Max Shields, June 1 at 12:57 pm #

I think you may be interested in this documentary showing five family farms around this nation, the dedication, even passion these folks have for the hard work of farming and the growing understanding that organic farming is a necessity.

fivefarms.org

Why then are you on the Internet Anarissia? How do you maintain information to gain knowledge? Or is it just easier to turn it off an throw it away? In Nature the easiest way is usually taken. Good fortune on that as an information strategy.

The article on “econocides” is another indicator of just how bad things really are. Read it at your peril.

I watch TV, DVD and read the news paper and listen to the radio. Plus many other sources. I am fortunate to have a Pacifica Radio outlet. My mother thinks I just take it all in without discernment. But then I had to correct her on that myth about Obama being a “secret Muslim.”

Night-Gaunt:
‘Despite what you may think Anarssisia TV does have many good things on it. So “turning it off” is a simple way of limiting yourself. I would recommended discernment in watching over such a simplistic but ultimately easier course of action. How about the radio too? News paper? Will you just use your eyes and ears in your own experience and nothing more? ...’

There are many avenues of information besides TV, radio and newspapers.  In fact I have not watched television or read a newspaper in many years, except for stuff quoted or copied to the Internet, books, or DVDs.  I confess that I sometimes listen to radio, but only if it is broadcasting some kind of music that I like.  One syllable of news or opinion and off it goes.

An important characteristic of the media you mention is that they are one-to-many, unlike the telephone and telegraph (one-to-one) or the town meeting or the Internet (many-to-many).  They resemble the authoritarian classroom or political meeting, where the great leader or teacher speaks to passive subjects and lets them know what’s what.  Needless to say the focal point, the lectern, the great-leader role, is taken over by aggressive ruling-class types or their servants.  Thus, they encourage, indeed, enact passivity and submission.

Beyond that, television has been observed to have peculiar physical effects on the nervous systems of those who watch it.  Some of this may be a characteristic of the display medium itself, which cycles 30 times per second and may interfere with the various wave patterns in human brains, but some of it appears to have been achieved very deliberately by the sort of editing practiced (fast, abrupt cutting, mostly).  The overall effect seems to be to put people in a physically depressed trance state.  It’s a kind of addictive drug, but electronic instead of chemical.  And like most downers, television turns off the more complex mental states.  Instead, messages to buy this or that, to work at a stupid job, and to support and applaud violence, are injected into the hypnotized audience, to become effective as soon as the target is activated by basic physiological drives like hunger, anger or sex.

My advice about television is to turn it off and throw it out.  Newspapers may prove useful for picking up dog excreta or lining bird cages, but these you may be able to get free by stealing them from someone else’s doorstep, thus doing both them and yourself a favor.

Despite what you may think Anarssisia TV does have many good things on it. So “turning it off” is a simple way of limiting yourself. I would recommended discernment in watching over such a simplistic but ultimately easier course of action. How about the radio too? News paper? Will you just use your eyes and ears in your own experience and nothing more? Don’t limit your information sources just have a good means of knowing what is real and what is propaganda.

I am listening to a speech given by Paul Roberts on the problem of food. Its quality, and quantity in our over industrialized world of attenuated logistical tracks that are very brittle. Mass starvation on an even larger scale than of the past 30 years could easily happen if those supply chains are interrupted. Climate change and energy shortages too figure into to it. Also the fact that massive AgriBusiness have simplified they types and the genomes of the animals and plants they use. [As monopolistic as their ways of doing business.] Leaves out diversity and homogenizes their mass production processes to make it easier and cheaper for them. A great danger of monoculture to any diseases could wipe out huge swaths of food. Also so much of the food is for animals only. A great waste there. Less meat too needs to be produced and eaten. All trends are in the opposite direction. That too can’t be sustained for long. If we don’t decide and change our ways the natural order of things will do it for us and against us.

Mandate of the Law

The 70% Majority Common Population of the United States do not have the resources to carry out the mandate of class and cultural requirements of law subjectively imposed upon them, without their legislative, judicial and executive participation in promulgation of the law, by the combined 30% minority populations of the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class singularity of toadies to the American aristocracy.

