Robert Borsage: "Get Ready to Rumble"

Great column from the Huff Post today. Worth reading.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/get-ready-to-rumble-the-f_b_161471.html


Get Ready to Rumble: The Fight for the Next Economy Begins
Robert L. Borosage

Excerpt:

We are headed into the most ambitious era of progressive economic reform since the New Deal. The crisis leaves little alternative, as job losses mount across the country and the world. The Obama administration has hit the ground running, pushing to pass an $800 billion plus recovery plan, scrambling to put together a new plan for banks still on life support, and cobbling together an initiative to help millions of families on the verge of losing their homes.

But recovery, however daunting, is not enough. Even as the administration struggles to fend off a full-scale depression, it faces the task of constructing the foundations of the new economy out of the ashes of the old.

Republicans, still grousing about more tax cuts and less spending, are clueless. But even many Democrats seem to assume that if we just get the economy going, bail out the banks, add a dash of regulation, we can go back to business as usual.

But that is neither possible nor desirable. That old economy was founded on stagnant incomes and unsustainable debt. Families struggled to keep their heads above water by taking money out of their homes and assuming ever higher levels of student, car, credit card and consumer loans. The country served as the consumer of last resort for the world by borrowing staggering sums -- $2 billion a day over the last years - from creditors abroad, largely Japanese and Chinese central bankers. That economy was floated on asset bubbles like that in housing which has now exploded in our faces. We can't resuscitate the old economy - and should not want to.....

MORE

and then refuse to support it anyway.

The Pukes are down, but they sense massive opportunity for them in the economic crisis. They know Americans have become an impatient people who expect quick fixes to get their standard of living back overnight to where it was in the last stages of the great credit binge. The Repukes know that what the opposition party does is quickly forgotten and that its inconsistencies and double dealing are soon overlooked, so they are ready to pull out all the stops to take Obama down. People may be thinking the Repukes wouldn't double cross Obama on the stimulus plan by insisting on diluting and weakening it then blaming him when it doesn't work. But the Pukes know that in periods of national chaos, people will fling themselves from one party to the next --and they're the only "next". There is simply no point in "covering your right flank", Democrats. Just do what's right and necessary, and to hell with the Republicans. Or you'll regret it.

"The Repukes know that what the opposition party does is quickly forgotten and that its inconsistencies and double dealing are soon overlooked, so they are ready to pull out all the stops to take Obama down."

---

Quickly forgotten by whom, and why? Soon overlooked by whom, and why? The active agents of those forgettings need to be put back into this thought, to complete the overall picture of how the American people are disinformed and manipulated into passively--perhaps despairingly--accepting false narratives of important events that do not serve their interests, and actively harm them. The agents of these forgettings are war profiteering corporate 'news' monopolies, by which basically five fatcat, rightwing, billionaire CEOs control all 'news' and opinion in the country (except the internet--God bless it!).

Personally, I think 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, throughout the voting system, owned and controlled by a few rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit-recount controls, is the most fundamental problem, since we cannot do anything much about the corporate 'news' monopolies (which operate as a major gag on free speech, and, by their monopolization, grievously violate the First Amendment, in practice) until we begin to elect real representatives of the people, not all these DINOs who might as well be Bushwhacks except for a few social issues (and who are weakening even on those). We can lobby; we can get little changes, say, better people on the FCC--but we cannot attack the heart of the problem: corporate rule of our public airwaves.

Reviving the Fairness Doctrine, particularly as it concerns media monopolies, would certainly help, but bills that propose that will not likely get passed, with all the DINOs and "Blue Dogs" and other corporate agents in Congress. Some of the DINOs were elected because voters had no other choice by the time of the general election. The question of who gets to run is sometimes settled long before anybody votes--it is settled by what FDR called "organized money." Diebold & brethren have little to do in those cases. Other bad candidates are Diebolded into the Democratic candidacy in the primaries, acing out better people (if "organized money" can't handle the situation). And this is just the beginning of the list of manipulations that have been made possible by rightwing corporate control of the 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. The wide range of this power reaches to 'electing' outright fascists--a fascist coup--to the White House, 'electing' outright fascist Pukes to Congress (such as Chambliss in GA)--and shaving Barack Obama's win by 5% (which I believe they did), to deny him a big landslide and depress a mandate for reform. It also stands as a warning to him that he can easily--EASILY--be denied re-election in 2012 (which would tend to dampen what he tries to accomplish on behalf of the people). And that power--to deny him re-election--would be exercised in combination with the false narrative that the corporate 'news' monopolies are capable of creating, and have created (for one thing, for the purpose of war profiteering).

The corporate 'news' monopoly power is also responsible for lack of knowledge of what has to be the scandal of the century: 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting itself--a fundamental assault on our democracy, approved of by both fascist Pukes and DINOs, and which any true-bluers who have made it to Congress live in fear of. Corporate control of our public offices now extends beyond money/no money to direct control of the vote counting mechanism itself, and anyone who challenges that can be driven from office, as was CA sec of state Kevin Shelley in 2004-5 (after he sued Diebold and demanded to see their source code, six months before the 2004 so-called election).

Restoration of transparent vote counting can still be done at the state/local level--it is possible, with a determined citizen effort. Corporate 'news' monopolies cannot be remedied at that level. We must have true champions in Congress--and lots of them--to get that done. And a president determined to do it, as well.

I would put our priorities as a democracy as follows:

1. Transparent vote counting.
2. Busting the corporate 'news' monopolies.
3. Everything else.