Author Archives

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I will not leave

I will not leave. How can I surrender my country to insane ghouls and watch from a safe distance as it dies.

– Ilya Klishin

Russians are so much like Americans, in so many ways. One of these is whining, although I give Russians the win on this. I’m pretty sure my pal Pelyevin would agree. But for those who don’t know Russia, it’s not like you think. We love the whiney Russians.

The difference is Americans don’t leave, don’t find ways around unjust laws if they stay. Americans just whine. And do nothing.

My message to both is “it’s your fucking country! You made it this way, or you let it get this way. ”

What I say has no effect. Nothing will have an effect except the inevitable landslide – the Fall of the Roman Empire.

And I think Canada will arise victorious out of it all. That’s where everybody is headed. They have opened their doors unlike any other country for decades.

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Pablo Neruda – Body of a Woman

Spanish Love Poems: Spanish Love Poems: Pablo Neruda – Body of a Woman.

Corpo de Mujer

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.
Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava
y hace saltar el hijo del fondo de la tierra.

Fui solo como un túnel. De mí huían los pájaros
y en mí la noche entraba su invasión poderosa.
Para sobrevivirme te forjé como un arma,
como una flecha en mi arco, como una piedra en mi honda.

Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y te amo.
Cuerpo de piel, de musgo, de leche ávida y firme.
Ah los vasos del pecho! Ah los ojos de ausencia!
Ah las rosas del pubis! Ah tu voz lenta y triste!

Cuerpo de mujer mía, persistiré en tu gracia.
Mi sed, mi ansia sin límite, mi camino indeciso!
Oscuros cauces donde la sed eterna sigue,
y la fatiga sigue, y el dolor infinito.

——————————————— WORK ON TRANSLATION———————————-

  • 1st stanza

The first line is easy; just note that it is about “a woman”, or “women in general”. The second line is tricky.  First the verb parecir worries people because it has some reflexive quality in it; but you would never say “you look yourself” in English. It’s technically what Linguists call a “middle” – not reflexive, not intransitive.  Anyway, it’s either “look like” or “seem.”  Then, it’s just a choice of nuance – “look like” is common, “seem” would give it a slightly dreamlike feel. Finally, it’s “al mundo” which is the contraction for “a el mundo”, which must be the definite article (a disagree with translations that use “a world”.

“en tu actitud de entrega” presents another problem: while you might think a literal translation is the way to go, you have to be careful of a possible “colloquialism” hidden in this phrases – the kind of phrase that is almost an idiom, because it is used exactly the same way every time.  First of all “actitude” would be better as “postion” or “pose”, but never “attitude”.  It’s one of those “false cognates” in Spanish-to-English.  While “submissive pose” sounds possible, “entrega” really has “surrender” locked into it – you have to hand something over. In the third line, it’s just one of those historical things: we just don’t have rural laborers in any real sense now; so, “peasant”? Now way.  There haven’t been true peasants for 1000 years.  He’s talking about digging so I could go with “farmhand” . “Savage” is just too dime-store for me, like “savage love”.  I think “brutal”, related to “brute”, which has the feeling of stupid.  The hardest one is “socavar” – really means to “excavate”.  Not just digging, but digging under.  What’s worse is that it often is used figuratively to mean undermine”.  I can’t imagine that Neruda doesn’t want the connection between “entrega” and “socavar” to have some macho connotation. The last line of the stanza only makes sense if you realize – which I think NO translator on earth has yet realized! – that this poem is about a pregnancy woman.  I mean, doesn’t that fit well with “you look like a world”?  Like “the world”.  And then later, he talks about breasts filled with milk.  So, she is pregnant, and he assumes it is a son.  So, even though “saltar” means to jump, what do Spanish speakers say when the baby move in the womb?  In English, we say (without thinking about it), the baby is “kicking”.

  • 2nd stanza
  • 3rd stanza

———————————–MY TRANSLATION —————————————————-

Body of a Woman

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look  like the world , when you lie in surrender.
My farmhand’s body roots around in you brutishly
and makes our son kick from the center of the earth.

