And Here We Are
By David Glenn Cox

And so here we are, living in an environment Huxley or Orwell could forecast, but could never foretaste. It is the enormity of it and the stealthiness of it, which gets next to you. Shoving money through the slots, as the man with gun and uniform watches you from the corner of the grocery store on a Friday night. It requires the suspension of belief and the acceptance of an un-reality, as Barack Obama names a former cable industry lobbyist to head the Federal Communications Commission and the Republicans create a false flag issue out of Benghazi.

It is the one-party state creating a smoke screen, diverting attention from the real issues of domestic policy. Divide and conquer, always keep’em guessing, always leave’em laughing. Jack Lew is a former hedge fund manager for Citigroup and manager of its alternative investments unit, with oversight over Citigroup’s subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Hong Kong and he’s the new Treasury Secretary.

Sally Jewell worked for Mobil as an engineer in the oil fields of Oklahoma from 1978 to 1981. From there she moved on to banking at Security Pacific and West One Bank, before moving on to the Titanic disaster of modern banking, the ill-fated S.S. Washington Mutual. Jewell escaped the disaster by jumping ship as the iceberg approached, moving on to become the CEO of REI sporting goods. She’s the Secretary of the Interior now and her qualifications for the job are based solely on chairing several green committees, versus a twenty-plus-year career in oil, finance and banking. Who would a thunk it; an oil engineer with background in banking and the Republicans said what?

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/05/21/and-here-we-are/davidcox/

By David Glenn Cox

“A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having, by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude.” – Robespierre

Congratulations, if you’re an hourly worker in the United States you’ve earned a .02 cent per hour raise last month! (April) Now of course, after earning almost a whole extra dollar per week, tax and investment advice should be sought out immediately. If you work in information services for a living, your hours worked increased this month, by one tenth of an hour. 2,691,000 Americans work in the “information” category and I guess they’re lucky to be working that extra fractional hour, even if there are 9,000 less of them, working this month over last.

For everyone else, all 155 million of us American workers, hours worked in every category either fell or stayed the same. The propaganda networks will trumpet 165,000 “new” jobs and that’s Winston Smith’s way of telling you, everything is so much better now. Come out; come out where ever you are! Ollie, Ollie Ocean free! But under the veneer is another story entirely, a story that you will not see on TV or Radio.

While 165,000 new jobs were created last month, 210,000 workers joined the labor force.

The number of Americans working Part-Time, for economic reasons rose sharply by 278,000 in April, to nearly 8,000,000 people. Eight million people in this country that want a Full-Time job, but can’t find one.

Part-Time due to slack work or business conditions rose to 5,250,000.
The number of Americans who could only find part-time work last month declined by 49,000.

Workers marginally attached to labor force were up by 21,000 and discouraged workers are also up by 32,000 workers.

Nearly 2,000,000 Americans now work two or more part-time jobs, an increase of over 20,000 since last April.

So just where are all these “new” jobs? Well, they’re not in mining or logging and not in construction or manufacturing. They’re not in durable goods or non-durable goods; they’re not in wholesale trade or utilities and even our friends in “Information services” lost workers. The new jobs are to be found in private-service providing, 137,000 of 165,000 jobs are in the service industry.

Trade, Transport – 9,000
Retail – 13,000
Financial services – 19,000
Professional and business services – 50,000
Leisure and hospitality services – 36,000
Education & Health Services – 24,000
Other services – 4,000

Realty Trac reported this month, “The number of homes overall in foreclosure or bank-owned rose by 9 percent to 1.5 million properties nationally in the first quarter of 2013 compared to a year ago.” Another 11 million homes remain under water, which brings us to Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”

Margaret Thatcher was a Neoliberalist politician, same as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Duh be you and Barack Obama. And Neoliberalist politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, believe just like Thatcher, that society, American society is only an artificial construct; they believe that it only exists because people say it does.