The U.S. Government, the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class singularity of toadies to the American aristocracy all require resources in order to carry out their self imposed mandates; resources that they all squeeze out ot the 70% MAJORITY Common Population for their own greedy benefit that leaves the 70% MAJORITY Common Population of the United States poor, having nothing but their dreams, subject to law they had no part in making, imprisoned without benefit or participation in the making of the law being used against them and having nothing but their dreams.

The American aristocracy and their Professional Middle Class singularity of toadies to the American aristocracy are, have been and continue to tread heavily on the 70% MAJORITY Common Population of the United States with their subjective law, a population that has nothing but their dreams and do not share in the life, liberty and happiness of the American aristocracy and their Professional Middle Class singularity of toadies to the American aristocracy.

It is time for the 70% MAJORITY Common Population of the United States to wake up from their slumber as sleepers beneath the rails of the vast commercial engine that is the United States, and demand a share of the resources carried by the rails and the trains, rather than to continue to be sleepers beneath the rails bearing all of the weight and receiving none of the benefit.

Cathy:
‘Eric Schlosser was on The Colbert Report last night talking about the new documentary Food, Inc.  I finally watched a few months ago the film “Fast Food Nation” that was based on his book by that name—chilling “fictional” account based on fact.  Now comes the non-fiction where names are named finally in Food, Inc   I hope that Americans are smart enough to put their desire for mindless and brainless entertainment for a moment to watch something like this, be horrified, and start demanding change. ...’

I think people have to start being change, not demanding it.  The first step will probably be to turn off the TV.

I am glad to hear from Max and David that some people are doing just that.

Eric Schlosser was on The Colbert Report last night talking about the new documentary Food, Inc.  I finally watched a few months ago the film “Fast Food Nation” that was based on his book by that name—chilling “fictional” account based on fact.  Now comes the non-fiction where names are named finally in Food, Inc   I hope that Americans are smart enough to put their desire for mindless and brainless entertainment for a moment to watch something like this, be horrified, and start demanding change.  Based on real-life conversations with people I’m not hopeful that the sheeple will do this, but hope springs eternal.

By david middelstetter, June 2 at 11:21 pm

Agree. I don’t think we need to “go it alone”, but we need to re-kindle basics like cooking whole food and canning and gardening food.

By Anarcissie, June 2 at 6:26 pm #

Food Sovereignty is a world-wide movement. There are local food system movements throughout the US. Wherever you live you should be able to find one. Or start one. There is a network you can connect with to see where this is happening.

I’m deeply involved in a number of sustainable initiatives including a local food system which includes community gardening as well as local farm and fisheries. We can learn, even have fun, and become acquainted with one another.

The government could have a place, but start local. The only semblence of democracy is at the local level. All else is big time corporate money and imperial empire schemes that have NOTHING to do with living.

We need to get that for ourselves.

Max Shields:
’... Food sovereignty is the only way to recover our food, our lives, our very souls. ...’

How do you plan to bring this about?

This is not a rhetorical question.

The Food Bank here in my Central Valley town is still a viable concern though the numbers of recipients are rising, as witnessed by Anarcissie, June 2 at 4:19 pm # . Possibly because my town is in the midst of one of the great farming areas in the world and many farmers donate food on a regular basis. Farmers are good and honest people,  large agribusiness is a criminal activity.

The question is what solutions are viable.

Michigan will have, after the next round of cuts by GM, one million unemployed citizens. As the author notes, pensions are disappeared or dramatically reduced and health care for retirees is beyond the ability of too many to afford.

All the while Washington gives away a trillion or so dollars to people who have no difficulties whatever buying food or affording health care.The same companies that are cutting pensions and medical coverage to retirees, laying off or cutting hours to working folks, the same companies that are directly responsible for our current economic crisis in fact, are receiving billions.

Our governance is upside down, obviously, catering to the 2% and allowing great hardship to befall the other 98%. If we wish to see a cessation of this nation’s plummeting fall towards third world status we must first recognize and clearly delineate the problem.

As the Libertarian would state, the problem IS the government, but the solution is not the abandonment of that government as that political opinion would have us believe, it is the redirection of its actions. Sooner rather than later it must come to us all that voting for either major political party is going to result in the same decision making we now see, the same ignoring of the working class and the same enriching of the very few.

