Miriam,
I agree, and all you said brings us to the question: Could it be that
our most basic problem is how we Humans are put together?
Carl Jarvis
On 5/5/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Let's differentiate between human nature and specific economic systems, and
between economic systems and forms of government. Also, there's a difference
between pre literate societies and those which have a written language and
use written history in order to pass information down from one generation to
the next. It's not that I want to be pedantic or picky. It's that I think
that if we're going to talk about the issues that we're facing now, we'll do
better in terms of solutions if we don't think in just really broad
generalizations. So yes, I agree that there have always been some people who
want to dominate others. But whether and how they do that, depends on the
kind of society they live in, and its culture. Not every war like society
has a Capitalist economy, nor has every war like society been literate or
Christian, Jewish or Muslim. Some have been complex while others have not.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2017 12:41 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of
Wealth
Miriam,
Actually, I'm not too well read regarding the forms of government that came
prior to Feudalism. But whatever they were, I can bet that they involved
some people holding control over others. I think that every form of
government has or had two things in common, strong arm control, and
ignorance.
The power to hold some of the people captive, whether as slaves, serfs,
indentured or whatever, and the muscle to maintain that control over long
periods of time, then allows Ignorance to rule. Control can be maintained
by inventing an all powerful Being who knows all and sees all. Control can
be kept by mind control of young men, trained and armed, who will defend the
Controllers.
But my point is that no matter what names we give it, the pattern of our
governments appears to be the same. Does it matter if we accept the
sacrifice of young virgins to placate our Make Believe Gods, or whether we
gun down young Blacks in the street in order to keep the population under
our boot heel? Is a Serf, bound to his Lord's land any less well off that
the Slave, bound to his Master's plantation?
or the unemployed young Black man or woman trapped in the rat infested slum?
No hope is no hope no matter how it's served up.
So we have come to a place where we call "civilisation" this wonderful world
of technology. So many labor saving developments. So many creature
comforts. So many fun toys. But are we any freer? Can we really call
ourselves Independent? Shouldn't advanced civilization include Hope, Self
Respect, Opportunity, Security for both ourselves and for our family?
When we are so conditioned that we can be herded by the use of fear, then we
are no closer to being civilized than Alley Oop.
On 5/5/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Capitalism was the next stage. We moved from feudalism to something, a
system which encouraged industrialization. Capitalism was what did
that. I think that's what Joe meant.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2017 10:45 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace
of Wealth
As a matter of fact, Miriam, I mostly agree, and enjoy Boardman's
articles.
I was grumpy and picking knits...or are they nits? In fact, compared
to what I'm now hearing on NPR, Boardman is a breath of fresh air.
Perhaps I read Joe's comments too rapidly, since I do not have the
luxury of time and lots of underpaid staff as our Glorious Leader has,
but I am not convinced that Capitalism was an improvement over
previous forms of government. In fact, we've had to create a Fairy
Tale, a Make Believe Never Never Land in order to believe that
Capitalism was the best road to travel. In Truth, it is the road to
Hell. And we are a long way down it, with the corruption of
Capitalism into Corporate Capitalism and the emerging Corporate
Nations. Think of all those glorious conquests by the Gold and Jewel
Seekers sailing around the world spreading Capitalism among the
backward locals. Since capitalism has built into its very fabric,
Greed, then it can never be controlled, and most certainly never be turned
to as a fair ruler.
As for our Fairy Tale ability to switch names to protect the guilty,
the old word, "Slave" has fallen out of Vogue these days.
"Incarcerated" is our New World term for Slave. And boy are we
packing them in! In case anyone wonders who will replace those sneaky
Mexicans who creep into our fields and underbid jobs needed by our
young White boys, you know them, the ones sitting of the steps of
their single-wide, drinking beer and cursing Socialists. Well, fear
not, all we need to do is to send out our well armed and well
protected police, and round us up a bunch of them lazy Black Boys.
