The Wall Street coupon clippers figured they got away with their scam in getting Obama elected; now the capitalist sooth-Sayers are hard at work doing the same thing with Obama's legislation--- from the bailout of the banksters to the "economic stimulus" package to Obama's "solution" to the mortgage crisis to his feigned and fake environmental concerns which will see Canadians expanding their nuclear power industry at a dangerously fast pace so the United States can reap the cheap power with all the problems and possible catastrophes absorbed by Canadians. And, of course, we really need to discuss Obama's three wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan along with Obama's continued support and subsidization of the Israeli killing machine.
Obama and the Wall Street crowd are banking on an American economic recovery fueled by cheap energy from Canada.
To be kind, one can only describe those who find anything liberal, progressive or left in Obama's schemes; we need to refer to them as muddle-headed.
I am sure, these muddle-headed middle class intellectuals would find me rude if I were to describe their support--- under the guise of progressivism--- for Obama and his programs and policies bordering on being crazy.
These muddle-headed middle class intellectuals, content that they helped elect Obama and now have his ear would do well to think about the fact that Obama and the Canadian ruling class pushed the socialist oriented New Democratic Party right out of the picture during Obama's visit to Canada where he met with Stephen Harper before meeting with Michael Ignatieff the head of Canada's Liberal Party--- the preferred party of Canadian and American big business.
That CBC, in service to their capitalist masters, failed even a mention of the New Democratic Party--- the Party of Canada's working class and real opposition to both capitalist parties, will be to their everlasting shame as Canadian discuss how pathetically skewed the coverage of Obama was as if it was the job of the media to hoodwink the public.
Obama left Canada to adoring crowds and great applause; with the adoring throngs thrilled to get a wave from the "great one." The shaft is on the way and the smiles of Canadians will no doubt turn to frowns as people realize their Canada has finally been sold out completely to the U.S.A.
The real threat today, comes not from right-wing ideologues since Wall Street only keeps these clowns around for distraction between the acts; the real threat now comes from muddle-headed, middle class intellectuals who bend and bow and clap and hoot and holler and fawn over Obama's every word no matter how much they have to twist Obama's words to conform to what is in their minds; middle class intellectuals who refuse to acknowledge the urgency of solving the myriad of problems millions of working people now find themselves suffering from in now in the most dire circumstances in need of a "People's Bailout."
These middle class intellectuals have always been arrogant beyond belief in thinking they have been ordained to do thinking for the working class. The assigned role of these muddle-headed middle class intellectuals is to confuse and disorient working people into thinking they need not bother looking for socialist solutions to their problems.
These muddle-headed middle class intellectuals have been assigned the task of making us think there will be an end to this economic mess even though the real economists are saying that if there is going to be a recovery, it will be of very short duration and most people are unlikely to even be aware the "recovery" has taken place... their words: the recovery is likely to be very mild and subdued.
We need emergency measures that will protect working people from the time of loss of employment and severely reduced incomes until their lives are restored to normal.
What is the problem here?
If anyone really believes there is ever going to be a "recovery" from this economic mess with capitalism being on the skids to oblivion, there should be no problem in passing emergency measures consisting of a "People's Bailout."
Obama is pushing these "stimulus packages" and now his "mortgage package" through Congress so fast people have not had the opportunity to even grasp what is taking place.
We completely defeat the right-wing by bringing forward legislation aimed at solving the problems of the working class, not the middle class, and the two are not one and the same by any stretch of one's imagination.
A requirement of saving one's home from foreclosure, and one's family from eviction, under the Obama proposal is that a job with real living wage or salary is required to begin to even be considered for a "bailout"... what about the millions of unemployed? Where is their bailout?
We have been told what unemployed working people are getting from Obama in his "stimulus package:"
"The stimulus plan will mean thousands of dollars in tax breaks for first-time home buyers and people buying new cars. Lower- and middle-income taxpayers will get an extra $13 a week in their paychecks this year, and about $8 a week next year. Unemployment checks will go up $25 a week, and keep coming longer. Food stamp benefits for 30 million Americans will rise. Short-term health insurance will become more affordable for many losing their jobs."
We have also been told how we will be able to monitor the effectiveness of Obama's "stimulus package:"
"The success of the stimulus package may be measured less by visible achievements than by what does not happen — the home that is not foreclosed, the family that doesn't slip into poverty, the disease that does not go undiagnosed."
