Talking Politics, Books, Libraries, Budget Cuts and Counterpunch

http://archive.main-fm.org/systemic-20110626.mp3

Letting It Bleed

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/17/letting-it-bleed/

A Father's Day Baseball Memory

On May 1st, 1991, Nolan Ryan pitched his seventh career no-hitter and Rickey Henderson broke Lou Brock's record for stolen bases the same evening. I was ecstatic in a way only baseball makes me.

My son, then a towheaded seven year old who, to this day, is fascinated with statistics, whether they concern the height of mountains on Mars or the earned run average of the entire Red Sox pitching staff, asked me what the big deal was after listening to me extol the virtues of both feats that May Day. It was then that I decided to honor his month old request to buy a baseball glove. Then he could find out for himself. The next evening he, his mother (who lived across town and grew up in a Cape Cod household where the Red Sox were the only baseball team there was), and I, embarked on a mission. With twenty dollars he'd been given for his birthday, my son bought a fielder's mitt inscribed with Cal Ripken Jr.'s signature. The next day he played catch with his mom's male friend at the time (a Reds fan) and he began to understand. He told me on the telephone of all the catches he had made and how the ball hit his nose only once. Mom, he said, even played.

Sports in America, my angry young friends tell me, are just an extension of the corporate system of greed. How can you be interested in them, they ask. I don't know how to answer their charges directly, so instead, I ask if they've ever seen a magnificently executed catch. One where an outfielder pulls the ball from its sure path over the fence, slamming his body against the centerfield wall, falling to the ground from the shock of the impact, and rising triumphantly with the ball in his glove. Or, even better, I query, have you ever made a catch that seemed equally magnificent yourself? Of course, it's not really as spectacular to an onlooker, but to you it's like you're Willie Mays in the first game of the 1954 World Series. They look at me as if I am crazy. Of course, I am -- a little.

There is no magic left in the world, say their expressions. And if there is, it surely isn't in some stupid game.

A week later my son brought his glove and ball to my house on the other side of town. The day before I had purchased a well-worn mitt from Salvation Army just for such an occasion. After a couple of wild throws from his end of the yard, and one well aimed toss from mine (which he failed to catch, anyway), I tossed the ball gently towards his glove once again. The expression of doubt across his face changed to one of joy and surprise as his glove wrapped itself tightly around the ball.

It wasn't Willie Mays, but it could have been. At that moment, I knew the genuine power of the game. It wasn't on the TV, in the papers, or even in organized Little League. It was in a game of catch in the backyard.

Washington Chooses Its Battles

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/10/washington-chooses-its-battles/

Ron Jacobs: Ken Babbs Shoots Straight

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/06/ken-babbs-shoots-straight/

Ron Jacobs: Falsehoods on Freedom

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/27/falsehoods-on-freedom/

Ron Jacobs: These Tales of Constant Sorrow

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/20/these-tales-of-constant-sorrow/

Two New Books

http://issuu.com/coconspirator/docs/bookannouncement?viewMode=magazine

Ron Jacobs: Frozen Bank Accounts and Free Speech in the US

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/12/frozen-bank-accounts-and-free-speech-in-the-us/

CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Tripping Through the American Night Now Available in print

Previously only available as an ebook, my collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available in print.  That's right--real paper and covers and everything.  You can order it here or at Amazon.com.  It will also be available soon at many other stores and through your local bookseller.  For the first couple of weeks, you can get it at a $4.00 discount if you order through the link that says "here" above.  Just type in the discount code NUJMWMG3 during checkout.

Ron Jacobs: Putting the Pentagon Out of Business

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/15/putting-the-pentagon-out-of-business/

Red-carding Capitalist Soccer

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/08/redcarding-capitalist-soccer/

Ron Jacobs: Getting Juiced with Ishmael Reed

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/01/getting-juiced-with-ishmael-reed/

The Co-Conspirator's Tale Now Available

http://www.fomitepress.com/FOMITE/Co-Conspirator.html

1979.  When Peter Somers fell in love with a girl named moonshadow on the Berkeley pier, little did he know that she was a member of a group of wannabe revolutionaries.  After an undercover cop is killed and another friend is falsely charged with the murder, the cell disappears.

2007.  Somers ends up back in Berkeley after receiving a letter describing the arrest of his friend on murder charges.  He joins forces with a lawyer and others in an attempt to clear his friend's name.  The authorities have something else in mind. 

There's a place where love and mistrust are never at peace; where duplicity and deceit are the universal currency. The Co-Conspirator's Tale takes place within this nebulous firmament. Crimes committed by the police in the name of justice. Excess in the name of revolution. The combination leaves death in its wake and the survivors struggling to find justice in a San Francisco Bay Area noir by the author of the underground classic The Way the Wind Blew:A History of the Weather Underground and the novel Short Order Frame Up.

