I think (pun intended) it was Robert Jay Lifton in an interview on NPR a couple years ago who said that people tend to get into a kind of group-think mindset when they remain in a particular environment, to the point that they become completely blind to any other perspective. The discussion then had to do with high-ranking military personnel who lived a kind of 24/7 pro-"military-as-solution-to-everything" existence that provided them with only one viewpoint's input, and specifically then on the Iraq situation. Only after they moved outside that environment -- and I believe Anthony Zinni was the example cited -- were they able to get the multiple-viewpoint input that allowed them to make more rational decisions.

Paulson & Bernanke et Cie. are not getting any other input. Everything that's getting to them, and therefore everything that's coming out of them, is informed by their environment. It's entirely, without exception, framed by a "we have to save Wall Street and the brokers and the bankers and the rest of 'our' folks." There's no input on the fate, feelings, and futures of the other 379,995,000 of us.

For instance, has anyone worked up a model, computer or otherwise, of what would happen if Bear Stearns had just failed? What dominoes would it have taken with it, and how much better off or worse off would the world economy be? What about Lehman and Merrill and even Frannie?

What would happen if we "sacrificed" the multi-billion-dollar fortunes of the richest 1000 people who made their fortunes off hedge funds and CDOs and CDSes, etc? After all, we have a government that does not hesitate to sacrifice 5000 mostly American lives in the pursuit of victory in Iraq and considers it a bargain. Is it any less patriotic to go to the people whose greed directly caused this catastrophe and demand that they give back all the stolen loot? I mean, it's not like we're going to kill them or even put them in jail. They just have to put the money back.

The question remains, of course, how do they do that, especially if the money never existed in the first place. Well, what would happen, seriously, if they took their write-downs, canceled the CDS insurance contracts, decided it was all just a game, and started over? Is that possible? Is there a way to do it? (Does that put AIG back in business?)

The REAL economy -- not the computer-model financial one that doesn't grow any food or manufacture any widgets or provide any real services -- is the one that matters. Unless the bail-out addresses that -- and I doubt it will -- nothing's going to change. Will the bail-outs fix the system? No, because they aren't addressing the problem. It's like bailing out a leaking boat; if you don't plug the leak, you're not making any difference and the boat's gonna sink eventually anyway.

Those of us here on the bottom of the Ponzi pyramid have little leverage. And yes, pun most assuredly intended. If we work for wages, we have little to no control over how our taxes are taken from our paychecks or what taxes are tacked onto the purchases we make of goods and services. Most of us don't have the financial wherewithal to buy gold or silver as heges against inflation. There's not enough gold and silver to go around anyway; most of us will end up relying on the existing monetary system. So we're screwed. And what is our only other real hedge against individual and personal catastrophe? It's to establish our own nano-economies of the old-fashioned sort: providing real goods and services. Growing our own food. Making our own clothes. Sharing homes. Exchanging essential services like roof or auto repair for food or clothing or whatever. And it seems to me that that alternative is the perfect illustration of what's necessary on the larger levels, from micro through macro.

But what do I know? Well, I'm beginning to think I know a lot more than Paulson and Bernanke and some of the other idgits who are setting policy. For one thing, I know my model works in the real world, outside the electronic wizardry of a computer.

An old joke -- There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.


Off to labor at my just-under-subsistence gig,

Tansy Gold

I don't make this post lightly. And I'm prepared to be flamed, even if I won't enjoy it.

Let me start out by saying that I'm a white woman, boomer generation, college-educated, raised in a virtually all-white Chicago suburb and now living in a pretty much all-white ex-urb of Phoenix, Arizona. I have therefore experienced almost nothing in the way of racial prejudice, and what I have experienced was based on having Jewish family members, not on skin color.

Second, I will freely acknowledge that I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, though not a fanatical one. I said privately to a lot of friends and to family members who were Obama supporters from the get-go that I was quite frankly torn between the two but was going with Hillary because I agreed with about the same percentage of her politics as I did of Obama's but that because she was a woman I was going to support her. I also said that if she didn't get the nomination, I would enthusiastically support whoever did. I never had any problem shifting support to Obama.

Third, I have made no secret of my opinion that Howard Dean failed the Democratic party and all the supporters of all the primary candidates when he didn't broker a deal between Obama and Clinton early on, before the party became polarized. I believed then and I believe now that the bitter primary fight not only led to something of a rift between the two camps (if not between the candidates themselves) but that it also exhausted a lot of resources, including financial ones, that could have been better used in the general election campaign. I think the reports of Obama no longer having the massive advantage in funds somewhat supports my conclusions.

Fourth, and more recently, I have voiced the opinion that the failure of the Democratic party -- NOT Obama personally or even the Obama campaign -- to include Hillary on the ticket left the Dems vulnerable to a dark horse VP pick by McCain who would tap into the emotional vote. In other words, I don't think McCain could have picked Palin if Hillary were on the ticket. It would have made him look silly -- or sillier than he already does. With Hillary out of the picture, the pukes could paint themselves as more feminist than the Dems, more progressive, and so on. EVEN THOUGH OF COURSE THEY AREN'T ANYTHING OF THE SORT.

Fifth, the Palin nomination utilizes that opportunity to exploit BOTH ends of the low-information republican electorate: the moderates who see Palin as a strong woman but still a traditional mother, and the reactionary far right who are able to compartmentalize the glaring contradictions in Palin's candidacy the way they always compartmentalize conflicting truths. Palin's gender provides, if you'll excuse the metaphor, an impermeable defense. ANY criticism of her becomes gendered, and the Dems are unable (so far, anyway) to counter that.

That's where I stood until this morning, when something else occurred to me as a result of a casual conversation about Germany in the 1930s. (Yes, my "casual" conversations do run to topics like that.)

The issue I hadn't examined, and which issue now confronts me with a situation I can't quite wrap my head around, is whether or not the GOP has finally been able to capitalize on the latent racism in the American electorate. They are able to play the gender card with full legitimacy, because the Dems are unable to deny their own failure to nominate a woman. And the Dems are now afraid to acknowledge that race may be a more important factor. In other words, the GOP has no problem playing the gender card because they know, from Hillary's run, that it's safe; but the Dems may now have to recognize that playing the race card won't work, because there's still too much racism in this country.

We know that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be vice president and certainly not qualified to be president. As Rick Davis of the McCain campaign has openly stated, this election is not about issues but about personalities. Perhaps what no one is willing to acknowledge is that there are a whole lot of Americans who will vote for an unqualified White woman long before they will vote for an eminently qualified Black man.

I think even Obama tried to engage in a dialogue about race, and there was so much denial, so much pretending that we've moved beyond that, that now the issue (rather like impeachment) is off the table.

We know that the GOP, contrary to its Lincolnian roots, is not the party of racial diversity and equality. The party's nominee can't even present his adopted daughter-with-dark-skin openly. Contrast this to Cheney's treatment of his lesbian daughter. White does matter. White trumps gay. White trumps gender.

I don't think it's a matter of appealing to a bloc of voters; I doubt there are many African Americans who would have voted for McCain anyway under the circumstances, so it's not about appealing to them. Instead, it's a matter of appealing to the "better nature" of Americans, even if we have to do it through a painful intervention.

I don't know. I'm throwing this out for discussion. I'm admitting my ignorance and my lack of experience. I also don't really know what to do about it. I don't know if there's any strategy that can make a difference. I just don't know.


