A Two-Tiered World

The New York Times rolled out its new and improved reader comments feature with much fanfare today, only to have it crash and burn within hours. Before the system imploded under the weight of its own self-importance, more than 200 readers had weighed in on the changes. While many quibbled about the strange new appearance of the reader commenting section, most were incensed that commenters have now been divided between the "trusted" and those who are still in need of the watchful eye of a moderating Big Brother. (translation: a recent journalism school grad/student waiting to break into a real reporting or editing job.) Many readers detest the necessity of signing up for Facebook in order to prove their credibility and identities. More details are on Poynter.

Full disclosure: a couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail asking me to be a trusted commenter because of my "history of great comments".  Naive person that I am, I signed up for Facebook for the sole purpose of becoming a Times Trusty. I have never been a fan of Facebook, especially since the news broke earlier this year that Goldman Sachs was attempting to wrap its slimy tentacles around it, and that Facebook admittedly has breached the privacy of users.  So I signed up with the bare minimum requirements: no photo or any personal info other than my hometown and birthday. About a million sites already have my hometown and birthday, ever since the dreadful day more than a decade ago when I signed up for a discount card at CVS.  Merchants sell this info to each other and it multiplies exponentially in cyberspace. (Helpful hint: clear your browser daily to get rid of those nefarious tracking cookies and also to reset your quota of 20 free Times articles.)

When I first tried out my new status on a David Brooks column, I was thrilled to see my comment appear almost instantaneously.  No more being rejected outright. No more being deliberately shoved in the middle of the commenting pool at #355.  But the thrill quickly turned to chagrin.  I was all alone in Comment World!  Where were all the other trusted commenters?  Apparently, there weren't any.  My comment sat there all by its lonesome for more than 12 hours, before the moderators got around to approving a few more. The reader recommendations that flowed in were meaningless.  Half the fun of commenting is the sport of it all.


I emailed The Times to find out why so few people had apparently been chosen, and one Aron Pilhofer wrote back to explain that he had no earthly idea who the hell I, or any other contributor, was.  He talked about a lot of factors going into the selection, and data being shoveled in and then out of an algorithm, and that it was basically a random process and it was still being tested. But not to worry.  A few more weeks, he promised, and there would be trusted commenters bursting from the boards.


Meanwhile, I drastically cut back on my commenting.  The few people I told about being a trusted commenter were understandably miffed, and I did not blame them!  I tried to explain that my name was simply picked out of a hat and that they, personally, were not being rejected.  A bunch of elite Times editors were not sitting around discussing Times commenters and their merits.  They don't know us, they don't want to know us. They view us as mere $-generating clicks -- the sooner the comments can appear, the more the ad revenue. We commenters, both trusted and mistrusted, are helping pay the salaries of such multimillionaire columnists as Bill Keller and Tom Friedman.  It is no different than the hoi polloi supporting tax-dodging corporations like G.E. and contributing to the pension plans of defense contractors -- not to mention the trillions of dollars we unknowingly gifted to the too-big-to-exist banks a few years ago.  The disparity, the unfairness, the oppression go on and on and on. And so do the divide-and-conquer tactics used by overlords everywhere.


That is why I had to chuckle while checking my inbox earlier. One message in particular got my immediate attention. Michelle Obama Wants to Meet You.  No, I am not that naive: Barack wrote me yesterday saying his next dinner was going to be a double date.  He would be bringing Michelle, and I could bring a guest.... if I contributed $15 and if my name was picked out of another one of those algorithmic computer programs. 


Well, at 10:30 this morning Michelle wrote and the chance to win had been reduced to $5!


At 11:30, she wrote back -- she slashed the price down to  $3!  Elle est désespérée!

This is another example of Two-Tiered World. If you are a member of the 1%, you can fork over thousands of dollars to meet the Obamas in person at any number of fundraisers, any time, anywhere. You don't have to enter for a chance to win.  You have already won. You own the Obamas.

If you are in the 99%, you are asked to pay just a little less, volunteer for a campaign with no pay, and if you're very very lucky you may get to kiss a politician's feet. How this is any different from feudalism is anyone's guess.

