Supercommittee of the 1 percent

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Congressional focus on the deficit at a time of severe economic malaise is downright foolish and dangerous.

And, as Dean Baker points out, it also is just one more example of how deformed our politics has become. The existence of a supercommittee, first, demonstrates a distortion in priorities. We need a rebirth of the commons, a sense of common good and shared sacrifice that has disappeared.

That means wrestling the economy back from the legalized criminal enterprises that control our economic lives. Corporations control our economy and our political system and they have used their power to rig things -- to create, in Dylan Ratigan's words, "a platinum citizenship" -- and protect their own prerogatives.

The supercommittee's focus on "entitlements" -- it's not should we cut Social Security, but how much should it be cut -- even as both sides avoid going after the bog boys just shows where Congress' loyalties lie.

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#OccupyWallStreet is about more than reform; it's about reformation

This essay from the Slovenian political philosopher Slavoj Žižek, which ran today in the Guardian and on Common Dreams (where I saw it), fairly sums up the failed readings of the #OccupyWallStreet protests by the traditional media and political classes.

The expectation among the power elite is that the challenge to power will coalesce into a traditional reform agenda, one that tunes up the system and makes it a bit more fair without challenging its core assumptions.

But there is something else going on here, a desire not for nominal reform but for reformation. As Žižek makes clear:

The problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not "Main Street, not Wall Street", but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street.

The ultimate solution is not a half-measure jobs bill, like the one being pushed by President Obama -- or even a much more robust, New Deal-like bill such as the one being proposed by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (which I support in the interim) -- but a dismantling of our failed economic system.

Capitalism, as it now exists, commodifies everything and makes it subservient to profit. Consider health care. Rather than focus on health, our system is focused on cost; the power is held corporate health firms (insurers, drug companies, hospital chains) and all decisions are viewed through the lens of minimizing costs -- even if it means denying legitimately needed care. And rather than overthrow the system, our elected representatives -- who get their campaign money from the industry -- opted to leave it in place with some minor tweaks.

The same dynamic holds when dealing with the financial system, the manufacturing sector, the provision of gas and electric -- and the use of the commons. Visit a mall -- our new main streets -- or a planned community like Twin Rivers in East Windsor, where homeowner rules supersede decisionsof the general voting public.

What is important about the protests is the protesters' sense of "the commons," the sense that there is something that binds us all together and something that we all hold as important.

They are not communists, if communism means the system that deservedly collapsed in 1990 – and remember that communists who are still in power run today the most ruthless capitalism. The success of Chinese communist-run capitalism is an ominous sign that the marriage between capitalism and democracy is approaching a divorce. The only sense in which the protesters are communists is that they care for the commons – the commons of nature, of knowledge – which are threatened by the system.

So forget the calls from people like Bill Clinton and Barney Frank to come up with some kind of detailed plan (or in the case of Franks, the odd accusations that the protesters were somehow to blame for the failure of the political classes to do the right thing). Clinton and Frank -- and Obama and most of the Democrats -- have no interest in revolution. Minor changes that might ameliorate the pain of capitalism while leaving the financial classes whole are what they are after.

The protesters know that even if the politicians and pundits don't.

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Please 'Rise' to the occasion

I spent a couple of hours this morning with the fine folks from Rise: A Community Service Partnership at the East Windsor ShopRite as part of our Patch-Rise food drive. Most people are gracious and helpful -- we'd collected some food and about $30 in cash in less than two hours. There were some, however, who not only declined to help, but were downright nasty about it.

It's an odd dynamic. There are far too many people who view efforts to aid those less fortunate than us as encouraging the poor to stay poor, as if anyone wants to remain in poverty when they have a chance to be self-sufficient. The dismissiveness and nastiness that we were met with by some is truly disheartening.

Thankfully, most people are generous and wan to help their neighbors. If you are one of the generous ones, stop by the ShopRite on Route 130 in East Windsor before 7 tonight or between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. tomorrow and make a contribution. The people at Rise and those they help will be grateful.

Forget deficit negotiations; where are the jobs?

Establishment liberals are mistaken when they call say that Democrats on the so-called super committee charged with shrinking the deficit incompetent negotiators. It has nothing to do with incompetence. Rather, it is part of a larger failure of establishment liberalism and the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.

The fallacy here is that negotiations are warranted, that slashing the deficit must be a priority at a time when the nation is battling an economic collapse. Without a serious jobs plan, one that matches the scope of the New Deal, the national economy will continue to disintegrate, costing the nation tax revenues and offsetting any cuts or tax hikes we put on the table.

Progressives need to get behind Dennis Kucinich's jobs plan, which will increase employment while rebuilding our infrastructure; and, if we're looking to pay for the jobs plan, we can do so by drastically increasing taxes on the top 1 percent and slashing military spending -- both the money spent on our unnecessary and costly military escapades and the cash we hand off to contractors.