Tansy Gold

The REAL numbers are worser (sic) still.


I'm so angry about this I'm shaking.

Why is Obama in money trouble? BECAUSE HIS SUPPORTERS ARE TAPPED OUT. We got hit heavy during a stupid and wasteful and counter-productive primary season that put ALL the emphasis on personalities and very damned little on issues.

Now we've handed that strategy on a silver platter to a senile old liar and his political boinkee. The personality war WORKED for the Dems -- and it handed the pukes a tapped out, exhausted, somewhat demoralized base. Furthermore, it handed the pukes the PERFECT weapon against us. Absofuckinglutely perfect. The controversy over Palin is giving them hours and hours and hours and hours of free campaigning. John Edwards' scandal disappeared in a few days; Mooselini's linger.

And now all those pukes with all that money, and all the power to make donations in other people's names and fund 527s and donate to the party, etc., etc., etc., are free to do so.

We fucked ourselves. We put ideology ("let the people decide!") over practicality.

Am I gonna shut up about this? No, I'm not. Because I think the sooner we Dems admit we did a fucking stupid thing, the better off we'll be.

What the fuck is the matter with Obama and this absolute bull shit of holding off on rolling back the tax cuts on the rich? Doesn't he fucking know he's turning off his BASE? What's Biden saying? Is he getting any coverage? OR IS THE MEDIA STILL SLAVERING OVER PALIN? Don't bother to answer that one.

If your boss is a McCain supporter and makes no secret of it, and you're lucky to have a job at all and can't afford to lose it, are you going to put an Obama sticker on your car? Are you going to risk putting an Obama button on your purse? THAT'S WHY IT COMES BACK TO JOBS. People without jobs, people without income, those are frightened people. People without security are frightened, timid, cautious. And now we've got a candidate who says "Lay off the kids" even as Palin is USING HER CHILDREN AS CAMPAIGN PROPS.

Don't lay off the fucking kids (pun intended). Anyone who goes out and preaches abstinence as the best and virtually the only proven method of avoiding teen pregnancy better have a house full of abstaining teen-agers. Palin can't claim that. HER POLICIES DON'T WORK IN HER OWN FUCKING FAMILY.

But we can only say that here. We can't go out into the workplace and say it, because too many of us don't have jobs or have tenuous employment situations or are a paycheck away from disaster.

That's why jobs matter. Jobs empower people, whether they're working for solid living wages and saving for retirement and their kids' education or they're able to start their own small local businesses and provide the same quality goods and services at a competitive price as the big guys.

The pukes, with help from Bill Clinton (the only Dem in that quarter century of puke tyranny), destroyed the foundation of America. And I don't see Obama/Biden doing much to fix it.


Tansy Gold, enraged

fight fire by walking away from it.

I'm not the only one on DU who has defended many of the attacks on Sarah Pain as justified in an almost "ends justifies the means" rationale. I have, I think, been a bit more verbose than many posters. And I have repeatedly framed my defense by saying that all the logic in the world and all the attention to real issues like the economy, health care, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy and the environment, etc., mean nothing in terms of persuading moderates and fence-sitters and uncommited undecided independents to vote for Obama/Biden and not for McPain.

What I recognized during a break from DU this afternoon -- and what I suspect most here on DU will pointedly ignore -- is that the vest evidence in support of my theory is DUers ourselves. And yes, I'm including yours truly.

We have reacted with emotional relish to each and every new rumor or scandal or revealed untruth about McCain and his theocratic attach bitch. I use that term with reservation, having lost a good part of my Labor Day week-end to dealing with dog fights involving my own beloved little runt of an American Staffordshire Terrier. I won't call Sarah Pain a pit bull because I think too much of the dogs. But I digress, sort of.

My point is that we more than anyone on the other side ought to understand how easily we are reached through our emotions. A dozen threads or more on each and every hint of scandal. Our hopes raised by each pundit's pronouncement of "She's going down." We don't look at the DU warning before we post a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate. How many times was the photoshopped flag bikini pose posted? Ten? Twenty? More? It was done because it resonated with our emotions and we reacted not with our brains but with our guts, our hearts, our fantasies and fears.

By any logical measure, a continuation of the past eight years of maladministration would be disastrous for this country, for the 300+ millions who live here, and even for the rest of the world. But we on the rational left often forget that our counterparts on the right are NOT rational. When my daughter called me the other day and gushed about how inspired she was by Obama, how wonderful it felt to be able to vote enthusiastically FOR someone, I pointed out that she, too, was falling for the emotional response. It took her a while -- she is a former social worker and now a speech pathologist in a working-class public school system in New Jersey -- to recognize what I meant. The difference between her and your average McCain/Pain supporter is that she was able to back off from her emotional enthusiasm and put a rational explanation beneath it.

So when we take the moral high ground and proclaim that we are not or at least should not sling the mud with the Republicans, we are denying a very important reality: that the emotional response is ALL they have.

Do read Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians." It's free online at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey / For whatever reasons, the people who blindly and against their own best interests vote for and campaign for and believe in "leaders" like Bush and Cheney and McCain are almost incapable of reacting any other way. They cannot be swayed by rational discourse. They are AFRAID of rational discourse.

Jon Stewart's comparison of how the right wing pundits address "issues" is another perfect example. Karl Rove can blithely point out that Gov. Tim Kaine has far too little experience to be a vice-presidential candidate: mayor of the 120th largest city (Richmond, VA) in the country, only three years on the job, and so on. Rove can then turn around and say Pain is not only qualified for the Number Two spot but MORE qualified than Kaine. Rove can lie about the size of the city of which Pain was mayor (Wasilla is NOT the second largest city in Alaska), but because he is appealing ONLY to the emotions of the REpublican base, they will believe it. They will accept it and totally and completely ignore Rove's earlier criticism of Kaine. Ditto with O'Reilly on pregnant teen-agers and the blame that ought to fall on their "pin-head" parents. And so on.

What Stewart doesn't point out, of course, is WHY this works so well. Unfortunately, that kind of critical thinking is no longer taught. We don't even see much of it here on DU. Stewart actually appealed to OUR emotions rather than our logic, and then hoped we would understand. While most of us saw the inherent absurdity, we didn't examine why such an absurdity even exists, let alone why it often prevails over logic.

Several mornings a week I have coffee with a group of friends, among whom is a dear sweet delightful widow from upstate New York. She's not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she has a sweet and generous heart. She firmly believes Barack Obama is a Muslim because he has a "weird" name. I once tried to point out that he had no choice in that name -- it's not like he went from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali or from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabar. But she isn't capable of reconciling a "different" name with a "real American." Never mind that her own name isn't the one she was born with. Never mind that she uses an androgynous diminutive of her first name. Never mind ANYTHING. She's afraid of anything differnt and so she will vote for McCain/Pain not because she believes anything they say or don't say but because they make her feel comfortable.

Would she switch her vote, or stay home and not vote at all, if she's shown evidence that Pain enjoys hunting and killing and encourages everyone to do it? Would she switch her vote if she were given evidence that Pain is a lying sack of shit about trooper-gate and airplane-on-ebay-gate and bristol-gate and bridge-to-nowhere-gate? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

But would she switch her vote if I sat down with her and explained how the mortgage crisis that caused so many of McCain's friends to lose their INVESTMENTS is far more crucial to the working- and middle-class families who are losing their HOMES? No. It wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to her. She's a widow with a secure pension from her husband, social security, medicare and supplemental insurance, no mortgage, no worries. She's more afraid of terrorist attacks in Gold Canyon, Arizona, than she is of global warming, a failing national infrastructure, ineffective public schools (she went to Catholic schools and never attended a public school), or economic meltdown. She believes in saints and angels and UFOs. Logic is NEVER going to reach her. Emotion might.

