Jack Burns Lives!

Last night I watched an interesting but highly disturbing interview on Bill Moyers Journal about the economy that featured James K. Galbraith, son of famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He’s the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair in government and business relations and professor of economics at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Galbraith states that Obama and his administration, thus far, have really only had two primary goals. One, to keep the entire economy from collapsing, and two, “to return things to a condition of normalcy, to use a 1920s word, that prevailed five and ten years ago. That is to say, we’re back to a world in which Wall Street and the major banks are leading and setting the path…”

He goes on to ask “Do you want to have a financial sector dominated by a small number of very large institutions, very difficult to manage, practically impossible to regulate and ruled by, essentially, the same people and the same culture that caused the crisis in the first place.”

No, we don’t. Such a policy means more uncontrolled growth, the disease Edward Abbey correctly diagnosed years ago, back when we had a chance to do something about man-made climate change. Why don’t we ever hear Obama address this? Surely he knows it’s a problem, as we’re talking about a very well educated man with capable advisors. Is he clueless or just apathetic?

And maybe collapse isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s what is needed to finally free the country and the world of the burden of Wall Street, since it’s Wall Street that’s at the core of our problems, from wars to ecotage.

Within the current economic orthodoxy, growth is necessary because it makes stocks and investments increase in value. No or slow growth translates into poor valuations and plunging stock prices. Simply put, people that gamble in the stock market want their stocks to increase in value so they can sell and make a profit, and this is the very reason why a serious discussion of steady state economics never emerges beyond the confines of academe and a paltry number of progressive intellectual circles. A steady state economy is the only type of sustainable economy, but people that profit within the casino complex don’t want a steady state stock market. They want a booming market, literally a booming market….

For markets to grow, you need to open new markets. You need governments friendly to U.S. business interests and historically, the U.S. has achieved this through warfare, either directly or via proxy forces. Basically, war is good for business. It opens markets, keeps real wages at a high level and U.S. control obviously makes it easier for all the fat cats to get fatter. In our modern, military fueled Keynesian economy, military spending is an alarming percentage of the all-so-important GDP, our true Gross Domestic Product. It’s why Kit Carson and the U.S. military rounded up the Navajo and sent them to Bosque Redondo. It’s why the United States controls Iraq and why U.S. forces are in Afghanistan. It’s all about money.

As long as Wall Street exists, the United States will exist in a constant state of war, trapped on a treadmill without a stop button. To kill the beast, you have to aim for the heart, and in the United States, the heart, the muscle that pumps life into the system and makes everything possible, is Wall Street.

“Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.”-Edward Abbey

I appreciate fellow Abbey aficionado Kris for bringing this one to my attention. Looks like most of our Congress Critters and our current Commander-In-Chief have been counting a lot of health industry dollars over the years.

The data shown on the chart includes contributions from individuals and political action committees to lawmakers’ campaign committees and leadership PACs for the period of 1989 through 2009. Obama took a whopping $20,144,316.00

This is the man that’s going to finally bring us healthcare?

If this doesn’t suffice for a Halloween scare, I don’t know what will. Yeah, the Monsanto news isn’t new. We’ve known for a long time they’ve been bullying farmers and using their genetic engineering to build an evil monopoly over food production. But it never hurts to have a reminder….

If I was a farmer, I think I’d equip a few vaqueros with good old lever action rifles and let them patrol for these vermin in case they decide to start snooping around the fields. Talk about a pest that needs to be eradicated!

As for the rest of us, don’t buy anything with genetically modified ingredients. Buy local. Buy organic.

Jack sits motionless at his cubicle staring at his computer screen. 112 messages in his inbox and a stack of files to his right, 15 or so deep, all waiting. Waiting for him to take action, but he can’t move.

He hates it. The computer, the job, his clothes, his life, his inability to act. It’s the same routine every day. Wake up, shower, dress in the corporate uniform, fight traffic, sit in a putrid yellowish prison of steel and cloth and review cases while attempting to avoid gossipy busy bodies whose entire lives seemingly revolve around office politics and which fast food dump they’ll select at feeding time.

The goal of the review is to save THE COMPANY money and make the bosses richer, although such action almost always means some poor soul somewhere, some little person that apparently doesn’t matter, will die while profits soar.

A mother with systemic disease joins the unemployed. She’s racked by pain and her disfigured limbs are now useless to the corporation she formerly served. Daily, she contemplates how she might bring about her own death. She’s the product of his work.

He knows he’s guilty. He’s one of them. He brings these things to pass and his guilt cuts through him like a scythe.

During his break, he slips away. He dreams of living under a viaduct. Dropping out and no one ever knowing what happened. Working as a ranch hand in Southwest Texas. Washing dishes in Marfa. Anything but this, a life that’s a gaping wound, draining his spirit.

Finally, he closes the laptop, stands up, shoves the chair back under his desk and walks out.

“Under the desert sun, in that dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean; the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises into nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.”

His things are already packed and in the truck. They’ve been there for two years. Crossing the Mississippi, he looks back at the city. Behind him, towering grey edifices cut through the sky like shards of glass. They’re hosts to parasites, the bloodsucking apostles of growth. CEO’s, corporate lawyers, real estate agents and people selling solutions for erectile dysfunction, bad debt and insomnia. None of it works.

He decides to stop just past the state line and lighten the load. He walks to the edge of the bridge and hurls his cellphone over the edge into the swirling chocolate abyss, walks back to the truck, turns off the radio and drives onward.