when the bottom line kills, unable to see they lost, finding the funds, and the american way...

privatize everything. the market is more efficient than the government. the scariest phrase in the english language includes government help. throw money at the rich and all boats will rise. whatever is good for business is good for america. unions have outlived their usefulness and are hurting the american worker. repeat, privatize everything. there is your modern republican party in a nutshell. its founders are wishing they were still alive so they could run these fuckwads out of the country. and we are seeing the consequences of thirty plus years of their mantra being accepted and put into practice.

and this week we are given a gruesome reminder that when you privatize everything, the bottom line becomes all that matters. humanity? compassion? community? psshhh, let's focus on the portfolio. the market is necessarily inhuman and inhumane. as bobby kennedy reminded us, our GDP does not measure that which makes us great, only that which makes a few of them very, very wealthy. the market does not give a shit if you are a 93 year old man without anyone left in the world. a man who spent his entire life working to own a home and is only looking to enjoy your last days on this planet before being reunited with your wife. the market only cares that the privatized power company has a bill which has not been paid. the market does not give a shit if you are a 93 year old man alone at home and the temperature outside is subzero. and so, thanks to privatization and the market, the private power company (making huge profits off the publically-financed power grid which yours and my tax dollars constructed for them) ignores social responsibility, compassion, humanity and community. rather than doing what is right, it does only what is most profitable. and it sticks a fun little device on your meter which short circuits it once you have hit a certain usage because it has some unpaid bills...but it doesn't tell you, because that would cost a few cents, and the market would not accept such "unnecessary" spending. and so, in the dead of winter in frigid michigan, when temperatures are constantly below freezing, your power just quits. and you are left to slowly freeze to death inside your home...you are left to a slow, painful death. all for the bottom line. ain't the market grand?

and yet the modern republican party cannot stop with the same old sorry story which destroyed america in the first place. "give us more tax cuts" they scream. "too much money going to the states" they tell us. "the market is more efficient" they robotically proclaim. and all we are left to do is smack our foreheads and wonder if they are fucking serious. tell me, if tax cuts were the answer, if destroying social programs were the answer, if the market was so great, then how the fuck did we end up here? is it that we did not put big enough holes in the social safety net? is it that the chasm between the uber-rich and the rest of us did not get big enough? don't get me wrong, I am all for listening to the intelligent argument from the other side, I am all for bringing true conservatives into the conversation...but at some point, you just have to tell them to shut the fuck up because they obviously don't have a damn clue what they are talking about. as the president told them, you fucking lost. you destroyed this nation. shut the fuck up, move aside and let someone try to salvage what is left.

in the meantime, the states are broke. and as unemployment continues to skyrocket (now over 7 percent officially - many times higher if you count the people we needlessly throw away into our prison system) they will only become even more broke because the brilliant republican fuckasses gutted everything human from the federal government, values guys that forgot the most basic christian value - give help to those less fortunate - and the most basic american value - a chance to live free and pursue happiness for all. and while they complain about giving some help to the states to deal with the mess they have left them...there remains one very quick way to find those funds - prison. the states are spending ten times their education budgets on housing drug addicts in prison. and while bullshit draconian un-american psychosis like the hidden print in the adam walsh act and mandatory minimum sentencing kicks in ever harsher each year, the gap only gets wider. and so your state cuts deals with private prison companies (remember, all must be privatized) and guarantees them thousands of inmates every year over the life of a 20 year contract. and then these fuckjobs have the nerve to tell your kid he isn't getting a grant or a subsidized loan for school. I'm telling you, but stock in private prisons...other than developing new ways to kill human beings, keeping them locked down like animals is the next biggest growth industry in this country. hows that for fucked up priorities?

we have gotten so far away from the most basic ideals that america stood for that we are more concerned with building bombs and bars than with building an educated citizenry. and so people begin to accept horrifying statements from republican leaders in this country questioning why we would ever want to bring an alleged terrorist to the united states where he might...gasp...have the same rights as an american citizen? and here I was under the impression that we were bombing the fuck out of the middle east to bring them the same rights as american citizens. here I thought that freedom and liberty were universal values and we should strive to make sure all persons enjoy them. here I thought we were proud of our system of justice and thought it the best in the world. as if it is hard to get a bullshit conviction in the united states anyways...ever gone through the criminal process? when boehner says shit like that on national television and isn't called on it I suddenly begin to think maybe the nutjob armed militias in the mountains are just ahead of the curve. afterall, when his ilk show up at my front door, all I've got is a set of miracle blades and cross-dressing cat.

on the plus side...it is nearly february in taos. which means it dumped. and it will keep dumping. and for a few hours a couple days a week I will forget that I am part of a broken system. and I will be unable to hold it in and let out yelps of excitement as the the trees disappear from view compliments of the wave of soft, dry snow pouring over my shoulders. and sharing those moments with those special to me, I will remember that all is not lost.