I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me
and the night enveloped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive  I forged  you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Ah those goblets of the chest! Ah those eyes of absence!
Ah the roses of the pubis! Ah your voice slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my unbounded desire, my uncertain road!
The dark river-beds that the eternal thirst follows,
that the weariness  follows, and the infinite ache.

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The United States Governement is working as It Should!

Yes. As it was intended.  How clever those Founding Fathers were!  They embedded into these United States in indelible, discrete system of government,  No matter how may weak-minded, simple-minded Americans try to undermine this system with more rules and more laws  and more amendments to those rules and laws, they will always fail!

Back then, we had two bloody revolutions against a King.  Many lives were lost, and many friends of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and more and more Freedom Fighters who gave everything to AVOID A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT and to see to it, by their genius in crafting a discrete Constitution, that the central government would NEVER succeed in becoming powerful over the States – the United States…united in the principles of diversity and disagreement,

This is the system of “checks and balances” you may remember from your brief single semester of American Governement – the bare minimum to call yourself a well-rounded Citizen.  (Thomas Jefferson tried to invent a thing called the Public School System, to created better American Citizens, but he was not smart enough to counter the dummies, and it has failed.)

So, Congress attempts to formulate laws, based on the wishes of their diverse constituencies (the States).  There was never any intention that agreement between the Sovereign States would be convenient or even possible!  On the contrary!  By design, the sovereignty of each State was to be sacrosanct in indomitable by the Central Government, lest the Grand Experiment in Democracy perish at the hands of the simple minded peasants who wanted a mommy and daddy to make their decisions for them, and then take the blame for those decisions when they failed.

Not so, the intentions of the Grand Thinkers of a by-gone era!  Struggle is at the heart of discernment! And, by God, if there is no agreement, then there will be no law – because all the People do not agree!  Ever heard of “demos” – “the People”?

And so, even if the Congress can piece together a piecemeal agreement, a President, as a Representative of the United States to other World Nations, can veto it – which is an indication that such a law is not in the best interests of the United States as a Nation among Nations.  It is not the job of the President to tell the States what to do, or how to do it!  It is not in the Constitution for the President to tell the Sates (i.e. the Congress of the United States) what to do, or how to do it!  That would be Tyranny!  And We died for that!

No, the most difficult word for all Americans to swallow is “We”. Americans prefer “us” and “them”.

But the Founding Fathers suspected the petty stupidity of the nation to follow, and guarded against it with Checks and Balances, the last of which is the Judiciary, which will judge the Constitutionality of the Laws passed by the States (Congress) and singed by the President.

And now, lo and behold, the Judiciary is judging one of the central tenets of Obamacare to be unconstitutional – just as they should!  Yes, Federal Judge Roger Vinson  ruled the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. The ruling favors of the 26 state attorney generals challenging the law. The judge ruled the individual mandate that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance invalid and, according to the decision, “because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.”

 

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Review of Mike Lofgren’s “Goodbye to all That”

Please read http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779 This is my response to that article, and what it spawns. In addition, you have to know some of the methods of critical reading: there are some universities that still require/offer a class called “Critical Reading”. That is to say, it is not just some intuitive thing that smart people can do. Even smart people need to take a moment to assess their critical reading skills.

Begin with the title: “Goodbye to All that: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult”. The red flags (for the critical reader) should be apparent: this is a disgruntled postal worker. This article is likely to contain rants. It will clearly lean one way – away from the GOP. It’s just something to think about, whether you lean that same way or not: if you want to make your own decisions in this life, you have to beware of what is in your kool-aid. You have to be a ware that this will be a slightly crazed, slightly angry, probably quite biased article. This is not to say that there will be no truth in it; however, you will have to uncover, or, un-color, that truth, if you want it.

Second thing is always the publisher: it is a little “grandiose” to host a web site called “TruthOut”. I’m sorry, but you don’t have “the truth”, either. “The truth” is probably got to by vectoring, at best. There is no direct path. Lao Tse would be wary of anyone who touts “the truth”. Perhaps we all should be.

