Reagan and Thatcher on the ropes… Throughout the West, the Center cannot hold

Reagan and Thatcher on the ropes… Throughout the West, the Center cannot hold

 

The president came into the debate with a low bar to clear, and he stumbled. He was flat. He was rambling. He was unclear.

 

About midway through the debate, the Biden campaign said that the president was battling a cold - an attempt to explain his raspy voice. That may be so, but it also sounded like an excuse.

 

-             Analysis: Biden's incoherent debate performance heightens fears over his age, BBC

 

By Gregg Wall (7-6-2024) 

 

The summer is getting warmed up here in Alberta, the Stampede is on, the skies are the deepest blue, and I’m wondering why I am inside writing this piece today.  Probably because this is about as close as I will ever come to gloating.  Neoliberalism, the center, the corporatist, the establishment are being rejected in Western democracy, after Western democracy… and its obituary is long overdue.  Odd, how nearly 4.5 decades since 1980, Reagan and Thatcher’s heyday… the public is calling out the biggest scam ever perpetrated, collectively, on the West:  trickle-down; supply-side economics; neoliberalism; globalization; the death cult surrounding the Western economies (aka necroeconomy); and Western political duopolies acting as a front for oligarchy.  More specifically in America and parts of Europe, the hyper-financialization of cannibalized economies that have seen businesses turned into the walking dead, innovation and jobs crushed in an orgy of corporate consolidation, and the economy & opportunity absolutely wrecked for the overwhelming majority of citizens (economies now dependent upon endless rivers of government debt and war spending).  All of it is being rejected.  Not all voters may fully grasp the mechanics of it all, but they do know the establishment has failed them, as wealth and wage inequality have soared.

 

No wonder the public is enraged, as they should be.  U.S. politicians and some European capitals have stripped public services, crammed austerity down everyone’s throat, and allowed families and labor to be preyed upon by banks, cartels, monopolies, and utilities.  Meanwhile, as Washington holds up the middle digit to the American public on reform… it sends billions and billions to a country too corrupt to join NATO, and another country engaged in genocide (and yet, Israel is so rich from US taxpayer largesse that it enjoys socialized medicine, free college, and socialized or subsidized housing).  

 

And what an interesting two weeks, it has been: 

 

Biden is imploding before our very eyes.   Seems that insiders, the Biden administration, EU allies, high profile donors have known Biden had a problem for the last four years… but Biden means cushy jobs for the democratic party, free defense and military for Europe, and donors have spent millions and millions to keep their boy propped up.  It would be a shame to see that investment head south.  And yet, it appears that some donors are finally willing to cut their losses and donations.  Nobody likes to see elder abuse.  Abuse where we pile on a job & responsibilities -- that would crush the strongest of younger individuals -- onto an octogenarian, who is struggling to utter a complete sentence.  All because it’s not PC to acknowledge the obvious, Biden clearly has no business being in the White House.  But before we leave this topic, there is something more.  There is something completely contemptuous about a two-party system, in an alleged democracy, that continuously ignores the demands of the American people, whether it be for: Medicare for All, a ceasefire in Gaza, a pause in endless wars and the resulting austerity, taxing the rich, or Biden fulfilling his 2020 campaign promises (which Biden has largely failed to deliver).  Not to mention, the simple request from the American people for Biden to simply, go away.  So, someone less corrupt and with a real opportunity to defeat Trump can run.  Biden has been a catastrophe for the United States, and most importantly, the long-suffering American people for nearly four miserable years.

 

After all, Biden and his generation are the ultimate testament to American fascism: America has built up the presidency and this garbage two-party system, as infallible, exceptional, unimpeachable, with delusions of grandeur, a nation hypnotized, sedated with endless propaganda & lies.  Americans, thankfully, are waking up to the fraud that is duopoly. 