They believe we’re all just free individuals and we might be our brother’s keeper but definitely not yours. They believe the only rights which actually exist, are property rights; everything else, like society itself is an artificial construct. The Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and the Constitution are all non-sense, to their way of thinking government owes nothing to the sick, the infirm or the dying.

From Wikipedia:

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We Don’t Love Freedom Enough
By David Glenn Cox

It is as if someone has died, that realization which comes to you from out of the blue and says, “Oh wow, they really did that!” Armed men in military style fatigues took over an American city and ordered its residents off the streets. Roaming, this force in their armored personnel carriers, interrogated citizens who dared break from their “voluntary” request. They ejected people from their homes and searched them without warrant. It reminded me of a scene from the movie Fahrenheit 451 where they were chasing Montag with the helicopters, while his picture is splashed across the television as “breaking news.”

Authorities pick out official suspects, disallowing any other photographs but those deemed “official.” The authorities ask for the public’s help in identifying the suspects, and then the boy’s mother comes forward saying the FBI has been talking to her son for two years and has been to their home…

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/04/30/we-dont-love-freedom-enough/davidcox/

The Pill
By David Glenn Cox

Let us suppose that some giant pharmaceutical company out there has spent long years of research into developing a pill that would make you feel better. With a single dose you would begin to feel yourself growing calmer. Like magic, all the unimportant little worries and insecurities in your life would simply fade away.

You can feel yourself thinking clearer, you sleep better at night and find you’re thinking more about important things. The human mind is the most amazing device in the universe; it is a super computer inside your head. It will hold enough information to fill 10,000 hard drives, but it is far from perfect. Primarily because, while a mechanical computer can perform dozens of functions all at once, your conscious computer brain can only do one or two low-grade functions at a time.

Like a guitar amplifier, you can only plug in one or two guitars; after that, no matter how good the musicians play, what comes out becomes a jumble of noise. We have only our eyes and our ears to help us navigate through the world and when they become overloaded such as in an auto accident, we only remember tiny bits and fragments of information and not the event as a whole.

Then there is that other person who’s living with you, inside your head. Your subconscious is a whole different mind living in the back room of your brain and it operates independently, working the night shift, once you’ve gone to sleep. It creates your dreams and it re-fights your battles, back from when you were six or twelve or twenty. Your old girlfriends or boyfriends live in there along with your mom and your dad, your Aunt Martha and the crossing guard from your elementary school.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/04/10/the-pill/davidcox/

By David Glenn Cox

We have reached a point in our lives, where from the summit of a high hill we can look back at the road which has delivered us here. Tis a tale of woe in a fairyland dream, sugar-coated pabulum, televised non-sense and unrealized dreams. It is hard to look back, almost painful, as yesterday weighs heavy in your pockets, so you try not to bring it along.

I have come full circle in this new reality, this new duality. This new America, where if we say we can’t see you, then you’re not there. Behind the façade you can see the shadows of agenda, a war on the post office, a war on public employees and educators. It is a complete and total deconstruction of society and of the world, which we once knew. As a young man, I’d wondered what it must have been like to have lived in the third Reich. Trapped as just some plain Joe, watching madness coming into season, what would your consciousness say when there was real money on the line?

Five years ago, I was of the middle class; today I’m of the missing class. There are fewer Americans working today than there were in December. During the same time period, the civilian labor force has fallen by over half a million workers. The official numbers of those unemployed also fell. But strangely, the numbers of persons in the Civilian Non-institutional Population rose by almost 600,000 since December. Do you see it; do you understand what it really means?

Not in Labor Force

Mar. 2012 – 88,288,000
Feb. 2013 – 90,100,000
Mar. 2013 – 90,483,000

The number of men 20 years and over, not in the labor force has grown by almost one million. One million American men, not just unemployed or discouraged workers, but men no longer counted as in the labor force in a single year. Rather than fix the economy, they just said they fixed the economy and the media aped along.

