I've been tinkering with this diary for a while. Several diaries posted today, perhaps most influentially edscan's "The Diversion" and gjohnsit's "The definition of insanity", prompted me to toss this one on the fire.
The WSJ reports that "Watchdogs Chide Treasury on Bailout". The General Accountability Office and a congressional oversight committee independently concluded that the Treasury's handling of the $700 billion TARP program has jeopardized its mission.
Last month Bloomberg reported that the "Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose (Update2) ", meaning the Bank refused to reveal ANY details about $2 trillion in loans, and apparently that's legal.
When the WSJ's TARP story hit the Fed story immediately came to mind and four quick questions blasted me like bullets:
First, why is big business, particularly the interests represented on Wall Street, so easily able to elude accountability?
Second, why can't Congress get any traction in its oversight of the nearly $3 trillion being mismanaged by these two organizations (Treasury, Fed), one of which is accountable to the President and the other of which is apparently accountable to no one (and why, on the heels of this $2 trillion shocker, is Tim Geither, the President of the Fed, given a pass as a nominee for taking the reins of the Treasury?)?
Third, why doesn't this story maintain significant traction in the daily churn of news cycles in either the traditional or alternative media?
Fourth, why is the public so easily distracted from this story and not driven to acts of outrage and disobedience, since the import of these developments have such ENORMOUS short AND long-term financial impact?
You now might expect me to answer these questions in turn, but answers, per se, aren't unavailable; actions of U.S. big business, government, media and the public have become virtually inscrutable, unless by "answer" we "pragmatically" accept that
- multinational financial elites control government and the media, and
- that the public is easily distracted and neutralized, thus
- tidily benefitting the former at the expense of the latter.
This "answer" is self-fulfilling, of course, thus it becomes truer with every passing year. However grim, it's a fait accompli. It has ever been and ever shall be thus. So STFU.
Perhaps recalling movements that led to great change, perhaps because of unruly curious minds, those who beg to differ find that questions from this vantage point multiply, projecting in every direction like tracers, illuminating a vast wasteland of corruption, complicity, confusion and complacency.
For starters, UM, where is the public outrage?
After eight years of nearly uncontested victimization to power at the hands of our government and with the complicity of media, now, with the swift addition of $3 trillion more in debt, why aren't there tens of millions of people taking to the streets and actively demanding justice?
Before this $3 trillion was added, the Bush administration, in eight short years, had doubled the debt that had taken 225 years to accumulate, with the addition of $5 trillion. If my math and understanding is correct, TARP and the mysterious Fed loans will bring the total cost of the Bush administration to nearly $8 trillion, or roughly $1 trillion per year. This represents a debt of over $25,000 per U.S. man, woman and child, or over $80,000 per average household.
And this was added to the $17,000 per person and $56,000 ALREADY borrowed before Bush.
So now we are up to $42,000 per person and $136,000 per household of national debt, in addition to any personal debt you may have, and the average household and business have plenty.
You may not have the loan note on file, but you and yours are on the hook, for it.
For more numbers, and more exact numbers, see America's Total Debt Report, by Michael Hodges. It covers debt in the "household, business, financial and government sectors"; though it was last updated May, 2008, it's still very eye-opening.
(Of course, Bondad has been keeping us abreast of these numbers for years now.)
And there is nothing at the moment to suggest that the latest expenses will fix the economy, nor is there an apparent end in sight to the spending and instability.
It took eight years of shock and awe for the public to muster the political will and collective action to bring Barack Obama to power.
Yes we elected a black Democrat as President and that is historically mind-blowing, but that unfortunately is a small accomplishment compared to what needs doing at this point.
Does the public actually believe that this act alone, in the face of the tremendous influence of the power elite, is somehow nearly sufficient?
Does the public really believe that government agents, including the President-Elect, are impervious to public pressure and/or truly powerless to influence and take action until the new administration is sworn in?
Does the public truly believe that we and the President-Elect don't already know many of the steps that need to be taken to begin the correction?
In October, after John McCain suggested he would a assemble a blue ribbon commission of Treasury, Fed and SEC experts to study the economy and make recommendations, Barack Obama's stump-speech response was: "A Blue Ribbon Commission?! We already know how we got here! We already know what to do!" (paraphrase)
And he was right.
It's the result of nearly thirty years of institutionalized, escalating class warfare.
Did something happen yesterday or is something happening today or is something planned for tomorrow that suggests--based on experience with the players involved and the situations at hand--that appropriate, bold action is underway?
As Reuters recently reported, Bush's National Intelligence Council's analysis, "Global Trends 2025" indicates that by 2025 America will be "first among equals".
"First among equals"?
Setting aside the jaw-dropping, obtuse expression, YES--because we have allowed ourselves to be and are continuing to allow ourselves to be economically raped and pillaged by the financial elites that have been favored by our misguided economic policies for going on three decades--we will be left indebted and insecure in this world by wealth that is concentrated, mobile and largely independent of the future of the United States taxpayer.
[NOTE: I'll be the first to decry American hegemony when it's used to exploit other peoples; conversely, I'll also protect it whole-heartedly for its powerful ability to do good.]
What explains this yawning lack of concern as the world's economic superpower prematurely drops to its knees, bled to death by wounds inflicted by its leaders?
Do we believe it can't get worse, while constantly lowering expectations of what is acceptable?