Across the pond, fourteen long, miserable years of Tory rule came crashing down… but fear not, the Labour party has purged all progressives and lefties, the financial press/establishment gave Labour the seal of approval, and it looks like Prime Minster Starmer will deliver more of the same: endless supply-side welfare for the rich, privatization fraud, maintain the trickle-down tax code, and continue failed neoliberalism.  Meanwhile, the voting public can take temporary satisfaction from the fact they kicked out the Tories, but as important, this election was marked by record low voter turnout.  So enough of the public showed up to reject repugnant Tories, while a huge swath of the British voters didn’t bother to show at all, essentially rejecting the establishment, the duopoly, and the oligarchy the duopoly reports into.  Essentially, a double win for the British people.  Low voter turnout is outstanding: it demonstrates that the public is increasingly onto the charade that is the two-party system.  Starmer already looks like a one term wonder, a deer in the headlight, a caretaker administration that will care little for the public, continue to take for rich, and give to the rich.  And Starmer’s ready-made excuse for not properly funding public services that have been gutted, like the NHS?  Sir Starmer will, of course, lean on that old standby, the national debt run up to provide welfare for the rich. Sorry folks, we can’t afford it.

 

France has a big election this weekend, and Macron has performed so poorly in the first round of voting that his establishment, corporate party will only appear on the ballots of half the voting districts, per France 24.  The populist-right & LePen are all set to make significant gains and could end up calling the shots in parliament.  The populist-right is closely followed by the populist-left, with Macron and his coalition trailing a very distant third.  There is some talk of a coalition between the left and Macron’s far-right coalition to keep the populist-right, Ms. LePen’s party and coalition, out of power.  No matter how it plays out… as with America, Canada, Germany, and the UK… French citizens clearly have had it with endless austerity coupled with the endless transfers of wealth to corporations, the uber-wealthy, and politicians.  France is another country where voter turnout is exceptionally low.  A sure sign, that for many French citizens, democracy, neoliberalism, and privatization are abject failures.  

In an update, French voters broke with recent trends and showed up to the polls Sunday: rejected the far-right establishment, Macron (2nd place), rejected the populist far-right, Le Pen (3rd place), and elected the populist- left, Melenchon (first place).

 

Before wrapping this up, I think SCOTUS (or America’s Supreme Court) deserves a paragraph.  This court has gone absolutely crazy, engaged in activities like pulling rulings out of thin air with no basis whatsoever in the Constitution, to writing legislation from the bench, to engaging in highly aggressive judicial activism & power grabs.  These are the very same activities that conservative jurists, like Robert Bork, use to decry and rant about when more liberal courts were in power.  Except now, this rabidly right-wing court is busy turning the presidency into dictatorship… many have argued, correctly, that the president is already a de facto dictator… and destroying what little remains of a captured regulatory state.  SCOTUS even legalized corruption at the state and local levels of government.  If anybody is looking for rhyme or reason for the court’s rulings, follow the money.  If it benefits capital, if it benefits corporate America’s or the oligarchy’s bottom line, the odds are exceptionally high, the Roberts court will side with the court’s ultra-wealthy benefactors.  

 

And the sliver of light in SCOTUS’ recent rulings?  If, when, should a future liberal court return to power… this fascist court has, with its own special blend of judicial activism, clearly demonstrated that the U.S. Constitution is a living, breathing document.  Moreover, strict constructionism and threading the judicial needle with America’s ancient colonial history to justify constitutionality is no longer necessary but in fact, all but dead. 

 

 

And it’s all beginning to unravel… as I recently argued, we are at or near the tipping point.  Forty-four years of greed, laissez-faire, looting corporate and nation state credit lines, endless for-profit wars, and an evil necroeconomy are beginning to blowback on the establishment.  The public is waking up: they know Western democracy is a sham, they know political duopoly is a cul-de-sac, and they know the reason they can’t feed their children and keep a roof over their head is due to systemic class warfare waged by economic royalist, a complicit political class, bankers and monopolies.  For the moment, the public’s biggest problem is options.  It’s highly satisfying to throw one corporate political party to the curb and highly discouraging to be forced to elect a corporate clone party, or controlled opposition, in protest.  At the moment, the public seems keenly interested in the populist-right political parties that play up division, hatred, xenophobia (as mass migration gets underway)… but it won’t be long before the public comes to realize these populist-right political parties are only delivering more of the same: more necroviolence visited upon the public and their children for the enrichment of the same cadre of mafia at the tippy top.  The public increasingly knows the endless ping-pong game within the two-party system is a dead end.  And support for third parties and third-party formation will be critical and crucial for real change, if change is to happen via democracy.  Many appear to have given up on democracy altogether.  Hence, low voter turnout in the UK. 