He starts with a kind of premise – that both parties are rotten. Kind of cute to use “rotten”. When you use it a lot, when that is the only word you use, makes me wonder. “Rotten” is a kind of moralistic thing to say, and I, for one, don’t want your morality, in this article. When he says they are both rotten, but “not in the same way”, I get more disillusioned: if you’re rotten (imagine a rotten peach), it’s a done deal: don’t really care “how” you are rotten. What he is setting up here is a double standard, something critical readers look for, and hate when they find. He’s going to say that the GOP are, like, “evil”, but that the “other side” (since we used GOP, do we need to find a topical-political term that means “not the Grand Old Party”?). Of course, terminology, when discussing political affiliation, is problematic: there are no real Democrats anymore, no real Republicans; the Left is Center, not left; the Right is morally right; Conservative is completely misunderstood(!), and Liberal has come to mean “do pretty much what you want”.

However, luckily, the article refers to “party”, specifically, so we will assume Republican (which is consistent with GOP), and Democrat.

There is now a problem of low information. At this point, a person who is well-read in modern politics would, at this juncture, acknowledge that a number of other people have made the very point that the two-party system exists only nominally, in the modern era. Most notably, Ralph Nader coined the term “duopoly”, which suits Mr. Lofgren’s article pretty well, actually. That is, they are both rotten, but not in the same way. But they are both rotten. The USA is in the grips of a double-headed master. Indeed, it takes two heads to complete the grand lie, which envelops both Left and Right, Red and Blue.

My main critique of this article is, that he does not even partially succeed in this promise: 90% of this article is used to bash the GOP. There are really only a few paragraphs that hint at a mutual responsibility, or a real, original Democratic guilt. (Try Ctrl-F in your browser on the word “Democrat”). The way that Democrats are rotten, in this article, is a passive rotten: they don’t do anything wrong, they do no initiate any bad policy, they do not engineer large schemes which enable corporate interests: no, they are just “weak”, or the “concede”. Once again, the author engages in the no-no of running out of adjectives: he uses “craven” when referring to the Democrats, more than once. So, the Democrats are “weak” and “craven”. But, they are no CRAZY.

This brings me to my last point of critique: crazy talk. What I mean by crazy talk stems from my own thinking and reading – and my own writing – about politics. So, I’ll have to explain my meaning, before I can deliver my critique. I think you are in trouble when you start using the actual word “crazy”, or call people “crazy”, in what purports to be scholarly writing, or, really anything you hope to provide as conscious, thoughtful analysis. “Crazy” has a kind of crazy feel to it – on the part of the user, more than the accuser, in my experience. His use of “crazy”, coupled with the fact that he has just escaped from a long tenure amidst these “crazies”, sounds a little like a stress-reaction, at one level.

But, on a more important level, we can’t go the “crazy” level, if we want to solve the problem! It is moot in the political arena. I mean, there have always been truly, certifiably “crazy” people in politics, and to try to even substantiate this is a kind of intellectual waste. Do you consider it crazy to be the only person in history to drop the atom bomb – on living people? That’s crazy to me, regardless of the countless justifications that were given for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The crazy part was the everlasting ramifications of the at of actually using a weapon of mass destruction.

Hitler was crazy. Did that stop him from being remarkably effective in gaining world power? Did his craziness even really contribute to his political campaign? This is, of course, the realm of speculation and theory. The point is: in world politics, “crazy” doesn’t count for much of anything.

In fact, it is possible that if one were able to gather all the factors of current world politics into scope, and if it were possible to get a handle on the myriad facets of the current world economy, it would appear, indeed, “crazy”. But, this is only because our rational systems, to date, are lagging behind. We have dragged ancient models along for far too long – like the notion of Democrat and Republican, and these models are, really, crazy. It compares to going back in a time machine, and talking about the effects of information explosion to Ben Franklin – without the notion of something like the internet, Ben would think you were crazy – straight up.

