In defense of campaign finance reform.

In defense of  campaign finance reform.

So this article is in response to: http://red-party.com/beyond-money-in-politics/ by a friend of mine. First I want you to read this:

“I’m not saying campaign finance or lobbying reform is bad or that it wouldn’t help us at all, but the transformative effects touted by organizations like Move to Amend and Represent.Us is totally unfounded. It starts from a false premise – that if we restrict big corporations’ ability to buy elections or legally bribe elected officials, we’ll open up space for politicians to be more representative to their voters. But the people who would be doing the regulating are the very same people who serve the ruling class of this country – the capitalist class, the 1%. This is why the Federal Elections Commission is such a toothless body. Our national politics were dominated by corporate interests before the 2010 Citizens United ruling. With strict financing and lobbying laws, these interests would turn their attention to court challenges, watering down enforcement or simply flouting the law altogether. Then there are the other, more traditional mechanisms of ruling class control.

They would still have their parties, the Democrats and Republicans. They would still have control over the economy, able to threaten capital flight in the face of any reforms that threaten their interests. Entire countries have been brought to their knees this way.

And of course we would still have a situation where ninety percent of American media is owned by just six companies – GE, Disney, News Corp of Fox News fame, Viacom, Time-Warner (think CNN) and CBS. With or without clean election reform, that’s a powerful arsenal. And then there is the most entrenched obstacle of all: the U.S. Constitution.”

In effect what the author is saying here is correct, the power of the media, CEO’s and the rest of the powerful bourgeoisie is immense and that getting campaign finance reform won’t do a whole lot. Not on it’s own. The article then launches into a myriad of fixes that would fix this situation or at least do so in part, which is really good and I encourage you to read the rest of the article as it does have some quite good points. However these are all things that today need to pass the political process. One part I want to focus in on is this:

“There is no silver bullet here. Single-issue campaigns aren’t fit for purpose. They limit themselves to one core reform in the name of being broad enough to attract as many people as possible in the short term, but this robs them of the perspective needed to actually develop and sustain a mass movement. We need a holistic approach – anything less is lying to ourselves, lying to those we say we want to empower. In the Marxist tradition we call this a democratic-republican program.”

But recalling back to the previous Quote about the power of the media, we know that the power of the media is strong. It is in fact to the level of brain washing, it can drown out a message to the point that creating that holistic approach is impossible.

But lets assume for a minute that it is not. Let us assume for a minute that roughly half of the largest demographic of americans are socialists (this is actually roughly true) and Americans are ready to accept socialism…. Now what? Well Marxism is an economic system but the people lack the first tool at the negotiation table, capital and money, to buy out their mastes. We’ve long relied on government to regulate business capital but as we’ve already established that’s near impossible. So what then? I have already spoken on the nature of leverage once before but for those that have not read it I will briefly quote the relavant parts.

“It is easy to understand why the democrats haven been unable to affect change, they are the reserve army of the upper class. what is less easy to understand, however, is the inability of the people and their champions to affect any change. To understand this one must first understand the nature of people and change. To get someone to do something requires leverage. This can be societal pressure, threat of force, money, position, or any number of things. The important part is that the party you wish to persuade either has something to gain by obeying you, or lose in not.

The Inability of the people to affect change, stems from the loss of their leverage. They have lost their first form of leverage in the vote, due in part to the wealthy using their monetary leverage to influence the process. The proletariat simply cannot keep up with the bourgeoisie in disposable income per capita and therefore the bourgeoisie win. Now, I know you know this and it's been said a hundred times before. The real question is why do we continue to play these games, to fight on an uneven playing field against a team that uses dirty tricks on their homefield? Remember gaining votes with money is the bread and butter of CEO's and boardmembers, it's what they do everyday. We aren't just fighting an opponent that has more resources but more experience using those resources. So why play their game? Why do we submit to playing the game on their terms?”