The president was in NYC last night for what the Daily News calls three separate cash bashes. Before the prez-induced massive traffic gridlock, the NYPD (whom Mayor Bloomberg only semi-humorously describes as his own private army) started towing cars away. Occupy protesters were penned in far from the frozen zone so that Barack could rake in the bucks in peace. 


I like to imagine that he saw their signs calling him a corporate puppet and war criminal. If nothing else good has happened these past few days, at least the pundits and the politicians have now been disabused of the notion that OWS could ever be co-opted.

Reminder: commenting here is free, sans Facebook, sans ads, and only minimally moderated to stave off the spambots.

All I Want for Xmas is an AK-47

You really can't make this stuff up. (H/T "Akhilleus"). Deep in the dried up bowels of Arizona, nestled among the headless bodies of Gov. Jan Brewer's imagination, there exists an actual place called the Scottsdale Gun Club. Its big selling point? It's a state of the art conference center/high tech shooting range rolled right into one! Between intense business negotiations and leveraged buyout brainstorming sessions, you can rent an Uzi for $65 a hour -- just a little over a dollar a minute to blow off some steam after you're done shooting your mouth off. From the Gun Club website:

Scottsdale Gun Club’s conference room is utilized for smaller gatherings. The room has a large oval marble table with 8 comfortable leather office chairs surrounding it. It also comes equipped with a projector, PC, and DVD. Also available is a teleconferencing phone so you can reach those outside of the meeting. Food and refreshments are allowed in this room as well. Behind all the action sits a Garwood Mini-Gun and an HK GMG Automatic Grenade Launcher. We don’t think these will be useful for your meeting, but they are great conversation pieces and ice-breakers!

But wait! There's more!  As Akhilleus writes in an email: "In Arizona, you can go to the mall and have your picture taken with Santa while holding automatic weapons. It's Arizona's very own No Child Left Unarmed. AK-47s for everyone! And dum-dum bullets as stocking stuffers!"

You can see actual video here. Don't worry. It's short and sweet, not too graphic, except for the part where a child points his assault weapon at Santa. And, writes Akhilleus, "Don't miss the little kid carrying a grease gun. And look at Santa's face in that video. He looks like he's ready to soil his sleigh."

Awwww. But wouldn't you know -- some grinches are taking all the joy out of the Second Amendment. It's the war against weaponized Christmas, for X's sake! A Baptist preacher from Phoenix named Rev. Brent Loveless told the Christian Science Monitor that the gun-toting Santa surrounded by kids with grenade launchers might not quite jibe with the spirit of the season: “It’s a time when you’re talking about peace and good cheer and things of that nature. (It's) probably a little too much" he ventured to guess.

But the reverend, "probably" thinking of the long-term security of his gospel-preaching gig in Arizona, was quick to add that he likes to hunt and supports the right to bear arms. So I guess he bit the bullet with that addendum.  After all, Arizona has the reputation of being the most gun-friendly state in the Union, having 1200 licensed gun sellers and an actual state gun (the Colt revolver) and a law passed this year requiring that gun history be included in the high school social studies curriculum. A Google search for "Arizona gun stores" produces 22,500,000 results and this map:

Only in Arizona, kids. Only in Arizona. Ho. Ho. Ho.

There's a Place

by Neil Gillespie
The Justice Network

This post was inspired by Valerie, Anne, DreamsAmelia and others who commented on Karen’s post "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Each of you expressed a fundamental theme of human existence, the need for shelter and community. Is it better to rent or buy a home? Is real neighborliness in person with your actual neighbors the bedrock of society, or can an online "community" suffice? And how does all this fit into the larger world or work and family?

There is another way: You can have it all, in an intentional community. The following is inspired by many people and ideas too numerous to mention here, so I’ll begin with one person, Scott Nearing. "If I am rich and you are poor," Nearing wrote, "both of us are corrupted by inequality."

Scott Nearing was a radical professor at the Wharton School. According to a University of Pennsylvania publication, he was "shocked in 1915 when he was the only assistant professor with a favorable recommendation from the faculty not to be rehired. His outspoken views against child labor and other progressive causes had run afoul of Penn’s trustees, who thought he was a dangerous influence on his many followers. Nearing won litigation concerning his dismissal, giving a significant victory to academic freedom - one step toward the creation of the tenure system."(Scott Nearing is profiled further on my website.)

