Category: Elections

WTFIRGO

February 8, 2012: J. Rosencrantz

I’ve been active in other domains, and so its been a while since I’ve posted here.  Weekly posts are migrating to the Freshjive Website, as part of the newly formed WTFIRGO Foundation which is raising money for social and economic justice organizations through the sale of limited edition agitprop tees. 50% of the proceeds from each months shirts will go to a different organization each month, starting with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which focuses on the struggles of Skid Row locals. 

Cross posted here is the inaugural WTFIRGO post, with  Rick Klotz’ sketch of the first graphic:

FUCK POLITICS: Apathy and its Opposite

Our political and economic order is in crisis. Powerful corporate institutions have superseded democratic institutions in wealth and power, to the extent, for example, that nobody can reach high political office without corporate sponsorship. This puts private wealth and power in a position to dictate legislation to the legislators they sponsor, against the interests of the people they are supposed to represent.

The rich get richer, but the rest of us get buried in debt. Banks are bailed out, but families are threatened with foreclosure. Non-violent drug offenders are locked up for years, but financial and political elites are immune from prosecution for their crimes.

Merely recognizing these problems, however, does nothing to address them.

And since, despite cynical campaign rhetoric to the contrary, politicians in “both parties” are beholden to the same cluster of interests, voting for this or that corporate shill will never present any significant challenge to the system.

Establishment media’s portrayal of political campaigns as a years long horse race between fully housebroken elephants and jackasses is a distraction from the true arenas of struggle for social and economic justice.

Challenges to the status quo from within the system are safely defanged — third parties, for example, are blocked from power by way of ballot access rules, media blackouts and a winner take all system which promotes a timid “lesser of two evils” mentality.

Even the difference between these two relative evils are largely illusory — “conservative” administrations throw vast amounts of money into imperial wars while “liberal” administrations promote indefinite detention and the assassination of citizens without a hint of due process.

So fuck politics.

But to come to this conclusion is not necessarily to succumb to apathy. Recognizing the insanity of delegating one’s own political power to distant, compromised liars is at the same time to recognize one’s own responsibility.

That is why the World’s Got Problems blog is joining with Freshjive to create the WTFIRGO foundation, which will seek to bring attention to and raise money for organizations working to unfuck the world.

So starting February 8th, Freshjive will be releasing one new t-shirt graphic twice a month under the WTFIRGO label to correspond with a World’s Got Problems post. The tees will come in limited quantities and be available for purchase through the ReserveLA.net web store. 50% of the proceeds from these shirts will be donated to a different social or economic justice organization each month.

We decided to begin close to home, by raising money for an organization struggling for justice in some of the harshest conditions in the country.

Just blocks away from the Freshjive offices in downtown L.A. is the Central City East Community, better known “Skid Row”, home to one of the most heavily policed and dispossessed populations of the country.

For years the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) has been organizing Skid Row locals in the struggle for social and economic justice. If anybody can teach us a thing about taking responsibility in the struggle, it is them — and maybe we can raise a few bucks for the cause.

T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

Capitulations

August 8, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

With the recent capitulation in the face of small government, “free-market” ideologues, Obama continues in the grand tradition of corporate spokesliars like Ronald Reagan, who use popularly endearing personalities as cover for regressive transferals of wealth.

Nothing encapsulates the subservience of these U.S. Presidents to their corporate financiers like the moment, captured in a brilliant segment of M. Moore’s Capitalism, in which then-chairman of Merrill Lynch literally whispers directives into Reagan’s ear.

Reagan went on to preside over the “wholesale dismantling of our industrial infrastructure” for the “sake of short term profits.”

Reagan began with the evisceration of the labor unions, infamously firing every member of the air traffic controllers union after they had been on strike for two days. Moore identifies this moment as “The Day the Middle Class Died“.

But he lays ultimate responsibility for the calamity not on Reagan or his puppet-masters — they were just looking after their own interests after all  — but on the lack of solidarity among the other labor unions who refused to fight:

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that’s just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers — they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything — and they did.