You see in order to change anything, we are going to need leverage. We don’t have money, we have the vote and force. So we start by getting the vote to mean something again. I’m not saying it is the end all be all but that it is the first step and an very high hurdle to clear in a battle that will last a long, long time. It is a crack in the foundations of the system that lets future victories happen. We get this passed and someday we will be able to pass laws that clean up campaign oversight, and maybe someday end the electoral college after that. Starting with small things and using a workers movement to keep people engaged in the political process and informed. But you start that by making them feel their vote counts again. People are not going to be inclined to give a shit if they think it won’t matter, but give them a reason to believe that and you get them involved again, which starts a snowball effect.

But without this, without this critical cornerstone, everything we can possibly do will be blackballed and shutdown by the media, the government and economic power the bourgeoisie hold. “but wait” I hear you say “the bourgeoisie will use the other powers to block any change even after this is done!”

Yes, yes they will, or they will try. But the American people woken from their hopelessness won’t give two shits. First of all with campaign finance reform they cannot stop the influx of non approved ideas. They have no legal way of doing so, if the money is good, and being from the government, it will be. So they will HAVE to let Stewart Alexander and Alan Moore onto the ballot box, they will HAVE to let them on the air at least in commercials, and given equal screen time and budgets, who wins the guy lying through his teeth or the guy who’s in it for the people? The guy who’s for the people. Sure they can refuse to interview them but even bernies getting press time because he’s no longer ignorable because he has the fame and money to challenge them.

“but this process is fragile and will take many many years” I hear you say. Yes. Yes it will, The alternative is what? I’ve searched for one but all I can find is picking up a rifle and sticking it to the bourgeoisie, which frankly doesn’t win you a lot of friends. But hey, force has been used to great effect before in history, just keep in mind it’s been used to great detriment on behalf of the instigators as well. 

The Quiet Coup

"Thank a soldier" An utterly ridiculous statement if ever there was one. At least, it is today. We are told "thank a soldier, because they protect our freedoms", and there was a time when that was true. 75 years ago our nation fought a war to save mankind from the clutches of madmen hellbent on world domination and near enslavement of all mankind. The story of the next 70 years, however, is one that, should they look at it objectively, will turn the stomach of anyone with a thinking brain. For the sons and daughters of the ones that saved the world from tyranny, are the very ones that goose stepped us quietly back into it.




This story, like many, begins with a prologue, Ours takes place in may of 1886 when a court reporter slipped in a few innocuous lines as a headnote to the decision of a Santa Clara Count V. Southern Pacific Railroad, they read as such:




"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."


Poof! with the wave of his hand, a lowly court reporter had effectively signed into law that corporations were people, and thus the stage was set for our tale of betrayal and corruption.


Little was done with this decison at first, but in 1971 a man by the name of Lewis Powell wrote a memo entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.", to a man named Richard Nixon, prior to his acceptance of his nomination as associate justice of the supreme court. In this memo powell wrote "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.


Notably this memo foreshadowed the decision of "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti" in which it was ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns.


And thus the first salvo had been fired in the greatest coup in world history. Nobody really paid any attention to it, at least not your average person. Your neighbor probably didn't even know, it passed under the radar of the military, it didn't even enter into the lively chit chat at the barbers or coffee house. But to corporations and the wealthy it was like a dog whistle. suddenly the flood gates had begun to crack and being the clever shrewd businessmen they were they seized the opportunity to succeed where their fathers had failed in the 1930s with the business plot (but that's a tale for another time).


What followed from there was a mockery of democracy, bribery that was once, underhanded, illegal and done under the table, was now open and legal. where once corporations had to obey the EPA and financial regulations, they now had the power to, In the befitting words of emperor palpatine, "make it legal"




In effect what this meant was that, on a national scale at least, you could not expect to get elected without big businesses blessing. Thus we got Reagon, Bush, and most telling, the center right democrat, Bill Clinton. Reagan and bush were par for the course as far as republicans go, corrupt, business friendly, didn't give two shits about the little guy. But the proverbial canary in the coal mine was Bill clinton. Here's a man who claims to be a progressive, who claims to be a liberal and yet he does something no thinking progressive in their right minds would do, something that would in 8 years collapse the economy, he repeals glass-Stegall, or important parts of it at least. This repeal opened the flood gates to the speculative housing derivatives trading that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Yes Bush gets blamed a lot for that, but it was mostly Clintons doing.




