Malcontents
& Angels
Clintonian politics is dead…. Long live President
Clinton.
By J.M.
Hamilton 6-25-2015
“It was the
worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the winter of despair, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct(ly to hell).”
Oh, yes,
history repeats itself again and again.
Rococo Ages come and they go, and it usually takes a good revolution or
two to remind the elites of their place in society: at their best, semi-benevolent stewards; and
at their worst, predatory vampires sucking the economic and political life
blood from a nation and its people. An
altogether cynical and cyclical enterprise.
Such irony
that the icon of democracy in the late 18th Century has become the
icon of failed economic imperialism in the early 21st Century. A national debt that is out of control, a
foreign policy that is vacuous, black/off line military budgets, seemingly
every document from our government is “classified,” and the bill of rights
trashed, by our police/surveillance state, torture, privatized prisons, and the
CIA hacking into Senate computers. (What
would cause the elite to install a surveillance state apparatus that would
rival a Nazi’s and Stasi’s wildest dream?
Answer: Fear. And a deep understanding of the elite’s own subconscious. The 1% fear having done to
them, what they’ve been doing to the 99% for a very long time.)
A President,
who campaigned on transparency, and as a bespoke Tribune for the people, turns
out to be the plutocracy’s best friend. By
his actions President Obama supports: free trade agreements negotiated behind closed doors (that gut the nation’s middle class, the American dream, and
insures corporate autocracy); persecution of whistleblowers and marginalizing the
fourth estate; endless support for the Military Industrial and Intelligence
Complex (MIIC); wars without end; the suspension of due process with signature drone strikes; and the shredding of the fourth amendment, as mass surveillance
assumes everyone is guilty until proven innocent.
It’s almost like
Chancellor Cheney has returned to the White House. No doubt, the current White House occupant is
far more polished, but in substance, a Crypto-Republican (No. Obamacare does not
make President Obama a liberal. Even George W. Bush expanded drug benefits for
seniors under Medicare, Part D --- a/k/a The Big Pharma Entitlement Act. The
expansion of the welfare state, front loaded for corporate profits, is a vote purchasing
gimmick both political parties utilize, at the expense of fiscal sanity, while providing corporate payback).
Nine decrepit
monarchs – all dressed in black - sit in judgment over the nation’s laws,
ruling on behalf of corporations and the plutocracy, again and again: Money equals freedom of speech; corporations
are people – except when it’s time to hold them accountable for their crimes; McCutcheon;
and Citizens United. As a result, what was
once “we the people’s government,” now purchased and for sale to the highest
bidder. The trials or courtroom proceedings
before SCOTUS, and many of the nation’s federal and state courts, are often for
show; all too often these nine politicians, and their judicial cadres across
the land, have made up their mind before the show trial even gets started (we can
see this with the predictability of SCOTUS outcomes/rulings).
Our
legislative branch campaigns 24/7/365, and has no interest in governing: a
complete abdication of authority and responsibility. Just show Congress the money, and allow them
to demonize The Imperial Presidency… the sound bites play wonderfully back in
the district, on FOX news, and on the never-ending campaign trail. Pathetic. And worst of all, they sellout themselves,
the nation, and the people, on the cheap, day in and day out - in a form of legalized graft. Don’t take my opinion for it, let the approval
ratings and cash flow speak for themselves.
As for our true
rulers, the plutocracy, the gals and guys who have co-opted and purchased our
government, not unlike a leveraged buyout, they only care about the bottom line
on the second set of books. If the
government goes down, awash in debt, and if the currency gets trashed, as the
Fed’s printing presses churn…. That’s okay.
After all, the elites are only living for the next quarterly statement,
and the next merger, in the hopes of cashing out. Could it be that many within the financial
aristocracy believe they can hedge their way out of the next financial crisis?
Their instructions to U.S. politicians:
Just keep the debt/financial engineered/bubble based economy going; the tax code in our favor; the regulators at bay and underfunded; allow us to merge
into monopolies and cartels; and the devil take the hindmost.
The
environment, the rule of law, workers, the poor, aggregate demand and top line
growth, captured regulatory bodies, and the U.S. government…. Forget about it! Best to keep the 99% in a perpetual state of economic
malaise and near panic, and like the fear card, it’s just another means of
control.
