problems of all this country, east and west and north and south, and for that reason, familiar though I am with conditions in this state, I have come to my second home, my home in the southland.

"When we stop listening to the apology that 'things might have been worse' and give our whole-hearted support to those who preach the gospel that through action they are going to make things better, then and only then will America resume her march to a better day." (From Franklin Delano Roosevelt's October 24, 1932 campaign speech.)

Mr. Hoover is in Washington.

The Picture

<http://open.salon.com/blog/david_cox/2010/... >



I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy twenty two-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and whose swell at the winter Olympic games.

It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by Pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless goat droppings the public chooses to chew on. This is some American mother’s son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is fucked forever.

How did this come to happen to this poor mother’s son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war but instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad thinks happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone that the war that blew off half of this boys head was based on out and out lies.

It was a war perpetrated by people who hoped to gain from it be it in oil or pipelines or service contracts and like the media they don’t care that this mother’s son is mangled and mutilated. Do you care? I’ve been married twice for a combined twenty-five years and in that time I doubt my wives ever baked a chocolate cake. I don’t read comic books or watch goat crap TV but you see I’ve got a son about this boy’s age. My heart aches and my mind fills with rage because the people that have the power and authority to show this picture would rather talk about American Idol and from where I sit that makes them and accomplice to a war crime.

Because not content to ignore the current victims they support more crimes and call for more wars. Several years ago in Iraq parents waited for their children at a bus stop. An errant coalition missile struck the bus stop and blew the elementary school age children to pieces. Needless to say this wasn’t widely reported but the parents in a frenzy began fighting over the pieces of their children. Little arms and legs, little headless torsos identifiable only by the shirt or dress they were wearing. Imagine the horror, imagine the type of people who could do such a thing. How do they live with themselves? How do they sleep at night?

They do it by watching Lost and American Idol and by eating chocolate cake. They read comic books and watch sports. It makes life easy because the media will not intrude on their fantasy world but instead will promote the fantasy. Oh, but who won the gold metal in curling and who was eliminated on American Idol.

Iraq war Coalition Deaths 4,696
Injured 30,000

Iraqi civilian deaths and injured, 1,366,650

Afghanistan coalition Deaths 1,659

American taxpayers bill as of today $964,044,305,874

A Gravy Train with Biscuit Wheels
By David Glenn Cox


I remember a story from many moons ago when I was a child about a man who had buried all of his money, by the light of the moon, in coffee cans in and around the back yard of his home. He had grown old and senile and was being placed in a nursing home. His family knew that the old man had money; they just had no idea where it was until he admitted that he had buried it around the property. The family began searching with a metal detector and a shovel but finally gave up and hired a backhoe, and netted almost a million dollars.

Being young and not understanding I asked my mother why the old man would do something so foolish. She explained with great patience about bank failures and why many people of that generation did not trust banks or bankers. Years later I read about an elderly couple in Ohio who were fighting eviction through eminent domain. Everyone assumed that it was just an old man who would not let go of his house, but as the bulldozers moved in and began to knock over the house vast quantities of coins were discovered hidden in the walls.

Silver dollars, half dollars, rolls of quarters, the old man didn’t trust the banks. Eventually over ten thousand dollars was recovered. Funny thing though, that was only the face value of the coins. The value of the money to coin collectors was upwards of fifty thousand dollars. That crazy little old man received a far better return squirreling his change away in the walls than he would have gotten at the bank.

Today in America seventeen million adults have no bank accounts whatsoever. Forty-three million have accounts but use them only to cash paychecks. Sixty million people is a huge number of adults to make so little use of the banking system. I first discovered the advantage of cash back when I still had the accoutrements of wealth. When I went to the gas station to fill up my truck using a debit card, the gas pump computer voice would drone on and on about a gas additive that could be added to my purchase. I had to stand in the cold and the rain waiting for my tank to fill. But when I handed the clerk a twenty, no message about add-ons and I could wait in the cab until the pump shut off by itself.

When I went to the grocery store with sixty or eighty dollars in my pocket my only concern was in not going over sixty or eighty dollars lest I’d have to put something back. When I used my debit card there was a constant anxiety of how much money I had versus how much money the bank said that I had. They would always hit you with that monthly fee when your balance dipped below a certain level. What that meant was that the bank was claiming first dibs on your money. You could have what was left after they grabbed their fees.

I think a smart marketer should promote environmentally-friendly yard safes. Rustproof and moisture proof, guaranteed not to leak for a lifetime. You have a better chance burying your money in the back yard than trusting it to the banks.

The bankers are aware that growing numbers of Americans, either through situation or design, want nothing to do with their industry. The FDIC came up with a new program, which I call “Free Crack”, to entice less affluent Americans back into the banks. The program was to encourage the banks to make loans of up to $1,000 while keeping the interest rate below 36 percent. God bless their little black hearts! Thirty-six banks made 16,000 loans totaling over $18 million. The problem is that making loans involves signatures and paperwork. Plus there are pesky state and federal laws about waiting periods and legal recourse. So to the banks making small loans for a paltry 36 percent, it wasn’t profitable enough.

