Why the GOP is a Problem, NOT a Solution!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The occupation of Wall Street is driven and inspired by a single over-arching fact: just ONE percent of the nation owns more than the rest of us combined and, secondly, that outcome is the result of GOP tax cuts, most prominently those of R. Reagan's cut of 1982 benefiting only the upper classes, specifically, the 'ruling elite' of just 1 percent!

The GOP owns this outcome and should accept responsibility for it. Instead, the GOP can be depended upon to press for more tax cuts, more preferential treatment and bogus economic 'theories' like supply-side economics better know by the derisive description: trickle-down theory.

Now --the above is the context in which every other outcome must be considered: every Democratic regime since 1900 has presided over greater JOB and GDP growth than has ANY GOP regime. This is especially apparent in the post-Reagan era where it is easy to find the official stats that rank post-WWII Presidents in terms of job creation and GDP growth.

Progressives Should 'infiltrate' the Democratic Party!

The GOP are economically incompetent. Now --if they should wish to change their stripes and eschew, repudiate the crime syndicate of which they have been a part --FINE! Let them confess their sins against a vast majority of Americans, that segment of the population which labors and by doing so produces wealth, wealth that has in fact 'trickled up' during the GOP regimes of R. Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr.

If you don't like the Democratic party --infiltrate it and urge everyone you know to infiltrate it. That's called 'grassroots' organizing. We don't have a lot of time and the Democrats already have an infrastructure in place. There is no time to create a viable separate party. Eventually, when it is successful, the 'occupation movement' will be absorbed and, hopefully, it's ideals will be affirmed by an established mainstream party and, eventually, made official policy. At that point, we will have won!

ORGANIZE!

Read SAUL ALINSKY, a 'left leaning, liberal' and organizer who scared the pants off the GOP! They were so frightened of him that they adopted his policies and used them against us! Now --who is to blame for that but the 'sunshine liberal' who decides to just sit on his ass and gripe because the world does not measure up to his unrealistic expectations?

Alinsky urged that REAL activists organize block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state!

FIRST -- take back the Democratic party by taking back the neighborhoods

SECONDLY --organize the neighborhoods to take back the party machines for progressives and/or liberals

THIRD --having taken back the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, you organize at the state level to get out the fucking vote.

Now --if liberals/progressives are not willing to read Alinsky (the GOP has) or if liberals/progressives are not willing to work to reform the only party that has a realistic chance given the odds against them, given the unfair 'statistical weighting' that results from endless, boring primaries and other roadblocks, hurdles and obstructions, then there is really nothing more that I can say!

The GOP are either CROOKED or INCOMPETENT!

The GOP is a top down party of psychopathic authoritarians dividing themselves into 'fuhrers' and followers of 'der fuhrer'! The rank and file believe what they believe because it assuages their feelings of fear and guilt. Stanford University conducted and published clinical studies of the fact that the GOP inclined have more nightmares, night-terrors than do normal people.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It’s how the ‘pay-offs’ are laundered. Clinton reversed the trend but briefly. That he dared get a blow job was much more important than saving a nation from a disastrous fate. In fact, it was all the GOP could pin on him, though he was under a sweeping investigation seemingly from the get go. An investigation in search of real crimes and, finding none, invented the ‘felony blow job’.

Someone said that Satan’s biggest ‘trick’ was convincing the world that he did not exist. The GOP’s biggest trick is convincing the American people that they are not a kooky cult of crooks, liars and elitists but a real 'political party'. The GOP has had such success with this ploy, I am surprised the MOB didn't try it! But the GOP is not a real political party; it has characteristics of kooky cults and other traits more closely identified with crime syndicates and/or gangs.

It is entirely understandable that the GOP rank and file would have nightmares and night-terrors! It's because the GOP rank and file are insecure, frightened, terrified. They want you to be as well. Nightmares are but dream manifestations of fears and anxieties. Normal people deal with their fears and anxieties. But --the GOP has outdone them all. They have built-up an entire party around fears, anxieties, phobias, prejudices, hate of various kinds, prejudice, bigotry and ordinary garden-variety crookedness and dishonesty.

The WALL ST occupation is a big tent but should NEVER be big enough to tolerate the watering-down of its message: A SOCIETY that has created, tolerated or --worse --ENCOURAGED a ruling 1 percent is a sick society. Now --we would call a doctor a QUACK should he tell you to just keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick.

Cops Resort to Form on Wall St; They Represent 'da man!'!

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The Rise and Fall of The Enron Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The recent death of Ken Lay revived memories of a corporate scandal that seemingly triggered the fall of lined up dominoes. I had hopes that the truth about corporate America would trigger some real reforms, a sea change in American attitudes about how business is conducted, and, at least, some introspection about the shallowness of American culture.