It is the hard and cold fact that there will be no short term solution to our corporate governance sorry to say, but there is a solution. I believe it to be voting for those candidates pledged to accept no monies from corporations, thus owing no allegiance to them.  Instead we would see a demand from within the Legislature to expand not curtail the social safety net for our citizenry, we would see a demand for real and nonprofit health care.

Heck, we might even see a call for free elections and IRV . We need those independent and third party candidates and we need them now. Thanks ever so much for listening.

The trade agreements the US has with other nations is no different than what occurs here in the States. Look at our cities. They’ve been decimated. Look at our rural areas. Incredible poverty. Food pantries get nutritionless surplus from just in time inventory systems at food chains. They use to get day old food; now it’s pure garbage high fructose chips and cookies, and coke. This is what the needed get in the US of A.

It’s broken. Obama spends his time feeding the banks and wall street; with a big fat grin. He’s heading up one of the most vile empires of history.

The food system, like much else in this neoliberal/corporate empire, is broken. It stopped providing healthy food for most middle, low, and poor income people decades ago. In place of it was junk food for all for industrialized fields and fossil-based nitrate “fertilizer” and pesticides.

We pump into the supermarkets and into the world market as a commodity. It’s pure unadulterated garbage.

Food sovereignty is the only way to recover our food, our lives, our very souls.

The 2008 food crisis did not end, nor was it begun in 2008. Grain, corn and soy have been dumped on the indigenous people of the world destroying their farms, then when the food prices go up, they starve!!

That’s how the American corporate capitalistic food system works. Just like colonial days. Westerners raped these people. Left them with nothing; then they go back with their free trade arrangements and genetically engineered corporated created seeds and beat the hell out of these people.

If the US doesn’t kill you will invasions and occupation, it does it with poisonous trade agreements.

Anarcissie—I have seen similar things here, at the “job center” (ie welfare office). it is packed with armed cops.

I dont know though, as long as the people who are angry are poor, the govt will probably, eventually, just call DynaCorp.

I did see where Sec. of Ag.Vilsack is calling for a change in the NAME of “food stamps” to “nutritional support”. That should help alot.
He says this to a lady working in a food bank, “Can I ask one thing of you? Please do not call them food stamps. It sounds like charity. It really is ‘nutritional support’”.

Thank you for your service, Vilsack.

Recently I noticed something which may bear on this subject.

I work (or play) with a group of people who distribute free food.  Although this distribution is to all comers, naturally the people most interested in it appear to be poor, and the distribution takes place in a poor neighborhood.  We’ve been doing this at the current location for more than a year, and the atmosphere has been generally friendly, genial, and easy-going.

Lately, though, there’s been a change.  The people that come around are anxious and sometimes angry.  Last week, people were not only grabbing up food as fast as they could, they just about came to blows over stuff like boxes of cereal.  This was something I hadn’t seen before.

I mentioned it to one of the older residents and she said, “Why, these people are hungry.  They can’t get anything to eat any more.”  It seems the community pantries are empty, more people are coming to them, and donors like supermarkets and other stores, seeing less trade, have less in stock and less to give away.

So I thought maybe we are not as far away from food riots and a resurgence of the crimes of desperation as we might have thought.

Sasha Abramsky seems to think a more generous dispensation from on high, like a rise in the minimum wage, is going to solve the problem.  My guess is that if the poor get more money, the price of food and everything else is simply going to be raised, but our lords and masters and their flacks and fools, new and old, don’t seem to be paying any attention to the problem anyway.  They’re concerned with bankers, brokers, and automobile executives.  So maybe it will be a big surprise when people go into the streets, and the boss media start pulling their hair out about looters, terrorists, rioters, anarchists and so forth.

Just posting my observations at this point; make of them what you can.  And maybe you should lay in some beans and rice.

Good points, Max.

hawkeye—good luck getting anything on birth control through this Congress. Theyre even using it as an excuse to not pass health care ‘reform”.

We need to teach birth control instead of “encouraging marriage” and “faith based initiatives”.

ardee,

Thanks for the reference. Another place is Goa, India.