And some of us never thought that the South could Rise Again.
But, all sleazy joking aside, nothing has really changed since the day
when Columbus first lied to the Natives who welcomed him and his
butchers to their shores. And we've lied, and bullied our way across
this entire continent and beyond...way beyond. And all the litter we
see about us, all the trash and the broken bodies and the ruined
cities and the pollution and the foulness of greed driven barbarians,
all of that and more are part of Capitalism.
But nothing is going to change until enough of us toss aside the Fairy
Tale Book and draft a new Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights that
includes All People, All Life, All that goes into making Mother Earth
our Garden of Eden.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/4/17, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I understand. No disagreement here.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 5:44 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
Joe,
I wasn't implying that we disagreed. We're saying the same thing in
different ways. I just posted a long New Yorker article about
possibilities
for Trump's impeachment that I learned about on the Nation's podcast,
Start
Making Sense. It will probably be in next week's Audible's summary of
The New Yorker on BARD. It doesn't give me much comfort, however.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz
Comcast
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 5:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
Where is our disagreement if any? For I think that Trump is an absurd
clown
put in place by his corporate masters and dillusions of the people by
same not unlike Hitler or Mussolini. A narcist now out of control of
his masters.
BTW I can't believe this shit is happening. Regardless, I don't
disagree with a word of what you say here Miriam.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 3:12 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
Well, if you look at the phenomenon of Trump, or if I do, I see three
dimensions. He's really mentally disturbed. People say, "Narcissistic
Personality", which may be the correct diagnosis. I don't know. But
what I do know is that he can't concentrate, , doesn't have a clear
understanding of issues , and is focused on himself and his own
gratification. He's self-centered and he is good at manipulating in
order to get what he wants.
So take that personality and add to it that he's extremely wealthy
and wealth, in this society, gives you power. But he's heading up an
incredibly corrupt political party which Noam Chomsky says, is the
most dangerous organization in the world because its policies are
leading to the destruction of life on our planet. But the third part
of the picture is that this is a symptom of what western civilization
has evolved into. This is where Capitalism or something has led us
because Obama and the Clintons and all of the corporate Democrats
held the door wide open. But the Democratic Party turned right in the
70's because of all of the money and planning and organization of
folks like the Heritage Foundation, The Koch Brothers, The Kato
Instsitute, the Peterson Institute, all evolving from the resistance
to the New Deal.
Miriam.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz
Comcast
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 1:04 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
The self serving, and often outright corruption of entitled democrats
is only outshadowed by the shameless fascism and outright
kleptrocracy of the republicrats. I too wring my hands at this
outrage of Obama. I really do.
But, I also shuck at the horror of the outright and utter and obvious
corruption and perfidy of Trumph which expands this corruption and
horror by expodential ammounts of waste, fraud, abuse, nepotism and,
again utter kleptroracy! It is not to absolve Obama here at all, but
rather to look at thins in matters of degrees.
I guess I'm comparing things here under the historical eyes of the
Weimer Republic and those under the rise of Hitler.
Actually those are apt outlooks in my mind as we are raising now
between revisiting things that were injustice, and corrupt towards
days that are existintial threats towards the viability of humanity
itself and, indeed all life on this planet.
Still they are worth talking about, as are subsets.
I still rage against the corrupted machinery against our civil rights
as people with disabilities for example that is ongoing.
Realistically I state here and now that no ex-President, and more
importantly, no human being or citizen of this planet wshould be
denied a certain quality of life. In other words we all want,
including those of us who are nominal socialists, a good life,
including one that has material comforts. That is what nominal
socialists or fellow travelers always wanted when push came to shough.
We want a world that is just, and in which all have enough to eat,
with comfortable abodes to protect us, and with things like health
care for all, and with clean, potable water, transportation,
effective communications and so on and so forth.
We want and wanted a world where "jealously" didn't reign the day
either, for we shouldn't covet ty neighbors goods per se, a valuable
construct that was perverted by the ruling class by the way.