There are no hero cops or private eyes in The Co-Conspirator's Tale, just a couple of folks who don't trust the world as it is to provide justice. The battlefields are the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area and the psyches of the accused, their accomplices and their accusers.

Ron Jacobs: Killing in the Name of Kindness

Ron Jacobs: Killing in the Name of Kindness

Ron Jacobs: Unbinding the Mind of US Media

Ron Jacobs: Unbinding the Mind of US Media

Washington's Internal Security Apparatus-A Long History

US citizens of almost all political stripes tend to live their lives ignorant of what the government that operates in their name is really up to. Some of this is due to the government's obsession with secrecy and some of it is due to the people's political naivete (or ignorance). Perhaps the only exceptions to this statement are those that exist on what are considered the fringes of US political discourse. Thanks in part to this ignorance, most US residents live their lives unaware of the police state author Andrew Kolin describes in his recently published book State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush.

This isn't just another book raging against the excesses of the George Bush administration. In fact, it is a historical survey of the slow but steady journey of the US polity towards an authoritarian regime designed to protect a relative few from the democratic urgings of the people. Kolin begins his book with a brief look at the debates over the writing of the US Constitution and its eventual incarnation as a blueprint for a centralized authority whose intention was to keep government away from the hoi polloi. Adjunct to this endeavor was a desire to expand the nation. This was done by killing the indigenous peoples living on the land to be expanded into. In order to justify this genocide, it was necessary to delineate the natives as something other than human. According to Kolin, the need for such an "other" is essential to the development of an authoritarian state. The Native Americans and the African slaves filled the need quite nicely given their obvious physical and cultural differences.

Another aspect of Kolin's proposition that differentiates it from so many other commentaries that have been written on the police state tactics of the Bush administration is his contention that the US police state is not a future possibility. It already exists. We are living in it. He backs up this contention with an argument that dissects the elements generally considered essential to the definition of a police state and applies them to the present day United States. From torture to propaganda techniques; from the government's ability to eavesdrop on anyone to its ability to wage war at will--these are but a few of the indices Kolin examines in his study. According to Kolin, however, the ultimate indicator of a police state is defined by whether or not the leader of a particular government (in this case, that of the United States) exists above the laws of the nation and the world. In other words, if the leader does something, is it ever illegal? Kolin provides multiple examples of every administration since Abraham Lincoln's operating in a vein suggesting that they all operated in this way at times. However, it was not until the inauguration of George W. Bush and the events of September 11, 2001, that the word of the president became a law onto its own. When George Bush said he was "the decider" he wasn't joking. He and every president to follow him truly have that power. They can decide who to kill, who to spy on, who to lock up, and who to attack without any restriction other than their own morality. Furthermore, they can also determine how such actions are to be done. As far as the presidency is concerned, no laws--not the Bill of Rights nor the Geneva Conventions--apply.

The march towards this police state that Kolin describes is best characterized by the phrase "two steps forward, one step back." Historically, for every presidential administration where excesses occurred, there followed another that saw a relaxation of some of those excesses. The repression of the Palmer Raids was followed by a decade where the Communist Party became legal; the McCarthy Era was followed by a relaxation of the anti-communist hysteria in the 2960s; Nixon's attempts to subvert the democratic process were answered with convictions and a series of laws that were supposed to prevent similar excesses. Yet, the march towards authoritarianism continued its quiet goosestep. Nowhere was this more obvious than in US foreign policy. After the US turmoil around its war against the Vietnamese, Congress passed a War Powers Act that supposedly limited the president’s ability to send US troops to other nations. In answer, every single president afterward pushed the limits of that law so that by the 1980s it was meaningless. Other attempts to limit the White House's ability to make war like the Boland amendment which made arming the Nicaraguan Contras illegal were just ignored. By the time Bill Clinton took power in 1991, the ability of the president to attack whenever and wherever was no longer seriously challenged by Congress, leaving the White House in sole control of the nations' military might.

The nation described in Kolin's book is a fearful one. It is a nation whose agents torture at will and whose military wages war for no apparent reason other than profit and power. It is a nation whose political police forces operate as both judge and jury and often fail to leave their personal prejudices at home. It is a nation whose judicial system rarely interprets a law different than the chief executive and when it does that executive ignores the ruling. It is a nation where so many of its citizens live their lives under the illusion that the authoritarian rule they increasingly live with is somehow protecting them. It is a nation that refuses to prosecute officials including the former president that were involved in torture that violated domestic and international laws. Finally, according to Kolin, it is a nation without redemption that will see the powers of the police state continue to grow unless its people wake up and dismantle it.