Big Wes,

The dilemma is that the automabile and the combustian engine and the energy that goes into building those contraptions and the massive infrastructure are unsustainable. If we all drove Prias the problem would continue on this unsustainable trajectory (same is true with the delusion of election cars, it is not simply the energy to run them but the incredible energy required to build an ever larger global fleet).

Our world must be transformed. It is not about giving more to everyone, but living within our/earth’s means. There are urban gardens that can feed everyone. We have become so habituated by the chain food stores that we think “buying” food is the way you get human energy. We have no relationship between the food we take in, the environment that produces it for all. It is the crime. Land, the natural world order has been forsaken for the ugly modernist version of reality.

It’s a dead end; and we need to stop forcing down the throats of people around the world!

Max Shields, June 1 at 12:57 pm
Re: Third world food production

Have you noted what the govt of India is accomplishing in Punjab Province? NPR.org will get you to a current discussion of the move away from chemicals and genetically altered food and back to organic production of foodstuffs.

Our corporate overlords have bled us until we could no longer sustain the system.  Skyrocketing gas prices, increases in food costs, subprime teaser rates exploding upwards, and the creeping death of job outsourcing finally caught up with us.  We can’t pay our mortgages, buy expensive doo-dads, and drive gas guzzlers anymore. The pain reverberates up the ladder.  Suddenly, their mortgage backed securities are worth jack crap and corporate earnings are in the toilet because we can’t consume anymore.  The elite are smart, so why didn’t they see this coming?

I think it’s really all a ploy by the ultra elite (the top 1% of the top 1%) to grab up even more wealth and power.  They threw the Rick Wagoners and the Bernie Madoffs under the bus to draw away the scorn of unwashed masses, all the while they get richer at the expense of the taxpayers and their newly downtrodden former underlings.  President Obama is bought and paid for by the same forces that put W. in office.  When the VP has the (largely unpublicized) nickname, “The Senator from MBNA,” it’s easy to see where the true allegiances lie.

The fattest cats of them all use bailout money to pay for their shiny new acquisitions (huge banks swallowing up other huge banks with taxpayer dollars and little regulatory vetting) while they sit back and get even richer.  But don’t stop making your mortgage or credit card payment.  And sure as hell don’t come looking for a handout, because the federal and state governments have already done everything they can for you unless you’re a multinational corporation.  We’ve got us this recession (arguably a depression) on and it’s up to you to do for you and yours…

With the subfusion of the corporate ethos of production for the consumer and creation of want to fill their coffers with our money at our expense. They are so removed from the reality of things. So over manufactured to the point of uselessness. We have food-like eatables but not real food. You must eat so much of it to get just some of the required vitamins and minerals but not all. While at the same time it is loaded with the kinds of fast carbohydrates, sugars and salts that lead to obesity, diabetes, kidney failure and premature death in large quantities. We now have the odd creature called a “nutritionist” because foods have become “food” for our eyes but not our bodies. In the real world of real food such an idea is redundant and unnecessary.

The old series “Max Headroom” (set in the latter 21st century) had such a joke by Max about Zic-Zac’s food packaging had more nutrients than the mass produced bio-synthetic burger itself!  Our future, not too far away.

Like so many things of importance to our lives, food and water are and the corporate mentality is to own them and then own us. In a monopolistic environment the business is assured profits to the end of time.

The closer it is the natural food the harder it is to find, the more expensive it is and the less it is advertised. Such is the topsy-turvey world of corporate land we live in.

Ardee,

Certainly realize that the author/interviewee could not cover all. What I presented is central to the problem and so it is inadequate not to cover.

Part of the reason, no doubt, are the interviewers, who appear to know very little about the subject and therefore did not press on the central issues.

What is the central issues in hunger here and round the world: FOOD SOVEREIGNTY. Until that is understood the subject is being treated in the old way but with a little more umph.

The results by the Northern developed nations have been abysmal. Most of the world hunger resides in former colonies. When the indigenous people were invaded and occupied, they lost the knowlege of food; it was taken from them and supplanted by developed/modernist versions of trade and ultimately the agribusiness/global food system which leaves those in need in even greater need. The pumping of funding or Bono charity has done more to cripple these people.