(At MotherJones, btw, Kevin Drum looks at the numbers over the past decades to show why unions matter, not only for unionized employees but for non-unionized workers as well. The punchline: Sociological studies show that in the absence of strong labor unions, income inequality grows and the political clout of the middle class shrinks.)

Popular capitulation in the face of this rightward shift took a brief respite as a result of the outrageous excesses of the most recent Bush presidency — millions took to the streets in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, for example. And while Democratic Party leaders, fearful of not “supporting the troops”, colluded with the Bush regime at every dark step, there was at least the pretense that they stood in opposition to aggressive war, secret prisons, government surveillance and the like.  And when Bush tried to gut new deal social programs by privatizing them, the Unions, as weak as they had become relative to the decades preceding Reagan, blocked his plans.

“But since 2008 a Democratic president has neutralized all these constituencies,” laments A. Cockburn at Counterpunch.

Indeed, those to the left of pro-war free-market ideologues who run this country have no appetite for taking the current imperial spokesmodel to task. Why? Because he is “the first black president”, or because “he is doing the best he can”, or because they fear who might succeed him if he is defeated in the next election.

This reflexive support for Obama leads Cockburn to the ironic conclusion that “the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent”:

McCain! But, you wail, he would have plunged America into new wars, kept Guantanamo open, launched an onslaught on entitlements, surrendered to Wall Street and the banks…

McCain would have tried all these things, but maybe he would have quailed amid a storm of public protest.

The lesson, I think, is that what is essential is a principled, rather than partisan, opposition to Imperial theft and violence.  And this means an opposition that remains alive even when the office of the President is filled by a person whose surface qualities — their party affiliation, their skin tone, their oratory skill — one finds appealing.

Ultimately it is this popular capitulation of principle that allows officeholders to betray their constituencies. If they can take your vote for granted, there is no need to be concerned about your interests.

Taxes for Chumps

April 18, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

As corporations and the rich become expert at tax avoidance, the bill for Washington’s Imperial Swan Song gets passed along to chumps like you and me. Consider these stats:

Over the past 12 years income for the richest U.S. Americans quadrupled as their tax rate was almost cut in half.

Corporations and the wealthy use offshore banks and tax havens to avoid paying taxes and other government regulations.

Many of the largest corporations avoid paying any taxes at all.

Half of your income taxes go to pay for the Imperial military machine.

And here is 9 other things the rich don’t want you to know about taxes.

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings asks a relevant question:  What if we all stopped paying taxes?

Here are some charts come (from a collection at Mother Jones and the WRL) to help visualize:

PS: Here are ways to resist war tax, from the War Resisters League.

Illegal Plants (But not for long?)

November 1, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

I never thought that I would see the day when Peter Tosh’s anthem would become a reality, but it looks like it might happen if enough people go to the polls tomorrow.

If anybody knows of any compelling reasons why marijauna should not be legalized, please let me know – I can’t find any.

By increasing the legality of this particular plant, CA Prop 19 would eliminate a disproportionately applied (i.e. racist) law that puts people in cages for the possession of a plant that grows from the earth. (Last year, CA police made 60,000 marijuana possession arrests, mostly of “young men of color”, even though “white” people use it more. )

Other benefits: It will increases tax revenue for a cash strapped state, and (possibly, hopefully) reduce the violence of the drug wars in Mexico, which has already claimed tens of thousands of lives.

But if all of this isn’t enough, just listen to Snoop:

No surprise, but Peter Tosh’s son Dave is also down. He makes his plea here.

CA Prop 23 (2010)

October 20, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Prop 23, initially and primarily funded by two Texas oil corporations (Valero and Tesoro), would suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) until unemployment drops to 5.5% for four quarters.

If it passes, Prop 23 will require that the State of California abandon the implementation of comprehensive greenhouse-gas-reduction program, and drop the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Proponents argue that the measure will help preserve jobs, and that preserving jobs should take precedence over addressing the climate crisis. Opponents say that overturning AB32 will result in more air pollution, undermine the burgeoning clean clean energy sector, and reduce incentives to find alternatives to oil.  Also, there is mistrust of the motives of the measure’s sponsors, who happen to be among California’s worst polluters.