I was dissappointed. Greed still motivates corporate robbers barons. Corporations are still considered to be "persons" in the eyes of the law. At the time, I asked: what happened to Enron? Occupying its own gleaming glass and steel skyscraper in downtown Houston, Enron seemed invincible, epitomizing what it meant to be an American corporation. That turned out to have been its downfall.

As much of the world suspected at the time, the American corporation was revealed to be a shell. Enron, for example, produced nothing. It bought and sold natural gas and manipulated spot market prices. It's huge purchasing power literally put the screws to California; the result was a long hot summer of rolling black outs and power shortages. Enron executives and traders were tape recorded cackling and hooting over California's problems --problems that bore the Enron trademark.

What then was the source of Enron wealth? Aside from the profits made manipulating markets, Enron was the recipient of some $10 billion from Saudi royals who still have questionable ties to both Bush and world wide terrorist organizations. That the money was morally tainted didn't stop Kenneth Lay and the robber barons of Enron. Enron was, in fact, in business with "bankers to the terrorists". Only the incurable incurious would not want to know more about the Enron connection to known 'terrorist' organizations --especially those having ties to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the 'American' oil industry.

Since the Reagan "revolution" and the rise of dubious economic theories like "supply-side" economics, the actual manufacture of anything of value seems to have fallen to Chinese corporations. The effect has been a cancer on the American economy, beginning with Reagan and having resumed with George W. Bush.

American companies are encouraged by all too friendly, conservative regimes to engage in questionable business practices. The political climate in which these huge businesses operate is much more than merely pro-business, it seems to be anti-everything else. There are large margins for error when tax breaks favor you, and your company can write-off a panoply of follies, inefficiencies, and borderline behaviors. Enron literally created new subsidiaries out of thin air and put a "book" value on them that had more to do with delusion, megalomania, and psychosis than it did with economics or accounting.

That's old news. I am more inclined to confine my focus to the effects this "pro-business" climate has had on the American "character". For example: do we still have character?

Before the rise of Bush, America, despite her many shortcomings, was still admired around the world. Now, we are reviled; and if the various religious and secular guests on a recent installment of Bill Moyer's Faith and Reason are accurate, the world wide revulsion to American culture has reached epidemic levels.

One does not have to be an Islamic radical to find America crass, obsessed with bigness for the sake of bigness, and arrogant for the sake of feeling "cool". Nevermind that there is no hard evidence to support Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911; I have concluded that to the degree that there is a real terrorist threat, it is nothing more nor less than blow-back, a fatal resistance to the arrogant bully on the block.

Now George W. Bush has made of America, the "state" version of Enron. The fact that this nation is financially as well as morally bankrupt is papered over with lies that must surely be compared to Enron's phony books. Many Enron employees, for example, were encouraged to take part of their salary in company stock i.e. you let me cut your salary and I'll make up the difference with worthless pieces of paper —Enron stock. On the national level, Bush tried to sucker retirees out of their Social Security with an equally dubious plan.

Of course a good "con game" requires a willing and greedy sucker. Enron was seen to be a place where employees were seduced into believing that after ten years they could retire rich in Sugarland —Tom Delay's ultra-conservative district. The three words that summed up the Reagan years also describe Enron and the administration of George W. Bush. Those words are: Greed is good!

Because greed is good, all orgnizations, especially American corporations, will inevitably trend toward inefficiency and mediocrity. An American middle manager, for example, is not likely to hire anyone smarter than he/she; secondly, he/she will look for someone that is "like" him/herself. Should the surprisingly competent get hired, he/she will probably leave for a better job where the cycle will repeat itself. Meanwhile, mediocrity, like sour cream, will rise to the top. The truly bright and talented don't go to work for corporations and, if so, it's only until they find something better. The "company man" is not likely to change the world, is not likely to leave a footprint on history. Corporations are not looking to hire philosophers, honest politicians, revolutionaries, poets, or dramatists.

Power for its own sake has become the corporate raison d'etre, just as it similarly motivates Bush and Bushie. Corporate power is based upon an absurdity —that corporations are individuals and have all the "rights" of individuals. Moreover, corporations, if they are to be considered "people", must certainly be seen to be psychopaths. For this reason, the Bush administration, as a collective, as a corporatized government, should be locked up and straight-jacketed.

It was the Reagan administration that began the corruption of American values despite sticking on the word "family". In retrospect, the Reagan administration can be thought of as proto-Bush. Adding their own absurdities to the the moral rot, the Bush regime threatens to bring down this country like Enron, like the Twin Towers, like a collapsing bag. To greed is good has been added Thom Friedman's what does being right have to do with anything?

Thus Friedman has made his lasting contribution to American culture. In the future, when one wants to describe a society in which nothing of value is valued, where only lies are celebrated, they will quote Friedman. Indeed, if being right has nothing to do with anything, what difference did it make that Enron's subsidiaries were almost all entirely fictitious? Friedman may consider himself 'lucky' for claiming that dubious phrase; it might have been puked up by an Enron executive some six years ago.

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