 

Ultimately and to hammer the point, this leaves the public with one, or a mix, of several solutions: create & support third parties that truly are responsive to the public’s needs, the power of organized labor - to exact reforms and change, dictatorship, and revolution.  The overthrow of crony democracy itself. 

 

This, as political violence is heating up.  There are some that believe revolution is unthinkable, but clearly… judging from the taxpayer money flooding into cop cities, mass incarceration, and defense… the establishment is equally worried.  Moreover, the establishment demonstrates no desire to cleanup and reform.  One thing is clear, in the words of Fredrick Douglas, power concedes nothing without a demand. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

The Kids Lead the Way

The Kids Lead the Way 

 

It’s all very sketchy and deeply unsettling.  Americans are living through a time of great evil, a considerable amount of which emanates from our own government, the duopoly, our elected representatives, and the oligarchy.  Americans, therefore, have a duty to speak, to march and be heard.  Power concedes nothing w/out a demand. 

 

In times of great evil, we no longer have the luxury of remaining civil… in our discourse and protests.  We must call out great evil for what it is, frequently and often.  The wealthy and their henchmen, corrupt politicians addicted to power and the corporate MSM… count on & rely upon our civility, as cover and to hide their crimes of civilian genocide, mass murder of children, and endless profits from endless wars. 

 

Nothing less than immediate cessation of all hostilities & the immediate creation of the State of Palestine should be called for by all world leaders.

 

-       Genocide & the Fall of Western Credibility, By Gregg Wall (October 28, 2023)

 

 

By Gregg Wall (5-11-2024)

 

For many it’s been a really dark period.  The entire episode, since October 7, has been both eye-opening and galvanizing… millions and millions who were once pro-Israel or maybe ambivalent have had to rethink everything (in the face of Western corruption, certitude by Western elites surrounding the righteousness & right to commit mass murder, and repugnant Zionist leadership).  Genocide and the mass murder of children tends to have that effect.  An outfit called AIPAC Tracker, on X, names names and how much politicians have taken in from Israel and it's not pretty:  POTUS Biden $11.2 million; Senator Rubio $1.0 million; Senator Schumer $1.7 million; Rep Jefferies $1.3 million; Senator Fetterman $244K; Trump $1.0 million; Senator Graham $1.0 million and the list goes on and on.  Can you say, ‘compromised’? (One has to love the audacity of paying Israel $300 billion, since 1948, only for Israel to turnaround and buy the U.S. congress with American taxpayer money, or is that antisemitic to say?)  And without variation, in lockstep, Team AIPAC dutifully repeats their talking points over and over, as if they were members of the Israeli government.  I can barely stomach the American MSM news organizations but if you tune in, they too, parrot the same narratives, long discredited: the right to self-defense, no matter how disproportionate the response; Hamas must be brought to justice (no matter the thousands of women and children murdered by Israel and the U.S., no matter that Hamas is less than 1% of Gaza), and the lie to end all lies, anybody who disagrees with Bibi is an antisemite.  Trust me, given the damage the PM has done to America and Israel, Bibi - and his cabinet and billionaire sponsors - are the greatest antisemites on the planet (although Biden certainly is making a major contribution).

 

All this, despite, as reported in Haaretz, Bibi Netanyahu (aka Mr. Hamas) is trusted by less than 5% of the Israeli population.  All this, despite the fact, that Biden has consistently plumbed the depths of abysmal public approval ratings, and Congress has an approval rating of 13%.  Looks likes the crooks in the political class, in Israel and the United States, have a great deal in common. 