"By 1917 Nearing was fired from the University of Toledo as an administrator and professor due to his opposition to America’s World War I involvement. In March 1918 he was indicted, but later exonerated by the federal government via the Espionage Act for his antiwar writing. In the 1920s he joined the Communist party until he was expelled from that organization for being too radically independent.

Nearing later  espoused a simple lifestyle of abstaining from products and economic practices that he believed hurt society. Among his 50 books was the classic Living the Good Life, co-authored with his wife Helen in 1954 and republished in 1970, inspiring the countercultural movement of the time. Nearing died in 1983 shortly after his 100th birthday."

Scott Nearing

Fast forward to 2011. The politics, economy and technology of today may provide the foundation for a new rendition of the intentional community, sometimes called a commune. Think of the possibilities of a physical community, somewhere in the wide-open spaces of America, combined with the interconnectedness of the Internet. A place run by people, not the corporations.

A place where we build our sustainable homes by hand, without debt, in the tradition of the Amish barn raising...

A place where we grow our own organic food, raise animals and fish, to nourish our body and soul...

A place where we manufacture quality products, made in America, by people, not corporations. Real jobs, with humane benefits and working conditions...

A place where we can operate e-commerce business online, with clients worldwide... 

A place where we govern ourselves without the corrupting influence of corporate money... 

A place with our own bank, banking system, and local currency... 

A place where we establish our own courts, where judges are not lawyers, and the practice of law and the delivery of legal service is open to the free market...

A place where we decide who serves on our police force and how they should behave, a place that may have a chief like OWS supporter Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia police captain...

A place where we build and run our own hospitals, daycare, nursing homes and hospice...

A place where we build and run our own primary schools and university, an affordable university where the emphasis is on learning and sustainable living, in contrast to the current debt-based college education with its emphasis on sports and consumer consumption...

A place where animals are respected and incorporated into our lives, as companions, or workers mowing our lawn (grazing), public service (dogs) or transportation (horses, camels) 

A place with sustainable public transportation, electric cars, horses, or camels...

A place with a sustainable public utility that produces green power and clean water...

A place where people of all faiths, races, ethnic groups, and orientations are welcome...

A place that values creative thinking... 

This is just the beginning. Feel free to add your own ideas. Add to it the best of liberal, conservative, libertarian, progressive, radical, eastern and western thought, and others not mentioned. Barack Obama may have betrayed the dream, but we don’t have to...


For further reading: Two classics by Helen & Scott Nearing: "Living the Good Life" and "Leaving the Good Life" are available in a one-volume paperback called "The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living". (Schocken Books, Jan. 1990)

　

 

A Dollar, a Dream, and a Hedge Fund

Time for another episode in the continuing series known as The Audacity of Oligarchy.....




"You gotta be in it to win it!" goes the TV commercial urging people to run out and buy lottery tickets.  Another one gushes: "All You Need is a Dollar and a Dream!" 


And needy people listen to this stuff.  According to one study, the indigent spend a whopping nine percent of their incomes on lottery tickets -- in effect, making this form of gambling a perfect addition to Herman Cain's 9-9-9 regressive tax plan to soak the poor.


So it was a real bummer to read that three millionaire asset managers, hailing from one of the most exclusive and expensive enclaves in the country, have won the $254 million Powerball jackpot in Connecticut. They spent one lousy dollar - or a portion of their income the size of a subatomic particle -- on one measly ticket. There hasn't been this much outrage since millionaire Jim Sensenbrenner, congressman and heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune, won the lottery for a third straight time.


Well, harrumph!  According to a Connecticut state lottery official, rich people can dream too, dammit!  Rich people are everyday people, just like us. And of course, we are much consoled that the lawyer for the trio says they plan to give a "substantial" portion of their after-tax, hundred million dollar-plus haul to charity. Presumably to a charity designed by the rich, for the rich -- to avoid further taxes. I know, I know -- I am probably being totally unfair. I promise to issue a retraction once they donate the whole shebang to Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross, or the free clinic movement, or food banks, or any worthy cause that doesn't take a substantial cut for its CEO.