Has class warfare become co-dependency?
Are we already plugged into The Matrix?
We TALK about the need to kill the enabling Republican economic policy myth. We only can do so if we force our leaders to kill it. We can only force them with overwhelming direct action. Only by forcing them, forcing each thrust, do we empower them to do it.
Apart from obvious times of military conflict, most of us know next to nothing of the many battles ordinary men and women fought to preserve freedom, expand the sphere of democracy, and create a more just society. Of the abolishionist and civil rights movements, we at best recall a few key leaders--and often misread their actual stories. We know even less of the turn-of-the-century populists who challenged entrenched economic interests and fought for a "cooperative commonwealth." Who these days can describe the union movements that ended eighty-hour work weeks at near-starvation wages? Who knows the origin of the social security system, now threatened by systematic attempts to privatize it? How did the women's suffrage movement spread to hundreds of communities, and gather enough strength to prevail?
As memories of these events disappear, we LOSE the knowledge of MECHANISMS that grassroots social movements have used successfully in the past to shift public sentiment, and challenge entrenched institutional power. EQUALLY LOST are the MEANS by which participants managed to keep on and eventually prevail in circumstances at least as harsh as those we face today.
- "The Real Rosa Parks", Paul Rogat Loeb, The Impossible Will Take Longer: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, Paul Rogat Loeb, ed., Basic Books/Perseus Group, 2004.
[CAPS, bold mine]
If a sit-in by the employees of Republic Windows & Doors can move Bank of America to positive action, why wouldn't direct action by the broad public force the hands of Wall Street (AIG, Goldman Sachs et al), government (Treasury, Fed and Congress) and the media to do so as well?
Why do we have to take this one on the chin?
Why are we willing to do so without a fight?
Through collective action alone can we abruptly, surgically remove the heart of trickle-down concentration of wealth supported by
*ever-escalating executive compensation and ever-diminishing executive accountability;
*slanted, porous, corrupt and corruptible tax codes;
*misdirected IRS attention;
*the unleveling impact of influence peddling abuses;
*financial service de-regulation and/or lack of regulatory enforcement;
*unproductive emphasis on derivative "gambling" vs. investments in goods and services;
*public debt financed re-distribution of wealth;
*costly, debilitating military over-reach;
etc.
One would think that on the brink of disaster as we are (not even including Global Warming, Healthcare, etc.), cities like NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Chicago, LA and SF ought to be able to and should draw regional armies of a million or more people every weekend until economic justice and stability are achieved. And every other metropolitan area likewise ought to be able to and should express proportionally significant and persistant outrage until we prevail.
Yet nowhere do the financial elites or the Republicans who protect them face even the fear of such brinksmanship.
I'll never know why this did not happen during the run up to the Iraq War, given the foreseeable consequences.
And now I am dumbfounded at the absence of the massive, unequivocal, overwhleming non-partisan direct action that can change the course of history on what must be the common ground issue to which everyone relates: the future of the nation's economic security.
Is everyone really okay with this, or has the nation succumbed to false, collective learned helplessness, behaving as if we are helpless even when we have the power to change our circumstances?
What will it take?
25% unemployment?
Massive homelessness?
$20 trillion in debt?
The repeal of the Fair Labor Act?
The death of Social Security?
Another doubling of the concentration of wealth?
Which straw will it take to break the camel's back and send the public scrambling, demanding radical change NOW?
What will it take to recognize that our fist is too full for another stalk?
What?
WHAT?
In this state I am reminded of these words from Martin Luther King, Jr., which still call from his "Letter From Birmingham Jail":
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost 2,000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to Earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually timne is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers of God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Now [our] approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized. But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist for love--"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice--"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ--"I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist--"Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist--"I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist--"This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the cause of preservation of injustice or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? ...So, after all, maybe the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremism.
In "Easter 1916," William Butler Yeats wrote that "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity." Lines such as these have often been used to inspire dispassion and moderation, which have their place. But Yeats was writing about senseless violence. Gandhi and MLK spoke of passionate yet nonviolent direct action.
And people responded, and together they changed the world.
I would argue that moderation, more than anything, cost us the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections. The 2000 recount situation screamed for an extreme response. The parlaying of 9/11 into the Patriot Act demanded and extreme response. The run-up to the Iraq War wailed for an extreme response. The tax cuts for the rich taunted us for an extreme response. The Swiftboats goaded an extreme response. We find ourselves here but for the lack of some well-timed extreme responses.
It is not time to ShutTFU, it is time to SpeakTFU.
2025 is not far. For both moral reasons and the health and future of the nation, economic justice must be established NOW.
Again, as MLK wrote, "The question" must not be will we "be extremist but what kind of extremist we will be."
We were handed a superpower. If we mean to pay it forward, it really is now or never.
Or will we be the generation that let it slip away?
UPDATE:
In addition to edscan's "The Diversion" and gjohnsit's "The definition of insanity", I want to acknowledge:
Marcion's "Protests spread around the world, will Americans join?"
Benajminwise's "Commission my f*cking poll question, Kos!"
Hope Reborn's "‘Why don’t we write our own bill?’ Bing-F'in-O!"
Supersonic Dog's "I'm not sure I belong here anymore... "
and...
Prophet's "Democrats: Bush to Wield Power After Jan 20"