We're up against a machine that understands this. Do you think Rick Davis or Karl Rove or Grover Norquist or Bill Kristol really believes the superficial bullshit the REpublican party is spewing? Do you think they really believe lower taxes on the rich means more money for the working classes? Of course not! They know lower taxes on the rich means more money for the rich! And since they're the rich, they're all in favor of it! This SHOULD be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, for a lot of folks on the left, it's not.

Some will no doubt come back with responses that Gore really won 2000 and Kerry really won 2004, but the reality is that neither of them was inaugurated and served as President. Falling back on the comforting belief that "our" candidate "really" won over Bush/Cheney is just plain stupid. It allows us to believe, erroneously, that logic and rational thinking and speaking will prevail. Unfortunately, ALONE they won't and don't. Not in this day and age.

If Obama/Biden want to stay above the muck and mire, fine. But we must be the foot soldiers in the trenches. We are the ones who can't be hauled before the tribunal of the national punditocracy. We can blithely spread rumors and debunk lies and deparse the parsed half-truths. We can ask the questions about Baby Trig's parentage and whether Sarah was cavorting between the bear skins with her husband's business partner. We can speculate with primal glee about whether or not Bristol is pregnant or Sarah is a racist or Track is a dumb jock or Todd is a bullying dominionist husband. We can criticize their clothes and their eyewear and their tattoos and their shoes. THAT'S OUR JOB. We're the firefighters, trying to stop an overwhelming conflagration.

We can fight fire with fire: haul out every rumor and speculation and dissect it to the nth degree. (Mixed metaphor? I dunno; science and math weren't my strong points!) If anyone doubts the effectiveness, remember that -- no matter what Sarah says her plans may have been, she did not go public with (her version of) the truth about Bristol's pregnancy until the blogs and the discussion boards and then the semi-mainstream media began to pick up the story. Is it an embarrassment to her yet? We don't know. But we do know it wouldn't have been ANYTHING if we down here on the ground hadn't kept digging and burning, digging and burning.

We can fight fire with water: clean the dirt of their own mud-slinging. Point out the racist connotations of "community organizers." Post the "stock photo" pics that were used to "include" African Americans in the great Republican tent. Expose the utter stupidity -- but not the untruthfulness, because it IS true -- of Rick Davis' claim that the election will be about personalities rather than issues. For many of the rightwing base, it won't matter; they can't be swayed no way, no how, and they'll still vote for McCain.

But by fighting with the most effective weapons, we have a chance with some of the moderates, the "swing voters," the undecideds and uncommitteds. LEAVE THE BASE ALONE; it's a waste of time. Give McCain/Pain their 30% or even 40%. We don't need every single vote. We just need the ones that count, and then we need to count them.

But if we set ourselves somehow above the fray, consider ourselves morally above the mud, then we have forgotten how to fight and do not deserve to win.

Obama and Biden, Clinton and Clinton, Napolitano and Sibelius and all the rest of the speechifiers will carry the official message. But they won't be able to compaign in the one-on-one intimate encounters that will swing one vote at a time. That's what we have to do. And we should not be afraid to use any and all weapons at our disposal.

We know -- I know and you know -- that the other side wouldn't hesitate a second.



Tansy Gold (who did not proofread this and hopes SOMEONE will pick out her errors so she can correct them.)

is considered normal.


http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contribu...
The day after Robin Bush died of leukemia at the age of three, George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush played a round of golf. There was no funeral for Robin Bush and she was buried in New York -- not transported back to Texas where the Bush family lived at the time.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...
stinkeefresh (563 posts) Tue Sep-14-04 09:44 AM
Response to Reply #3
10. They didn't tell him what happened!!!
Any more details? I am facinated by Robin Bush. In a Salon review of that book, they mention that the family played golf the next day.

Paragon (1000+ posts) Tue Sep-14-04 09:56 AM
Response to Reply #10
12. Yeah, they did.
Bury the kid, then play 18.

If they were that far in denial, imagine how it affected the son.

stinkeefresh (563 posts) Tue Sep-14-04 10:16 AM
Response to Reply #12
16. I'm tempted to pin the whole psychological trauma
of Bush on the death of Robin. I don't care how much your family sucks, a six year old boy loves his three year old sister.

**************************

I'm not sure why I suddenly remembered this today, but there you have it. The incident was apparently reported in Justin Frank's "Bush on the Couch," which I have not read in its entirety.

But it certainly makes me wonder all the more if there aren't elements of real, deep-seated mental illness at work. Not only does booooosh need to out-do Poppy in everything -- re-election, taking the war to Baghdad and Saddam, etc., etc., etc. -- but now he's even sticking it to the old man about giving up golf to somehow honor the dead, exactly the way GHWB failed to honor the beloved baby sister.

Bat-shit crazy, that's what this guy is. Totally, completely, without a freakin' doubt, bat-shit crazy.


Or I'm not


Tansy Gold

Rand was deliberately exposing her own flaws?? I don't think so, because that would have meant the whole novel was its own opposite, and that would border on farce. Rand was not farcical.

But I do think Rand was conflicted, at some level, maybe subconscious or even below that, because Eddie was one of two prominent characters who did have some "human" qualities, the other being Cheryl.

(I'm not sure if a "spoiler alert" is even necessary or appropriate for this thread, but I'm used to book discussion boards where failure to issue an alert is practically grounds for the equivalent of tombstoning!)

I remember being stunned when Cheryl was, in soap opera terms, written out of the story. Why, I wondered, did Rand get rid of her just when she (Cheryl) "saw the light"? It seemed stupid at the time, and it seems even more stupid now that I know more about storytelling -- and propaganda. Cheryl was the placeholder for the reader who needed to be "converted" to Objectivism, the person who fell for the superficial glitter of the falsely rich and morally bankrupt. Yet by disposing of her right at the moment of conversion, Rand was essentially saying the Objectivist system didn't have room for converts, just as it didn't have room for the Eddie Willerses of the world, meaning "the rest of us," not even if we were devoted Objectivists in thought, word, and deed. This amounts to preaching to a predestined choir, because no one else is worthy of being saved. (This, imho, makes Objectivism more akin to a religion than to a philosophy, and certainly removes it further from anything resembling economic theory.)

When I went back and read Eddie's last scene this afternoon, I discovered another tidbit of some interest, somewhat forgotten but not entirely. Eddie encounters a group of refugees in wagons -- a suggestion that at the collapse of the "collective" economy, the populace will be reduced to pre-industrial barbarism -- and they are described thusly --

The men of that caravan -- thought Eddie indifferently -- looked too mean-minded to become the founders of a secret, free settlement, and not mean-minded enough to become a gang of raiders; they had no more destination to find than the motionless beam of the headlight; and, like that beam, they would dissolve somewhere in the empty stretches of the country.

These were ordinary people, people "from Imperial Valley, California," who had been displaced in the collapse. They were not only expendable in Rand's universe -- as was Cheryl, as was Eddie -- but they were meaningless.