Taken all
together (the secrecy; the offline budgets; the mass surveillance; the desire
to control not only U.S. citizens, but the world, via the MIC and surveillance;
fear mongering by our 24 hour corporate news cycle; abdication of
responsibility by the plutocracy to the social contract; back room deals and
double-dealing; and two of four branches of government – the Fed and SCOTUS –
not democratically elected)… and it all adds up to government by Star Chamber.
Grim
stuff.
Then, when
it’s Darkest, we get the occasional heretic, the outlaw, the iconoclast, the
bad robot… malcontents… the individual who
gives the elite fever dreams. One can
spot these folks a mile off: They are
not afraid to tell the truth; they often genuinely care about making things
better for all of us; derision and scorn are heaped upon these outsiders by the
gangsters at the top; like all of us, these whistleblowers, too, are human, but
they do not let their humanity hold them back from speaking truth to power (indeed, it often spurs them); and as a result, an example must be made. The heretic is talked down to, often shunned,
sometimes persecuted and vilified, and in some instances, threatened with jail
or worse.
Malcontents?
I guess it’s
a matter of perspective. To many,
these individuals are angels. They
certainly are my heros. For starters, I
may not agree with everything these individuals say, do, or stand for, but the
following list provides serious cause for inspiration and praise.
Pope
Francis
When was the
last time a religious leader took on the world’s power structure? Pope Francis has been on a tear: advocacy for the poor; trashing an economic
system that preys upon the poor, crony-capitalism; kicking elite and Wall
Street bootie; and now the latest, coming out with a climate change encyclical. The usual suspects, the GOP
and the robber barons, who love to thump the Bible when it suits their ends,
came down hard against the Pope. If we
are known by the enemies we keep, as well as our friends, than the Pope truly is
a righteous dude. Pope Francis is burning the barrier/firewall that nearly all religious leaders cower behind,
between earthly and metaphysical power. He’s
kicking in the door, and you can smell the fear, rolling off Big Oil’s/Big
Coal’s/Big Carbon’s collective back. If
the Pope was twenty years, no make that ten years younger, I do believe he’d
destroy the current global economic system, and rebuild it in a more effective
and egalitarian manner (i.e. a kinder and gentler form of capitalism, mixed in
with socialism for the 99%, in lieu of socialism for the plutocrats). Having said that, Pope Francis is doing an
incredible job with the time that we are fortunate enough to have with him.
Anybody who can
make the elite this uncomfortable is, truly, doing God’s work.
Senator Rand
Paul
Mr. Paul,
like his father before him, has an issue with our government. Where Mr. Paul and J.M.H. part-company
concerns the government’s much needed role in regulating the economy and the
“free market.” Even Adam Smith acknowledged that mercantilist tend to seek out government favor, and consistently, when given the opportunity, venture towards monopoly and cartel. That’s where the government, ideally, is very much needed:
To protect capitalism from its worst excesses (i.e. monopoly and cartel). Alas, our crony government has failed in this
regard, repeatedly (M&A, consolidation, and combination continue at a record pace under the Obama Administration, and thanks, in large part, to the
easy money policies of the Obama Reserve). But where Mr. Paul’s Libertarian
stand strikes a harmonious chord, for me anyway, is when he attacks foreign
adventures, nation building, the military industrial complex, and the
police/surveillance state. And when he’s
on point - look out… Mr. Paul doesn’t mind taking on the U.S. Senate, the President, or the private contractors, who own and operate the MIC. In fact, his energy level seems to climb, in
direct correlation to the animosity directed his way by the warmongers and the
aristocracy. Whether its extrajudicial
drone strikes or mass surveillance of Americans, Senator Paul can be counted on
to stand up for U.S. citizens, fiscal sanity, and the Constitution. As for the Senator’s support for a flat tax,
and his support for the demise of corporate welfare – via the tax code…. Yes,
and yes again!
Senator Paul
is off to a great start and an auspicious career.
Senator
Elizabeth Warren
Who makes Jamie Dimon lay awake at night? My guess
is Senator Warren. Never has there been
an advocate for the people, who sees modern day Wall Street for what it truly
is: A cesspool of recidivist
malefactors, who rip off their clients, destroy markets, engage in pernicious rent seeking behavior, feed off government largesse and state sponsored welfare
(e.g. including but not limited to, the Fed’s printing presses, taxpayer funded bailouts, and the tax
code), are a detriment to the nation, a drag on our economy, and a threat to our
national security. We think climate
change is bad… take a close look at the denizens in the London financial
district, and on the corner of Wall and Broad.