Look to Latin America for examples of rejuvination - specifically Brazil and Cuba, for starts.

It’s about food sovereignty, not grain/corn/soy dumping by the US and monocultural farming and genetic engineered seed. the latter has ruined the connection between the land/sea and food for people.

The same issue resides here. We have urban gardens sprouting up and these are good signs. Why should anyone go hungry in a world blessed with abundance?

The commons has been privatized by imperial capitalist in the West/USA is one area to look closely at.

The rich no where the wealth is - OWNING NATURAL RESOURCES. And that is precisely what makes the poor poor and impoverished.

Max Shields, May 31 at 6:26 pm #

All in all a very meaty comment, about which I would only add a couple of things.

The author could not possibly cover all the bases in one interview or even one book probably.

With the advent of multi-national agribusiness, and its invention of genetically altered crops , where the seeds do not belong to the farmer any longer, thus indebting them to servitude each growing cycle, the problem is not the supply of food.

The profit motive usurps the natural cycle of growing and harvesting of foodstuffs, further it wreaks havoc upon our planet , poisoning the earth, water tables and the consumer with equal aplomb.

When these large growers can undercut the price of crops grown locally by small farmers in market places, as we see in Mexico, Central and South America now, do we wonder why millions leave their farms and cross our borders desperate for work?

Its a large topic, an interrelated one and more complicated than most realise I fear.

Abramsky does not understand the systemics and root causes of hunger and/or poverty.

His solution is to provide (“jobs”) funding through jobs/work to continue the entrenched broken global food system. This system has fattened most of the American people (even its poorest of poor) at the expense of the rest of the world of the South.

Hunger is not for want of “food” it is because we have disconnected ourselves from the earth that provides an abundance of food. The problem, short term, may seem to have a solution by paying people more (living wage) or by keeping gas prices down to ensure transportation.

This does not solve the problem, but exaserbates not only the the USA (where we consume much of the natural resources already) but for most of the rest of the world where real starvation is occuring.

Abramsky is correct in identifying our current institutions set up to “fight world hunger” as part of the problem. But he never explains that in this interview. His solutions are near-sighted at best.

Food is everywhere. We are so dependent upon “buying” it that we stopped making it. It expect agribusinesses to take care of our food, even though much of that is barely nutrious food at all.

This is a problem which cannot go the route of tying income to its solutions. It is not the GDP or the per capita income that determines hunger. It is our ability to use our energies to produce what is there combined with informal knowledge of what food is.

I know this sounds a bit absurd in an absurd capitalistic corporate world. but that world has failed mightily. And there are good reasons why, and if it persists it makes the problem much much worse.

will it be the bread liners and you the semi inteligensia who ban with red necks and lefties.  who will go stand vigil in washington and when. who and how many instead of these piddling little pockets of demonstration no disrepect to those who are actually getting out and going to stand but it’s not enough. but it’s a start. may fizzle out. may blossom. kind of like betting on when a bay will be born. or when and where a next american war will occur. or heads or tails.  at this rate i’ll wager spring of 2012.

It is also a good gauge of the legal system.

The disparity we have right now between the ultra rich and the rest of us is just like when we had the last Great Depression. Depressing isn’t it?

For now fore closer companies are doing booming business but that won’t last long. So many of those job search businesses too have gone out of business. Not too many prospects. Especially in the higher paying and higher educated jobs. Either sent overseas or just gone. Some have returned in a lower paying format. Or are part-time, contract, limited and that is with impossible conditions made to keep down the overwhelming number of applicants for each job.

For many more the depression is already here. For a few others it is a Great Depression or dead from starvation or lack of health care or suicide.

All of these and more in the “Richest & Greatest Country on God’s Green Earth.”

I agree with Purple Girl. Saying that what was done in the “financial services sector” (which only exists as a figment of imagination), was “all pretty legal” sounds like a deforming of Colbert’s “truthiness”.

What, “legalish”?? It was fraud, peeps. It is not as if these people cant be indicted. It is whether they will be.

This is a good way to tell which side someone is on.