In the meantime, the real "founders of a secret, free settlement" were listening to symphonies and rewriting the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade. . . "

Since Eddie knew nothing about the people in the other "imperial" valley, the irony was Rand's and I can't imagine how it could be anything but intentional. Furthermore, the fact that Rand gave none of these ordinary people -- including Eddie -- any potential for surviving meant that she didn't think they were capable of it. They would simply die or disappear or kill each other or whatever, leaving a pristine wilderness for the intellectuals to repopulate like some Garden of Eden. (One assumes they would have children who would, from birth, be Objectivists with no flaws, no runny noses, no sibling rivalries, no jealousies over prom dresses. . .)

But the worst part of the Eddie situation was that Rand didn't let Dagny have any concern for Eddie. Dagny never wondered what happened to him; she didn't care enough to give him a single thought, and neither did Rand.

But neither did Rand give Eddie's end any meaning, the way she tried to give Cheryl's departure some function, some importance. Cheryl had seen the error of her ways and that revelation shattered her. Eddie's loyalty got him . . . . nothing. That shouldn't have meshed with Rand's philosophy, if her philosophy had any room for the common man. It didn't. The extension, then, is that neither does Greenspan's: the "objective" is to erase the common people and make the world safe for the elites.

So I guess my response would be that I think Rand had to let go of Eddie because there was no place for the likes of him -- loyal worker bees -- in the "new" world, but I'm not sure that it was completely a conscious decision. Then again, maybe it was, but I don't think her intention was to point out her own flaws.

As far as I recall, there is only one child actually on stage in the whole book, and it has no lines.

And that is one of the flaws I saw. Even at 19, I knew that children throw a whole different perspective on economics, on selfishness, on altruism, on community, and when Rand never had her sexually active main characters get pregnant, have children, or even THINK about the potential for having children, I knew she had missed the main point of how a social order is constructed.

She was also unable to make her main characters truly human, because they, unlike the story, had no flaws, no weaknesses -- and the villains, conversely, had no strengths, no redeeming good qualities. Therefore they couldn't grow, learn, develop. Heroes must make journeys, and along the paths of their journeys they stumble, fall, take wrong turns, learn from their mistakes, and evolve either for better or worse. Dagny and Francisco and Hank and Jim and Cheryl and Eddie and John were all exactly the same people at the end of the book that they were at the beginning.

Now, much of that analysis was something that evolved over the years as I grew and read and learned and progressed as a writer (and a human being) myself, but even on that first reading in 1968, my own innate sense of story told me this was a flaw, that characters who don't grow over the course of events are not "heroes."

Part of that "sense" came just from looking at the book itself. Rand uses the fable of the Twentieth Century Motor Company as the device to debunk Marxism/communism, but she was unable to see that it failed because of ordinary human nature -- greed, laziness, jealousy -- which would also have destroyed her utopia if she had allowed her "good" characters any flaws. Any generosity or kindness that motivated the Stearns heirs was equated with weakness and evil, and I had a difficult time reconciling that to my own generic christian/jewish/american tradition. She was adamantly opposed to anything that suggested compromise, and yet I think that's what essentially makes the world go 'round: we all learn to compromise in order to live together.

To what extent "socialism" successfully bridges the gap between pure Marxist communism and pure Randian capitalism, I just don't know. I would like to think that there is a middle ground that takes all things into consideration and achieves something steadily approaching perfection, but I don't think we've arrived at anything very close to it yet.

But another major element that kept my "willing suspension of disbelief" at bay while reading "Atlas Shrugged" that first time was that I recognized Rand's need to rely on major elements of non-reality to make her point. SPOILER ALERT AT THIS POINT.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The story hinges on two elements of pure science fiction -- Galt's generator and the invisibility screen over the valley. For all of Rand's insistence on dealing with reality, she couldn't make the story -- and therefore her politics -- work without resorting to blatant fabrication. Furthermore, even though the book was written in the 1950s -- published in 1957 -- there's no television. For her to utilize technology that didn't yet exist but ignore technology that DID was a fatal flaw for me.

In many respects, I saw Eddie Willers as the book's real hero. He was also Rand's voice throughout. The fact that he was left abandoned in the desert, after having given his life -- in direct opposition to Rand's philosophy -- to Dagny and Taggart Transcontinental, Rand let him die a very miserable death. To me that was unconscionable, as a writer, to leave a main character's fate unresolved. I don't think she knew what to do with Eddie, just as she didn't know what to do with children or people who are hurt in industrial accidents or people who get sick or old. She didn't know what to do with real life. Real life is often messy and imperfect. And that made her philosophy inoperable.

And yes, Prag, I'll post this to my journal, too.

Because I am, though sometimes I'm not,



Tansy Gold

While I don't consider myself an expert on Rand as a person, I've read quite a bit about her and I've been around quite a few people who believe in her Objectivist philosophy as devoutly as some fundamentalists believe in their church.

As a novelist, I saw the flaws in the story line of Atlas Shrugged the first time I read it, back in early 1968. But as a politically vulnerable individual, I also absorbed a certain amount of the philosophy. It's a "moral hazard" to put in front of the uninformed an ideology that catapults "men of the mind" to precedence over "mere labor." That is Rand's counter to Marx, which is what she was trying to do. Hank Rearden was the sole creator of Rearden Metal because his mind created it. He had the mental capacity as well as the physical capacity to go into the mill and make the alloy, but he hadn't mined the raw minerals or driven the train that shipped them to the mill. And it didn't make a bit of difference that he hadn't built the mill or designed and engineered the equipment. THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERED was that he had created the formula.

This is not much different, in my humble opinion, from the extortionist profits that flow like an undammed river into the pockets of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or any other "creative" person -- and that includes yours truly (except I don't have that undammed river of extortionist profits flowing into my pocket). Creative endeavors are fine and they're necessary, but they aren't the SOLE producers of product.

Those who find themselves in positions to, pardon the phrase, cash in on Rand's philosophy are probably tempted ("morally hazarded") to do so. Why not Greenspan? Just as someone like, oh, say, Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin comes along and is the right person at the right time, why not Greenspan falling into the job at the Fed where he was "morally hazarded" into implementing his chosen philosophy, however misguided it might be?

A few weeks before I encountered "Atlas Shrugged," I had a chance encounter at a Hare Krishna temple in the East Village. Unlike nearly everyone else in attendance, I did not succumb to the mindless surrender of will and intellect; I escaped into a bitter cold night and felt relief. I was barely 19 years old, and I knew right then that I would never allow myself to trust anyone who put more faith in an unexamined idea than in his or her OWN intellect. The "devotees" in the temple served as an example. Now, I'm not saying I'm totally correct or that anyone has to accept MY philosophy as gospel without examination, but I am saying that I fear those who accept such a philosophy -- meaning, one that takes the moral/financial/emotional/physical destruction of others as "necessary" to achieve one's own ends -- and even more I fear those who have or acquire the power to implement that philosophy on a large scale.

I stand by my fear: Alan Greenspan has demonstrated his faith in Rand's morality of greed and he has the power to implement her vision. I see no reason to think he would resist the temptation, er, "moral hazard" to do so.


Tansy Gold

. . . . I dunno when it was, maybe 2000 but certainly by 2004, I jokingly told some friends in an email group that I was going to run for president. I generated an AOL home page for my "campaign" and listed the planks in my platform.