Mr. Dimon says Senator Warren doesn’t understand international
finance.
No Mr. Dimon,
Senator Warren understands you and the Street all too well. After all, her livelihood doesn’t depend upon
putting on rose colored glasses every morning, and pretending all is right with
the world, after Wall Street almost took out the global economy in 2008, and a
London trader cost J.P. Morgan six billion dollars. The next financial crisis will likely be in
sovereign debt. Trillions in sovereign debt
has been created by Central Banksters out of thin air, racked up to bailout the
international banking cartel (elitist socialism incarnate).
Today,
Senator Warren, and Senator Sanders, set the direction and tone for the
Democratic Party, and not a moment too soon.
Clintonian politics is dead… Long live President Clinton.
Edward
Snowden
If Mr.
Snowden hadn’t laid his life on the line, we’d all still be clueless as to the
degree to which the U.S. government hacks our computers and cellphones 24/7/365. Thanks to Mr. Snowden, and Senator Paul,
parts of the Patriot Act were recently repealed, but we have a long way to
go. We are all still under surveillance,
now by both the NSA and the phone companies.
As with the privatization of our prison system, the privatization of the surveillance state (the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA), has led to gross abuses,
and a violation of our civil liberties. There’s billions to be made in spying for the U.S. government, and the private sector
isn’t going to let those billions slip through their fingers, willingly. Meanwhile, while Mr. Snowden is threatened
with prison and worse, leaders of the surveillance state lie to the Congress
with impunity, hack into Senate computers, cry out for greater powers, and
indicate serious harm will come, as a result of Mr. Snowden’s revelations. But as usual, the fearmongers are proven
wrong again and again (The fearmongers never point out who the U.S. should
truly be worried about: The angry, racist, white American with the Y chromosome, armed to the teeth by the NRA’s worst excesses).
Mr. Snowden
has already been nominated for a Nobel prize; personally, I would like to see
him exonerated of all charges, return to our fair shores, and run for the nation’s
highest office.
Nancy
Pelosi
As a former life
long Republican, and a recovering one at that, I thought hell would freeze over
before I would ever write a word of praise for Representative Pelosi. Satan can relax… it will be warm and toasty
in hell for a good long while yet, because Ms. Pelosi, along with the House and
Senate GOP, decided to support Obamatrade, after all. This week, Ms. Pelosi, true to form, backpedaled and retreated,
sided against the American worker and the U.S. economy, and pandered instead to
global oligarchs and multinational interests with TPP fast track passage. It’s not surprising; it’s this same crew who
buys Representative Pelosi’s ticket to office.
At least
she’s consistent.
The Fourth
Estate
My apologies
in advance if I haven’t named them all, but these are the institutions who help
take a bite out of the plutocracy’s crime wave on a daily basis: The New York Times; The New Yorker; The Washington Post; Slate;
Salon; The Nation; The Huffington Post; The Guardian; Spiegel; Bloomberg; Barron’s; Marketwatch; Project
Syndicate; VOXEU.org; Reuters; Politico; John Stewart; Katrina vandenHeuvel; John Oliver; Tom Keene; Doctors
Nouriel Roubini & Joesph Stiglitz; Twitter; Blogger; and Bill Maher. Without you and many other brave journalist,
free thinkers, techies, economist, scribes, and bloggers, this nation would be
lost.
Due to these malcontents
and angels: “It was the best of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the season of Light, it was the spring of hope, and we
had everything before us.”
Mr. Dickens
once wrote those lines, combined with the lead paragraph of this piece, to
start off a book on the French Revolution.
There’s a quiet revolution going on in America today. After a thirty-five year run of right wing fairy tales, the war of ideas is being won on the left and by libertarians; the plutocracy and Wall
Street have proved that socialism works quite well, for themselves, and that crony
capitalism is an abject failure, except for the 1%.
America’s
greatness lies not in its past, but with our vast potential…. A potential that
1% of the population has attempted and succeeded in capturing for
themselves.
It’s time to
turn that around.
Viva le American Revolution.
Copyright
JM Hamilton Publishing 2015
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