The result of crazy talk is unfortunately more devastating for the side of the Good, than the Dark Side. As I wrote above, the one who writes of “craziness” often retains the brand, more than the “crazies s/he writes about. Consider Noam Chomsky, the long-standing bastion or reason and clarity. These days, I’m going to say that a lot of people, including people who once swore allegiance to him, would consider him a little “crazy”. And this is precisely because his latter writings began to really focus on deep and intriguing “plots” of masterminded world disorder. Ralph Nader, as well, comes across lately as “wild-eyed” – once again, because he is throwing up the crazy flag.

In conclusion, crazy is not the way out of our responsibilities. Can’t play that card. Further, it is not the GOP masterminding, and the Democrats side-stepping that makes them both rotten: it is worse. Both sides are masterminding. Both sides are side-stepping. There is, in fact, no real mastermind – this is the problem. We are in the state of dying Rome, where there was simply no one in charge, no one left with a far-reaching vision. The politicians were, indeed, crazy, in that they were engaged in a game that had lost the scorekeeper and all the playing pieces. The aristocracy was no more addled that the proletariat! Somebody has to be the first in America to emerge from the coma/ecstasy of the Dialectic, and begin a clean path of first-person assessment. As Lao Tse advised, “Put Your House in Order, and Wait on the Tao”.

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New Nouveau Riche

That term. nouveau-riche, is probably going to disappear soon. My guess is that it is already only nominally available to the blogosphere (which is the new word for reality).

This disappearance is due not so much to ignorance as it is to uselessness – when you become useless, you disappear. This is written in the Sociology 101 Book. On the other hand, if an old term gets a new use, it’s like a new lease on life. Let me do away with the old word first, and then publish the new one.

Long ago, almost 2 centuries ago, people didn’t work. Work is something that was invented in the 20th century. Before that, there were no classes – like working-class, middle-class: there were Rich and Poor, and Life and Death. No buffer, no education, no One. You were a slave, or not, or dead.

The Rich got rich by getting land, or killing. If you got rich by killing, you were Royalty, and you inter-married; so, no one had to work for money: it was just there, and as long as you continued to kill your enemies and milk the poor for blood, the money continued to stockpile. And I mean stockpile! I think it would be a great (second) PhD thesis for Ben Bernanke to analyze the ROI of the the Blue-Blood. I mean think of the generations of retarded imbeciles in the blue lines, who squandered what would amount to billions in modern times, and yet, successive generations just got richer and richer.

Then there are those who got Rich by getting land – usually given to them by Royalty. In the ancient history books of the 20th Century, we all knew the term “landed gentry”. This was when the term “gentleman” didn’t mean just a dude who didn’t blow his nose in his hands – it was a kind of title. Basically, the Royalty was small in numbers,addled from genetic retardation, and hence, kind of boring, and, bored. So, they “made” friends – people who got to live “at Court”, hang out, be Rich, but, God Forbid, NOT work.

Ok, so the point is, somebody, not Steve Jobs, but somebody very much like him – maybe V.I. Lenin – created this notion that anybody could be rich if they wanted to. Believe me, this was not well-accepted, even though today, the mind of the blogosphere can barely grasp anything BUT this notion of wealth. The short story is this: stupid, little people got as much money as both the Landed Gentry and the Royalty, just by working – doing shitty jobs like mining coal and drilling for oil. These people got named “nouveau-riche”, by the Rich, because they desperately wanted to exterminate them (note: if you want to exterminate something, give it a classification, a name). Didn’t work. The NR actually managed there money, willed it to their kids, the “old money” Rich died, went crazy, Communist governments (including those that called themselves Democracies) divided the un-earned land of the LG amongst the biddy Peasant-rich, and well, there you have it: Amerika!

But now, luckily, the Royalty and Landed Gentry have reappeared! Shhhhhh! The Democrats and Castes don’t know about this yet: they all live in the Matrix, where there is still Work, a Middle-Class, and American Dream, etc., etc. And right now, there is a Recession in the Matrix! Crazy! Because the Rich are having a great time – there hasn’t been even a bump in purchase of high-end and luxury items throughout this terrible recession in the Matrix. Fendi still sells tons of bags, Bently is cranking out cars, there are lots of families with 2 and 3 children, all of whom have iPads for toys. Aston Martin came out with the DB IX, in the midst of this terrible recession.