It was, of course, meant as a joke, and yet there was something of a serious side to it, too. After all, what was to prevent someone, someone like me, from launching an Internet-based campaign for high public office? With no funds raised, no funds spent, with only word-of-cyber-mouth for a campaign, why not? Why not at least get some public notoriety for a truly progressive agenda?

Most of us in the group were -- and are -- of an age to remember the campaigns of comedian Pat Paulsen. We are also of an age to remember the idealism of the 60s and to wonder what happened to it. Of course, because we're all also women, most of us fell into the socially-constructed roles of wife and mother and helpmeet and employee and maid-of-all-work and chauffeur, and we watched as our companions in life fell into the socially-constructed roles of breadwinner and ass-kisser-because-the-bills-have-to-be-paid and leaky roof mender and clunker-car-fixer. We watched as the 60s faded into the 70s and morphed into the horrors of the 80s and the renewed hope of the 90s and the catastrophe of the 00s. And now the 60s have returned, but in the form of our ages, not the calendar, and we feel not only a sense of responsibility but a sense of desperation and even a sense of regret.

So I made up my little "Tansy Gold for President" page and we laughed and we knew it was a pipe dream because no one would pay attention, no one at all outside our tiny little group and even if anyone else did pay attention it would only be to laugh -- and then to forget.

At the same time, as campaign gave way to campaign, and our side continued to lose and wimp out and act like spineless maroons, we knew our personal ideals were more in synch with Dennis Kucinich and yet we had more personal resonance with John Edwards, but as women we felt a down to the bone sisterhood with Hillary, even though we all really knew that Obama would probably get the nomination. And we knew we'd vote for him willingly and eagerly, because not to do so was to vote for our own annihilation. And we feared a protracted primary and an intra-party battle that separate those of us who needed each other most, but we'd do our own personal damnedest to see that didn't turn us from the only path to survival.

In the end we tucked the "Tansy Gold for President" campaign all away because it was only a joke, and who needs jokes when there's a world to save from the destructive forces of the vast and evil right wing conspiracy, from war and starvation and global warming and global poverty. And no one ever talked about Kevin Kline and "Dave," or Robin Williams and "Man of the Year." We let Stephen Colbert be the silliness for 2008, not Tansy Gold.

And now, as I watch the economy crumble and I worry about what's really happening in Iraq that "they" aren't telling us about (see Tom Engelhardt at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042108K.... ), as I see my own fragile security eroded bit by bit each day, as I listen to my children voice their fears for themselves and their young children, then I start to wonder if maybe we on the left, we who are the radicals, we who are the children and then the grandchildren of those idealistic 60s, we who are not ashamed to call ourselves socialists, maybe we ought to have a candidate who speaks for us in a voice that will be heard if only because it is so "out there," so "radical," so "silly."



It took me half an hour to find it, because all the places I thought I'd saved it, well, they weren't the right places. My AOL campaign page is still there, not, of course, under the name Tansy Gold, although I have an AOL account in that name. No, it's under my real name which a few of you may know.

I'm not sure when I put it up, except that it had to be sometime before May 2003. It was probably before March 2003, too, because there's no direct mention of Iraq and the war the boooosh/cheeeeneys exploded upon it.

Other than that, it's pretty much the same platform I'd run on today.

If I were running.

And I were really



Tansy Gold

I originally posted this as a reply in another thread, then someone suggested I post it alone. I've taken the opportunity to make some small revisions, but mostly it's the same.


I, like others not completely happy with either Clinton or Obama, would like to give my Feb. 5 primary vote to John Edwards, and maybe I actually will, even though I know it will ultimately not change anything. As wonderful as the intentions are of those who want to "send a message" by voting for Edwards even after he has left the race, and as much as I sympathize with them, I still feel they will not make any difference.

But not for the reasons you might think.

Back in late 2003 or maybe early 2004 -- and Saracat will, I think, back me up on this because she was there -- I told a small group of assembled Democrats in Phoenix that the party ought to get behind a ticket and not waste time, energy, and re$ource$ on a long, drawn-out primary battle. I said that from a strictly pragmatic viewpoint, a Kerry-Edwards ticket offered the best chance for beating booosh/cheeeeney. I also said that I thought ultimately that would be the choice of the primary voters, but it would come too late to do any good. The focused energy had to be there from the beginning. We will, of course, never know what might have happened if the Kerry-Edwards ticket had been able to mount a concerted assault from, say, April or May instead of August.

And yes, there were people here on DU who attacked me for turning over our right as voters to choose the party nominee, EVEN IF it meant dragging out the process and spending the resources. In the end, it simply meant that we were all thinking about ourselves and our personal preferences and not about the "greater good." At least, that was the way I saw it. Many disagreed with me.

So now, four years later, I personally would much rather see John Edwards at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2008 than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama because Edwards is much closer to my own philosophy. (He was in 2004, too.) But I also understand that, even though he was part of the 2004 ticket, his populist views and his anti-corporate politics run afoul of the Powers That Be. Certainly against the republican party, but also against many democrats'.

Why, then, given that the Edwards platform resonates with so many more people, and especially with those whose lives are most severely and directly and NEGATIVELY impacted by the policies of the corporate-backed PTB, did he not fare better when it came down to the actual voting? In my humble opinion, I think it's because the Powers That Be -- but with some seriousness -- found a way to neutralize the Edwards passion. The means was identity politics, and the messenger was the MSM. The 2008 Democratic primary campaign was all about "the woman and the Black man," and the white southern boy didn't have a chance, no matter what his message. Indeed, as the OP of the other thread said, it was more about personalities than issues; I think it was more about persons.

Was this intentional? Is there an Oz-like machine behind the Obama candidacy that put him out there to divide the voters along certain lines so that, no matter what happened, one of the non-populist candidates would win? I don't think anyone doubts that there is a machine behind Hillary Clinton. And I also think there's enough of an anti-Hillary machine that, had there not been an Obama, that machine would have gone to someone else. That it was able to put its resources behind Obama as a Black man and a viable candidate suggests that it's there and it's quite powerful.

I think that machine knew that if the Democratic nominating fight came down to Clinton vs. Edwards, Edwards would win, or at least he would come close enough that his populist message would get substantial coverage. What would we be hearing from John Edwards on the stock market crises, the drop in numbers of jobs, the sub-prime meltdown, the foreclosures, the stimulus plan, and on and on and on if he were still running close to the front?

The PTB know that the war in Iraq is not going to wind down quickly even under a new administration. It's simply not logistically possible. Yet so much of the MSM coverage has been on the differences, however slight or great, in war policy between Obama and Clinton; so little attention has been paid to the economic issues about which presidential policy could actually have an impact. And that lack of coverage to economic matters -- in-depth coverage, that is -- protects the PTB, protects their candidates, and effectively silences John Edwards.

Voting for Edwards in the primaries now will not change the ultimate outcome because there simply are not enough people who care, who share the Edwards passion. This is sad, and it may even be disastrous in the long run, but it is also true. A vote for Edwards at this stage will be a symbolic gesture, and symbols are very powerful to those bearing them -- but they're not effective in lining up delegates.