The average number of hours worked from March 2012 to March 2013 is virtually unchanged; there is no improvement anywhere to be seen. Retail trade employment lost 24,000 jobs in 31 days of March; clothing accessories stores lost 500 employees per day in March. Building materials and garden supply stores lost 10,000 people or 322 workers per day, for everyday of the month. It would seem reasonable to assume that if there were any and I do emphasize, any growth, to be seen in this economy, it would be reflected in garden supply store sales in the spring.

Appliance stores lost 6,000 employees last month, I guess we’re all buying our washers, driers and refrigerators on the Internet these days, but more likely, it’s Craigslist. But employment also fell in mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation, warehousing, information and financial services. Employment fell from the mine to the check-out line, in this all mighty consumer economy of ours. At a time when legitimate government would be trying to bolster the economy, this government terminated 3,000 Postal employees per week in March.

The unemployed are pushed through the sausage factory, where you don’t ask where it came from unless you want to go there yourself. Through the steam pipes, through the valves and dials, finally poured down the drain pipe of untreated effluent, the waste product of a collapsing economy, deposited into the invisible sea of the missing class.

Through years of electric propaganda Americans have reached a point where it is now patriotic to hate Americans. This is not to say we haven’t hated each other before, but in the past they were at least selective about it. In times past, we hated groups by race or creed, based on grandpa’s hatreds. Clownish playschool Neo-Nazis or robed Klansman, scary only in the way an unchained pit bull is scary. Today our enemies are school teachers, municipal workers, postal workers, Union workers or the poor. All to be disparaged in the press round the clock by the Corporate News Networks.

The city of Detroit is now in the hands of an unelected Overseer, appointed by the governor to institute policies the electorate find unpalatable. Who is to blame for this American city’s descent into ruins? Who is to blame for this catastrophe? According to the blogosphere, it was caused by unions, blacks and decades of democratic politicians. Collective amnesia, plug and play racism, as the paid horde shouts for Barabbas.

It is a strange psychosis where a people profess a love for their country and its Democratic processes, while despising its citizens. Call it cardboard cut-out patriotism or flag waving from behind the bars.

Consumer Price Index

Food at Home – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 1.2 % (Not seasonally adjusted)
Motor Fuels – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 3.3%
Electricity – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up .8%
Apparel – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 2.4%
Shelter – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 2.3%
Medical Care– Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 3.9%

Official Consumer Price Index rate of inflation – 2.07%

Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory employees on non-farm payrolls

March 2012- $ 19.68
March 2013- $ 20.03

The average wage increase was .35 cents an hour, that’s average, now for retail workers it was .14 cents an hour and with an average work week of 33 hours their wages grew just $ 4.62 before taxes and maybe $2.50 after. There is no wage growth in this economy for anyone, regardless of what you do or who you are.

If you take the numbers listed by the bureau of Labor Statistics for duration of unemployment and add the numbers up, currently they stand at 15.68 million. If you do the same with last years numbers they total 15.9 million:

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The Lights of Perverted Science
By David Glenn Cox

During the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill said something which was quite radical for the time and largely went unnoticed, but in our modern 21st Century existence, perhaps it needs to be reconsidered.

“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

By “perverted science”, Churchill meant radar and proximity fuses. This was before the buzz bombs or the V-2. It is such an explicit and exquisite term, perverted science, encapsulating and distilling knowledge without benefit, counterproductive, Mary-Shelly-Frankenstein knowledge. Nightmare technologies like nuclear weapons which once begun can never be ended. Our country is awash in genetically modified foods, fracking, drones, armed guards and RFI chips, yet, when we look at these things in a rear view mirror to see a reversed image, we see something far more frightening, as the seeds perverted science can only prosper in the soils of perverted government. Other governments around the world have dismissed out of hand proposals for GMO crops, GMO foods, fracking and drone surveillance.

