Little noticed in this "Arab Spring"

By Carl 

Israeli citizens are demanding more liberal government:

TEL AVIV, Israel -- While the world has been focused on the anti-government movements that sprang up during the Arab Spring, the largest protests in Israeli history have been sweeping the country for the past two months, threatening to destabilize the government with calls for extensive change.

The protests began with a Facebook petition over the cost of cottage cheese. They now include a litany of demands, including a return to the days when the government took a more active role in subsidizing costs. Protesters also want changes in the tax system, more subsidized government housing and more spending on health and education.

Last weekend, more than 150,000 people participated in a nationwide march to protest high housing costs. The organizers are calling for another march this weekend and promising an even larger turnout.

Israeli officials admit surprise at the strength and staying power of the protesters, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded this week by canceling a scheduled increase in the price of gasoline that was to have gone into effect Tuesday.

That's not popcorn popping, that's the sound of the heads of neo-conservatives and right-wing Zionist bloggers like Pamela Geller exploding.

In a time of austerity measures in America and much of Europe, tiny Israel is deciding, yes, we the people need more.

In fairness, Israel is a nation built on socialist values. As a small island of Judaism in a larger hostile environment, people who are crammed together learn the importance of looking out for one another.

Here in America, we could have adopted the same basic moral values, but chose instead to live with the romantic illusion of "rugged individualism."

Bollocks, as the British would say. "No man is an island," as John Donne put it. Opportunity in America is defined as the culmination of the tribe fostering the one. No one gets rich in this nation on his own, and our tax codes and social constructs ought to recognize this. For behind every rich person in this nation lies an entire community and network of people who work to support his or her opportunities. 

And since greed drives the acquisition of wealth, you can guaran-damn-tee he or she ain't rewarding those folks adequately.

America stopped being about "fairness" a long time ago. It stopped being about opportunity more recently, but still, the barriers to entry in any market are in direct violation of the basic principles of laissez faire economics put down by Adam Smith (who believed in soaking the rich, by the way).

That kind of rugged individualism, where a person through the sweat of his own brow and the dirt under his fingernails, could carve out a modest life for himself that allowed him to be free of working as an indentured servant on someone else's farm, that kind of rugged individualism one can admire. But it's not the rugged individualism people think of today.

It's not the rugged individualism of free enterprise and competition. Now, markets close to competition. Companies will patent everything in sight, including your own DNA, to claim rights to them. Try "going Galt" when you leave your DNA everywhere.

Today, if you don't wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, you're a rugged individualist. An idiot, but an RI nonetheless. Note that you're middle class enough to *afford* the motorcycle in the first place. You were not someone's slave who suddenly freed himself through dint of hard work and savings. 

Americans have a very hard lesson to learn. We are not individuals. We pretend we can be. And in some small ways, we can be, but not in ways that matter.

A friend of mine said to me recently, "You can be a slave to the corporatocracy under Republicans or a slave to government under the Democrats." There's at least some truth to the latter, and a lot of truth to the former -- although I challenged him to show me how he could be a slave under Democrats. I got a lot of talk about Spain. Not sure it was relevant.

We are slaves. Nearly all of us earn a living making someone else wealthy.

A few of us earn part of our living making someone else wealthy, and part of our living siphoning wealth off other people: in other words, with an economy that is effectively a zero-sum game, you are either being sucked dry or sucking someone else dry. Neither is a particularly pleasant moral position to take.

That the corporatocracy has dug it's siphons so deeply into our society was an inevitable outgrowth of Republican policies (and sadly, many Democratic ones, too).

For my part, I'd rather be a slave to a government that at least once in a while has to get my authorization to enslave me, and that every so often, gets overruled. It sure beats an autocracy of boards of directors and CEOs with no fealty to shareholders, much less other stakeholders like employees or vendors.

Americans could learn a lesson from the Israeli people. When the notion of fairness goes out the window, the best strategy is not to be more antisocial, but less. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

You forget I'm in America

By Distributorcap

Did you know that the United States doesn't have any rich people? There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no nouveau riche. If you listen carefully to the words of such brilliant orators as Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, they never mention the wealthy, never say anything about the monied class.

If you listen very carefully to the recent speeches from the man of 1,000 chins and the man with the bronzed male member, what we have in the United States are "job creators." Rich people -- puh-leezee, this is America, not the French aristocracy of 1788.

Here is where Anita breaks out into song:

"I like to be in America, Okay by me in America, Everything free in America" -- where Bernardo keenly observes, "for a small fee in America."