One thing that really struck me about the coverage of this moment of oligarchic irony: the nouveau-nouveau riche asset managers just don't look all that happy in the photos. Maybe they feel bad about winning and snatching the food out of the mouth of the unemployed single mom in front of them in line that day, who'd just spent her last dollar on a ticket. (doubtful) Or, they are miffed that the government is taking a whole half of their haul in taxes (they're used to the effective 15-18% rate reserved for the .01%). Or, they are simply annoyed that they had to take time from their busy day of making money to pose in the traditional lottery photo-op.






Ho Hum.... Another Day, Another Quarter-Billion (AP Photo)

Update:  A fourth reason for their apparent discomfort: an acquaintance is telling the press that the bankers may not have actually bought the ticket after all, that they are just "fronting for the real winner." 

 Money does not buy happiness, people. (Actually, that's a lie. It really really really helps when you don't have much of it.)  But the uber-wealthy of the Forbes 400 are not joyful humans, for the most part. (I have absolutely no proof to back me up on this, but writing it makes me feel better.) They worry too much about how they can keep what they have, and fret about how they can get more.  The poster-child for unhappy billionaires has to be Walmart heiress Alice Walton:

Like the Greenwich Powerball Trio, this 62-year-old was also a wealth manager before her own $20 billion jackpot from Daddy Sam made her America's 10th richest person. She now spends her time spending her billions on art and charity to avoid taxes, as well as on lawyers to avoid prosecution. In April 1989, while speeding in her Porsche, she struck and killed a friend of hers. She was never charged, nor did she offer any compensation to the victim's family. Nine years later, she was arrested after hitting a gas meter. Her words to the arresting officer will go down in the annals of plutocratic chutzpah: "I'm Alice Walton, bitch!"


She pled guilty, though, and paid a paltry $925 fine: a speck of molecular dust in the infinity of the universe. Her most recent arrest came this past October. (mug shot above.) This time, she sent her regrets.  Mea minima culpa.


More from the Gallery of Peevish Plutocrats:

Zombie Turkey, Reanimated

Holiday weekend news dump/controlled leak, While-you-were-cooking/eating/shopping/traveling edition: The respected, pro-single payer chief of Medicare and Medicaid Services suddenly tenders his resignation. At the same time, some "anonymous" Democrats let it be known that they are becoming fond of the previously-hated Paul Ryan turkey of a plan for privatizing Medicare after all. What a coincidence!

In a story buried in The New York Times on Thanksgiving Day, reporter Robert Pear revealed that:

"Though it reached no agreement, the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction built a case for major structural changes in Medicare that would limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program, lawmakers and health policy experts say.
Members of both parties told the panel that Medicare should offer a fixed amount of money to each beneficiary to buy coverage from competing private plans, whose costs and benefits would be tightly regulated by the government."

Pear never does reveal the identities of the Secretive Democrats who claim that their plan is a kinder gentler version of Ryancare, which would ultimately have phased out Medicare entirely with prepaid vouchers for beneficiaries to obtain private health coverage. But one of them is Catfood Commission I member Alice Rivlin, whom Pear says is for transforming Medicare from straight single payer to a plan with a "public option."  In other words, the same plan for universal coverage that Candidate Obama pretended to espouse back in the day.  In other words, instead of forging ahead with Medicare for All as the majority of Americans prefer, these "unnamed Democrats" are forging ahead with at least the "semi-privatization" of the only single payer system we've ever had.  And you just know that once the parasitic insurers get their claws into these "Medicare improvements", it will only be a lobbyist's hop, skip and jump to full privatization. This leaked agenda should  probably be named the conserva-dems' "Stealth Health Plus."

I am surprised that we haven't heard more outrage from "progressive" Democratic lawmakers on this horror show of a zombie turkey carcass reanimation plan. Oh yeah.... they probably haven't heard about it yet.  They are still deep in their tryptophan comas. 