What that meant is that things shouldn't be based upon exploitation
and abuse and that things, material things, and, prosperity
relatively speaking should be shared for the common benefit and
thecommon good and the commonweal.
Republican capitalism was a great leap forward ironically over prior
systems. Problem is that it devolved and ignored the basic premise of
raising all boats and shared eexperiences and results in ever
escallating crisis and injustices. Slavery was replaced by wage
slavery. And power was held along with most wealth in tinier and
tiner hands until it all led to the tiniest of hands with Trumph.
BTW that wealth was not created by those tiny hands either but,
rather the hands of the working class, even as defined today; which
is to say the producers of whatever we now define as real wealth itself.
Oh but, I poke my head above and beyond list frays here to say:
"Shame on you Obama," even though I at the same time really wish for
another four years, again relatively speaking.
For crying out lough this Trump thing makes me think (and again
relatively) nostalgectically for the days of Reagan or G.W. Bush for
crisake?
For now we've devolved from thehypocritical to the stupid to the
innately cruel.
And that is a recipe for more than disaster. It is a recipe for human
extinction as Carl suggests and, perhaps, as an aside a repudiation
of Darwin, but I digress.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 12:18 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
I love Bordman. He does an opinion piece each week. Like Robert
Scheer, he's a product of the Vietnam anti-war movement. Innitially,
I saw a headline or heard a short snippet about Obama's $400,000
speech and I thought, "No wonder he was so supportive of Hillary.
He's doing exactly what she's been doing. These corporate Democrats
represent themselves as a people's party and then they shamelessly
make millions based on having held office". So I was really happy to
read an article that expressed my outrage at Obama and the rest of them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl
Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 10:44 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: jamesjarvis98 <jamesjarvis98@xxxxxxxxx>; Matthew
<mcblack@xxxxxxxxx>; footballmania <footballmania@xxxxxxxxx>; delores
selset <dselset@xxxxxxx>; Jennifer Ford <dandjford88@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's
Embrace of Wealth
As I began reading this article, I thought, "Here is an example of a
No News Article. I mean, who cares what the Obama's do with the rest
of their lives, or how richly they are rewarded for playing patsy to
their Billionaire Masters? The only difference between the Obama's
and all their predecessors, including Gentleman Jimmy Carter, is the
color of their skins.
It is the reward for being Faithful to the Establishment.
But the article did pick up toward the end, and is well worth wading
through the padding(after all, Boardman does need to crank out words
in an effort to make his living).
But I personally feel that time needs to be spent on how Barack Obama
and those who "graced" the Office of the Leader of the World'
Mightiest Empire came to be such War Lords and Murderers. Like
Donald Trump and Bushes I and II, and Bill Clinton, and the Mighty
Mouth, Ronald Reagan, Ford and Nixon and beyond, Barack Obama is
simply a product of our American Empire's Capitalist System.
Capitalism, like Cancer, depends upon growth and expansion. A fast
moving cancer never stops to allow its Host to rebuild before
continuing to grow.
Nor does Capitalism. Capitalism long term goals are short term profits.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can grab today, is the driving
motto.
So we working class folk came to this place in our history through
our own weaknesses. We bought into the Capitalists belief that
wealth is the sign of success, and great wealth is the sign of
genius. We accepted the belief that we can expand forever. Even
understanding that our Planet Earth has certain hard and fast limits,
we go forward as if there is no tomorrow...and that may well be our
future. We have become Consumers, not Workers.
Everything in today's world is "sponsored" and we must buy buy buy in
order to keep our hopes alive.
We even vote into office the very people who will defend the
Capitalists right to fleece us. I turned on the Mariner, Angels game
last night and the first words over the TV speakers welcomed us to
the name of the Corporation that paid to have the right to call this
baseball stadium by their name.
And it was said over and over.