I'm not sure if I posted it here on DU or not, or just in a more private forum, but I said some weeks ago, during the height of the mud-slinging between Clinton and Obama, that if I were Howard Dean, I'd sit them down and tell them to make nice RIGHT NOW. I'd tell them that the party was going to get behind a united ticket, which at the time I thought should be Clinton/Obama (based on age and experience). And then I thought one of President Hillary's first acts after the inauguration should be to appoint John Edwards as Attorney General, with a mandate to clean up the corporate corruption that has sucked so much real wealth out of our economy. After a year or so, when a Supreme Court vacancy allowed President Hillary to appoint a justice, Edwards should be her first nominee. (This kind of involvement would also allow the real person that is John Edwards more time to spend with his family and STILL have a very powerful influence on the direction our nation takes in the near future.)

We need -- DESPERATELY -- someone to proclaim as loudly as possible that not only is our economy completely broken but that its brokenness is the direct and intentional result of pro-corporate (which is not quite the same as pro-business) right wing governmental policies. I don't think either Hillary or Obama will do this, and in the coming months theirs are the only voices that will be heard. (And should the economy worsen dramatically, we will need that populist voice even more desperately.) But by uniting behind a ticket and essentially forming a government in anticipation of the election and inauguration, I think the Democrats can do more than just "win."

I've become more and more of a socialist the past few years, and less and less concerned with personal "winning." I think the republicans have slowly become aware that of their remaining candidates, only John McCain has a chance against the Dems, and I think they are in a position to unite behind him much the way they united behind booooosh -- fanatically even if they don't agree with him on every issue. It is more important, therefore, in my opinion, for the Dems to look more pragmatically at the general election and less emotionally at the primaries. That may be the first step toward truly unifying our side and working together to make real change.


Tansy Gold

Do these 'derivatives' -- which word seems to resonate with 'Enron' -- actually represent something? Are they tangible goods/services, or simply a financial device to create a 'commodity' that has 'value' that can be 'traded/bought/sold' for a profit or loss?

Many many years ago, I worked very briefly for a commodities trader in Chicago, and because I was very young and even more ignorant than I am now, I had little clue what was going on at the Chicago Board of Trade or Mercantile Exchange. I got my first clue when one of the firm's clients came screaming into the office and wanted to know how in hell he was going to deal with the freight car full of eggs he had just 'bought.' He thought he was just buying and selling 'futures contracts' on the eggs to make money; he didn't think he was really 'buying eggs.' Well, one of his 'buy' contracts apparently didn't get 'sold' soon enough and he had actually bought the eggs.

Ever since then, I've kind of seen 'the markets,' whether stocks or commodities or 'derivatives,' as a casino on steroids. Most of the people buying and selling aren't 'investing' in the companies whose stock they buy; they're just trying to take money out of someone else's pocket by selling them something purchased previously at a lower price. There's no value added by the seller; if there's any 'value' added at all, it's from someone else's labor -- or someone else's lies.

When someone like this O'Neil person from Merrill Lynch walks away with $160MM or whatever, those dollars had to come from somewhere, didn't they? O'Neil didn't really create any value, did he? Or was the 'value' he created something that is somehow 'valued' by those who see robbing the working person of her/his job/cash as valuable?

How does this kind of system work? We know billions and billions of dollars are steadily flowing into the coffers of these Wall Street types and other CEOs. We know that these billions have to come from somewhere, someone. If it's funny munny from the govt., handed out in the form of low-interest loans from 'the government' to banks and other financial institutions, doesn't that de-value the real money earned by real working people? Doesn't that drive inflation? (Don't the taxes of the working people gund the government that's making those loan?)

When the Fed throws several billion $$$ into 'the economy' with no tangible goods or functional services behind those $$$, isn't that inflationary? And where are those 'rebate' $$$ handed out to the general population going to go? If they just go to pay off debts or buy short-term necessities -- food, utilities -- that will have to be purchased again in another month or two after the 'rebates' have been spent, how will that really boost the economy? If we don't have an economy that does anything, that produces anything, are we really just shifting money from one account to another, always going steadily from the poor to the rich, and when it all ends up in the hands of ten or twenty or a thousand greedy bastards, what happens? What happens to 'the economy' then?

If we have a defense plant that's making ammunition for The War, fed dollars are coming in to pay for the bullets/bombs, and the workers get paid and the owners/investors get paid. But the government takes the product of their labor, ships it off to Iraq or Afghanistan, and blows it up. So what do the workers have to spend their money on? Cheap crap from China? How does that 'help' our economy?

Am I crazy? Stupid? Both?

If a mortgage broker makes a loan to an underqualified borrower, then 'sells' the loan to a bank and pulls out a profit, what has that broker done to 'help' the economy? Oh, sure, a house is built and people are given jobs and paid to build the house, but then the borrower can't continue to make payments and all he's paid so far goes to the bank and he's left with nothing. The bank has his money, but the bank also now has a house that isn't worth what the bank paid to the construction company/developer/speculator to build it. The bank goes to the government for a bailout, or the insurance company that got paid by the bank to 'guarantee' the loan pays the bank and then has to get a bailout by the government, and ultimately the borrower who is working and paying taxes but not making enough to give huge profits to the developers and mortgage brokers and reinsurers ends up losing everything he's got and STILL paying taxes to bail out the people who screwed him over!

Again -- Am I crazy? Stupid? Both?

Used to be, if you were sick, you went to the doctor. You paid the doctor bill, you paid the prescription bill, you paid the hospital bill. Your money, your health care. Then the insurance companies came along to take the 'risk' out. You paid your money to them rather than to the doctors and pharmacies and hospitals. They pooled the money and 'invested' it so that if you got sick, they paid the bills. If your bills were less than what you paid to the insurance company, well, too bad, but at least you had the peace of mind knowing that if anything really bad happened to you, you wouldn't be stuck with the bills. If your bills were more than what you paid to the insurance company, well, then you won the gamble.

But now it seems that the insurance companies -- and the doctors and the hospitals and everyone else involved -- have become tools for sucking money from the ordinary people and spitting it right back out into the pockets of the rich. The fact that insurance companies can be good 'investments' seems, well, it seems oxymoronic, criminal, un-American. But I guess that's just corporate capitalism at work.

The prosperity was real -- but it was like a big ass party paid for with credit cards, wasn't it? Oh, we had a good time, all right, but now we have to pay for it. And paying off the bills for the party means, well, no more parties for a while. Belt tightening. Home-brewed iced tea instead of Pepsi; hamburgers instead of steak; home cooking instead of Red Lobster; making those shoes last another six months; driving the car until it's paid for; paying attention to price tags and looking for sales or just wearing those perfectly good last year's fashions; not throwing away that cheap coffee table and buying another cheap one, or maybe learning to buy good stuff that lasts and giving up the disposable 'gotta be trendy like the advertisers exhort' mentality.

I'm sorry for the rant. I went off on a tangent or three. But I sit here feeling like some kind of Cassandra or something -- it all looks so theoretically simple and yet no one seems to get it.

Or maybe the one who doesn't get it is


Tansy Gold

today I think John Forbes Kerry is one of the most low class, no class disgusting sons of bitches I've ever had the pleasure of not meeting in person. Oh, wait, I *did* meet him in person, but very briefly.

He reminds me of a lot of men I've known over the years, the ones who marry a woman who will do things for their career, who have money or connections, who will work to put them through school, women they can take advantage of, but they never really care about these women. And then when the career never really takes off or the senior partnership doesn't materialize or the kids just aren't as bright and wonderful as expected, these guys ditch the wife they never really cared about in the first place and pick up some brainless young thing to make themselves look good. It never works, boys, it never works.

