(Originally posted on March 25, 2009)

The latest White House, Treasury, Fed and not to mention Wall Street “bailout” plan is to reimburse hedge and equity funds. Reimbursement is what this has been about all along. That and a firmer grip by the banking system on our political system. (Ironically it is these types of businesses who have had the biggest hand in nuking our economy…)

“Reimbursement” or “bailout” as you prefer, is not intended for those of us who have lost equity in their 401K or IRA, or our meager efforts to invest, or in our homes. No that money is likely gone forever, and only the ruling elite will be reimbursed for losing “our” money. Which by the way, if there are monetary obligations on any of those losses we have incurred, they will NOT likely be forgiven. It is really just like those games of Monopoly we played when one of our friends lost all their money, and we said “that’s OK here’s some more". If you don’t work for AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc., or are an elected official, or a long-time employee or executive of some industry who profits from these policies such as the Military Industrial Complex, the GMO ("genetically modified organisms” or better known to us as “food", “medicine", etc.) industry, health insurance industry, etc. then you are not one of these “friends".

You buy a home on a “esoteric” loan scam, or maybe it’s a regular loan and later you just lose your job or a spouse dies, etc. The lender has already bundled it and sold it. The bundle buyer then further leverages it and borrows or sells against future losses. Or they do the insurance scam SWOP or something similar (no I do not understand how any of it works!). Finally it goes bust. But everyone in the transaction process gets reimbursed, except the original borrower. If that isn’t “having your cake and eating it too", I don’t know what is…

The damage though affects everyone else. Home values go down, personal and state budgets, including health, education and welfare get forcibly reduced, price increases for necessities. On and on. We all see it daily.

Just as I have been saying now for many months, this is all about our monetary system, campaign financing, the income-gap and the ruling class domination by big corporations from energy & resources (including food and water), healthcare, finance and military imperialism. Greed and stupidity are givens. But nothing about this is sustainable, and if you factor in the expotentiality of population growth, economic growth under a debt-based monetary system, and the opposites of growing demand vs. finite resources, you may very well end up with something like “Soylent Green” (Charlton Heston - 1973). And it could begin to look that way in our lifetime, really. Just look around the world now in India, Bangladesh, South Africa, etc. The lone street sweeper in the early hours of dawn will be replaced by garbage trucks designed to scoop up the abandoned infirm, the dead and the dying…

Have you ever looked at the trash along the road and thought “I’d like to clean this up, but how can I by myself?". But on the other hand you’ve also probably seen or heard of concerted efforts by groups of people and the trash can and does get picked up. Of course the littering continues because those who do litter, do so thoughtlessly, and are not confronted in a way that “teaches” them why they shouldn’t. Instead we feebly use regulations, laws and punishment as though we are children who cannot “learn their moral lessons". Instead we have to be “conditioned” to our behavior until it comes to us naturally, not even recognizing the right or wrong of it anymore and if ever.

This is similar to the problems we now face. We’re not spreading the word, and more importantly the logic and morality in a visible enough fashion. No one person can make a sign and start picketing, and expect to do any good. Especially if those who see you are ignorant to your grievances and what they mean. My own state of Florida is going to likely pass a law cementing “private” campaign financing. They sold it by comparing “public” financing to “political welfare". That’s what they always do. As Gore Vidal once said, they market politics in such a way that the average person will generally end up voting against their own self-interest.

Follow up:

But my point is, none of this will ever change if we do not oppose it. And yet opposition seems so daunting when you think about what it would involve in time and money, when all the time and money belong to those we oppose. It often becomes easier just to “bitch” about our own problems without connecting the dots in the overall sickness. “Misery loves company” is a slogan I picked up when I was a bartender some years ago. So while we may “bitch” within our circle of friends, we do little or nothing to articulate the big problems in a public forum, such as I am trying to do here.

But you see, it’s not all about time and money, although those are required components to varying degrees. It’s really about “familiarity". In marketing they call it “Brand Recognition". It’s what the ruling class does. They say “terror threat” enough times and we see those threats just as though they really do exist outside the imperial influence we have used for 50 years to make those otherwise invisible threats surface as “blowback".

It’s about what the article and interview below are attempting to do. What a growing number of people around the world are realizing. Yes , it’s a daunting task. But it is not an impossible one, or even an improbable one. If it were not in our power to change things, then how did America come to be in the first place? They didn’t even have the internet…

This is a Rolling Stone’s article by Matt Taibbi. I wish I could be so articulate:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

This is his interview on DemocracyNow (The Exception to the Rulers) 03/25/2009:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/25/aig_and_the_big_takeover_matt

A recently acquired co-patriot of mine and I were discussing the problems facing us and our future. Problems unlike anything ever confronting our civilization or our planet for that matter. While I was “bitching” about the seeming lack of widespread public opposition in the media and our society in general, and how little effort anyone seems to be willing to exert, he said this in response, “Silence is consent.” I was stunned by the epiphany of it. I will go even further and say that silence is not just consent, it is complicity. It is encouragement, endorsement, not unlike the person who turns up their stereo so they do not have to hear their neighbor’s beating each other to death. Only our silence does and will result in hundreds, thousands and even millions of deaths, every bit, if not more brutal then a husband beating his wife down the street.