 

Meanwhile, the steady stream of devastation, destruction, murder, and great violence are jaw dropping.  No wonder congress wants to kill 1A, the Constitution, civil liberties, and social media (especially TikTok).  And still, congress, who can never seem to find a dime for the American people, shovels billions and billions at the genocide in Gaza and the war in the Ukraine, $95 billion in the latest authorization.  (The national debt is out-of-control, to such an extent the IMF is issuing warnings).  And the congress completely ignores the fact that Bibi funded, supported, and underwrote Hamas for fourteen years.  That Hamas operated inside Bibi’s Gaza prison camp. That ultimately, per Israeli press, Bibi was the beneficiary of the October 7^th attack.

 

Just how corrupt and racist are the members of congress?  Well, they are perfectly okay funding and authorizing a genocide, at last count some 35,000 souls, with approximately 10,000 more unaccounted for, and 14,000 children dead.  Absolutely wretched.  Of course, this doesn’t stop the Senate from demanding that the International Criminal Court not issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and assorted thugs in Bibi’s cabinet.  In terms of ICC charges, as Israeli leadership goes, so goes the congress that is funding this entire nightmare.  This also doesn’t stop the Biden Admin from indicating - in a pending report - that Israel has not violated international law, when Politico goes on to write the administration contradicts itself, hedges, and says that Israel has violated international law???

 

And then there’s the absolute contempt that drips from members of congress for peace protestors, students, college kids, who have made the simple demands for a ceasefire (along with the majority of Americans, including 80% of democrats) and that university endowments divest from defense contractors… hardly radical stuff.  And the response from federal, state, and local governments, many of them run by Dems: goon time, police state hooligans, violence, mass arrests, and like Israel’s response in Gaza, a complete militarized overreaction by the American establishment against peace protestors & very young adults.  Unvarnished thuggery. 

 

And congress and America have not seen anything yet.  Wait until the kids discover the American economy and good jobs have been hollowed out, liquidated, offshored, and consolidated into America’s totalitarian monopolies & utilities.  Wait until they discover systemic racism is embedded throughout the U.S. economy and healthcare and life itself are rationed.  Wait until the kids learn they’re indentured into trillions in national debt:  $39 trillion and counting for Wall St bailouts, corporate welfare, endless war, empire, colonialism, propping up the stock market, the perpetuation of the necro-death-economy.  All so that repugnant boomers can be filthy rich.  When people have nothing, are deep in debt, and they are systemically preyed upon, blowback inevitably occurs.  And what will a pampered and privileged gerontocracy’s/kleptocracy’s response be then? 

 

Cop city?  What happens when the establishment starts locking up white kids and young jews merely for protesting, The United States of Racism and Greed… our failed necroeconomy?  Or for stealing a loaf of bread? 

 

It’s ugly and it adds up to what many have known for some time, the United States is no more a democracy than China or Russia… and at least China doesn’t run around the globe attempting to backstop their economy with endless war, murder, and colonial subjugation and violence, so a few can cash in. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's really not fun to write about this every day.  I wish things were different.  I wish America was exceptional instead of tyrannical.   I wish America was indispensable instead of its leadership feared and loathed by the Global South, and yes, by America’s citizens.  I would love to believe the propaganda, the fairy tales, and lies we were all raised on… but increasingly that America no longer exists, if it ever did.  The middle class has been buried in a shallow grave.  It’s different when you are white and male. Although my life has been no picnic, I look at how blacks, gays, minorities, and women are treated in the U.S. and it’s absolutely disgusting.  And the folks America bombs to death overseas because they are brown or black skinned, and possess resources coveted by Western multinationals and oligarchs …  it’s why I celebrate every time I see erosion in America’s failed status quo (because I want to see the United States do well, I want to see the United States get better, reformed… I want to see all Americans do better).  But like a twelve-step program, American elites and the political class won’t even acknowledge the country is badly managed and that we have serious, serious problems. 

 

It all rolls up to a complete lack of accountability, arrogance, and avarice.