Kerry should have kept his mouth shut. He should know that his endorsement has little positive value: He's a loser who couldn't stand up to the swift boat liars and didn't fight for the voters of Ohio. If he thinks he's "helping" Obama, well, more power to him I suppose. But he essentially s(p)at on his former running mate, and that's a low class thing to do.

Piss on you, John Kerry, piss on you.


Tansy Gold, who thinks it's much better to be pissed off than pissed on

A couple of things jumped out at me --

A.
"Almost 20 percent of working families with insurance are now paying over 10 percent of their incomes on health care."


B.
"Average working families have considerably less reason to exalt //sic//. Nearly 30 percent of Americans with health insurance, up from 18 percent in 2004, now say they're having trouble paying for food, heat, and housing. "


I am currently on COBRA, and my cost just went up to $336/month. I do not have a rent/mortgage payment or a car payment (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!), so that makes my health insurance by far my largest single monthly outlay. Higher than groceries, higher than electricity, higher than taxes or homeowner's insurance or anything else. And that figure equates to roughly 18% of my wages (when I'm working).

My benefits will run out in April, I won't be eligible for Medicare for another 6 years, I'm not even remotely eligible for Medicaid, and I have no prospects for employer-paid insurance.

What on earth gives this McGuire asshole the moral authority to STEAL hundreds of millions of dollars from people who actually WORK for a living? UnitedHealth isn't providing a "service" to its policyholders; it's simply a vehicle for funneling huge, obscenely huge sums of money from the pockets of working people to the bank accounts and vacation homes and lavish lifestyles of pieces of shit like McGuire and Koslowski and Ebbers and Lay and Skilling (may he rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life).

I do not wish these people ill; I wish only that they would experience some fortunate event that catapults them back into the income level and lifestyle of the people they have sucked dry for so many years. Let them spend a week-end or ten or sixty wondering which bills will get paid the coming month and which will be allowed to slide into past-due status. Let them try to balance the cost of late fees on a credit card payment versus the reconnection charge if the phone bill doesn't get paid. Let them lie awake a few nights wondering if the car insurance premium check will hit the bank before the next payroll deposit.

Maybe there's something wrong with me that I find people like this to be just about as evil as any rapist or murderer. How many people go hungry because they can't afford both food and health insurance? How many people let their insurance lapse because they have to choose between paying the premium or paying the electric bill? (How many women stay with abusive husbands because the husband has insurance?) How many people die or suffer needlessly because some fucking piece of shit like McGuire sits on a "nest-egg" of half a BILLION dollars?

Has he ever actually wielded a knife and stabbed someone to death? No, of course not. Has he ever shot anyone? No. But I wonder how many lives he's poisoned, how many families he has starved, how many children he has abused or neglected by living like a king while they lack basic health care.

I hate people like him, and I won't apologize for the vehemence of my loathing.


Tansy Gold

Retail managers? How much are sit-on-their-asses stockholders paid? hedge fund managers? mortgage brokers?

Let me make this clear from the outset: I don't condone theft. But I also consider, marxist that I am, the obscene profits of corporations, their high-level executives, and the firms that trade in stock of those corporations to be thieves as well.

But they aren't under surveillance. They aren't scrutinized. They aren't threatened with loss of a subsistence-wage job if they're caught STEALING a grape from the produce department.

The Wal-Mart store I worked at in the late 90s serves as an example, and just one out of many I could cite. The store manager -- I won't mention his name even though I'd love to -- routinely sent "associates" out to the parking lot to pick up empty packages, especially toys during the holidays, to be brought back in and recorded as "stolen" to boost store sales and his bonus. As a cashier, I caught several shoplifters, but they weren't stopped or held for the police or anything else, because the "proof" of their theft could be used to improve store profits and the manager's bonus. The attitude of the "associates" shifted from honesty to turning a blind eye. It wasn't that we "didn't want to be bothered." It was that we knew it wouldn't do any good. How did we know? Because we tried. I personally spoke with the district manager twice; he did nothing.

Understand, IdaBriggs, that these were for the most part very honest people. The DIShonesty of management changed them. We all knew the little black balls in the ceiling held cameras that were watching us all the time, and stealing so much as a pack of gum was grounds for firing. We watched as one of us was arrested -- yes, the cops called in to arrest her -- because she put a pair of shoes that had gone on sale in the back room so she could PAY FOR THEM later. This is against Wal-Mart policy: customers/guests always get first crack at merchandise, so an employee who puts something back for him/herself is a thief. This particular employee had not STOLEN anything from Wal-Mart, unless you want to count the 10% discount she'd have gotten on the sale, which a regular retail customer would have had to pay.

What management could do in terms of stealing was never going to show up on the surveillance cameras. They could mark items down that they wanted to buy, and they did. Oh, sometimes customers bought everything and the dept. managers never got to take advantage of their own markdowns, but far more often, they did. I remember one incident in particular: The dept mgr wanted an entertainment center, a cheap piece of crap like everything Wal-Mart sells, but still, he wanted it. So he waited a week or so, and while there were still some in stock he marked the price down 20%. Then he had a friend come in and buy one, at the reduced price, and two or three days later, the friend returned it as "damaged." There was nothing whatsoever wrong with it. After the return had been processed and the store wrote off the "loss," the dept mgr "bought" the "damaged" entertainment center for about 1/3 the original retail price.

I was the cashier who handled both the original sale and the return. The dept mgr was an acquaintance, and I knew his friend as well.

One of the cashiers, a young woman I worked with frequently, was routinely stealing cash. The rest of us cashiers all knew it, to the point that when we went on break we would pointedly ask that she not cover for us because our cash drawers would always come up short if she'd been in them. She stayed out of trouble by not stealing when she was the only person in a drawer, but the shortages when she shared with someone else were just too obvious. But we had reached the point where we didn't care. And we wouldn't report her because it had become our little form of revenge against management and their undetectable thievery.

Eventually she got caught. Management detected the pattern and kept her on a register where the surveillance cameras kept a close eye on her, and they videotaped her putting a ten dollar bill in her pocket. Unlike the associate in the shoe department who was publicly humiliated, the cashier was fired privately after her shift.

We knew many of the various ways customers stole, and we didn't care, because management didn't. They wouldn't go after shoplifters because it would make them look bad. But they had no compunction about going after employees.

I don't condone theft, but I despise this attitude of "we have to spy on them or they'll STEAL FROM US." It's a "guilty until caught" mentality. It presumes that everyone, at one time or another, is going to steal and the bosses have to be there to catch the culprit in the inevitable act, and never mind the huge thefts, the Enronian/WorldComian/GlobalCrossingian/Tyconian megathefts, the "I make $500 million a year as a hedge fund manager and I shouldn't have to pay taxes on it just because" thefts from the public purse.

I've worked for more than one boss who was so incompetent he literally couldn't do the job he was hired to do. In two blatant cases, they lied about their qualifications to get the job, then after being hired they manipulated all the "little people" into doing the work for them. In one other case, he was just a lazy sack of shit who bragged EVEN AFTER HE WAS FINALLY FIRED about how he collected a fat paycheck and did nothing. No surveillance camera is going to spot that kind of theft.

I don't doubt, IdaBriggs, that you've seen lots of theft and you're appalled at the pathetic excuses the thieves give when they're caught. But there are one fucking hell of a lot of "thieves" whose faces and sticky fingers never show up on the surveillance tapes, who never get caught, and who never have to make pathetic excuses or any other kind.