You have to give the GOP credit for adherence to the Prime Directive -- the only good public is a stupid and misinformed public. It sure has paid off well for the Job Creator class of America.  Phase 1 began in 1981 with the ascension of the genteel and amiable Lucifer himself, Ronald Reagan, the first step in the nation's climb back to the landed gentry.  Reagan gutted social programs, proclaimed welfare queens drove Cadillacs, declared ketchup a vegetable, stated trees cause pollution, and made education (along with fat tub of lard William Bennett) a very, very evil thing, even more evil than that nasty evil empire with its evil headquarters in Moscow. Phase 2 was ushered in by the creative marketing genius of Lee Atwater. If you are going to lie, cheat, steal, misinform, and mislead to get ahead, make sure you do it consistently and convincingly.  And use lots of video and pictures, like people sitting in a tank.

And the final phase, Phase 3, was the inevitable mainstreaming of the politics of  hate -- it's us vs. them, it's the winner takes all, it's knowing the only good compromise is a non-existent compromise. Using the valuable lessons (or is it lesions) from Phase 1 and Phase 2, the King of Tiffany Despicable himself, Newt Gingrich, marketed Phase 3 into a profitable and influential cottage industry known as Fox News.

Fast forward to 2010 and Social Security (an insurance program everyone pays into) is only known as an "entitlement." (Entitlement is so mainstreamed now it doesn't even register as doublespeak on any scale any more). So is Medicare. But corporate subsidies, economic breaks for oil companies, Big Ag, Big Pharma, defense contractors etc. -- not so much entitlements but "economic engines."

In 2011, we can now add "Job Creators" to the lexicon of a society hastening its descent into a world driven by five-second bytes laced with Orwellian language and insidious totalitarian tactics.

I am no economist, but one day some TV pundit, one who is not as concerned about the theater of the government and as about the governing of the government, is going to publicly state that tax cuts for Job Creators simply do not create one fucking job. Tax Cuts for the class known as Job Creators creates money for Job Creators.

There is really only one thing that creates jobs, and that is demand (Middle English demaunden, Anglo-French demaunder, Medieval Latin dēmandāre) -- period.  Demand for goods and services (do I sound like my Econ 101 professor or what?) creates a need for someone to supply those very needed goods and services. Giving more money to people who already have more money than they know what to do with is just not going to create jobs. Or enough jobs. Yes, it will create a few more gardeners, maids, and nannies and maybe a few mechanics to service the Cadillacs driven by the corporate welfare queens. But millions of jobs for a humming 14 trillion dollar economic engine -- that and a few crumpets will get you dinner with Marie Palinette.

John Boehner and the Man of the 1,000 Chins can ramble on and on and on about how tax increases now are the worst thing ever and that more tax cuts to those billionaires will really, really, really create more jobs (insert red slippers and click 3x). And since mumbling tax cuts (like mumbling entitlements and Job Creators) makes such a melodious soundbite, the great Reagan Uneducated Class (RUC for short), now in their 30s-40s, who were trained well in Atwaterian Marketing and Gingrichian Sociology (or rather sociopathology) - still think that giving the top 1% (who earn 24%of the income) more money will all of a sudden make America the land of milk and honey and paved roads and bullet trains.

Skyscrapers bloom in America

Cadillacs zoom in America (without welfare queens)

Industry boom in America

In 1980, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. In 2005, the top marginal tax rate was under 40%. For the top 1%, after-tax income rose 176% in those same 25 years, while for the bottom 40% it rose just 12%. In 2008, the top 10% on the economic scale held 80% of all the financial assets. Seems equitable, huh?

Can someone please ask Chins, Boehner, Cantor, and even Grover Norquist exactly what jobs those Job Creators are going to create with all that extra money to generate enough demand to get the economy going? Salespeople at Prada and Gucci aren't going to allow America to keep pace with a world more interested in their internal infrastructure than external police actions. Everyone (including teabaggers) knows that tax cuts for the wealth simply cannot create enough (or any) jobs to correct the economy of 300 million Americans. Only creating the demand for real services and industries and goods will.

People (and there are millions) who continue to fall for the continuous Orwellian horseshit being pitchforked by the Republicans simply fail to see that the only jobs those Job Creators are creating are permanent (and cushy) jobs (with a pension and health care for life) for McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, DeMint, and the other assorted lunatics of the GOP. 

Anita: Free to be anything you choose.

Bernardo: Free to wait tables and shine shoes.