But this reality, just like in the movie, “The Matrix”, is absolutely unbelievable to the (imaginary) Middle Class and the Nouveau-Riche-Residue. This is hard to explain, but, it may just be that TV continues to be on all the time, and even the makers of TV don’t know. “Jeez. I just don’t get it! Where do people get the money? Ya know?” You don’t know. You can’t really know, because fundamental things like “money” just don’t mean what you think they mean, anymore.

Meanwhile, the New Era is booming! It’s the Market. Yes. That thing that the Matrix dwellers call Wall Street. Wall Street is like “the Mafia” – something that was really a family at one time, who headed organized crime. But now, organized crime has become simply “reality”. Reality is Business, and Business is the Market. Unlike the movie, the Matrix, the people in the battery cells are Consumers, not Producers. Probably something that could be fixed, although they actually do fuel the Market in just the right way. Consumers drive Industry, Industry goes Public, this translates into Market Instruments, and, the Real People make real money (e.g. Yen, or Yuan). The whole “Wall Street” thing was just a little slip up – a glitch in the Matrix – that spilled out into the consciousness of the blogosphere, not enough for them to really understand it, just enough for them to blog about it, and elect Barack to take care of it.

Here’s how it all ends: there are no jobs, because there is really nothing to do. Remember how work was invented by Lenin so he could convince people to revolt against the Tsar? It all sounds kind of funny now, doesn’t it: “Tsar”, “Proletariat” – c’mon. What kind of words are those? In an Industrial age, there was a great need to make things, and an attendant need for wage-slaves. The bargain was good: give your life in exchange for a car, a house and a TV. But, all that stuff is made now, or, if we need more, there is a whole new world of people who are willing to accept that old bargain – these are the people in the 3rd World (God! What happens when we run out of Worlds!?!?). These people risk their lives to cross the US Border, just to be slaves. Of course, they don’t call it “slavery” – the call it Opportunity, just like our (white) fore bearers did.

The point is, there’s no more ned for you bulky Proletariat – you don’t even know that word any more! This is naturally a very harsh reality, and, if you believed it, it would damage Consumer Confidence. Consumer Confidence is a number, not unlike the number in horse racing, that raises or lowers “the odds”, and, consequently, “the payout”. So, a Recession, and a guy like Obama, provided an easy out: oops! lost your jobs because of China! The Recession! Oil Prices! But really, your “job” was just kind of a waste of time – a hangover from a time not so long ago, but, you know, stuff moves way faster than you think.

You’re not going to get your job back. The detail are not clear, because, there is the little detail that the Market, as is is currently designed, needs Consumers, and Consumers need (to believe that they have) money. Currently, Matrix Consumers are under the impression that Money is made through Work. Probably something real people could work with, until the Big Solution comes through. But not these really ridiculous jobs of the past, that produce nothing! Like office jobs – totally imaginary. Automation is so far beyond the mind of the blogosphere that it almost hurts to think about it. For someone to pay for an entire imaginary Human Life – I mean, Cradle-to-Grave, with Kids and College and Self-fulfillment – all because you what? Show up to a cubicle and sit at a desk? Wow. Your weed is cracky!

Services, however, are still quite necessary. Oh yeah. There’s still plenty of dust, and dirt, and small dogs produce a lot of hair. Plus, good food requires preparation and serving. And then there’s still a lot of garbage to get rid of.

This could go on, but it would be too depressing. For example, education really only produces Consumers – the idea of an “intellectual” belongs to the lost generations of the Landed Gentry. We need Content Providers (you know, in corporate computing, we actually use that term! This is, yo, kind of real!). But basically, none of the youth seems to be able to get on board with the kinds of work and discipline it requires to learn languages and musical instruments. So, the rest of knowledge transfer can be done so much better through a desktop interface.