Constant advertising for pennies cost per mention. And that is where
our genius is being focused. New improved methods of getting your
name in front of the suckers, and new improved gadgets to replace the
beads and shiny bobbles we used to bribe the Natives who were
blocking our expansion back on Manhattan Island. And just like a
flock of pigeons, we peck away at the shiny toys, desiring to keep
pace with modern technology and dine on the dwindling resources of Planet
Earth.
No, Barack Obama is not the problem, anymore than is Donald Trump.
Even Capitalism is not the root of the problem. The problem we must
solve, if we care to survive, is our own foolish, herd-like mentality
that causes us to believe that we can rape and abuse this Planet
Earth forever. If we can't come to our senses soon, then our Ship of
Fools will be dashed upon the cruel rocks of oblivion.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Barack Obama. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth By William
Boardman, Reader Supported News
03 May 17
If the Obamas aren’t living the American Dream, then who is?
Now they are offering the man $400,000 for making just one 60-minute
speech (and another $400,000 for a 90-minute speech). That $400,000
is more than twice the average net worth of most Americans at their
wealthiest ($194,226 in 2011, mostly in the worth of a home). A
Credit Suisse survey in 2014 put Americans’ average net worth at “a
whopping $301,000,” still well below what rich people will pay for a
one hour speech by a former president.
Even Obama’s annual pension is more than what most Americans own
(his pension is $205,700 plus roughly $150,000 in perks). Speaking
at a rate of
$400,000 per hour translates to $16 million for a forty-hour work
week; even if the speech takes a day to prepare, that’s still $2
million a week. An annual household income of $450,000 puts you in
the top one percent. It takes an income of almost $150,000 to be in
the top ten percent. Most Americans don’t even dream of a payday in
the millions.
Why shouldn’t he go for it? That $400,000 speech is almost as much
as his taxable income in 2015 ($436,035, from publicly released tax
returns). In 2015, the Obamas paid $81,472 in federal income tax,
more than Americans’
average annual household income of $55,775). Citizen Obama is
already way richer than 90% of his fellow citizens (and almost all
Kenyans probably), so why shouldn’t he try to increase that gap
between himself and the hoi-polloi? At the same time why shouldn’t
he be trying to narrow the much more gigantic gap between himself
and his mega-rich play-pals, like Richard Branson (net worth over $5
Billion) or David Geffen (net worth over $7 Billion). Barack and
Michelle Obama together have a net worth of only $24 million or so,
up from a mere $8 million when he became president. Or to put it in
perspective, when he became president, Obama was already in the top
one percent of wealthiest Americans.
None of this is meant to suggest that the Obamas are doing anything
wrong in the way they are living their post-White House lives,
insofar as we know.
At
least he’s not crying poor the way Hillary “dead broke” Clinton did
when departing Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor has he been smarmily coy
like then-Presidential multi-millionaire Bush telling The New York
Times that, in retirement, “I’ll give some speeches, just to
replenish the ol’ coffers.”
In fairness, it should go without saying that, in the White House,
President Obama was probably, on balance, preferable to his most
recent predecessors, and is still a notch above the current incumbent.
That said, Obama’s presidency was mostly an ineffectual limp rag of
minimal horror that looks good mainly in contrast to the glaringly
worse high crimes and misdemeanors of others. There’s no good reason
he shouldn’t cash in in the same ways his less worthy predecessors
have. Obama fits quite comfortably into the cliché of useless,
self-regarding ex-presidential lifestyle to which the only recent
arguable exception is Jimmy Carter.
Responding to Obama’s acceptance of the traditional emoluments of
out-of-office, the flusterings of the twitterati have often
portrayed themselves as shocked, shocked to find that there’s
post-presidential enrichment going on (but they express that shock
with none of the patent irony of Captain Renault in Casablanca). The
moral fatuity of these nattering nabobs of nonsense is nothing new,
it has long been the ruling class’s farcical manner of flattering
itself that it has actual principles beyond just having more. The
last few minutes of a Bill Maher clip illustrate the dominant mind
bubble, where only billionaire Nick Hanauer reveals any sense of the
greater good, wishing Obama had spent time building houses for
Habitat for Humanity and identifying wealth disparity as tearing the
country apart. The three show biz millionaires at the table don’t
even acknowledge either point.
