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Ein Volk, ein Reich (fortunately)

By Owen Paine on Thursday November 8, 2007 11:58 AM

I seem to write a lot of stuff triggered by Bobby Reich. He's kind of a Faust to me. His latest book, titled Supercapitalism, might as well be titled Sub-corporatism: the state of America in the age of boardroom trollocracy.

There's nothing newsy here on the social panorama front. I recall some cynical balkanite's (was it Luttwak?) "turbo-capitalism" notion of decade ago, providing profiles in power not far from Bobby's "Beware the scial menace of the border-busting, firewall-breaking, clean and decent reg-crushing, wage-slendering, continent-hopping, limited-liability, total surplus-gathering, profit-max outfits! They're.. errr... sociopathic!"

Indeed -- and then some, eh?

What prompts this post is a Reich-suggested rectificationary action: allow the overmatched civic sector to fund up for the common-cause fights against the behemoths in the glass towers -- through nothing less than IRS-certified tax-credit dollars! Yes, we the weebles, under Plan Reich, could each year donate up to one thousand dollars of our income-tax liability to any IRS-certified advocation shop of our own personal private choosing!

The implied intent, wish, hope and prayer: if we the weebles couple this with tossing out "corporate money" from the public square debates we'll get back our Madisonian congress.

Hmmmmm. Madison as in James -- or Madison as in Avenue?

In a system like ours, the civic sector and the commercial sector twine together like breeding snakes. Ponder this: have you ever seen an ad for soap as silly as "General Betray-us" two-sheet? Nothing is more shameless, more unselfconciously sanctimonious, than a new-age secular beggar's schtick. And to fund "party" campaigns and otherwise influence Hill votes? Yikes!

Then again -- diverting, say, $100 billion of Uncle-headed dollars into a burgeoning "non-corporate" advocacy community has its upside. Playing hide the banana among all these start up pluralizing fundseekers oughta spawn more profiteering policy cut-outs than the Cold War spawned Red bugs -- a full employment program goo-goo meritocrats.

Comments (6)

Randall:

Any time the "ain't got" is supposed to pony up for some scheme of the "all mine", I don't care whose label is on it, I smell a skunk.

Hello. New to the site. I appreciate the thoughts, even though it takes me a while to decypher. I'm not quite sure the following questions are in context or not:

What is your opinion on how one can rally around a goal (no more 2-party system) if the accomplishment of the goal is delayed until far more significant steps occur first (e.g.; making "sell-outs" that bring us anywhere near the former)?

If "nothing is more shameless ... than a new-age secular beggar's schtick," is it also shameless to cooperate with Iran to prevent a neoliberal attack on their citizens?

At what point do you think selling out becomes effective influence? Or would you say there is nothing between Achievement and Failure?

And if so, what is Achievement and what is Failure?

Thanks!

op:

"is it also shameless to cooperate with Iran to prevent a neoliberal attack on their citizens?"

we as citizens of the empire
need not co operate with anyone on this
just stop the neolibs ourselves

"At what point do you think selling out becomes effective influence"
i submit turning discrete states
into a continuum is fun for
a deep headed think in
but border area cases aren't
applicable to NOW so far as i can see
or near future NOW either

the time is now
near mid day
all species of cows
look clearly different

op:

"What is your opinion on how one can rally around a goal (no more 2-party system) if the accomplishment of the goal is delayed until far more significant steps occur first"

the sooner the bolt happens the sooner
this two party tango dances
into the final bend over
of bend overs

the bend over that can never
end for the donkettes

mjosef:

"Nothing is more shameless than" - yes, I too am so hopeless, so confuz'd, when gathering all my secular liberal and so righteous organizations pleading and shredding their skins for my charity dollar - one dolla for you, one dolla for you, and you, and now, presto, a livable planet!
Then there is the much greater, much more directly harmful specter of the supersystem's capitalist monolith in my face ever' damn day, and what do we do about that? You are right to see the earnest and now somewhat snarky Reich as selling huckleberry pie in the sky, but we should always remember we didn't make this supersystem, our enemies within it are just stand-ins for our own fears of our selves, and you can't go wrong deriding the whole mess. The only "influence" we need to find is the "influence" that can get our complicit, dust-like butts out of bed each day, to be a little more humane, a little more congenial, a little more accurate - and that means this website is as "influential" as it gets.

op:

mjoe

nice prose twist

peppermint division


note this :

living thru vs changing society

some of us ...not me
will have
to find a hard way
to take us all
to the rough

makin' it
go down smooth
despite the spurs

that's for
the pharmacy department

dembotologists unite
we have nothing but pains to lose
and
a whole fuckin world to confuse

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