Making the Robbed Pay for the Robbers' Crimes

"Some men rob you with a six gun/and some with a fountain pen..."-Woody Guthrie

As I write this, Republicans and other right wingers fret and strut about their stage in Madison, WI. calling for the arrest of Democratic legislators refusing to be bullied into destroying public worker unions in Wisconsin. It's not that the Democrats completely oppose the GOP governor's proposal to destroy the unions, but the incredibly powerful and populous protests against the proposal have convinced them that they should disappear for a while. The protests, meanwhile, are growing in size and fury. A similar situation seems to be unfolding in Ohio, Indiana and other US states where similar attempts by anti-union state officials to destroy public employee unions are underway.

The desire to destroy the unions is being presented as a deficit reducing proposal. In reality, the unionbusting proposals would have very little effect on cutting the deficit. In fact, some reporters claim that Wisconsin did not actually face a deficit until the governor pushed through some tax proposals favorable to big business and the wealthy. These very same businesses and wealthy individuals are part of the small number of people that have benefited from the economic crash of 2007. It is their intention to continue benefiting at the expense of the rest of the country. Amazingly, numbers of US voters apparently agree with them despite overwhelming evidence that shows what is good for the super rich is not good for too many others. Despite this, they call for small government while being enslaved to the will of the corporations.

In her 2011 opening address to the North Carolina state legislature, Governor Bev Perdue called for a two percent reduction of the state's corporate income tax. This call from Perdue, a Democrat, is one that has been championed by the Republicans of North Carolina for a long time. Besides being one more bit of proof that there is very little difference between the Democrats and the GOP when it comes to kissing corporate tail, this call flies in the face of logic.

The state of North Carolina is facing millions of dollars in cuts. Libraries are being closed, public employees are being laid off and positions are not being filled. Schools are increasing class sizes, laying off teachers and threatening some districts with closures. Even police and other law enforcement (usually untouchable) are thinking about layoffs. Yet, Perdue and the legislature want to cut corporate taxes. Already, the income tax surcharge on North Carolina's wealthiest taxpayers ended with the 2010 tax cycle. So, what are they thinking?

The rationale behind this call to reduce corporate taxes is as old as the tax system. According to those who champion this nonsensical idea, the reason North Carolina isn't creating jobs is because corporations do not want to pay the 6.99% tax in North Carolina. If that tax is reduced, the tax cut's proponents claim that more businesses will set up shop in the state. Ronald Reagan used a similar argument when he was president. He called it the trickle-down theory. (As far as I can tell, it felt a lot more like getting trickled on). The most recent national politician to make this idea into law is President Obama when he extended the tax cuts for the wealthy.

The big problem with this theory is that it doesn't work. Jobs have been leaving this country by the millions since Reagan instituted his tax cuts and they haven't come back. Corporations don't want a tax cut. They want no taxes at all. Their bottom line is profit and most of them will go where that profit is the greatest. In other words, where labor costs are minimal and taxes are even less. It is the people of North Carolina that work in North Carolina's factories and buy their products, yet the politicians would have us believe that the corporations are doing us a favor by being here, and should therefore have to pay a lower rate of tax than the rest of us.

It should not be the duty of the state government to facilitate a race to the economic bottom for those who live and work in North Carolina. Nor should it be the function of any government entity to enhance the coffers of its corporations at the expense of its citizens. Yet, by lowering the tax rate on corporations, this is exactly what North Carolina is doing. With less tax monies, there will be less money for services like schools. Already corporations come to North Carolina looking to pay lower wages. They should not also benefit from paying a lower rate of taxes than those who work for them.

The scenario described above is one that rightwing forces (with no small amount of acquiescence from liberals) has been putting into place nationwide for decades. The cost of this endeavor has been the safety and health of workers; the impoverishment of entire neighborhoods in the United States and nations around the world; and the impending destruction of the educational system, to name the first that come to mind. If this scenario comes true, it may never reverse.

In a speech I heard Jesse Jackson give in 1984, he stated that workers didn't just want jobs, they wanted jobs that paid a livable wage, offered benefits and, most of all, provided the worker with a sense of dignity. After all, he continued, every slave had a job during slavery. The point being made here is that working people deserve a decent life just as much as those that employ them do. Just working is not enough. The worker uprising in Wisconsin is a recognition of this. As for those who tell private sector workers that it is the public sector workers' fault for the current economic mess--that is, pure and simple, a lie. It is the rapaciousness of Wall Street and the governments that work for it that are to blame. These and other lies pitting workers against each othere are just one more attempt by those in power to divide those who are feeling the pain of neoliberal capitalism's heartless and avaricious greed.

Ron Jacobs: Framing the Sixties

Ron Jacobs: Framing the Sixties