But then there’s Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom
seem to be running for president in 2020.
Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard
Law School professor, said on SiriusXM, referring to news of Obama’s
$400,000 speaking fee:
I was troubled by that … One of the things I talk about in the book
[This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class]
is the influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers
through Washington and that it shows up in so many different ways
here in Washington…. There's more of us than there is of them. And
we've got to use our voices and our votes and fight back.
Warren’s use of “us” is rather elastic, since she and her husband
have a net worth of roughly $8.75 million, enough to be at the
bottom of the top one per cent by wealth. The couple’s annual income
of roughly
$950,000 is well within the top one percent. She received an advance
of $525,000 for her book, This Fight Is Our Fight.
Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and former
congressman, told
CNN:
Look, Barack Obama is a friend of mine, and I think he and his
family represented us for eight years with dignity and intelligence.
But I think at a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality
...
I think it just does not look good…. It's not a good idea, and I'm
sorry President Obama made that choice.
Sanders is not among the top one per cent in wealth or income. He
and his wife have a net worth of roughly $1.6 million, putting them
comfortably within the top ten percent. The couple’s joint income of
$205,271 in 2014 is also well within the top ten percent. For all of
that, Sanders does in fact “remain one of the poorer members of the
United States Senate.”
The point of all this has nothing to do with hypocrisy, which may or
may not exist in any of these examples. What’s truly “troubling,”
what really “does not look good,” is that, in retrospect, Obama now
appears the consummate huckster, a man whose gulls remain full of
admiration for the man they fail to realize has fleeced them from
beginning to end with empty eloquence. And now the dark joke is that
those who benefitted most from all that empty eloquence are willing
to pay handsomely to hear more of it.
THAT should be troubling, yet few seem troubled by it.
And that’s all you really need to know to understand why we’re where
we are now, no longer with a charm shark but with an unabashed con
man as leader of the free world: the richest president in our
history, a user and abuser who is richer than all prior presidents
combined, a man whose wealth was not built on actual slavery like
Washington’s, but close enough by treating people like slaves
without even the obligation to feed or house them.
The idealized Obama would have – might have – led the resistance to
President Trump. But then the idealized Obama might have led the
resistance to Obamacare in favor of single payer, might have led the
resistance to the Honduran military coup in favor of democracy,
might have led the resistance to Saudi genocide in Yemen in favor of
human rights. In 2009, President Obama said, “I did not run for
office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,”
although he managed to do as much. Obama’s campaign included the
notion that Wall Street fat cats should pay their fair share in
taxes. That hasn’t happened, but at least some of those cats are
paying a fair share to him.
And that’s all fine and good and ironic and amusing and unimportant.
What matters is what he does – and what Warren does, and what
Sanders does, and what the rest of our real and would-be leaders do,
where they stake their futures. Recently Obama spoke reflectively
[video] about his own
future: “What is the most important thing I can do for my next job,
and what I’m convinced of, is that although there are all kinds of
issues that I care about, and all kinds of issues that I intend to
work on, the single most important thing I can do is to help in any
way I can prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the
baton and take their own crack at changing the world.”
Really? The single most important thing is to kick the can down the
road?
When the house is on fire, the single most important thing is to
call an architect?
Just as the Bush presidency set the conditions for Obama to become
president, so did the Obama presidency set the conditions that have
produced President Trump. Obama entered the White House with the
wind at his back, with Democrats in the majority in Congress, with
the country ready for hope and change and serious leadership. The
result, eight years later, is not pretty. Maybe it’s not as bad as it
seems.
Or maybe it’s worse.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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