Following Glass-Stegall's repeal we also had a slew of legal bribery fueled supreme court decisions further eliminating the barrier between money and politics. Today people are starting to notice. But the damage has been done, far too little was done when we could have done something that now the power we have has been virtually eliminated, barring a miracle. At this point you are not a viable candidate unless you kiss big businesses ring. And it all began back in 1978, in the quietest, and most effective coup the world has ever known. Slowly by big businesses hand democracy was slain, and your neighbors went on with their lives, the military stood silent, and we all just sat in our lay-z-boy's watching Seinfeld and eating potato chips.




There are many lies we tell ourselves to make us believe this hasn't happened, that this is okay. The most damnable however are the ones that see the writing on the wall, that pretend they can get ahead of the curve, that their children will be spared the horrors that this path will lead to if only they do so much. They are all wrong, the means by which one becomes successful are becoming exponentially harder. The well off today those in the top brackets have a chance of sending their kids to a decent future, but those not in the ruling class have only misery and failure to look forward to as the economy collapses under the immense weight of the rich. Because in their haste the rich have set up a system by which they reap more and more from the poor, and while they are clever in not taking too much as to rouse the peoples anger, inevitably one will over reach, someone will fuck up, and all the gains of the middle class will be wiped from the face of the earth as if it never existed, and the lies we tell ourselves will become apparent, undeniable, and the consequences unavoidable.




I cannot say i will take pity on any of you, or even myself, when the time comes. After all, we all stood by and did nothing, and I am as guilty of that as any of you.

The Generation that just needs to shut up.

       Spoil the rod and spoil the child, and by god the boomers were spoiled. Their parents and grandparents generations were the greatest generations, and gave us FDR, MLK, JFK and a slew of other great people that changed america for the better. Before them we had Theodore Roosevelt, consistently ranked in the top 5 presidents by historians, and whose contributions, while not widely known, are as important as the new deal ever was.

       1960, that was the last major presidential election that the boomers could not vote in, and it gave us John F kennedy. Following that, in 1968 They and the previous generations elected, arguably, the most corrupt president to ever hold the office, Richard Nixon. This was the start of the downward or should I say the Rightward spiral that culminated in a republican being elected as a democrat in 1992.

       For all the vitrol the boomers spew at millennials for being shiftless and lazy, they are not the ones that showed up for occupy, they are not the ones working to get money out of politics. They did however lay in bed in the 1970's while democracy was being undermined by the justices, and the president they voted for gutted american democracy. 

       They like to complain a lot about millennials who have it so easy, you know dealing with a shrinking pool of unskilled jobs and skyrocketing student loan debts. They like to forget they were given the world on a silver platter, and like to pretend that their tours in vietnam somehow mean that the explosive economy that created and molded them meant that their great success was all their doing Because hey they had to go through some tough shit. And to their credit it was tough shit. But that doesn't mean that the economy was bad back home. When the boomers got back from Vietnam they found a welcoming economy ready to embrace them and expand. 

      And here's the point, that's all they've known. That's why the older half of the boomers are so highly conservative, in their formative years a little elbow grease was all it took to do well and rise up the ranks because the economy was booming and all they had to deal with was a small recession in the 70's. In large, boomers could get what is now a dead end job, keep their nose clean and end up somewhere nice and retire in their 50's. Overall they saw a few battles but they never knew real economic hardship during their formative years because the systems that were put in place worked. Minimum wage was so high it actually functioned as a living wage. 

      But as all spoiled children do, they cried when it came time for them to pay their dues. They were spoiled and didn't understand that for that great prosperity, you have to give something back. So we saw the top marginal income tax decrease slowly from 90% all the way down to 38%, and effectively even lower than lowest tax bracket. Because hey, boomers felt "I earned it why should i have to pay for someone?" And thus was St. Ronnie was elected supreme ruler. Reagan though, was more than just a president, he was a prototype of what was to come, what politicians had to be like to get the boomer vote.