 

And the bright spots?  The young adults laying it on the line on the campuses, who have been radicalized by boomers, debt, many witnessing first-hand how their parents scrape by, the necroeconomy, an alleged democracy that continuously ignores the needs of the American people, corruption and racism that is built into the Great American Death Machine.  Outside agitators?  Really?  Who needs outside agitators to radicalize the kids when we have entirely corrupt state & federal governments, billionaires, the outside agitator of the State of Israel, imperious Washington, and greedy Wall St.? 

 

What other disinfectant and sunlight is coming this way?  The long prayed for arrest warrants from the ICC… may they come and soon, and may the warrants not be limited to the Israeli government.  More positive energy?  The fear that has finally taken hold of the Biden Administration, as it dawns on the party that Biden is toast and the Chicago Dem convention is likely not going to be the party they planned.  Did these idiots really believe they can murder thousands of innocent children, alienate their political base - repeatedly, blow off entirely their 2020 promises, and get away with it?  

 

It's 2016 all over again, and even snot-nosed Hillary is lurking around… like the bummer she is.  I don’t know whose decision it was to bring Hillary onboard Biden-Harris 2024 but Hills is the kiss of death.  A woman scorned, like Bill, by the American people and for very good reason.

 

And the final bright spot… the UN voted Friday, sidestepped the U.S., and started to further recognize Palestine.  Long, long overdue and a slap in the face to the United States government and every Western lackey government that follows America’s lead. 

 

Selah.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

Neoliberalism is Dead

Neoliberalism is Dead

 

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

 

-       Section 2A Monetary Policy Objectives

 

By Gregg Wall (3-16-2024)

 

Neoliberalism is dead, buried – like an avalanche – under the crushing weight of bank & billionaire bailouts, corruption, failed duopoly, greed, predatory monopolies, oligarchy, and endless for-profit wars.  America increasingly reduced to the status of a banana republic, its government for sale and rent to the highest bidder.  So entirely corrupt & lost, so ignominious and yet foreseeable the fall, America fails to shock… perhaps the only thing surprising is how insular & thin the bubble Dem and GOP grandees, the MSM talking heads, and their owners all dwell within.  Entirely lost in the lies, fiction, and narratives they attempt to sell the public. 

 

Perhaps there’s no better example of America’s precipitous fall than the attack upon freedom of speech, as congress, in record-time, came together in near unanimous bipartisan support for the TikTok ban this week.  You know Washington and AIPAC have entirely lost the narrative (w/ far too many facts running directly counter to the American/Israeli storyline), and have no legitimate response, when they - like a despotic regime – have begun to outlaw speech and attack online communications & networking.  The lies are stacking up so fast… put out by the Biden administration, Bibi, & the MSM… that major news organizations no longer have any credibility.  Absolutely pathetic.  Seems that the majority of America’s youth, the under 35 crowd, no longer believe the Boomer establishment, the lies and the propaganda. Gerontocracy has grown fetid, rotted, high on its own supply, and lazy. 

 

What could have turned off the younger generations?  Perhaps it’s the endless wars, the cataclysmic national debt, the massive transfer of wealth and welfare to the connected and the powerful… or simply, the endless litany of lies and unfulfilled commitments Biden promised in 2020 to get elected.  Maybe it’s the predatory monopoly economy that destroy jobs, opportunity, innovation, and continually – w/ no reason other than greed – uses it totalitarian power to dictate prices, wages, government policy, and foreign policy.  It’s all a lie.  Everything we’ve been taught. Unelected, unaccountable Boardroom & C-suite dictatorships with horrific, unimaginable powers have turned the United States into a totalitarian state (with just the fig leaf of a failed, entirely corrupt, two-party system).  In the span of my lifetime, America went from having a thriving middle class to a two-tiered society: the haves and the have nots. 