Meanwhile, also in keeping with the spirit of holiday news dumps, Dr. Donald Berwick is out of a job, without so much as a "heckuva job, Don" sendoff from President Obama.  Recess-appointed last year, Berwick evoked the wrath of Republicans, livid that this respected physician had publicly praised the (single payer) British Health Service. The resignation appears to be the final chapter in the latest installment of what "Confidence Men" author Ron Suskind credits former Economic Advisor Larry Summers with saying: that the White House policy is to be seen as "caught trying" -- in other words, the president states a policy, or names a progressive appointee, only to sit back and passive-aggressively watch as the rabid nihilistic Republicans conveniently eviscerate it/him/her. (The poster child for this de facto policy is, of course, Elizabeth Warren.) From another Times article by the ubiquitous Mr. Pear: 

"Mr. Obama said he would nominate Dr. Berwick’s principal deputy, Marilyn B. Tavenner, to succeed him as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Ms. Tavenner, the secretary of the Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources when Tim Kaine was governor, is more of a manager and less of a visionary than Dr. Berwick, who has been working for more than two decades to transform the health care system and raise the quality of care....

Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group, said that with Dr. Berwick’s resignation, the government was losing “a visionary leader, a champion for patients,” who knew how to improve care while reducing costs."

Oh well.... Obama atoned for abandoning yet another person who made the mistake of actually working for the public good. He pardoned not one, but two, turkeys this Thanksgiving. Why double the fun?  I have a few theories. One: the poultry duo symbolizes the bipartishit of the Oligarchy. Plus, like the prosecution-immune Wall Street bankers, turkeys are mean and somewhat stupid creatures. And even if you kill a mother turkey before her eggs are hatched, the chicks ("poults") won't care. They will mindlessly follow the first fat hen they see.

Poulitics as Usual

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Black Friday was barely underway when the first-ever (they think) incident of shoppers being pepper-sprayed was reported this morning.

No, it was not Lt. Pike. A woman desperate to get her hands on some cheap Chinese electronics in a California Walmart (where else) blasted fellow alleged humanoids in the annual consumer stampede that makes America so.... exceptional.  According to police, 20 people were injured, and the unidentified woman was still at large. From the LA Times:

Alejandra Seminario, 24, said she was waiting in line to grab some toys at the store around 9:55 p.m. when people the next aisle over started shouting and ripping at the plastic wrap encasing gaming consoles, which was supposed to be opened at 10 p.m.

"People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray," the Sylmar resident said. "I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes."

Although "part of the store" was evacuated, the store itself remained open for business.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that 9,000 shoppers were lined up in front of the Macy's flagship store on Herald Square overnight in hopes of snagging a bargain.... or because they get a rush in a crush...  or just to be able, someday, to tell the grandkids that they were there.



Anti-Wall Street Day of Rage, NYC, March 2011 (Pre-Occupy; not covered by MSM)




Tahrir Square, Cairo, November 2011




Best Buy, USA, Nov. 25, 2011



Happy Thanksgiving

Some coping mechanisms:

Sarah Vowell thinks we should fuggedabout the "Mayflower-cruising Jesus freaks" but instead commemorate the deaths of 11,000 Revolutionary War patriots in a British prison ship on the East River in NYC. Daily Show clip here (I have no control over the introductory K-Mart Doorbusters commercial -- sorry!)

Wednesday Addams explains the meaning of Thanksgiving, with Danish subtitles over which I also have no control.  This beautifully horrid little girl grew up to play a 60s Pan Am stewardess on TV.  Sometimes these precocious types burn out. 

If you're still wondering about the true meaning of Thanksgiving.... don't ask me.  But for those of you in a curmudgeonly mood, here is a festive holiday read called "Why I Hate Thanksgiving".

From Reader Will comes Jon Stewart giving the cop who started the whole pepper spray craze his very own show!
And last penultimate but not least, listen to the 2003 Thanksgiving radio interview  that the late historian Howard Zinn gave to Tavis Smiley. (Some readers were having trouble linking to the NPR site, so thanks to Jay - Ottawa for sharing this Zinn page.)

Last but not least, DreamsAmelia sends this link to Greg Brown singing "I Don't Want to Have a Nice Day." 

Have a Nice Day!