welcome to chicago senators, a real stimulus, and where to find the money...

the united states senate has for years (hell, decades...centuries even) been a lofty perch for a handful of blowhard white male holdouts desperately clinging to the good ol' boy life and the knowledge that they are blessed and better than anyone that would come out of a true meritocracy. yes, the united states senate is the depository for our home-grown aristocracy. and that is why I am grateful to illinois gov. rod blagojevich for giving them a dose of good old fashioned hard nosed blue collar chicago politics. ever since blago and his hair were led into the dark SUV in handcuffs, the senators have been on their self-imposed pillars talking down to the rest of us (as if the vast majority of them aren't crooks...hell, harry reid, the loudest shitbag of them all on this issue hails from neveda, that bastion of good and ethical politics) and declaring that blago will not get to fulfill his duties and the people of illinois will be without a second voice in the senate because they decide who gets in the club. (on a side note, I am amazed at how little I heard from the talking heads about how frightening it was that the senate was effectively telling the american people its elections and laws ..ing united states senators were null and void anytime those already in the exclusive club decided they did not like a candidate...or even worse, the people lawfully picking that candidate...and this from the purportedly "liberal" party which has been crying about the loss of democracy during the rule of the uber-wealthy. and this my friends, is why the democratic party should burn in hellfire). well, the hair showed washington that it doesn't have shit on chicago. box them in, embarrass them, force your will upon them. its the chicago way. and now the senate is backing down (thanks in part to another chicago strong-arm...the president-elect). take note all of you that worried that obama is not tough enough...the man rose from chicago politics and forced his way onto the national scene and into the white house. fuck with him, and he will end you. welcome to chicago.

there is plenty of talk about economic stimulus over the last few months. (the amusing part of it being that everyone talking about it was ignoring the ground work for a future stimulus and shouting how prosperity was everywhere and the market was high so all was well and would be forever. and now we have nothing to stimulate except other nations that build things. woot.) and I am all for pumping the economy in a last ditch hope that we haven't crossed the rubicon (although I am fully willing to accept that relative economic decline is inevitable, and, in the long term, can actually be beneficial to a former worldwide economic hegemon). but when it is coupled with all this crap about tax cuts (because if there is any kool-aid which washington just cannot put down it is the tax cut crap and the brain dead, now yet again proven false friedmanomics) I become very worried. that supposed "stimulus" of tax cuts the last few times was just one more example of the cute word play of those that don't give a shit about the masses or poverty or the growing chasm between the shrinking number of haves and everybody else. it was a wealth transfer...from those without to those with too much. it was a stealthy attack in the class war that they have fomented against us for centuries. ask yourself...if you get a refund check or a break in your taxes where is that money going to go? not into your savings...because your insurance and your loan rates are too high. it will go right back to the same insanely bloated institutions that already took hundreds of billions of tax payer money and then said "thanks...and no, you cannot know where the money went or what we did with it or why we are still refusing to do the socially responsible - and long-term business savvy - thing and loan any money to anyone worthy." claiming right does not trump doing wrong.

and if we are going to get a real stimulus...an infusion into education, manufacturing, infrastructure development, small business (actual small business, not the current definition, which includes dick cheney) growth...now that the deficit under the party against big spending has skyrocketed...where do we find the money? drugs. little noticed story recently - the feds are planning to "surge" the border in the war on drugs. and we all know how well this particular war has worked...and how effective prohibition was at developing a huge class of gangsters. so we spend billions and billions to ward of drugs. in the process, we effectively divert about as much as a kid digging a hole with his hands on the banks of the mississippi...we aren't stopping shit. and we spend billions putting addicts and those that supply them in prison - where it is actually easier to get drugs than on the street. ensuring that when they get out they cannot find work, leading to depression and right back to drugs. and in the meantime we have turned other nations into living hells, we have turned border towns into death traps where 40 murders in a weekend is no longer news and if the chief of police lasts more than a week he should get his retirement. and yet we look to london, where herione is given to addicts free of charge, putting dealers out of business, crushing crime and avoiding the danger of the impurities (pure opiates don't tend to kill people near as much as the crap to cut them). and how much revenue is made on taxes for cigarettes and alcohol? when was the last time you heard of someone killing a family for a cigar and a shot of whiskey? you could tax the hell out of these things, regulate their manufacture and distribution to keep them as pure and safe as is possible, keep prices low enough to put dealers out of business, and still make a fortune. and don't give me this crap about how we will become a nation of addicts if drugs are legalized. we are a nation of addicts now. it is not hard to get drugs anywhere in this country. if you think it is I envy your sheltered existence.

I'm just breakin' down...