"It's the Economy Stupid"

For a long time I have been characterizing our economy as a BIG PARTY. Kate objected saying, “Lots of people are hurting.” I agreed, but in the main I believe that the country has been in a big party mode. I don’t know how I knew that. It was something I just felt. I was also very aware that parties big and small at some point come to an end. My assumption wasn’t so much studying any hard economic data as a sense that folks were out there spending money like there was no tomorrow. Which brings me to “The economy------------”.

When Carville made the famous remark about the economy early in 2000, I thought “wait a minute here.” It was really Karl Marx whose analysis of how societies get their work done concluded that it was all in the economic relationship between owners and workers. Marx laid out a basic framework of ideas as to how capitalism operated. One thing I recall quite clearly is that when capitalists profit, somebody somewhere is working to create that profit.

I have wondered a lot about that during this “big party” time. James Fallows’ article in the January-February issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled “The $1.4 Trillion Question” is a good example of what Marx was writing about. Fallows says that our big party has been at the expense of the the low paid workers of China. “Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus--$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day.... In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China.” (Thank you Karl Marx and James Fallows and it’s to bad that Marx became “outdated.”)

Okay, so back to the economy. My economic sense of how the country was doing probably grew out of my experience as a 12 year old during the big bust of 1929 and the long depression that followed. The folks in my family circle at that time were primarily radicals, socialists. communists. anarchists, and free thinkers. What they had in common was a firm belief that the capitalist system was the root of all that was wrong with society. They were all heavily influenced by Karl Marx. In the middle of the 19th century Marx was predicting the kinds of depression we were experiencing in 1929. Because we knew it was coming, when it hit we were the best prepared to deal with it. It was a sort of “well what did you expect after all the fun and games of the twenties.”

Getting back to our economic problem here at home. The experience of ‘29 gave me a sixth sense as to how the economy was doing. It was telling me that things aren’t bad enough for people to be hurting. Lee Iacocca in a recent book asked, “Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff. Where are our leaders in the face of all that is going on in the country?”

My sense is telling me that most people are finding ways to cope by extending credit, getting second jobs, working off the books (the cash economy) and by families rejoining their parents. Now comes the housing bubble bust and its domino effect on the economy, with the Stock Market responding downward to the bad news. The Federal Reserve reminds me of an old World War II comment, “they don’t know wether to shit or go blind.” Even our distracted President has weighed in with the observation that “there may be a problem” out there somewhere. Now with this situation there ought to be more protest, citizen demands, some signs of serious dissatisfaction. Why aren’t people roaring mad about what is going on?

Okay, that lets me go back to 1929. If Lee Iacocca wanted to see outrage, it sure was there. But it took a lot of organizers on the left to make it known. There were street demonstrations, protest meetings, marches on Washington, letter writing campaigns, petitions to Congress, and on and on. How did those things come about? Not spontaneously. They were organized by communists, socialists and other left wing socially concerned organizations. The IWW-Wobblies had an organizing motto on their Little Red Song Book. It said “FAN THE FLAMES OF THE DISCONTENT” and that’s what I was doing on a soap box at Tremont and Prospect Avenue in the Bronx as hundreds of others were doing the same thing all over the country. A more recent analogy would be the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties that culminated in the million person march on Washington where Dr. King made his famous “I have a dream” speech. Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, President of the Sleeping Car Porters Union, organized that march. I was at Mobilization for Youth at the time and we took 400 juvenile delinquents to Washington by special train that the organizers had arranged.

From my experience, what is lacking in our time is any organizing force that can bring together the discontents and transform that discontent into a meaningful program of demands and action. I am sure some of my readers will respond by pointing out that there now exists new ways for people to make known there discontent through the Internet. I appreciate that the internet has given citizens a whole new way to be heard, but I have yet to see how this will work in the present crisis. I would love to see some efforts to organize the discontent into meaningful programs of action. Do the Primary campaigns have anything to do with any of this? Or is that just another diversion like Nero’s circuses? Sure wish I knew.

J. Edgar Hoover's Guantanamo

Forgive the blog delay. Have been in a boxing match with Bronchitis and so far he has fifteen of the sixteen rounds. Spent XMas in the miseries between the coughing. wheezing and snotchering I am not at all certain where I have been and what I have done. A doctor gave me an anti biotic that not only didn’t help but made me “delusional.” And I am sure if you are a regular on my blog you know for sure I didn’t need that since I was there already. Oh well.

A short time ago there was a story in the NY Times The headline read. : A 1950 Plan: Arrest 12.000 and Suspend Due Process.” This was J. Edgar Hoover’s plan at the start of the Korean war in 1950’s to suspend Habeas Corpus and round up 12.000 of us “suspected” of disloyalty.

This is not that far from what George Bush has actually done by putting the “suspects” in Guantanamo Cuba out of the reach of US courts. Harry Truman who was President back in i950 refused to sign Mr. Hoover’s proposal. Keep in mind that this was the era of McCarthyism when through the artifice of fear thousands became victimized by the terror. In some ways like the present a heavy cloud of fear seem to hangover the land.

I am proud to announce that indeed I was one of the 12,000 on the list. In my 700 page FBI file there is Hoovers identification card with my name and assigned number. What got me on the list was a long list of sins I committed like a very popular pamphlet I wrote as New York State President of the Machinists Union against the Taft Hartley Law called “This Is Aimed At You.” The “You” being the average working class wage earner. Opposition to the Korean War and yes Hoover found my support for the UN “suspicious behavior.” Further evidence of my “dangerous character was a designation by the notorious anti union outfit the Chicago Chamber of Commerce naming me as the “most dangerous radical inside the A.F. of L. unions”. ie The Machinists.

Looking back at that time of fear I suppose I could feel highly flattered that I was one of the 12’0000 chosen. Which reminds me of Berthold Brecht of “Three Penny Opera” fame who was truly upset back in the thirties during the Nazis “Book Burning” when he learned that the Nazis had not burned his books.

Could it be, that what we have here is a list of 12,000 people who chose to be the anti war anti fascist resistors of the fifties? Though deprived by history maybe they should be on an honor role of true patriots who chose to stand up for the Constitutional Rights of the citizens.

If I could get a list of the whole bunch I could publish on the blog as an honor role. Wouldn’t that be fun? Okay I will send off a letter to the FBI under “The Freedom Of Information Act” and we can see what happens. Kate, forever vigilant suggests that I need to get permission from all those folks to publish their names. Of course she is right but I suspect that the overwhelming number have departed this potato.

I am going to comeback with thoughts on 2007 as well as the Primary Circus that is now in full swing.

Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Hoarfrost

On a recent morning I awoke to a world surrounded by crystal. A fine rain had frozen on every plant and blade of grass--a most magical scene that nature has ever derived. I have tried to catch some of that magic in the poem “Hoarfrost”.

Hoarfrost
She comes at night
To put her carpets down.
Walk so light-a mantel of crystal
On withered grass and weed-stem leaf.
Hurry, light cracks the eastern sky,
tread so gentle
The work is hair fine spun.
Come quickly now-at sunlights first peak
All is gone.
But yet hush-a wisp of wind.
A world of sound now to begin.
Think not of summer’s coat.
Thorns leaves stem all jewel encased
Preserved for later date.