This is made possible by corporate control of the American media creating a false sense of reality and of normality. The media in the United States of America is nearly as censored and editorially controlled as was the German press under Joseph Goebbels during the Nazi era. It was way back in February, almost an eon ago to modern media outlets when Chris Dorner, a fired Los Angeles Policeman killed two fellow officers and wounded three others. Dorner left behind a manifesto on his Facebook page claiming to have been victimized by the authorities because he had reported a fellow officer for abusing a mentally ill suspect. Read the rest of this entry →

That’s why they call it a Police State
By David Glenn Cox

Understand this… the politics you knew as a child or even the politics you knew before the 2000 election, no longer exist. There is only one political party in this country, the money Party. All politicians must appease the money Party. Your Congressman or Senator might come across back home as an arch Conservative or a Liberal environmentalist, but in the halls of power there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between them.

As a population we live with an overload of inputs, 9-11, the wars, the shootings and the endless carnage brought about by the political philosophies of those in our government, who are neither Republicans nor Democrats.

Politically I am a Socialist, I used to be a Democrat and I never left the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me (Us). This New Great Depression has afflicted our economy for four years now. It has put tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans into economic distress and Barack Obama’s answer to all of this has been the same answer as that derived by Herbert Hoover.

“Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement” ~ Herbert Hoover

Partisan rhetoric about the effects of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal aside, in 8 years the American workers had recovered their prosperity. These workers had the right to join a labor union and they had a Social Security income to depend upon, to build a decent retirement.

Obama has followed the Hoover method; he’s cut taxes for business again and again. Obama’s has even proposed a plan for government to subsidize labor costs for corporations. That isn’t liberal or conservative politics, its Fascism. It represents the co-mingling of industry and government. To live in a country where industry sets the safety standards, a country where the government sides with GM against the UAW and then profits directly from the workers loss.

A country where a Democratic President loves gun control and there’s only one problem with gun control, besides being a fanciful and unworkable penalty against the law abiding, and that problem is the cops.

The other day in Rancho Cordoba California, three policemen shot and killed a suspect. The police had been called to a domestic dispute and when the officers tried to remove the man from the bedroom he resisted arrest. Police say, he nearly overpowered the three officers, so the three officers shot and killed him. Doesn’t that seem a bit of a harsh sentence for resisting arrest? Couldn’t they have called the station house for help, he was after all unarmed. Either, this was a baddest man ever to step out of the mountains or the Rancho Cordoba police force needs tougher physical standards. Three on one, armed with night sticks, pepper spray and tasers and the cop’s first answer was to shoot him?

They used to call these things isolated incidents, but not anymore. In Cleveland, a police officer heard a loud noise, which he presumed came from a car leaving the court-house parking lot. The officer put on his thinking cap and deduced he was under fire from terrorists in a car leaving the parking lot at a normal speed. So cleaver were the two suspected terrorists, both middle-aged, that no one else in the area even suspected that there had been a shooting, isn’t that amazing?

The officer returned fire on the car and then, somehow in the police thought processes, couldn’t understand why the car wouldn’t want to stop. Gee, you’re driving along when suddenly bullets are whizzing around your head for no apparent reason. Would you stop and try to explain the mistake to the nice officers? Eventually, after a high-speed chase, police officers fired 137 rounds and killed two unarmed citizens, guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In Marin County Florida, an officer shot a fleeing suspect in the back and a Grand Jury failed to indict the officer. A You Tube video from the dash cam clearly shows the altercation between the suspect and the two officers. When the suspect takes off and begins running away, without reflection, the officer fires automatically and kills the suspect. Here’s what’s important, activists protest and picket over President Obama’s claim to executive authority over targeted killings, but a Grand Jury refused to indict a cop who clearly executed a fleeing suspect.

Do police now hold the power of life and death over us all?