What is lacking is our social articulation of the problems that effect all of us. Many of us “don’t have time” or it interferes with our personal happiness to talk about it publicly. But yet we seem to find it OK to “bitch” about our own personal problems. Somehow doing that doesn’t seem to interfere with our “fun". Well that’s fine. It’s a cultural thing I guess.

I don’t like the psychosis I’ve developed either. It interferes with my own recovery. But isn’t that a Catch-22? A paradox? Like putting off paying a bill? Or a big screen TV you can’t afford? You only postpone the inevitable. And frankly I believe the “postpone” part is a misnomer. Once a problem is manifest, it exists. Recognition always follows, but seldom precedes. The only thing you end up postponing is the solution…

So here’s what I want everyone to do: Pay attention to everything you can that’s going on around you, however you can find it easy to do. Listen to what others are saying, how they are behaving under this global stress. but more importantly, question our leaders and our domestic and foreign policies in public under any circumstance. Question your elected officials’ agendas directly, or through public initiatives, or just whenever you are in public and find yourself in a conversation. Don’t rely on a single news channel or paper to give you your opinion.

You don’t have to take anyone or anything directly to task (though you really should). Just keep asking “why is it so?". Why does it have to be this way and why can’t it change? Discuss it, debate it, get mad about it!

It’s “Branding” in it’s purest sense. The more the conversations take place among the population the more it will become “common” knowledge. When the unanswered questions begin to deluge the ruling politic they will address it. They ultimately have no choice because while their corporate supporters may have all the time and money, they do not have the numbers. And it is by numbers that we make political decisions, starting with our elections. History clearly shows this. If not through the democratic process, then through the anarchist one. Our own Revolution had an influence on the French Revolution, but the people of France waited so long that it polarized the change into bloody chaos. Although in the long run they came out in many ways ahead of us, in my view.

President Obama’s rhetoric has become less and less comforting to me with each passing day of this spiraling out-of-control impending global disaster, but still it is hard to ignore the fact that he is more plugged into the population’s mindset than anyone before him. He proved this during his campaign through his use of grassroots support and the internet. He clearly showed that many individuals could out-trump the corporations, although we now know the financial industry had a fair hand in his election as well.

On the other hand, because of this 21st century version grassroots phenomenon, I have personally seen the potential influence we can have on policy. The healthcare initiative is a great case in point. I must have signed tens of hundreds of online petitions over the last couple of years about universal healthcare. I have heard verbatim some of those petitions repeated word-for-word in the public-political forum. I have heard members of congress confirm directly by institution or activist group a particular message influenced their vote on the floor. It is not beyond our reach to change things, regardless of our personal resources or capability, or time and money.

For instance, how does a bumper sticker become common knowledge? How does a TV show or a movie become popular even before most people have seen it? Advertising and word-of-mouth. Don’t underestimate word-of-mouth. I have never been able to afford to seriously advertise my business, but when I have been fully engaged in it and done right by the customer, I have grown nonetheless.

Language slang or the current lexicon of language is another good example of word-of-mouth. We should all realize that from our teenage years. We should no more hesitate to say publicly, even to strangers that we need to change the campaign finance system, for instance, than saying to them some new word or phrase we learned to describe a mood or predicament. Isn’t that also what our politicians do? Introduce new words or even change their definitions, their meaning to suit their agendas?

Just today a news story talked about how the president may begin to forgo calling it a “war on terror", and instead call it something like “indefinite military engagements". Why do they do this? Well to accomplish what the corporations and banks want without us realizing the true implications of it, and instead give our support. Or more often our “silence"…

And that’s my final point. We cannot afford to stay silent any longer if we care anything at all about the security and happiness of our children and beyond.

I don’t have any children so my worst fear is best illustrated by those senior citizens who were abandoned in New Orleans just before Katrina hit. The senior’s home they were in was run by a for-profit private corporation… It should have been a non-profit in my view with heavy oversight by the state and plugged into the emergency services communication apparatus. It wasn’t. Remember the interoperability issues with emergency services communications right after the Twin Towers attack? That my friends was a result of our out-of-control so-called “free-trade” policies and capitalistic mindset where we are not people, but consumers. Measured only by statistical data, not real-world evidence. not the real down-to-earth consequences.

Just think about it and then talk about it. Anywhere, anytime. Better now to have someone disagree with you and maybe make you feel bad, then waiting until no one is left around for you to say “I told you so” to. Future history is being written now, with you or without you. For my part, I would like to be a positive footnote in that history.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins