The Time For Cowardice is Over

Progressives, (now that we have allowed the term liberal to be trashed by Fox News pundits), have indulged in a bit of what has been generously referred to as political noblesse oblige for the last 30 years or so. I am not so generous. I call it cowardice, and I think it should stop, and right now.

For far too long, we have allowed fact-challenged, fearful, angry, bigoted, double-digit I.Q. types to have their little rants without suffering idiot-quashing rebuttal and, in so doing, have allowed the bar for serious political discourse to be to be set just millimeters above the ground.

And, for consistently sitting back in muted shock and awe while garbage-in inevitably produced garbage-out in Washington, our tacit acceptance condemns us as complicitors in the resultant disastrous political and economic consequences.

We sat back while a B-movie-co-star-to-a-chimp, spewed memorized ideological propaganda to an ignorant, impressionable public (yes, let’s also admit that humanity has not progressed as far as our technology would lead us to believe) starting with the line: “government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”

The Gipper was right, of course, but the only problem that government actually posed at the time was as an impediment to big business hegemony and the destruction of the middle class. And progressives saw it coming but just lowered their eyes and bared their bums rather than fight against the massive deficit spending, gutting of unions, and a tax structure jerry- rigged to benefit only the wealthy.

The Death Valley Days veteran proclaimed in his best down-home-Hollywood-speak, that lowering taxes for the wealthy/corporations and eliminating burdensome government regulation of business would “trickledown” wealth to the middle class and the poor. So we sat patiently, stupidly, waiting for a flow that turned out to be all trick and no trickle.

And what little wealth did once belong to the middle class actually began to trickle up to the super rich and corporations. Middle class incomes flat-lined, then declined in real terms, and job benefits mutated from rule to exception. We allowed unions to become a dirty word, just like liberals, and the number of unprotected workers skyrocketed like pregnancies after prom night.

Thirty years later, and we are still cowering like sheep, inaudibly complaining (bleating maybe) among the herd that that first drop of wealth from above, never dripped, yet we can’t seem to tear ourselves away from Dancing With The Stars long enough to prevent the new wave of snake oil salespeople from cementing the identical double-speak policy far into our increasingly abysmal future.

As the religious right crazies began taking over media outlets, persecuting gays, and sanctioning the murder of abortion providers, we cowered and did nothing to effectively shame them then and are doing nothing now. You may feel uncomfortable with the notion of someone who blindly obeys the will of divine voices in their head in charge of our nuclear arsenal,  but that is what may happen for real next year.

And when the greatly strengthened corporate interests and the religious right picked a guy for their standard-bearer who could not finish a sentence, we clucked our tongues, but little else…and we did this twice. Look where our cowardice got us.

Yet, two unfunded wars, thousands of American kids dead or disabled, corporate hegemony, rampant unemployment, and a collapse of the world economy have had little effect on the behavior of we cowards who knew better, and did nothing, even as we were being screwed from 2000, to 2008, in every orifice imaginable.

And now that corporate financed “grass roots” politicians are altering state laws to disenfranchise the young and the old and the sick and the poor and minorities, what are we doing to stop it? If you think that it can’t happen to you, it may already have.

And now that those same corporate-financed “grass roots” politicians are firing teachers, firefighters, cops, and other government workers, what are we doing to stop it? How many folks on your block have to go into foreclosure, before you will turn off the Jersey Shore and do something to defend your fellow Americans?

And now that those same corporate-financed “grass roots” politicians are spewing the same 30-year-old garbage that health care reform, clean air and water, worker safety, a fair shake for the poor and the middle class, closing tax loopholes for the super rich are all nasty “job killers,” why are we so afraid to openly expose these lies as lies and the spewers as liars?

And when the new crop of Tea/GOP crazies pan Social Security as a “ lie and a Ponzi scheme,” and tell us that we have to turn Medicare over to Wall Street, we can actually spot the mendacity, pouring from their pores like sweat off a racehorse, but what are we doing to send them back to their stables?

How bad does it have to get before we finally lose the Stockholm Syndrome and start answering back: to friends on the social media, on blogs like this one, and during the debate on each and every bull-pucky bill proposed by those corporate-funded “grass roots” politicians.

I, for one, am tired of the self-loathing that necessarily accompanies a life of cowardice. I have always been happy to discuss issues with anyone and everyone who wants to chat and will continue to try and find common ground with those who honestly feel differently than me.

But I will no longer sit back and let the insane run the asylum, and that includes telling a friend, colleague, or politician that he/she is wrong and why, and not backing down when they quote Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the Tea/GOP presidential candidates in support of their misguided views.

And I am asking all Americans to beg, borrow, or steal a spine and join in a national discussion, which is long overdue.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Our President is offering a common sense jobs plan called the American Jobs Act, which will help in the short run and will work in the long run, if combined with, a sensible trade policy and the abrogation of tax-loopholes for the super rich and corporations.  A vast majority of Americans are already in favor of the proposals within this plan.

Most of its provisions were based upon GOP or bipartisan ideas, but the Tea/GOP congress has already opposed the plan, because it includes closing tax loopholes for the super-rich/big corporations. And they have already said that they would rather pass nothing, than “give Obama a win.”

Now may be a perfect time to get off your rump and bump, don’t you think? AmericaJobsAct.com

JBS

Lessons Learned From Denver Cop Reinstatements

In a city known for the most violent police force per capita, for a city of its size, you would think that the newly appointed Denver Manager of Safety, Ashley Kilroy, would have offered at least one feeble rationale for reinstating the two officers who were caught on camera gratuitously beating an innocent citizen Michael DeHerrera into unconsciousness and then lying about it while under an official investigation.

We get a hint in the Denver Post report that Mr. Kilroy did not exactly agree with the decision of the Denver Civil Service Commission to reinstate Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr, for assaulting Mr. DeHerrera with a black jack into unconsciousness, just because DeHerrera was on his phone and might have been filming them from across the street gratuitously beating up one of his friends. 

I am sure that Mr. Kilroy was also concerned that the two cops confiscated and conveniently “lost” De Herrera’s camera, and then unlawfully cited the hospitalized DeHerrera for interference.

It must have also bothered Mr. Kilroy that, when the officers were busted by another incriminating video source which they had neglected to destroy, they continued to lie to officials and claim self-defense, even after the video clearly showed that the officers behaved more like NAZI Brownshirts, than commissioned officers of the law.

Actually DeHerrera was on the phone and with with his dad, a Pueblo County Sheriff’s deputy, at the time the officers came all the way across the street to harass, tackle, and inflict serious bodily injury on this harmless young bystander.

Former Denver Manager of Safety, Charles Garcia was totally right to fire these thugs and one wonders what arcane provision of the civil service code was used to sleaze in their reinstatement.

Though, the more important issue to me is the message that this sends to the rank and file of the most violent police force in the country and to the residents of Denver.

No, I don’t expect that the two reinstated officers will get a ticker tape parade in their honor, but I suspect that police violence will now resume unabated as the only lessons learned by fellow officers were:

1.  Destroy ALL of the evidence and by any means necessary.

Flushing just one camera down the toilet is not enough. People will have to believe you, if there is no video.

2.  Confab and get your stories straight BEFORE you make your reports.

Nothing is more incriminating than inconsistent reports.

3.      Don’t worry about the psychopaths in your ranks. It is more important that you

stick together and ride out the process in silence and solidarity. The last thing you need is an officer who “forgets” to watch your back, because you sided with management…even if he almost

killed someone…again and then lied about it…again.

4.      Always pay your dues to the Denver Police Protective Association, so they too

will pay for your legal fees, when you unlawfully pummel a citizen into the asphalt.

And what lesson did the rest of us learn? We learned that we can not trust the folks who were sworn to serve and protect us. People in the poorer neighborhoods have always maintained that cops where they live indulged in gratuitous harassment and violence but suburbanites have always discounted this view because we tend to devalue the word of poor people who have to live in high-crime neighborhoods. Looks like they were right all along.

We learned that we had better warn our children that the most dangerous thugs on the street wear  badges. We now have to tell our children “never approach cops, put away your cell phones, never run, never speak, and  crouch into a ball to protect your head as best as you can.”

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

America: Let’s Use Money To Make Things Again

The financial services industry makes money by taking money and making more money out of it. Although they claim to loan money to the American people, you would not know it these days, because they seem to only be loaning money to their other moneyed buddies. Oh, right. Corporations are people too. I keep forgetting.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, 50 states Attorney’s General, and private investors are just now finally suing the 17 biggest banks for negligently making billions in worthless loans, bundling the tripe and calling it securities, lying about its tripedness and selling it to unsuspecting investors, insuring the smelly innards against the inevitable failure, and (when their little shell game tanked the economy) lying to congress about a fraudulent scheme to make billions and billions out of rotted cow guts.

The reaction from the banks?

1.   Not our fault! It was…uh…the economy’s fault! Yeah, that’s it! The economy!

2.   Caveat Emptor! (let the buyer be ware). Investors should have known that we were lying through our collective capped teeth.

3.   Best not to come after us, because, if we have to pay this money back, you’ll be “pushing us guys off a cliff” and we’ll go under again and you’ll “just have to bail us out again.”

Oh, gosh, in as much as I really fear that suing the criminal banks might “sap earnings and contribute to losses in the financial services industry,” I have to look on the bright side.

Firstly, I think that, in general, corporations that lose money by taking money, and loaning that money out to thin air and then lying about it repeatedly, when caught in flagrante delicto, ought to be held to their own caveat emptor, or e pluribus unum, or et tu Brute or whatever.

Secondly, since the financial services industry has not been in the business of loaning money to businesses that actually put people to work making something for quite some time, I am even less moved by their crocodile tears. Bail you out again? Seriously?

Thirdly, I am not an idiot. I know (and we all are learning) that the financial services industry can make more money by dealing in money with other money-people, than by loaning it to companies that make widgets (actual stuff) and that their investors (other bankers, hedge-fund managers, and the super rich) might not see the usual double-digit quarterly returns on their stock portfolios, if the financial services industry went back to helping start-up entrepreneurs, builders, farmers, inventors, and personal service providers. But, being a glass-half-full kinda guy, I see change as a good thing.

So the mega-corps and super rich make slightly less profit and small and medium businesses get the money they need to invest in creation and expansion, which will mean jobs making goods, jobs growing food, jobs providing personal services, jobs building buildings, jobs inventing technology for the 21^st Century, and jobs marketing all these new businesses to the public.

To me, people are people too and this would be a good thing for those people.

A little less of the whole oligopoly-world-hegemony thing, and more of the American Dream. 

J. Brandeis Sperandeo