On July 10, 2011 Kelly Thomas was beaten and suffocated by five Fullerton Police Officers. Kelly Thomas was a homeless man and a diagnosed schizophrenic. Police had stopped Thomas for a suspected auto burglary, but Thomas had nothing on him indicating he was involved. Over the next 15 minutes the officers taunt Thomas, threatening to arrest him for imaginary crimes, until finally, Officer Ramos says, “Now, you see my fists, they’re about to fuck you up.”

Thomas was tasered six times, until the taser guns ran dry and then, he was beaten and finally, suffocated by five officers piling on top of his lifeless body. Thomas’s body then lay on the sidewalk, in a puddle of his own leaking body fluids, while paramedics attended to the cop’s bloody knuckles.

Kelly Thomas was beaten to death by police on the streets of Fullerton California, but what was Kelly Thomas charged with? The officers knew Kelly Thomas, he was a fixture, and they’d talked to him before. They knew he was homeless, but rather than say homeless, let’s say instead, that they knew he was powerless to stop the officer’s.

Kelly Thomas had no cell phone or high-powered attorney. His economic status made him an easy victim. So let’s beat up that homeless guy, just for fun. Oop’s we’ve killed him.

You are closer to Kelly Thomas than you could ever imagine.

In February of last year, Officer Daniel Harmon-Wright killed 54-year-old Patricia Cook in the parking lot of Epiphany Catholic School in Culpeper, Virginia, for the crime of driving away when he was trying to question her.

The jury recommended a three-year sentence, after the officer had fired his pistol five times into the body of an unarmed Sunday school teacher. He faced a possible 25 year prison sentence, but soon, will be back out on the streets with us again.

When your greatest fear of gun violence comes from the police force themselves, gun control is a bad idea. Because once the police know the average citizen is powerless against them, we’re all Kelly Thomas. And when you consider the volume and the rise of “shoot first, make excuses later,” police work. Given American police forces penchant for gun violence, they would quickly make the Gestapo look like grade school crossing guards.

An all-powerful imperial police force, with the power of life or death over the average citizen in a free country is an absurdity. That’s why they call it a police state.

Somewhere Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
By David Glenn Cox

The French aristocracy was not executed during the blood terror simply for the crime of being rich; they were executed for ignoring the plight of the poor. In their defense, yes their defense, let me offer up the observations of a poor man. When you have nothing or very little, you share that environment with all those around you who also have little or nothing. Since that number in this American society is huge and growing, that lifestyle and those opinions, appear to be the opinions to us, of the population as a whole.

Now, take your average golden lunchbox millionaire earning around $ 400,000 annually. He or she gets that paycheck every week and glances at their gross weekly earnings of $ 7,692.30; they look quickly at their deductions and are outraged. But what they don’t ever have to think about is “Oh, my god, how am I going to pay my bills!” With a monthly income of $33,000, what’s a $5,000 a month house payment or a $ 900 per month car payment, or even two of each?

Very quickly, in a matter of a few years, they’ve run out of things to spend money on. You own all the houses and cars you can handle, you’ve got a Rolex or three and you’ve gone everywhere and done everything; well… almost everything. But that damn money keeps piling up by the door, another $33,000 every 30 days, so there’s nothing left to do but to invest.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that our golden lunchbox millionaire likes the wild life and spends heavily. Even after deducting any potential tax liability, our millionaire still has around $320,000 to try and live on. So let’s suppose they spend $10,000 per month on a David Crosby size cocaine addiction, or a Bill Bennett sized gambling compulsion. Even after squandering 12 grand a year or even 50, they’re left with only $ 270,000 to live on, with the point being, their lives have nothing to do with ours.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/03/08/somewhere-between-yesterday-and-tomorrow/davidcox/

Where Do They Go?
By David Glenn Cox

All along the watchtower princes kept the view of strange days and of self-same nights.

This month’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report expresses the symptoms of a lingering stagnation that smells. Actual new job hires were 17,000 in a labor population of nearly 157 million; two million more working compared to last year, with another two million more “no longer in the labor force.” Either way, split the difference as the number of officially unemployed grew for a third consecutive month to 12,332,000.