The administration's banking reform legislation kept bankers up nights thinking of new ways to separate you from your/their money. The legislation cost the banking industry $15 billion, as fees for overdraft protection were limited. The banks collected $38 billion in overdraft fees last year. Who would have guessed that Americans were so sloppy with their money? Well, it works like this: you make a purchase with your debit card and the money is withdrawn from your account instantly. If, however, you make a return or are due a credit, that takes from five to seven days, at the bank's discretion.

If that puts you into an overdraft situation, you are fined, even though your account has a pending credit. They win, you lose, every time, every day, twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year. This smiling industry of jackals and hyenas does not take well to losing $15 billion in their/your money. So what’s a blood-sucking, money-grubbing legal gangster to do?

The answer is really very simple. Since they have now had their claws clipped in the overdraft department they said, “Let’s call it something else! Let’s call it a payday loan!”

Cooler heads in the marketing department prevailed and answered; “Such august and major banks as Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Fifth Third cannot be seen dabbling in the unseemly world of payday loans.”

The rebuttal, “But the interest rates are 120 percent a year, and there is no paperwork. The sucker/customer pays whatever we tell them they owe and thanks to direct deposit we get their money before they do!”

Marketing answered, “We’ll call it Early Advance or Checking Advance, and then we’ll market it as a service not a loan and free ourselves from the regulatory oversight of state banking laws!”

The Payday Loan stores cried foul, this is our corner, go find your own suckers. We were here first! Payday Loan stores have a $42 billion industry fleecing the poor and needy and don’t appreciate their upscale suit and tie brethren horning in on their market. Steven Schlein who represents the Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade group of payday lenders, said, “National banks like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Fifth Third are federally regulated, while payday lenders are overseen by the states. What the banks are doing are payday loans. Let’s have everybody operate under the same system.”

Payday lenders garnered over $7 billion in fees last year and what is brewing now are jackals fighting over the corpse. We've got suit and tie gangsters with drive-by attorneys and hit squad lobbyists in a turf war over who gets to fleece the suckers first.

This all began to coalesce in my mind when I started reading about the Greek economic crisis. Back in the heady days of 2002 the Greek government found itself in a budget mess. The government needed loans but because of the European Union’s restrictions on how much a nation could borrow they had no source for new loans, until the American bankers showed up.

Goldman Sachs and hedge fund manager John Paulson began massaging the numbers by using cross-currency swaps and cross-border bond swaps denominated in foreign currencies. These weren’t payday loans, they were currency exchanges. So stealthily were they operating that Goldman didn’t even officially have an office in Greece. It was all perfectly legal mainly; it was only a subversion of the rules and not a violation of the rules.

Despite high fees and transaction costs Goldman Sachs earned the reputation in Greece as the go-to guys. As I began reading about this my mind raced and I could imagine millions of Americans signing for home mortgages with high fees and transaction costs as the mortgage lender says, “Don’t you worry, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we’re your go-to guys. We’ll get you that mortgage!”

Yet now in Greece it has all gone bad. The European Union advises a strict diet of higher taxes and lower wages, in other words the pain is to be borne on the backs of the working people. It all has a sickening, familiar ring to it. An unnamed European Commission official said, “You have the sense that banks have been playing all sides of this, making money whatever happens to Greece.” Damn straight, buddy!

Here in the States the banks live the life of Riley; they have a virtual gravy train with biscuit wheels. Free money from the Federal Reserve, bailouts from the Treasury. Huge fourth quarter bonuses followed up by first quarter losses and nobody's the wiser. The British government imposed a 50 percent tax on bank bonuses, but our President laughs them off with a boys-will-be-boys remark. The banks practically have a highwayman’s license to steal and the government's answer is to tinker in the margins.

Greece has a long and storied history of pointing the way forward, and today riots broke out in the streets of Athens. A nationwide general strike has shut down the economy. Half a million civil servants, air-traffic controllers, customs and tax officials, train drivers, doctors at state-run hospitals, and schoolteachers walked off the job in protest of government austerity plans. Yiannis Panagopoulos, president of the union GSEE said, “We didn’t create the crisis.”

Damn straight, buddy, neither did we. It is very clear who caused this worldwide crisis and it is also very clear who should be made to pay. The Jabberwocky of the banking industry must be brought to heel or be slain on the battlefield. It must be skinned and it's hide nailed to the courtyard door, for the two things a banker will never admit are that he’s had enough or that he’s made a mistake.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

Excuse the repost, but I'm out of my mind today

Cooking in a Coffee Pot
and Other Useful Tips for the Homeless
By David Glenn Cox


I write this for the millions who, like myself, are holed up in basements, garages, empty houses, fields, culverts and what have you. Guilty of being Americans and homeless, trying to make it through just one more day in the land of Fuck You and the home of the slave. I am at the top of the homeless pyramid; I still have internet access and a toilet.