        Well Boomers, remember those GI bills? Those had to get paid for by something. And we had a lot of veterans coming home to that. Remember the 80's? How long does it take to get  a doctorate again? about 8 years right? 4 for a bachelors? Vietnam ended in 1975. It is not a coincidence that the great technological advancements we saw in the 80's coincided with that. But now we have fewer veterans coming back, and even fewer going to college, on top of a shrinking unskilled job market. That spells disaster for the younger generations and a flooded job market. At it's high after the 2008 financial collapse, unemployment for millennials was close to 30%, great depression era level unemployment. 

       Speaking of the great depression, that greatest generation, and the one before it, that gave us the likes of JFK, and MLK, they were shaped by the great depression. They knew economic hardship even more than then millennials, and they did great things. So what have the boomers presided over? a collapse of the economy or two, a rightward shift in american politics, and the dismatling of the same programs that gave them everything they had. 

So, yeah, it's time for the boomers to just Shut up. 

Victims of American Imperialism and "Religious Fundamentalism"

"Religious Fundamentalism" in quotes of course because that's a sick joke.

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women."

— Osama bin Laden, 2004

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

Keep in mind these counts are ONLY for iraq as far as i can tell.

US coalition Civilian casualties

Unknown actors

Anti-government/Occupation forces

These are civilian deaths alone. In Iraq alone. At minimum 15,000 of which were killed by the US and coalition forces. I'm working on finding all the casualties but keep in mind this is all going back to the genocide taking place in palestine. From Osama to Saddam, all of it, because of western favoritism of the Israeli's both in turning a blind eye to the genocide and helping with it.

So collateral damage, worth it right?  Or maybe it's just counter productive and sparks other wars. Perhaps the answer is not to be a dick, perhaps we should consider working together with the world instead of trying to bend it to our will, to our culture, to our way of thinking.

Or perhaps you shouldn't listen to every politician that says we're in danger. Perhaps we should stay the fuck out of other peoples business. And perhaps it's time to admit that the formation of Israel was a mistake.

cutting the head off the snake

It is easy to understand why the democrats haven been unable to affect change, they are the reserve army of the upper class. what is less easy to understand, however, is the inability of the people and their champions to affect any change. To understand this one must first understand the nature of people and change. To get someone to do something requires leverage. This can be societal pressure, threat of force, money, position, or any number of things. The important part is that the party you wish to persuade either has something to gain by obeying you, or lose in not. The Inability of the people to affect change, stems from the loss of their leverage. They have lost their first form of leverage in the vote, due in part to the wealthy using their monetary leverage to influence the process. The proletariat simply cannot keep up with the bourgeoisie in disposable income per capita and therefore the bourgeoisie win. Now, I know you know this and it's been said a hundred times before. The real question is why do we continue to play these games, to fight on an uneven playing field against a team that uses dirty tricks on their homefield? Remember gaining votes with money is the bread and butter of CEO's and boardmembers, it's what they do everyday. We aren't just fighting an opponent that has more resources but more experience using those resources. So why play their game? Why do we submit to playing the game on their terms? Well, we don't have to. There are other ways. First, we can play the game, but we play it on our terms. We stop this nonsense of trying to beat the money masters with money and votes, because we know they win that round. We fight using alternative forms of leverage. Now, contrary to popular belief, protests are not a form of leverage and accomplish nothing more than giving the bourgeoisie large groups of people to laugh at. We have to have real leverage. This can be anything from large scale boycotts to outright revolt. The important thing is that there is something for those you wish to persuade to either loose by ignoring you or gain by complying with your orders. Take care when giving them something to loose however, because if they get sympathy your efforts will be counter productive. Second, We stop playing the game all together. Forget the politicians, forget the bankers, just let them drop off the edge of your radar. Sounds impossible right? well, it's not. It is possible to start a bank. IF one were to start a non profit bank one would have the ability to create with it, a side economy, one that can just simply ignore the world of big business. How do you do that? Easy. First the bank must be democratically controlled. Easy enough. But then you have said bank start offering a deal. Instead of loaning out money for businesses loans, the bank will hear business plans and authorize individuals to persue those plans under the banks name. The profits of the companies started this way go to the bank. The benefit for the entrepenur is zero risk to themselves, and no need for credit. So how do you start something like this? First you have to capitalize on modern times, both technology and society. With things like kickstarter, you can raise money for the initial project. If you further capitalize on the anger against wallstreet by say, putting a limit cap on CEO's and no golden parachutes, you can get there. You might need a few appearances on major TV to get noticed, but it can be done. And notice none of this requires the fatcats or politicians do anything. Just the people. So there you have it, the two methods of regaining the peoples freedom. Choose wisely.

CCP: Chavez, Cronyism, and the Corporate Plutocracy

Hugo Chavez has been a thorn in the side of the plutocrats for a long time.  But to understand why we must look first at the history of Venezuela and the oil subsidies . In 1949 the government of Venezuela was considering nationalizing their oil. Well the plutocrats will have nothing of the sort and Royal Dutch Shell and Jersey Standard Oil strike a deal, they will give the government of Venezuela 50% for the profits that they make. Well within a year the detail of this come out and Saudi Arabia starts looking to do the same. The companies dealing with Saudi Arabia at the time went by the name ARAMCO (Arab American Company).  So Saudi Arabia is looking to strike a deal or nationalize their oil company, and they’re kind of leaning towards the soviets because of our support for Israel, and arabs don’t like Israel. So a deal is struck, Aramco will make all the money they can, and give half to the saudi’s, They can then turn around and deduct half the money they make from their taxes, not from their income for calculation of their taxes, but simply cut off the tax bill.  So who makes up for the sortfall… BINGO! The American taxpayer.

                So fast forward to around the mid 1970’s.  Where the whole scheme has been known for a while, and surprise surprise, the corporate elite have figured out that  they can get money from the government just like Aramco. Well this opens the door, the only thing left is to figure out how to do it. Enter: the powell memo. What this was, was basically a call to corporate America to become more aggressive in it’s takeover of the government, because it was, at it’s core, extraordinarily profitable. Well Nixon sees this, and powell is subsequently put on the supreme court, and the finalization of corporate person hood comes to be through a series of decision by powell and company. So we basically come to where we are today, corporate rule due to buying the government being a very lucrative and effective strategy.

Well Chavez had a different approach, he comes in and basically says “fuck your money, the oil industry now belongs to the state” and with that Venezuela starts to improve not only their own lot, but that of several surrounding countries, including Cuba. So while America is giving money away to rich oil baron, Venezuela is profiting off of it’s own resources and those resources are being used for the betterment of the country, essentially giving the middle finger to big business.  Say what you want about the man, that is a great achievement.

2008 Crisis and Beyond

Disclaimer: I am not an economist. An accountant. Or Business man. So take this with many huge grains of salt

So I got a wild hair up my ass and thought I’d share what I know of the cyclical Boom/”OMG THE SKY IS FALLING” cycle we seem to be set in. Specifically focusing on 2008 and the next one that is looming overhead.

Culprits:
2008: Bad debt being sold fraudulently

TBA: Derivatives, derivatives are like insurance on inflation. Kind of like a future you aren’t obligated to buy if the price is under the agreed upon terms. Essentially say you make sundaes, and you need banana.  Now you know the price right now is $60 a unit. If however the price doubles to $120 per unit, you are up shit creek without a paddle, you can’t do business and you will have to fold (bit of an exaggeration but you get the point.) what a derivative is, is a financial product that says you pay $2,  and if the price of banana’s goes about $80, you only pay $80, but if the price remains under $80 you pay the market value plus the fee. Simple, and actually helpful, especially helpful at combating inflation, so the market is actually fairly self-stabilizing to some degree. Oh and 30 day lending might play a role, maybe.