I have to stop now. This is really out of hand. The basic message is: be happy! Everything will work itself out, as it always has. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it – no one ever did, did they? For sure, the TV will stay on, and your device will have plenty of content for when you are bored. The Republicans, as you call them, won’t take over, because something infinitely worse has already taken over, while you were sleeping, and this Thing doesn’t want some weird tea party shit any more than you do! Now, they ARE formidable, the Republicans, because they retain something very rare – heart and soul! yeah. These guys have Faith and Hope, and they are crazy-willing to fight for it! But the godless,s sexless, indignant, self-righteous Mass is a pretty powerful antidote. So far, the Rulers have been able to just sit back and watch the Left and Right duke it out. I mean, look how easy it was to let the left wing actually kill and kill again, when the religious fervor of the Mohammedans threatened to interrupt Steve Jobs’ plans! Wow. Bill Clinton throws out the term “regime change”, and suddenly a Stealth Bomber is aimed at Osama’s head! Then,Obama sent Navy Seals to smoke that bastard! No doubt the Republicans would face the same demise, if they got too cocky, too religious, too weird.

To recap:
1) the world is “ruled” by a third party, that isn’t in your book. They are not really into “ruling” – their kind of autonomic, in that their only goal is to make more money, and then re-invest that money in money-making opportunities.
2) If you are white and American, you should become a sommelier soon. Everybody else is already busy working at jobs that the world needs. You’re a little behind.
3) Money is a notion: it equivalent to “buying power”. Buying means paying for a thing, like a helicopter, for example, not a Starbucks, outright, not “on time”.
4) The United States will not go away. It will become something like Disneyworld, where there are people on endless vacation, and then “cast members”.
5) Don’t believe me! I mean, you liked that book, “Fight Club”, didn’t you? It’s kind of the same idea. The only thing I am saying different is that – it’s real! You are the movie.

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TiVoMan, ManApp

In earlier days of cable TV, they worried about “availability” – God forbid you should have to plan your schedule around someone else’s notion of “the right time” for the show that would fulfill you (for now). TiVo wasn’t a response to this need – TiVo caused the need. The iPhone taught us to get instant gratification from our needs, whatever they might be.

The gray area, or the “steve-jobs-phrase”, at this stage is that, not everything can be provided by an App. Once again, though, it’s not that we lack the technology to meet human desires and needs, but rather that humans needs and desires are just to complicated anyway.

Men, for example. A woman doesn’t really need or even desire a full Man-thing, with his smelly ass, his insatiable hunger, more for food and blood than for sex, although it’s not a bad sub when you can’t get war. This kind of crazy, instinct-fueled needs matrix is just too much for Woman, who has reasonable needs, at reasonable times, or else, hysteria, every once in awhile. But hysteria doesn’t hold a candle to the testosterone wand, when it comes to right here, right now, and I-don’t-know-what-I-really want.

Obviously, there’s no need to simplify the Man – just give him something to keep him occupied, which is something like internet porn. The Woman needs a Cyber Man, or, better, TiVoMan. Simple: set to record; then, play back when you can curl up with a nice glass of wine – Merlot, say – in some comfy booties.

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I am a fabulist

some things are better left unsaid. it doesn’t mean what you think it means. it means I write to let some gas out of my ongoing spoken diatribe. giving us all a break. tidying up. but no losing anything valuable by being completely silent.

I’m a fabulist. nice way of saying “liar”. not really. I guess it’s a bit more subtle, or twisted, than that.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fabulists)
Fabulists are authors of fables, in the normal sense of “a narration intended to enforce a useful truth”.

That’s spot on.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable)
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.

A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.

Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the New Testament, “μύθος” (“mythos”) was rendered by the translators as “fable”[1] in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.[2]

These citations are missing an important point – the fabulist is not an author, necessarily. Not like other authors, whose job it is to write. Fabulist tell fables. They may write them. But they do not separate themselves from the work, as though they controlled it, as though it were a product of their creativity.

We narrate life as it happens. If you happen to be listening, that’s your problem.

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Retreat, Surrender, Can He At Least Plead?