The HUGE discrepency between the top 1% and the remaining 99% is Proof that those who sung the advantages of a ‘Trickle Down’ economic structure were out to reinstitute a Feudalistic Cast System in the US- thus committed Economic TREASON.Even more damning is the Fact taht every Great emprie that ran on a ‘Trickle Down’ economy Collapsed. Thus they were not only out to destroy the FREE Market system- but out to Destroy the Power and influence of This Country.Thus not only making their crimes Economic Treason- but Outright Treason.
Add to that the Fact that numerous other countries and their citizens rely on our mutual Exchange of good and services, and our generous charitable support- that jacks the Crimes committed by those ‘Trickle Down’ Economic Gurus to Crimes Against Humanity.
Who should first be lead to the Gallows- Greenspan? Who should be teethered in tow behind him- Phil Gramm, Rubin,Summers, Bill Clinton….Many Deans and Professors of Business and Economics too?
Want to see Wall Street get Ethic and morals instilled Quickly- lop the head off just one for these High Crimes.Re- Education on the Edge of a blade.

What the hell….. it seems to me everyone is simply saying let’s give up.  Are you TROLLS…?

If this is what YOU have decided to do, go ahead… but don’t be confused if the REST OF THE COUNTRY, stands up and does something about it.

Bullshit extraordinaire, that’s what I hear, yeah…. according to YOU PEOPLE, we should simply lay down and DIE.  To each their own…. but, please… don’t include the rest of us in your demented analogies.

The MERE fact that so many of you endorse “giving up” is illuminating…. in fact, you shine brightly.

I’m sorry, Inherit The Wind, you’re right.  I was reading tropicgirl’s post before yours and I got the two mixed up. 

Tropicgirl summed up the present situation up, well.

KDelphi, I would it if charities existed at a minimum.  Right now it’s an direct proportion to the number of people consistently in trouble in this country.  Although charities are big business and Newsday Long Island recently did a story on the amount of money out of every dollars that actually helps people—the bigger the charity the less went to direct aid—in many cases a truly paltry number. 

The way the word affordable means is a joke—nothing more than an advertising catch phrase.  There is very little affordable to a median income family these days—and I was shocked at how low the median is in the U.S.  That median sure benefits Wal-Mart, though. 

And I have noticed that Obama has never used the word “poor” either.  I keep waiting—I will not hold my breath on that one.  Most of the people he’s talked to on the road that might think of themselves are middle class are the new working poor and the poor are now, in fact, beyond destitute. 

I don’t know what to say about Michelle.  My impression is that she’s a good act.  I can’t see as genuine, as others seem to.  She came across as angry and hard at the beginning of the campaign and suddenly became this warm and fuzzy and carrying individual—part of the Obama brand. 

Lastly, I do legal transcription for a living and the misery of people comes across my desk everyday—it is very sad and depressing.

With the type of Capitalism practiced in the US, bubble and bust are inevitable.

If you look back over the history of Empires, the “middle class boom” was a fluke. There is no way anyone can point to the 40’s-80’s as evidence that this form of Capitalism “works”.

It is simply a result of the “financial services industry”

No other “democracy” (or “republic”, if you will) has the bulk of citizens living with such a huge desparity between the haves and the have-nots. This form of Capitalism had to fail and it should fail.
It is unjust and wastes scare resources at a rate that is totally unsustainable. If the US economy “recovers” and we go back to the same mess, we will have learned nothing.
Its not sustainable on the planet.

Maybe Pres. Obama will try a “New DeaL” type rescue of the “system”, but, he doesnt seem to have the will…Just doing the same thing, throwing in a LIttle Keynes, and, waiting for another bubble is no solution for a long term, serious economy.

The US needs a system based on people more than profits. No-reg Capitalists have managed to convince most people that everyone acting in their own short-term self-interests works out for the best. We can now see plainly that this is not true.

Extreme “individualism” is just not borne out by evolution.  The upper classes have convinced people that they cannot have democracy without Capitalism.

Despite all that has happened, there has been no movement towards “reform” or “regulation” and, then why should there be—-the people who caused this are paying no price. People have lost their homes, their jobs and their savings. And not one Wall St robber has paid a penny or done any time in jail, even though it is plain that fraud was committed.

They will do to you whatever you are willing to put up with, for as long as they can do it. That is their “self-interest”—why would a “free mkt-er” expect them to behave any differently?

