The Two Questions to Ask of Politics

Like much of the rest of the world, the US is in the middle of a social revolution that none of us likes, mostly because it is launching us into the unknown. We stand helplessly watching as our banks, governments--and even the manufacturers we once trusted--almost casually break their bonds with us.

Many now long for a more familiar world. It's not that life in the past was so wonderfully simple. It was just more predictable. People knew the rules, and there was comfort knowing they were in place and could be seen working. Today, it seems that the people who get rewarded are the ones who not only don't follow the rules but act as if they never existed.

Yesterday, the BBC reported yet another trader scandal in Switzerland where one man has cost his employing bank two billion Euros. The reporter commented that not only had the bank obviously not learned anything from the last round of losses in 2008, but that the trader had no motive to care since he was being paid anyway and not working with his own money. In other words, there was nothing in place to prevent him gambling with other people's money--probably because there's a fifty-fifty chance that the gamble might make a lot of money (and grow bonuses). We wouldn't hear about the gains except on the bank's annual statement; the losses, however, make the front page. It will probably cost the trader's job as a public penance. But it's really the fault of the bank's policy that permitted it.  Money conquers all.

Given all the self-interested scrambling for money at all costs, it's rare to come across someone who asks who in the hell we are as a people and what makes us "us." Yet, this is exactly what we need to be doing.

The problem is that rather than self-evaluation, it's much easier to look around for others to blame. It can't be us, people say, we are still the good, solid people we always were: it's the poor, the minorities, the people who have children they can't support, the sick, the "illegals" who take handouts, and those who won't take responsibility for themselves--they're the reasons things aren't going well. We do that, of course, without looking at our roles in such things as the housing crisis--"investing" in houses we couldn't afford and planned to flip for a profit, until of course, that couldn't be done anymore because so many people had been doing their own get-rich scheming.

As I see it, the most frightening part of all this is how this country's anger is being turned into an ugly emotional bloodbath. People are voting race and class rather than looking to the future. Unfortunately, the inevitable outcome of all the hate will be a civil war fought along racial and class lines. Is this what we really want? Wasn't one civil war enough? And won't those screaming about big government now be among the first to demand its intervention when riots hit suburbia as in London--just when the government has been emasculated and the states aren't strong enough to respond?

This gloom and doom is all well and good, you may be saying, but so what? If it's going to happen it's going to happen. Anyway, what can one voice and one vote do? Aren't I better off just buying a gun and living out in the country?
 
Well, I guess one can indeed buy a shotgun (the arms manufacturers would love that), but civil wars have a nasty habit of finding even the hidden and no one will be safe if the money collapses and the economy tanks.
 
Instead, I would argue the most important thing we can do is make sure we know what it is we are casting that one vote for. That starts with us really taking responsibility for ourselves and beginning to think about politics rather than emotionally reacting to what the corporate media chooses to feed us (and if you trust the media, remember the influence peddling, corruption, and fall of the Murdoch news empire). 

The other day I read a commentary that suggested it was hard to understand politics unless one had participated directly or been on the front lines. Well, I've been on the front lines. For a year, I worked the university's lobbying team at a state legislature. I came away with an eye-opening education and a deep cynicism that led me to ask two questions of everything proposed or passed. These questions are 1) Who is paying?  and 2) Who is benefiting? In the case of the latter, if there was any benefit to the person supposedly being served, it was incidental. The real beneficiaries were often hidden and silent.

I found that the best way to get to the bottom of political will and motivation was to step aside from the distractions. For us, that means forget about minorities and whether they are showing poverty fat when they shop at Walmart; forget about who is paying what in taxes; forget about whether undeserving people are getting medical care; forget about whether one group seems to get more breaks than another. These are the manipulations that prevent us from looking at the far more serious issues. Our attention is being deliberately drawn away from what matters.

Instead, ask the questions.

1) Who is paying? In the case of the current political upheaval, who is funding it? Answer: You have a political pressure group on the Right paid for by corporate interests. You also have a Congress on both sides that has been bought and sold by corporate interests.

2) Who is benefiting? Answer: corporate interests who gain from war, gain from tax benefits and advantages, and gain from being designated "people" by the US Supreme Court. All we gain is the emotional excitement of fighting with one another while the economic riches of this country are quietly moved to off-shore subsidiaries.