The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled “To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default.”
It was truly, as the Times pointed out, “a political environment laced with lunacy.” But don’t blame it all on the Republican “mad dogs” on Capitol Hill playing chicken with the economic plight of the American people and its wobbling economy. It was President Obama who surrendered.
In one of the most inept episodes of Presidential-Congressional relations, Mr. Obama managed to give the Republicans more than they expected and leave the Democrats with less than the Republicans offered. The Republicans never expected Mr. Obama to give in entirely on tax increases on the wealthy, on the reviled oil industry giants and other corporate tax escapees. The Republicans even agreed to $800 billion in new revenue over ten years. Obama fumbled the ball day after day, and with the August 2 debt ceiling deadline looming, he fell to the extortionists. Unlike Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, who routinely expected and got debt ceilings raised without conditions.
President Obama’s disaster began months ago when he agreed to tie raising the debt ceiling to a grand bargain with the Republicans regarding deficits and revenues instead of demanding a debt ceiling raise while he was caving on extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. That immediately gave the “fanatic” Republicans a veto power over the “establishment” Republicans in Congress. And fanatics don’t blink. Especially those fanatics who, elected last year, say they don’t care about being re-elected.
So Obama accepted about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, got no revenue producing tax increases and therefore made it nearly impossible to create a public works jobs program to uplift a sliding economy.
With economic indicators registering more trouble in recent days for American workers, Mr. Obama has no cards left. Interest rates cannot be driven any lower by the Federal Reserve. He didn’t get even a renewal of the extension of unemployment benefits. Consumer spending – 2/3rds of the economy, is stagnant. Without consumer demand, new investment is sluggish. Unemployment is rising, and without jobs, workers can’t increase their consumer spending. State, local and federal government spending cannot increase under the yoke of the just agreed-upon cuts. The weaker dollar may increase exports a little, but the U.S. still has a continuing massive trade deficit, especially with China. Europe’s financial problems will curb orders of U.S. goods and services.
So what can Mr. Obama do? He can propose a public works program, paid for by the tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations. Both are getting richer. The large corporations are reporting very good second quarter profits further disconnecting their affluence from that of their workers and labor in general. He could, if he wanted, make a very strong case for repairing America’s infrastructure and bring the soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as a majority of the American people and the most mayors of our cities desire.
First, however, he has to take the offensive by showing that the bulk of the deficits since 2002 were caused by the Bush tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and Bush’s two wars. Obama also has to hold the Republicans accountable for their hostage-taking of the American economy so they cannot impede public works proposals in an election year.
Amazingly, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he was quick to compromise from the get-go. Consequently, he painted himself into a corner. So, since he is not a leader, maybe he can become a pleader.
Given that non-financial companies are sitting on two trillion dollars of inert cash and other liquid assets, maybe he can appeal to these companies to disgorge ten percent in immediate special dividends to their long-parched shareholders who are, after all, their owners. Loosening the executive locks on this hoard of money would provide $200 billion for more likely spending in the market place. Companies like Apple, Google, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft alone are sitting on well over $200 billion cash. To these coddled, indentured U.S. companies he can invoke President John F. Kennedy’s challenge–“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Second, he can plead with those very profitable corporations that have benefited from the government bailout, or pay little or no federal income taxes, to voluntarily contribute to a public works fund.
Companies like GE, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Boeing, IBM, Wells Fargo, DuPont, American Electric Power, FedEx, Honeywell, Yahoo, United Technologies as a group made $171 billion in U.S. profits over three years and paid zero federal income tax with a $2.5 billion negative advantage. And that, says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, is “just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance.”
Is such pleading just Pollyannaish? Maybe. But it will resonate with the American people’s sense of injustice. Those feelings of indignation can reverberate and cause members of Congress to start remembering who sent them to Washington. Last I heard, corporations don’t have a single vote.

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by

Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist

In the Public Interest
Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist
By Ralph Nader
8.12.2011

He took his position as the founder and CEO of Interface, the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturing firm, and made environmental history that is extending into many sustainability commitments for the industrial managers he educated.

The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.

In 1994, Mr. Anderson had what he called his “epiphanal moment” when he read Paul Hawken’s book–The Ecology of Commerce. That is when he gathered his colleagues and set his company on a mission to reach zero pollution by 2020 “by focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and closed-loop recycling.” Interface is more than halfway there reducing expenses and increasing sales and profits in the process. He liked to call himself a “radical industrialist” or a “recovering plunderer of the Earth.”