This is no substitute for a "People's Bailout" by any stretch of one's imagination; Obama and the Democrats should hang their heads in shame for having the audacity to try to pass this off on us and expect us to be thankful to boot; but, they don't even know the meaning of the word "shame" because they have been so subservient to the Wall Street coupon clippers and merchants of death and destruction for so long.
It would be nice if the muddle-headed middle class intellectuals would try thinking about the real circumstances of those less well off than themselves before they begin giving their support to Obama's schemes.
Working people would do well to scrutinize any and all words by those who fawn over Barack Obama like these muddle-headed middle class intellectuals who are nothing but well-paid capitalist sooth-Sayers--- who if they told the truth about capitalism being on the skids to oblivion and warned us that we are on the road to perdition--- would find themselves out of jobs.
I received this from someone in Muskegon, Michigan who has decided it was time to take a good hard look at "Capital" by Karl Marx---
Hi Alan,
This comes from the 1886 preface to the English edition, the 1st English one, to Capital...
"While the productive power increases in a geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over-production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, “what to do with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands."
It's this Chronic depression that's the bottom of the huge contraction of productive capacity now taking place. Some capitalist economists think that it'll stop after about a year at a loss of 10%. That's huge! China has already lost 20 million jobs that had gone to make stuff for the world's Wal-marts, etc.
Hope you can use this.
You can watch and listen to Professor David Harvey reading and discussing "Capital" here:
http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/getting-started/
From another friend who decided to start reading and studying the Marxist classics (after all, even Newsweek magazine says, "We are all socialists now") I received this:
From: Frederick Engels's--- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific/ (part of his /Anti-Dühring/), is a description of the crisis of capitalism that seems uncannily appropriate to today.
* * *
Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began--in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time.... The fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour power.
Frederick Engels's---
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific/
part of his...
Anti Dühring/
New York: International Publishers, 1935, pages 64-65
You can read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific here:
http://socialismutopianandscientific.blogspot.com/
Many people have written me suggesting reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine;" it is a fantastic book.
We need to consider that as working people we need to get up to speed quickly on what is going on because the greedy, money grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers are wasting no time.
We also need to understand that capitalism really is on the skids to oblivion, we are in the midst of a very, very serious economic depression, and we really are on the road to perdition... as such, working people are going to have to develop a means to fight for the kind of social programs where our current problems get resolved as we take the appropriate action to get rid of this rotten system... the capitalist system which is thoroughly rotten to its very core... its time to chuck the system as we protect our families... just as we would chuck an apple rotten to the core... one bite from a rotten apple is enough to know not to take another bite from the same rotten apple.
We need a "People's Bailout" now.
No one, least of all the muddle-headed middle class intellectuals are going to fight for us... we need to develop the kind of organizations which bring us together to fight for ourselves--- for the interests of the working class.
Here in Minnesota a few forward thinking progressive state legislators have come up with "The People's Bailout;" their Democratic colleagues are hard at work trying to figure out how they will wriggle and worm their way out of this in evading our issues.
Here is "The Minnesota People's Bailout" along with the letter I sent to State Senator David Tomassoni supporting this important piece of legislation he has courageously brought forward knowing that many of his own Democratic colleagues will heap scorn on him as they try to derail "The People's Bailout-Senate File 542:"
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/original-message-from-alan-maki.html
We also need a solution to this health care mess--- the open window of opportunity for reform is closing as quickly as Obama is moving forward with his "stimulus packages" loaded with "pork" for Wall Street; the "pork" of corporate profits no one wants to talk about but so many of these muddle-headed middle class intellectuals expect us--- our children, grand children and great grand children--- to pay for.
Tell Barack Obama and Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff to takes their dirty imperialist wars and shove them where the sun don't shine--- let them know working people insist on financing "The People's Bailout" instead.
Fund health care not the monstrous Israeli killing machine.
Canadian and U.S. workers might want to think about whether there is a cure for "Obama fever."
Obama-mania might have been in full force in Canada today... we will see how many Canadian auto workers will lose their jobs in Canada tomorrow.
Something to think about while sitting around the dinner table this evening as you are watching the throngs of adoring Obama loving Canadians on television.
Alan L. Maki
