And how do we keep the sky from falling?  Gut Social Security.  Really, that’s the plan.  Even though Social Security is deficit neutral–meaning it doesn’t use tax dollars to fund itself–and only needs some minor tweeking to stay deficit neutral, it has become in the eyes of the DC crowd Public Enemy Number One.

Wall Street lusts for more public money to play with.  If SS is privatized, Wall Street gets to do lots and lots more gambling, this time with your SS retirement.  And much like in any casino, the house always wins.  If you think privatized SS is a good idea, research what happened in Chile when Pinochet and Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” tried it.  It failed big time and the Chileans are still paying the price.

Get a little more informed by watching this video and joining the fight to save Social Security.

Today the Postal Service exists in a netherworld where it must provide universal service–a classic public good–and at the same time break even; it must “compete” with private parcel services while providing them with platforms to expand their nonunionized and nonuniversal businesses; it must meet the demands of Congress while getting by without tax dollars.

Instead of entertaining ill-thought-out discussions about how to squeeze the Postal Service even more than it has already been squeezed, Congress needs a precise picture of what is threatened when we talk of going to five-day delivery, shuttering post offices, laying off experienced postal workers, hiking rates for newspapers and magazines (including, it should be noted, publications such as The Nation) and privatizing pieces of what is supposed to be a ubiquitous public service.

These “efficiencies” threaten more than just the Postal Service. They pose direct and indirect threats to democracy.

Bravo.  Finally someone who “gets” it.  John Nichols of The Nation (here) riffs on a lot of stuff I’m usually ranting about and asks a question all Americans need to grok: what is the USPS mission–universal service or making money?  The news shows and pundits would have you believe its the latter, and that all the USPS has to do to make money is dismember its unions and get lean and mean, i.e gut its workforce and close up shop in rural America.  Wrong Answer, exclaims Nichols, who points to a PO  that bound together the colonies and early Republic by cheaply circulating the various newspapers and opinion journals that stoked a revolutionary zeal in 18th century America.

Nichols pines for a renaissance in the post office that will transform it for the better while returning it more to its original mission.  Since the internet is such a vital part of 21st century communication and information gathering, perhaps an internet cafe in every post office lobby, especially in poorer and rural neighborhoods without broadband, would be a home run for the post office and the American public.

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

– U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

Never underestimate the power of a beautiful blond showing some tasteful cleavage.  Go Public Option, GO!

A post by Numerian over at  The Agonist lays out the final assault against unions:  Public resentment of union wages and benefits in an era of stagnant private sector wages, Glenn Beck style “common sense” and globalization, coupled was massive deficits in the budgets of States in an era of severe economic recession, is about to destroy all gains unions have made in the last 150 or so years.  The final battle against unionism has began, and it’s going to be a David vs. Goliath battle, except this time David doesn’t even have a rock while Goliath has a M1 Abrams Tank.  While not publicly-funded like teachers, fire fighters and police, the postal unions faces the same scenario as they do.  Mr. Numerian makes it very clear in the post that he or she sees unionism’s demise as a foregone conclusion.

It is not too difficult to determine the outcome of this fight. States and localities have no choice but to close their deficits, and the taxpayer has no appetite for greater taxes. Therefore the unions will have to accept cutbacks in salaries, wages and benefits; reductions in pension plans (amounting to an outright repudiation of legally-agreed payouts); and the loss of job protection, so that government officials can fire workers much more quickly. There will be nasty strikes over the next few years, and lawsuits aplenty as these cutbacks are enforced, but there simply isn’t the money to continue to pay union workers in government anything like what they have received in the past.

The deflation that has ravaged the pay and benefits of the middle class private sector worker is about to work its damage on the public sector as well. The middle class in the US will shrink even more, as one of the last bastions of protection against rampaging globalization and Republican market orthodoxy succumbs.

Numerian sees past this coming fall of unionism to the eventual campaign against the true “last bastion” of socialism in the US of A:  The armed forces.

We can say “one of the last bastions”, but there is still one left, a sector of the economy that isn’t even unionized. That is the pay and benefit programs for the military, especially the officer corps who can retire at 50, slip into a well-paying job in the industrial complex, yet also take home generous retirement benefits. The costs of supporting tens of thousands of these retirees is galloping forward year after year, but this is so far a sacrosanct area that no politician will touch.

Even the Department of Defense may not be able to hold out forever, if economic conditions get really bad (and that is likely to be the case). If so, the concept of retirement with a fixed pension payment will be obliterated in this country, as the US continues on its path of erecting third world standards of pay and benefits for all its workers.

In an era of unbridled, atavistic “free market” capitalism for you and me and fascistic corporate welfare for those deemed “too big to fail” this scenario is increasingly realistic.  Time to gather stones and swinging the bolo.

Read the whole post here.

After my last 2 “it’s the end of democracy” rants, I needed this.

With the recent Supreme Court Citizens United v. FEC decision, it just got easier for corporations–even foreign corporations–to buy elections.  Remember the cries and whispers about B. Clinton getting laundered Chinese money in support of his 1996 re-election campaign?  Imagine that times a million, and all 100% legal, or at least legal enough, and you can see the danger posed to our republic by this ruling.  Unlimited cash flowing into the election process from here on out.  One dollar, one vote.  100 million dollars. . .  And picture this: with some creative accounting, Citibank, AIG and Goldman Sachs can probably even use taxpayer-supplied bailout money to buy more politicians through unlimited campaign spending.  And those bought and paid-for politians can engineer even more bailouts for their corporate masters once in office.

Here’s the heart of the majority opinion (you can read the whole thing here), written by Anthony Kennedy:

Distinguishing wealthy individuals from corporations based on the latter’s special advantages of e.g., limited liability, does not suffice to allow laws prohibiting speech.  It is irrelevant for First Amendment purposes that corporate funds may “have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” Austin, supra, at 660.  All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.

Huh?  You know, it’s actually very easy to distinguish between a person and a corporation.  A person lives and breaths, eats and excretes, sweats and toils, ages and dies.  A corporation is a stack of legal documents consisting of ink on paper.  It doesn’t live and breath, and is immortal unless legally dissolved.  How is it that a non-person was given “free speech” under the first amendment and “due process” under the 14th amendment?  Perhaps it’s time for some legal experts to challenge the constitutionality of “corporate personhood” altogether.

God bless our wise judges.  God save America.