Bipartisanship? Why is that such a fab concept?

I tell ya folks, I have had it up to here (pointing above my head to the drowning-in-dreck level) yes up to there with talk of bipartisanship. (bipartisanbridge.org) The day it ceases to be acceptable for one to adhere to a set of principals rather than compromising to the point of near stasis is the day that government becomes a futile effort in wasting time, energy, and money. OH, WAIT! We are already there and have been for almost thirty years on the Democratic side of the aisle where avoiding offense seems more important than protecting the poor and the workers from abuse handed down by corporate overlords and the privileged few.

In the meantime, the GOP has been giving the Dems and the working class a great big middle finger and most of the public just sat on it and spun in the hopes they could one day do the same to those less fortunate than them. It took a whole lot of plain, flat misery delivered by smiling, bald-faced, lying ministers of greed to make that same public decide that the big finger up inside them was doing some real damage.

Well, lah-dee-dah! In the words of Laurie Anderson, "Push my button, baby!"

Bipartisanship is not independence or non-partisanship; rather it is the partisanship of the middle of the road. The middle of the road is a good place to get run down.

When the pendulum has been allowed to swing so far that the great accomplishment among the Democratic Party since the days of Ronnie Raygun was Clinton's draconian Welfare Reform, which led to more poverty and suffering in collusion with Newt Gingrich, we of the Progressive Partisans are really having a problem. Now the bright, young man from Chicago has chosen to staff up with bankers and we are getting more of the same with better window dressing.

Now is the time to act. There has not been a better time in at least 75 years to seek pluralist movement in the USA. It is time for the Greens to act as though they mean to be a national force and widen the spectrum of discussion and it is time for the United States of America to have an actual, bona-fide Labor Party.

A Labor Party? Yes, a Labor Party. A political party whose every plank is based upon the manner in which an issue affects the lot of the working women and men of our young nation. Such a party, impeccably structured and diligently promoted with alacrity and a complete lack of horse hockey, drawing from the ranks of organised labor and disenfranchised wage slaves could burgeon in less than a decade to enrollment rivaling the GOP and the Democrats, thus breaking the national duopoly and producing genuine motion and substantive debate for the first time since national electrification and the RebubliCrat debate with Technocracy.

Since the past thirty years, including (Bill, I love you but I must say it) the Clinton years, have been a free ride for unregulated capital culture and a gift to the free-marketeers, it is time for we the progressives of America to take our shot.

Face it, the free market has busted us all very hard in the chops. Capital culture without restraint is just another case of "power corrupts," which is an adage that seems never to fail in its accuracy. We must hold our fine, young president's feet hard to the fire to assure that he will deliver on the promises he made to the progressive community.

We had better do a more effective job of so doing than we have so far because the cabinet President Obama has chosen on the economic side of things, with the wonderful exception of Ms. Solis at Labor, is just a bunch of hacks promoting exactly the kind of financial bias that got us into this mess. His statement dismissing the economic impact of the failed drug war and legalisation of marijuana at a recent town hall are also disturbing. Add to that his failure to put the military-industrial complex on notice that the free ride is over and this president just starts to smell much like those who came before him.

I still have great hope for this smart young pol we have put in power AND we must demand his attention if we are to steady the ship of state and swing the pendulum back to a place where all persons residing in our amazing young society get a fair shake at those three primary rights delineated in Jefferson's birth certificate for the USA...Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

How about it, people? Are you with me? Are you yet prepared to start voting with your interests instead of seeking to be the same selfish bums who have kept you chained to a desk or grill for the past generation or more? Let's get a move on.

In the words of Red Green, "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together." Just be sure you also remember Phil Proctor's warning that, "I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus."

Just what is this socialism anyhow? And why is it evil??

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey indicated only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

Dan Ferris, Free Marketeer deluxe on S&A Digest says: "So... 47% of American adults – almost half – think less freedom is better than more freedom, and believe punishing success and rewarding failure is better than the converse.

The electorate is an ignorant, jealous mob that's getting more and more of exactly what it wants – your money. Democracy is working. The Amerikan people have spoken, and they want your money."

Pardon me, Dan; your cabal of unbridled lazaire faire capitalists have had nearly thirty years of the I got mine so go get yours society and it has left us in a mess with a food-rioting population and a good chance of experiencing violent revolution.

Social Democracy has worked quite well in the rest of the industrialised world for four decades and even in this current depression, Europe is faring far better than are we.

The function of enlightened government is to serve, protect, and uplift its employers, the people. Corporations, no matter what the law states, are not persons and must be well regulated. Employers must be held in check to prevent abuse of the workforce and labour unions must be reformed and revitalised so that people can feel as though they have a say in their lives and livelihoods rather than rightly feeling like powerless wage-slaves.

The problem is not governmental influence upon society. Rather the problem is the manner in which governmental influence is wielded. To bail-out banks is foolish. To bail-out the American people is wise.

Julian Bond said quite well that "there are no handrails in America. One must fall all the way to the floor before a helping hand is offered." Let's get real and start erecting handrails; that is how we uplift the people and build a lasting civilization.

More later...

Buyouts are better than bailouts.

Well here we are again in another crazy week of the 'How Shall We Waste Our Money' game. I have a real problem with the abject idiocy being practiced on both sides of the aisle and in the West Wing. We have prime examples of how recovery from these meltdowns does and does not work. What we are doing follows the Japanese model of recovery from the nineties, which left them in dire straights for better that twelve years. Do you want to live with this until 2021? I certainly do not.

The Swedes, on the other hand, projected ten years in the nineties and got out of their mess in just four with the government reaping a tidy profit in the process! How did they do that? They did it by buying the banks rather than bailing out their leak ridden boats.

Right now, depending upon the day, the US government could buy Citi outright for six to fifteen billion dollars cash on the barrelhead. Then we could properly scour the books, unwind the CMOs and other bundled loan based securities, and slowly by slowly market the salable assets back to the private sector at a 100% to 1500% profit! This is not pie in the sky; this is how it really works!

To do things this way we must shackle or fire Little Timmy Geithner, who is just another Wall Street hack who is looking out for his club-mates, just as he did while head of the New York Fed. Why a guy as seemingly bright as Barry Obama would choose the Fed Governor who let the banks screw up as badly as they did while he did his best imitation of Nero is beyond my reckoning. It is as though the guy has a few too many favours to repay.

Let's get real and treat the banks the same as we are treating the Auto Industry.

The Boards of Directors need to be cleansed and the executive staffs must be replaced.

The money must stop flowing freely with zero oversight.

We must seize control of every failing and faltering institution.

If a company or institution is "too big to fail" then it is too big to exist and must be statutorily dismantled.

If we do not do these simple yet difficult things and pull our heads out of the holes within which they now rest, we will indeed be in an even worse condition in five years and we may, by then, suffer violent revolution at the hands of hungry people wielding lawn tools and handguns. I do not believe any of us want to see that.

Private Capital Committing Suicide by a Million Cuts.

Okay. We've lived through this six times if we are over forty. There are no bubbles, just repeated cycles of stupidity, no problems, only solutions.

When any new industry begins, every person that sees it coming thinks they can follow the leader to riches. So long as one gets in, takes a flyer, and gets out in short order, this works fine. It is when the hangers on decide they actually know why the industry they entered functions that they marry the deal and doom themselves to failure.

Individual stock market trading is a fine example of the danger inherent in such following on individual scale. That every householder with a computer and encouragement from Chucky Schwab and Sam Waterston believes they are qualified to be day traders boggles the mind.

...more later...