The one thing to remember about the homeless is that they never have a day off. They are homeless every day; it's easy to forget and difficult to understand, but the homeless face the world without a buttress. They are toe-to-toe with the heat and the humidity, the rain, the cold, the mud, and the bugs.


They have lost their basic building block of society, a home, a place to lay down their heads. A place to lie in comfort, a simple retreat from the world. I consider myself among the lucky; I have a leaking air mattress and a roof to keep myself dry and a box fan to keep me cool. I don’t sleep in a bed but on a floor, and eat on a table salvaged from a dumpster. But it is not a home, it is a garage. It is a refuge and I am a refugee in modern America.


Brought up in another place, I feel myself an alien in this land. This is not the land of my birth. Where did it all go? How can we get back there? Our goals, motives and principles become polluted and reverse reclamated, blurred and obscured by the lack of a home. We live like cave men and women, targeted and dodging the monsters in squad cars or just avoiding the looks of disgust from those who believe themselves invincible.


But we know better and we look back with “see you soon eyes,” and we dream a dream of beds with clean linen or a hot bath or a shower. A job with decent wages and maybe even a front door and a window with a screen. But if I had one wish it would be to play the movie “The Grapes of Wrath” on every TV channel for twenty-four hours, because I am living every line of it every day. “Don’t take no nerve to do something when you ain’t got no other choice.”


“It’s my dirt, it ain’t no good but its mine!”


We are looking for our California, our promised land, a place to start again. Because, just like Tom Joad, we are getting angry. “They’re working away at our spirit, trying to make us crawl” feeding us promises, programs that, like the rain, sound good but never reach us here on the ground.


I laugh myself through the want ads each day at jobs that make promises that are either sucker gambits or flat out frauds. Come work for free! Learn Grant Writing, only $200. “I never should have come on this trip. You remember that coupon in the spicy Western stories magazine? Learn to be a radio expert.” Jobs that aren’t jobs at all, promising good work and good wages but paying a nickel a box when they promised a dime. “An' you fellas will have to take it cause you’ll be hungry.”


I traded my truck for a 1994 Paseo and $1,500, but I don’t drive; it is merely a vestige of who I once was. I don’t drive because I don’t have insurance, but it is like an escape pod. Just knowing that I could go if I had somewhere to go, it is my last redoubt. I’m down to about $250 dollars and still looking for work, foolishly, pointlessly. I applied to a popular website that was seeking in depth journalism on the subject of homelessness but they never replied. Typical American media, they just want anecdotes about homelessness, they want to hear about it but don’t want to know about it.


I watch the body shop next door meandering towards oblivion as their work dries up. Friday, they had six body men working on three cars and you can’t keep the doors open like that. The cabinetry shop on the other side is working four and a half days a week.


I buy groceries according to what I can keep in a mini fridge, more like an icebox really. It keeps food cool, not cold. For soup you measure a cup of water in a plastic cup and place the soup in the coffeepot. Then you let the water pour through and wait for the warmer to warm the concoction. It’s not piping hot, but it’s hot enough and beggars can’t be choosers now, can they? Because of my culinary limitations I buy the same foods each week; two months ago it cost $45.00 and last week it was $65.00.


The money is rapidly loosing its value, which also explains why gas prices are rising even as demand sinks. I know that more of you are coming to join us in the time that the land forgot and you will have questions just as we had questions. But there are no answers for them, you just do and try and make the day. You wait anxiously for the Georgia sun to go down to offer some relief from the heat. As the sky turns red, the box fan again begins to offer some relief, the only relief available.


The kitties, Moxie and Blackie, still visit me each night and it is peculiar because I’ve joined their society more than they mine. When I wrote about them before, some people, well-intentioned I’m sure, suggested that I capture them and turn them over to the humane society. You don’t understand, we are equals in this life. I don’t rat them out and they don’t rat me out. If I turned them over maybe they’d have a better life; maybe they’d get gassed.


But, like the Joads, “We had meat tonight, not much but we had it.” The kitties are free and for the time being happy. I feed them and welcome them but they are free to go as well. They are not mine, merely night visitors who befriended me without qualifications. It would be too hard on my conscience to turn them in without knowing the outcome. Maybe you understand, maybe you don’t. Tom said it like this, “Seems the government has more interest in a dead man than a live one.” Or in this case they have more interest in picking up kitties than in finding them homes. Besides, the government has done nothing to help me; why should I expect more for cats that will never vote?


The cool and the stillness of Sunday night are a comfort to me and I must take my pleasure where I can, because the air mattress still leaks and the hot sun will return again tomorrow. So I will lay my head on the floor and dream.


“Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live - for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken … fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”
( The Grapes of Wrath)