Here is an argument against Prop 23 in action-movie format, written and directed by respected acquaintance M. Cooke:

UNBOUNDED CYNICISM

November 10, 2008: J. Rosencrantz

BLACK UP, GAY DOWN

November 5, 2008: J. Rosencrantz

M.L.K.’s words in D.C. seem, in retrospect, to have been a blueprint for victory in the presidential personality contest between Obama and McCain. The content of Obama’s character – his obvious intelligence and genuine fair mindedness, his unassailable calm, his love for his family – won out against the white skin of his irascible opponent.

Yet as the first mixed race candidate was elected President of the United States, four of those States passed discrimination laws against homosexuals.

California, Florida and Arizona all passed ban-gay-marriage amendments, and Arkansas made it impossible for gay couples to become adoptive or foster parents.

In the two of these states that Obama won – California and Florida – Blacks and Latinos were instrumental in passing the discrimination laws.

In California, according to AP polls, 70% of African Americans and more than 50% of Latinos supported Prop 8, a state-constitutional ban on gay marriage.

The passage of Prop. 8 also puts into legal limbo the marriages of about 18,000 same sex couples, including that of Robin Tyler and Diane Olson. (Pictured above in black and white, they were the couple whose lawsuit defeated the previous California same-sex marriage ban, and were the first legally recognized same-sex marriage after the original ban was found to be unconstitutional.)

Although Obama did oppose Prop. 8, he didn’t do so very strongly and in fact supporters of the gay marriage ban could quote him accurately in their fliers:

“I’m not in favor of gay marriage…”
UPDATE (9/9/08): Of course, nothing in the above post is meant to excuse anything like this. Obviously, homophobia is not limited to African-Americans, and not all African-Americans are homophobic. And there are African-American homosexuals.

TRAINING POLITICIANS TO TAKE YOU FOR GRANTED

November 3, 2008: J. Rosencrantz

To Summarize: Obama supported the Republican Class Action Reform Bill, there-authorization of the Patriot Act, the retroactive immunity amendment to FISA, off-shore drilling and the death penalty. He now thinks that the “surge” worked, does not rule out the continued use of private mercenaries, and, in Iraq, is now only committed to “reducing the number of combat troops within 16 months.” He has called for an increase in military spending and picked a running mate who supported the invasion of Iraq and the original Patriot Act. He supported the Wall St. bailout. He thinks Hugo Chavez is an enemy of the United States, but that “Israel’s security is sacrosanct.”

I get it. Barack Obama is intelligent, beautiful and he loves children.Or at least American children. The children of Afghanistan, who, like the child in black and white,too often suffer the consequences of U.S. air-stirikes, might have to look for an alternative daddy since this one pledges to escalate war in their country.

Matt Gonzalez, Nader’s running mate, asks progressive supporters of Obama / Biden: “What would they have to do to lose your vote?”

Alexander Cockburn, writing for the Nation magazine, also tries his hand at dissuading progressives from Obama.

The Hermit discusses Obama’s endorsement of the Bush Doctrine with wit and verve.

And in a personal message to my fellow Californians: Remember, we in California are free to vote on principle – there is no way McCain can win here, and Obama should know there would be a price to pay for continued support of corporate welfare and lawlessness, imperial war and destructive environmental policies.

And, for what it is worth, my brother and I discussed the state measures and came up with this: Yes on 1A, 2 and 3. No on 4. Yes on 5. No on 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Yes on 11 and 12.

THE CORPORATE DUOPOLY’S LIMITATION OF THE POLITCAL SPECTRUM

October 31, 2008: J. Rosencrantz

A recent post focused on problems with voting mechanics, but even if voting mechanics were secure and accessible to everyone, there would remain other powerful obstacles to democracy.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation run by former members of the Democratic and Republican Parties, conspires with the major corporate media networks to block large swaths of the political spectrum from achieving national attention.

All four of the above presidential candidates have qualified on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning:

FAIR addresses the problem here.

THE RIGHT’S DISINGENUOUS ASSULT ON ACORN

October 22, 2008: J. Rosencrantz

Olbermann covers the story here.

The anti-ACORN campaign has resulted in threatening and racist messages sent to ACORN’s offices.