It's not a question of "big, bad corporations," but you have to look at them objectively. Our "reliable" US brands have been sold to the cheapest labor markets. We are now just expected to serve them as silent, "reliable" consumers, although how much longer we can afford to buy any of their products is questionable with so many of us now living in poverty. Many corporations, however, are enjoying record profits.

In fact, our corporations are now becoming our shadow government, wielding social power through the jobs they offer (those that still remain in this country) since many of them don't pay taxes. Of course they wouldn't hire during a presidency they don't approve of. They'll sabotage any effort made during this administration.

With the right poltical leadership, our corporations will open up minimum-wage jobs by the score, with no benefits of course (they'll leave that the US health care plan). By then, the long-term unemployed will be so glad to get any job they won't complain. All responsibility for healthcare benefits will be abdicated to what's left of the US Government (just as they did with pension plans). They will also support privatizing Social Security (not because it's bankrupt--it's absolutely not) because there is a large sum of money that could be "managed" into high corporate salaries and potential profits, once they figure out how to pare payments to the people who bought this insurance and paid for it all their lives.

When this all plays out, it will be a charade. Congress will "bend" to the will of the Tea Party all the while serving corporate interests because "of the jobs they provide." In fact, I'm prepared to believe that the entire economic crisis is entirely artificial. Some may say I am being unduly harsh on our corporations--but our memories are short and I find myself doubtful of their ability to control themselves. Remember Enron, anyone? The BP shortcuts? Countrywide?

Biscotti Jars and China

I went out shopping today. It's one of life's pleasures, as long, that is, that I can find things that I want to have in my life. It didn't take long, however, before I began questioning whether the things on offer would really meet that criteria. In other words, were the things being offered for me to buy really the things I wanted to have?

There's a bit of a story here. A few weeks ago, I met Kimi in Las Vegas to celebrate our August birthdays. Beides the slots, one of my favorite things is to go see the garden display at the Bellaggio Hotel. It's always artistic and dramatic and once we've taken pictures, I like to browse the shops around it. This time, I went into one that specializes in Italian imports. I fell in love with a biscotti jar. It was terra cotta and showed the Tuscan countryside with a villa, cypresse (cypress trees), and farm implements--very traditional. I debated for a long time and the only thing that prevented me from buying it was the problem of getting it home on the plane. If I'd had my car there, it would have been a done deal.

Back home in Denver, I regretted my decision. So, I trekked off to Park Meadowns Mall (one of our upscale shopping centers) today, looking for a biscotti jar made in Italy or Portugal. I couldn't find one. Oh there were biscotti or comparable jars all right, but invariably, they were what I consider to be fakes. They were made in China. There was no way I would buy one of them. And I'm not talking about Penneys or Sears here. I'm talking about Dillards and Sonoma-Williams. The latter did have things from Portugal and France, for which I commend them, but there were all too many things that were mere imitations, and not always the best.

This led me to consider the larger meaninng of my quest to find something authentic.What does it mean to us as a society? All I can conclude is that for every thing we buy made in China, we deprive someone in Europe and the US of their jobs just so we can buy cheap imitiations. I suppose I should say someones plural because it takes a lot more than one person to make something of lasting value. I can see cheap-o stuff flooding the discount shops like WalMart and Kmart and even Target, but when it invades even our upper scale shops it means that these store also condone peddling this stuff to us. I have to wonder not only about them but also about the corporations supplying them.  Have we become so addicted to accumulation that we don't even care what we collect?

The corporations with their bottom line of squeezing every penny are no small part of this. They slap their names on things they have made outside the country, claiming they need a sweatshop workforce to be competitive. What they are really doing is sending our jobs overseas to get things made more cheaply, and I do put the emphasis on cheap. In going offshore, I think they underestimate us seriously and they run the risk of us boycotting them, which they will deserve.

Today, I went out looking for beauty and quality. I found mere imitations, a cynical assumption of the style of another country to be paraded as real because our corporations have equally cynically assumed we will satisfied by it. From what I can gather, imitation has been China's method--copy the work and design of some other county and sell it cheaper. I, for one, do not see buying cheap stuff as satisfying anymore. In the future, I will look for where something is made and choose accordingly.

I can't be the only one feeling this way. I have to believe there might even be room for a new set of stores called Made in the USA or Not Made in China. Maybe the choices in them would not be as numerous. But I would feel much better knowing where my money is going.

In the meantime, I guess I will just have to go back to Las Vegas and hope they still have the biscotti jar.