Over the past 30 years, I've lost at least four excellent jobs because I made the mistake of complaining about a boss who was robbing the company through incompetence, laziness, dishonesty, you name it. I've been self-employed since my husband's death two years ago, but rising costs of groceries, gas, utilities, taxes, etc., are pushing me back into the job market. I won't look for a "career" because I don't feel like being taken advantage of by the corporations or their minions in "management." And if I'm kept under surveillance like any other wage slave, I damn sure won't "rat" on my fellows. I may not cheer them on, but I won't protect the corporations either.


Tansy Gold

Over the past almost six years, we've heard a variety of reasons why the U.S. had to invade, make war on, and occupy Iraq. Whether it was the weapons of mass destruction, bringing democracy to the region, fighting the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them there, getting our hands on their oil, the reasons were plentiful. Taken by themselves, they were rather noble -- well, except for the confiscation of the oil. And most of them were achievable.

The hard truth, however, is that ALL those objectives could have and would have been much more effectively achieved without going to war. All of them.

We've listened to the whining excuses of so many congresspersons and senators who said they voted for the war because they believed the information coming from the boooooosh administration: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that terrorists were gathering in Iraq, and so on. Many of us on the "outside" knew it wasn't true, even though we didn't have access to the intelligence reports. I suppose, in a way, our "knowledge" was no more valid than the "knowledge" that god exists, but we at least had some logic on our side as well as published reports by U.N. inspectors. The point, however, is that invading and making war on the country was NOT the most effective way to deal with even the potential for biological and/or chemical weapons, let alone nuclear. It just didn't make sense.

As for bringing democracy to the region, we have first the lessons of history that the current administration is dead-set (pun intended) on ignoring: Is this a region culturally predisposed to democracy? Is it even democracy if it's imposed on them against their will? But again, the point is that whether the power-blind administration thought it out that far or not, the imposition of democracy by means of bombs and machine guns is futile.

It's been made abundantly clear that the public services infrastructure in Iraq pre-invasion was a hell of a lot more productive than after. The damage that had been done by the U.N. embargo was bad, very bad, but the damage done by the invasion was far worse. And despite all the money that has been dumped into Iraq and all the time and effort spent to "restore" necessary services, the place is in far, far worse shape than it was in February 2003. Lifting the trade sanctions would have gone a long way to help the people of Iraq; dropping bombs hasn't accomplished anything.

Over and over and over, we heard the mantra that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless and brutal dictator and had to be removed. But we tried to respond that first of all, he was a creature of our own U.S. creation, and second, that as ruthless and brutal as he was, he had achieved stability through a secular dictatorship. The Islamist fundamentalists like bin Laden were as anathema to Saddam Hussein as to us. In fact, they were probably more so, because Saddam had no use for their challenge to his power, but he also had no sympathy with their religious fanaticism. The booooooosh administration, on the other hand, has that much in common with the al-Qaeda terrorists. But once again, effective removal, or at least neutralization, of Saddam Hussein could have been achieved without resorting to war. His execution via kangaroo trial only made the U.S. a war criminal. Oh, it probably gave boooooosh and cheeeeeney orgasmic spasms of glee, but if that's all that can be said in favor of the deed, then we have sunk to a truly sub-human level.

Control of the oil would have been much more efficient without the complication of war and insurgency and sabotage.

Indeed, even the legacy of boooooosh would have been that of a true Churchill, not this demented fantasy he entertains, probably while engaged in earnest conversation with the bust in office. The bust of Churchill, that is, not the "bust" that is booooosh himself.

The whole lie about the connections between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks is utterly meaningless in terms of "succeeding" in the war. There has been ample documentation that the Iraq war has created far more terrorists (those who have actually committed acts of terrorism) and potential terrorists (those who just haven't done anything . . . yet) than existed before the U.S. invasion. Had the boooosh administration worked with Saddam Hussein to keep terrorists out of his country -- much the way Churchill worked with Stalin to vanquish Hitler and the Nazis -- we would all have been better off. Had the booooosh administration concentrated on finding bin Laden and his minions, we would all have been better off.

The attacks on Afghanistan had some logic: the desire to root out bin Laden and al-Qaeda and perhaps even dislodge the repressive Taliban from power in that poor country. But the assault on Iraq NEVER had any logic behind it. NONE. And it has caused irreparable damage to so many thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lives, American and Iraqi, not to mention the loss of cultural heritage, the interruption of vital public services, and so on. And of course it has siphoned off so many resources that could have gone to Afghanistan.

Two horrible facts remain, and must be confronted by both the Congress and the administration before any progress can be made toward ending the war and the occupation and then restoring America's reputation.

First, the government must acknowledge that we cannot go back in time and undo all the horrific damage that's been done to Iraq and the Iraqi peoples. Going forward down the same road we've been traveling is not going to halt the destruction, and no "victory" can ever replace the lost loved ones. So far, no one has been able to provide a definition of any kind of "victory" that would even begin to justify the horrendous losses borne on all sides. We must get off this highway of death immediately. Continuing with a failed policy will not bring success. Period.

Second, once they have stopped digging the hole deeper, the government must acknowledge that every one of their goals could have been achieved easier and more effectively without war. This is a huge confession, and I doubt many of those responsible for instigating and implementing the war are truly capable of admitting a mistake of this enormity. They may have to find an explanation for why they did something so monstrously stupid: Were they blinded by a desire for revenge against someone, anyone, for the losses of 9/11? Did they feel they had to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING in response? Did they simply believe that the United States of America was so powerful and had such a wonderful reputation that whatever we did would surely be seen as right and good? No matter how they frame their excuse, they still must admit they were wrong and they made a mistake.

There will be, of course, extensive ramifications, and how these are dealt with will require careful thought and more soul-searching. The one motive in going to war that does seem to have been fulfilled is the shifting of wealth from the working classes to the elites, especially through war profiteering and the privatization of the military. How will the U.S. military be restored after the depredations, not only of losses to life and limb and heart and mind, but also the losses of vital functions that have been privatized? How will the government handle the enormous profits generated for companies like Halliburton and Bechtel and their stockholders in light of the massive government fiscal deficits those profits represent? How will the American reputation be rebuilt in light of the unconscionable destruction wrought upon the peoples of Iraq?

Perhaps the toughest realization of all is that not only were the stated goals achievable without war but that the war has itself now made most of those same goals unachievable. The sectarian violence that Saddam Hussein kept under control now rages freely. The terrorists have a living, breathing recruiting poster. The flow of oil is a trickle. There is nothing even remotely resembling democracy in Iraq. And there is virtually nothing the U.S. can do to change that.

Except withdraw. As awful as the scenarios are painted of what will/would happen upon an American withdrawal, they may actually be better than our staying. Rather than the imposition of order from without, the Iraqi peoples -- Sunni, Shia, Kurd -- will have to achieve their own resolution. They may endure a long civil war from which emerges a single nation united under a strong leader, even a dictator like Saddam; they may splinter into ethnic enclaves. As awful as the prospect is of standing by and watching the carnage of a civil war that we, in our meddling, have unleashed, that may be better than staying and providing the motivation for the limited but unending civil war now going on.

We would all have been better off, six years down the road, if the booooosh administration had not taken us to war. We can't change the past, but we can still change the future.


Tansy Gold