Cathy, May 30 at 4:24 pm #

We don’t want handouts.  Americans are not afraid of work—that has been proven again and again.
*************************************************

Cathy, Tropicgirl didn’t say that—I did.  Check below.

tropicgirl said in regards to job banks:  This was the one legitimate Republican criticism: Programs like this usually don’t work, they merely exist as a scheme to provide work to the people who work there.  See, FDR’s public works programs actually identified real needs—roads, dams, parks, and then hired armies of workers to build them.  They worked and created infrastructure as they did so.

I have written until I’m blue in the face, FDR really was bold in his jobs problem.  These were real jobs for real people—and boy do we have work cut out for us in that area again.  Help for the states which directly affects this kind of work—not happening.  Speaking of parks’ jobs, I heard in California they’re planning to close them temporarily.  How that helps to lose those tourist bucks, I don’t know.  All I know is there is no help for California.  And, remember, it happens in California first and then moves east. 

In America, if you are not a corporation or a bank or worth millions—or I guess billions now—there is nothing for you.  Nada, you are a failure, you are a loser, you didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

We don’t want handouts.  Americans are not afraid of work—that has been proven again and again.

No, Marx has nothing to do with this descent and it isn’t the kind of socialism that will help us, just the corporations. So maybe Mussolini should be the one you should be looking to.

Jason!!, May 30 at 11:10 am #

Meanwhile, Pravda Mocks US Descent Into Marxism at Breakneck Speed
..............................

I believe that it would be more accurate to claim an ascent into Marxism, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. All in all a curious article from a curious source.

Those interested in the distinction might spend a bit of time here:
http://www.marxists.org/subject/students/index.htm

It would behoove you to read Trotsky’s good criticisms as well:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm

Outdated, certainly (1936) but pertinent still.

Meanwhile, Pravda Mocks US Descent Into Marxism at Breakneck Speed

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

Irony.

Our human condition is an inevitable result, in large part, to our unchecked capitalism. Our food is designed to increase our desire for unhealthy and addictive substances, not to be nutritious.

I recall , and rather vividly too, a conversation between my grandfather, two of my uncles and my dad. One uncle, Uncle Miltie ( yeah really), noted that only one thing claimed the same percentage of a family’s budget now ( this was early fifties)as it did before WW1 ... food.

The gist of his comments were that we should expect this to change at some point in the future and it has. His prophesies were pretty accurate. He was a smart guy , if not in line with the beliefs of the rest of my democratic family members. He and Rose ( his wife) had moved to Chicago and were not at most family functions any longer. I was only a kid but enjoyed listening to those politically charged conversations.

Sad to say the Dominionists are getting their way. Machiavelli once observed that the most difficult thing in the world is to replace one organization with another. After failing in 1934, and not being punished by FDR, they worked and schemed and started again in 1980. In 2009 they are poised to finish the job of removing our Republic.

From 1945-1980 our middle classes were created and flourished then have been on the decline. My contention is that it has been part of a long range plan to cripple us then remove the Republic. So far it has been working with Obama now accelerating it by at least four fold. It could still get much worse. He and Geithner haven’t been fixing the problem just holding it off as they pump even more water behind the wall.

Unlike Russia we aren’t prepared for a complete economic collapse. http://www.cluborlov.com/ will show you the 5 steps of collapse as mapped out by Dmitry Orlov. I say that the Dominionists will lend a helping hand after we reach #3.

Despite the fact that I lost my job 6 weeks ago, I’m lucky.  We’re OK and hopefully will continue to be as my wife is still working.  Meanwhile I try to add value doing those things we would otherwise have to pay for, like household and automotive maintenance and repairs—it adds up.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the people who aren’t so lucky.  I saw a lady selling her bits of jewelry so she could pay the gas bill when it was still cold, just to tide her over until a sales job at Macy’s started paying her.  I sat next to a woman at an unemployment “Jobs Bank” mandatory seminar.  Her cell rang and she said “I can’t answer it. It’s a bill collector and I’ve been out of work since December. None of them want to hear that I just have no money and still have to eat. So I don’t answer.”