 

The younger generations, they know.  They see with their own eyes how their parents live, or their grandparents lived.  They are willing to work and put in the time, but the opportunity is simply not there.  The economy is consolidated and w/ that consolidation, a large number of well-paying jobs are eliminated.  Child poverty is rising, suicides rising, the planet burning, tent cities growing more numerous, deaths of despair on the rise, greed – masquerading as inflation – has sent the cost-of-living spiraling out of control, obscene wage & wealth inequality, artificial and contrived scarcity… entirely manufactured… so a few can profit, and the icing on the putrid cake:  catastrophic national debt forever used as an excuse for endless austerity.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The systemic corruption, the capture of the nation by a predatory few is deeply upsetting, unsettling, and is already setting off blowback, paroxysms, and a revolution in thinking and attitudes. Sclerotic, entirely corrupt leadership tends to have that effect.  And at the epicenter of all sits the Federal Reserve.  No other nation in the brief history of humanity has been gifted with so much power and privilege, as that afforded to the Federal Reserve; and no other nation in the brief history of humanity has squandered and wasted so much power and privilege in the span of a little over three decades (in a violent orgy of corruption & greed).  Unprecedented greed and corruption in the form of for-profit wars, for-profit empire, financed colonialism, privatization schemes, tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, the massive transfer of wealth, inflated asset values for the rich, endless Wall St bailouts, the aforementioned economic consolidation into a totalitarian economy, and the buyout of the U.S. government itself… all it funded by the Federal Reserve and monetary policy.  One endless supply of socialism and welfare mainlined into the arms of oligarchy, multinationals, and the political class; and one big F.U. to the American people, seventy-eight percent of which now live one pay check away from humility or are already on the streets. 

 

Neoliberalism is dead, flatlined, braindead… kept alive, in a zombie state, by an endless infusion of what Wall St likes to call ‘liquidity’ or in more common terms, bailout money.  As I noted last November, the U.S. economy is kept alive on an endless diet of money printing and war.  Otherwise, the economy is actually shrinking, failing to grow, and it certainly isn’t taking care of the vast majority of Americans.  Not only does the economy ride on unsustainable debt and aimless wars… but crushed and suppressed labor also keeps the house of cards afloat (with low wages and lousy benefits, see for-profit healthcare).  Someone has to pay for all those extravagant CEO pay packages and it's generally labor. 

 

Every time a crisis occurs the congress is bailed out of any tough decision making or choices, and the Federal Reserve steps in with a catastrophic flood of money and debt.  Every time the economy falls down, it’s understood that no questions are to be asked, and no scrutiny from the public or our ‘democratic government’ is to occur, so increasingly the Federal Reserve and monetary policy becomes the de facto solution. 

 

But if we carefully examine the FED policy objectives … endlessly bailing out our failed libertarian economy, endlessly propping up fiscal malfeasance, and financing catastrophic debt and wars… appears nowhere in the FED’s mandate.  Four successive FED chairs have enabled gross corruption, avarice, incompetence, and the abdication of responsibility & accountability, by both congress and America’s private sector. 

 

In fact, what can be clearly argued is that the FED’s monetary policies of continuously financing catastrophic debt and fraud, endless wars, limitless bailouts, bottomless corporate welfare, and billionaire & multinational entitlements… the consolidation of the economy into monopolies… has had disastrous consequences for the FED’s true mandate, that of maximum employment (of well paying jobs) and stable prices.  Funding the creation of a monopoly economy, via easy money, where unelected, unaccountable CEOs dictate prices, wages, and government policy … along with runaway national debt… clearly, is both detrimental and destructive to labor, families, children, the American people, and the long-term viability of the nation.  

 

America needs a new FED chair with a new outlook, and renewed commitment to FED policy, instead of the myopia that surrounds the latest four FED chairs… who constantly hold up labor as an excuse for bailing out a failed economic model, Wall St., and the perpetuation of a bankrupt status quo.  In summary, it’s long past time to cut up the Democratic and Republican parties’ credit card… for endless wars, empire, wholesale fraud & corruption, a failed supply-side paradigm, genocide, limitless private sector bailouts (with credit card privileges extended to oligarchy, multinationals, and Wall St).  

 

None of that is in the FED mandate. With the Congress cut off, real conversations can begin about what to do with the national debt run up by an ultra-corrupt gerontocracy, from taxing great wealth to writing down, slowly, the national debt (in whole or part), to eliminating billionaire entitlements.  Cuts to Social Security and Medicare should not be entertained. 

 

The American people have had enough fraud. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024