In 2000 he relinquished the day-to-day running of the company to Dan Hendrix so he could become the synergistic advocate around the country and the world for what he called a “zero footprint.” That is, going beyond the sustainable “to restorative” “to put back more than we take and do good to the earth, not just no harm, through the power of example.”

Years ago I heard him speak in Washington. He sounded like a very precise and enlightened industrial engineering professor, except he was also meeting a payroll and outcompeting his competitors. In 1998 he agreed to sign on to our widely supported petition to USDA and DEA to remove industrial hemp from the DEA’s restrictions and allow our farmers to grow this very versatile plant for energy, food, clothing, paper and many other uses including carpets. Mr. Anderson promised that his company would buy more hemp for its products–industrial hemp can legally be imported from Canada and China–but is not permitted to be grown in the United States. “We have experimented with hemp in carpets and fabrics,” he said, “and it is a very good fiber for both, however supply is very limited because of laws against hemp growing.”

Ray Anderson was authentic. He intensely disliked corporate “greenwashing,” which he defined as “letting words get ahead of deeds purely for economic or personal gain.” At Interface (located in Atlanta), he significantly advanced John Elkington’s concept of the “triple bottom line”–economic, social and environmental which come together into one bottom line (economic) as a better way to make a bigger profit.

Take note of his approach–he starts with a set of deep ethical values, translates them into industrial processes that do not damage the Earth and then bends the corporate behavior to those two predicates.

Asked two years ago what he wants from the government, he replied “a carbon tax… taxing bad things instead of good things, so that an honest market can then work. Today it’s a dishonest market, just stumbling around ignoring the externalities.”

In his first book Mid-Course Correction, he refers people to page 172 to meet “Tomorrow’s Child,” as his reply to the question of what motivates him? Posterity, “tomorrow’s child” includes his five grandchildren.

Hundreds of thousands of engineers should read his book Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist. As a renaissance engineer with his feet on the ground, Mr. Anderson set the standards for professionalism which starts with prevention of damage and ends with restoration. He motivated those in his company and leaders in other companies with his inspirational imagery. He talked of climbing the seven faces of “Mount Sustainability.” “Every foothold gained,” he declared, “begins with a self-questioning analysis of our process and materials and the determination to achieve even better results with less, and ultimately, no impact on our environment.”

Here are the Seven Fronts on “Mount Sustainability”:

Eliminate Waste: Eliminate all forms of waste in every area of business;
Benign Emissions: Eliminate toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities;
Renewable Energy: Operate facilities with renewable energy sources–solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass and low impact hydroelectric;
Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transport people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions;
Sensitize Stakeholders: Create a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves peoples’ lives and livelihoods; and
Redesign Commerce: Create a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce.

While Anderson spoke from details, he moved to inspiration and philosophy. He would say to hard-bitten industrialists and idealistic students: “You, too, have influence. You have the power of one. Your organization has influence, too–the collective influence of one and one and one. Knowledge, deep (not superficial) knowledge, getting well up that curve, comes first. Doing (taking action) must follow–in your personal lives and at work. Knowledge and action are critical. They give credibility and validity to your examples and to your influence, which can spread and grow without limit.”

He even got top executives at Walmart to listen and move.

Ray Anderson’s greatness came from the expansion of his vision from year to year. He was a learner par excellence–from books, from the people at Interface, from academics, and from advisors like David Suzuki and Amory Lovins. In his last book he wrote: “[we] are all part of the continuum of humanity and the web of life in general. We will have lived our brief span and either helped or hurt that continuum, that web, and the Earth that sustains all life. Which will it be? It’s your call.”

Ray Anderson’s legacy lights the way for the future of the world’s productive and living environment.

To his wife Pat, his children and grandchildren go our sorrows and sympathies imbued with a deep appreciation of Ray Anderson’s magnificence that touched all who followed and extended his embracing humanity.

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