Meanwhile this idiot jobs bank: “Come in anytime and use our facilities.”  But how do you get there? It’s easy to find, but….there’s NO place to park. None.  The one lot marked “Visitors” was 2/3 full, but the gate was pulled and chained and padlocked.  The sign on the building said you can’t park on that street.  All there is around there is VERY poor neighborhood.  How are you SUPPOSED to get there? Public bus? Taxi? Hitch-hike? Ankle Express?

THAT was the one legitimate Republican criticism: Programs like this usually don’t work, they merely exist as a scheme to provide work to the people who work there.  See, FDR’s public works programs actually identified real needs—roads, dams, parks, and then hired armies of workers to build them.  They worked and created infrastructure as they did so.

How phuggin’ hard is that to understand?
And I guarantee there is not ONE job there in my field. I can’t imagine any of the companies who have the jobs I can do going through the New Jersey State Jobs Bank.

Its about six months since Obama became president.

Still nothing has been done to help the people of America, even the ones Obama used as props during his campaign. We are hopelessly lost and abandoned. Losing our homes, our children’s future’s, a chance at education, self respect.

We are further and further disgusted at the codifying of the Bush mistakes by Obama, making them permanent, in the areas of war, drones, murder of innocents and COVERING IT UP.

We still have no idea what the hell his health care proposal is but it doesn’t matter because no one likes it, no matter who you are. Its a RIP or DOA if it ever arrives.

We still have no laws that will prevent Obama’s buddies, the bankers, from raping us again, just like our soldiers apparently raped innocent people in Iraq.

Israel is still in the process of wiping out Palestinians.

No one knows what the hell Hillary does.

The CIA is a stinking pit and so are their offspring.

More and more people are becoming sickened at the fact that Obama ran for president knowing full well himself that he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

Horeshack, the budget director, is in another world of his own creation.

Wall Street is about to become outlawed by the rest of the world.

Corporations are still outsourcing and offshoring jobs but now they are doing it with bailout money.

Michelle is still posing for fashion magazines.

When is the corporate press going to notice that the left hates him just as much as the right? Go on, ignore it. Thats going to make it even more of a shock. 

Obama will be gone about as fast as he arrived. And you won’t see anyone really unhappy.

Just typing while I’m listening….so its kindve train of thought.

Night Guant—Yes, and, the impoverished just go freeze to death, or die of a completely treatable disease..I cannot say that I go hungry…I guess I am not a big eater. But, I know many that do. Then, when you get sick from eating all this trash, you cant get health care….

Some here say that charity will take care of these problems, and, that the lady in the food bank deserves nothing—they owe her nothing. But, they still take her tax money , when she can buy food, and give it to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates multi-nationals.. They should listen to this program….The lines at the food stamp office are beyond the parking lot. I knew that many of these people NEVER thought that they would have to go there…WHY does the middle class have to suffer before they give a rat’s ass??!!

As fewer and fewer can afford to give to food banks, more and more will go hungry. More will sleep in parks. Anyone who thinks that a person can focus on anything , except survival, under these conditions, is callous beyong repair.

Charity is unreliable, condescending and a dead -end.

We need to change the socio-economic-political system.

The US neo-liberal class should be ashamed of themselves.

“More affordable” and “more accessible” means what? Someone will not be able to afford it or access it. We need single payer folks, like civilized countries have.

The minimum wage is astoundingly ridiculous.

I dont see the “liberal” in Pres. Obama , either. I also do not see his “tremendous ability to put himself in others’ shoes”.

He has some great ideas—-good luck getting Pres. Obama or The Nation mag (which I just stopped subscribing to, even though it was a gift) to listen to any of it seriously. If these people had the capability to “put themselves in others shoes”, we would not be where we are. Where do you see the big “change”, Mr. Abramsky?? Pres. Obama never even says the word “poor”.

I dont see WHY the US economy HAS to be based on huge corporations. And we dont need to spread our misery to the world, either.

I’d love to read the book…No justice AND no peace!

The same things I have been saying since 2001 but without the fine detail Mr. Abramski has given us. I hope to eventually get his book, if I can afford it.

The hidden sign of our times. Inevitable outcome of the wrecking of our middle classes into poverty.