How:
2008: In 2008, the problem was that people were basically selling spoiled goods. In laymans terms what happened was Bob bought a $200,000 house from Jack on credit, promising to pay $250,000 by the end. (often times  Bob couldn’t really afford the house but was persuaded to by jacks silver tounge, I.E. Predatory lending). Now, Jack, looking to make a quick buck want to sell something, what does he sell? He sell’s the debt that bob owes jack to Rufus for  $220,000. However, Jack knows Bob isn’t doing well, and has a high likelihood of going into default, paying only $10,000 leaving Rufus with $10,000 and a house that is really only worth $150,000. Now, rufus would have been fine had he known the risks, and the price was under $160,000 for the $220,000 Debt but Jack had promised Rufus that Bob would be able to pay at least $30,000 and that the house was worth $200,000.

Now, you have to understand that a house and debt are assets and that assets don’t obey the law of supply and demand, in fact, as price increases, demand increases, and as demand increases price increases. Now obviously what drives this is speculation as to increasing value and how much you can get out of it, however, once it goes too far it won’t go up any more because since it’s an actual product the price can’t rise forever. So the “market” was telling people the house was worth vastly more than what it really was, or at least what you could build one for.  As you can expect, this was a perfect storm of stupid. You had bad, or outright fraudulent claims made about assets in the form of debt. And the two components of the income on those assets were, well shall we say, shaky at best due to predatory lending and the inflated prices. Now, the inflated prices were market value so those were “fine” it was when you had the fraudulent claims about the risk of the debt that made things bad. Basically once the cat was out of the bag, the shadow banking system collapsed and with it the demand in housing assets and thus their price, which compounded the problem.  By the end the largest banks had been assisted with over 7.7 trillion dollars, yes 7.7 trillion, mostly by the FED. That’s half the GDP. So 2008 was a crisis that lost us one half GDP

TBA:  Now the derivatives markets are fairly stable, as far as I know there is no fraudulent claims. They aren’t based on something that can just up and poof out of existence, the risks are calculated by very smart people, and important to note is that the seller of these is the one that loses if the math is done incorrectly and risk is not assessed correctly. However, the size of the markets is over 630 trillion dollars.  To my knowledge that is the total of what the derivatives are worth (the $80 in my previous example, someone correct me if I’m wrong. Which is good because that’s the biggest number you have, if that 630 trillion is the summation of all those $2, start prepping, and I ain’t kidding, full out bomb shelter)What does this mean? If for some unpredictable reason, prices on average rise above the value of the derivatives terms the issuers are going to be taking a loss.  Now what does this mean… well the largest banks are on average worth about 1-2.5 trillion dollars. Notice the differences there 630 trillion…2.5 trillion. Luckily that’s shared by a fair number of banks. However for example, JP Morgan Chase, total assets worth around 2.3 Trillion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP_Morgan_Chase,  how much do they have in derivatives? 72 trillion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDprXKn8oTU. These are the same people that just lost a few billion a few months back. That means if prices rise unexpectedly 3.5% past the agreed upon terms in their derivatives for some reason (or they were just fucking wrong about the risks) they get wiped out. 10% and you’re talking about them alone creating a financial disaster like 2008, 20% and that would equal a loss of the entire American GDP. These price increases, they’d affect all of the banks and anyone holding a derivative, and the derivatives markets total 630 trillion, meaning an increase over expected of just 2% would wipe the equivalent of the US economy. 11%, would wipe out the Gross World product. Oh and remember that 30 day lending, without the banks these companies go broke temporarily. Meaning when the house comes crashing down, not only is the erasure of every private bank account possible without some miracle of intervention, something the Government would not be able to accomplish without immediately being downgraded to a null credit rating, but businesses would halt, workers wouldn’t be paid.

On the flipside: derivatives ARE fairly straightforward and I know of no fraud or incentive for fraud, and they are looked over by some very smart people. So getting to that 3% increase would be monumentally hard (remember that’s over the agreed upon price which is usually somewhat higher and standard inflation is taken into account). So panic time? No. but you’d have to be a fool not to keep an eye on it.

Long story short, pray that smart people looking after the derivatives markets are as smart as they say they are, and a metor or some shit doesn't hit us.