Wages rose at the ridiculously paltry rate of 0.5 percent, seasonally adjusted for three months and for the year; compensation rose only 1.9%. A desert sheik should run such a frugal household. At 1.9% wage growth, any plans for an economic recovery should be placed well off into the far distant future. It’s true you know, you can’t stand still. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. The numbers all meander around so, up one month and down the next, but never improving outside of a narrow range.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report says: “Employer costs for health benefits increased 2.8 percent over the year. In December 2011 the increase was 3.5 percent.” Who paid that increase? So the averages for Americans of all stations are falling backwards. Take heart ye of the class struggle, wages for the higher-ups are doing only proportionally better. Retail workers’ wages increased an average of ten dollars a week, while their boss made twenty. But either way it’s only McDonald’s money.

Weekly hours worked are down in every employment category year after year, save for business services and healthcare. It’s not just a slowdown in this industry or in that, it is a widespread malaise. In its January report the BLS is careful to mention in the footnotes: “Note: Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of the January data.”

Median unemployment duration in weeks:

October – 19.6

November – 18.9

December – 18.00

January – 16.00

I never would have guessed that they adjusted the population controls, would you? Such adjustments make it difficult to assess changes over time through data comparisons and what they’re saying numerically doesn’t truly express the meaning existentially. It means if you were to lose your job today, on average, in a best case scenario, you won’t find a new job until June.

Now take a look at the average length of stay on unemployment.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/02/17/where-do-they-go/davidcox/

Praising Money Tonight in the House of the Lord
By David Glenn Cox

It was a red carpet and searchlight extravaganza playing to a full house. Millionaires, multi-millionaires and even mega-multi-millionaires filled every seat. Then the star of show burst through the doors and worked the crowd no differently than a diamond studded televangelist. Smiles and glad hands for all, we’re praising money tonight in the house of the lord.

Stalinist applause filled the room, two minutes, then four minutes, then finally, the extra had his walk-on moment, banging the over-sized novelty gavel and the crowd grew quiet. John Boehner announced the President to the room and the pandemonium returned. Screams and shouts of joy completely unfettered and unencumbered, it was as if the Beatles had reunited and were suddenly appearing unannounced.

With that many rich folks all together in one room and all so orgasmic-ally delighted by the appearance of the President one must ask as a poor man, what’s this mean to me? I mean, we’re talking rich and poor here. Not just my poverty but that of all of us, if you took the combined net income of the Capital house band and Obama and his Posse, seated in the Capitol building for the State of the Union speech, it would probably exceed the net income of a mid-sized country.

Hell, if they wanted to they could start their own army and take over the country. They could, if they wanted to and were clumsy about it. Consider this; the Party room says the unemployment rate stands at 7.9% (U-3) while the more exact number is 15.4% (U-6). To the studio audience that 7.9% is gospel, it is the Lord’s truth, when even the 15.4% number is horse apples. A completely dual reality, the wealthiest one percent of the one percent are having a party at their club house tonight and they’re happy as f*ck about it.

The President – “Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home. (Applause.) After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years, and less foreign oil than we have in 20. (Applause.) Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.” (Applause.)

A grit and determination which could also be described as American’s suffering unnecessarily. After a decade of unnecessary war, some of our troops are coming home and some more will come home next year. These troops aren’t being demobilized, but will return home to prepare for the next conflict. After years of grueling recession we have only years of grueling recession to show for it. Corporations and oil companies are more profitable than ever. The Wall Street S&P is back over 14,000 again and that’s why this crowd in the honeycomb hide out are all so f*cking happy tonight.

Outside the Capitol where over 300 million Americans are playing along at home, over 24 million of those Americans are out of work. The unemployment numbers haven’t really changed much at all this year and little from the year before, just the categories these Americans are counted in change.
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