The issues are the jobs and economic inequality.

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If a tree fell in a forest, would it run for president?

I have to wonder why the press insists on paying any attention to this clown. Terry Jones for president? Maybe the networks thought it was the Monty Python member.

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Obama the warmaker

All hail the chief as he brings home the troops from Iraq -- but don't say anything about the growing use of robot drones on the expanding battlefield of the war on terror.

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Create jobs and cut the military

The defense lobby is playing offense, pushing an argument that cutting defense will cost the economy jobs.

It's an interesting argument, but one that ultimately fails the test of logic -- as Dean Baker pointed out yesterday:

During a downturn where there are lots of unemployed workers, any government spending will create jobs, regardless of whether or not it is on the military. In fact, military spending is likely to create fewer jobs than spending in most other areas (e.g. education, health care, conservation) because it is more capital intensive.

When the economy is near full employment, military spending is a drag on the economy. It pulls resources away from private sector uses, lowering investment and increasing the trade deficit. This leads to job losses, which are likely to be felt most severely in manufacturing and construction.

In short, for those who do not believe in the military spending fairy, military spending will cost jobs in either the short-term of long-term. If the spending doesn't make sense in terms of advancing national security, then it doesn't make sense period: end of story.

The lesson here? We need a real jobs plan that includes public investment, but we shouldn't look to the Defense Department to create those jobs.

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Happy X-mas War is Over

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The end is near, finally, but only after thousands were killed in Iraq, civilians and soldiers both, the nation's standing was damaged and our democracy was irreparably damaged.

The end of the war in Iraq, however, does not end the American imperial project. We remain entrenched in Afghanistan, with that war bleeding -- literally -- into Pakistan, and new military efforts taking place in Africa.

So, the president might deserve applause for ending the Iraq War, but let's not fool ourselves into believing he has suddenly transformed into a peacenik. Bring the rest of the troops home and then we can talk.

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Rebuilding the republic one protest at a time

#OccupyWallStreet is changing the political landscape.

Like all important movements, the anti-corporate protests have altered the political dialogue and could -- hopefully -- break the grip that the moneyed classes have on our electoral system.

How do I know this? Because even the establishment is shifting its allegiances. The early coverage of the protests was dismissive when it wasn't downright snarky, but now we are seeing editorials in The New York Times applauding the protesters -- even as U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, one of the more liberal members of the House applauded the protesters while accusing them of allowing the GOP takeover of the House (funny how it wasn't the Democrats or the president and their timid incrementalism that was to blame) on Rachel Maddow earlier this week.

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The protests are making a lot of establishment types uncomfortable, which is where their political power grows from. The occupiers, as Jim Sleeper calls them in Dissent

aren’t storming established economic and political institutions as much as they’re bypassing them and old news media that’s enmeshed in them. They want the American republic to declare its independence from the market forces that are driving the old journalism and governing the government.

They are

reminding us that republics have to be more than just aggregators of investment and consumption patterns. They’re proving grounds for citizens who learn to coax one another beyond algorithm-driven self interest to find their larger, better selves by pursuing goods in common that consumers and investors can’t. They’re challenging both market and state power with “cooperative power,” whose elusive strengths the writer Jonathan Schell has followed in Gandhian and American civil rights movements and Eastern European revolutions of the 1980s.

Frank's argument that the protesters should take to the ballot box is as corrupt as the system he ultimately is defending. Frank has served a long time, has taken contributions from the same industries being protestsed -- $1.3 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industries, according to Opensecrets.org -- and the Dodd-Frank legislation that he touts, while an improvement over the status quo, is exactly the kind of incremental reform that is the problem.

As Sleeper says, the

next logical step from park occupations and new-media swirls would be into massive non-compliance: imagine 50,000 recent graduates declaring that they won’t repay their exorbitant loans. The irony is that it could happen by “default,” in both senses of that term, as thousands of students, like millions of homeowners, are simply unable to repay. The difference would be that no one could throw these recent students out of college or take back the diplomas they’d earned. The challenge would be to organize the political, logistical support they’d need in order to resist intimidation and prosecution by collections agencies and sheriffs. Beyond a certain point, the current outrageous lending system would be unable to enforce the rules enacted by its own bought-and-paid legislators.

A republic depends ultimately on public virtues and beliefs that neither markets nor governments can provide. It needs the oxygen of a deliberation and voluntarism that a newly democratized journalism may summon, even more than Paine’s pamphlet did, but that it cannot ensure. So far, at least, the occupiers have issued and answered the summons with courage and comity, as well as with their digits. Soon it will be up to the rest of us.

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Get ready for redistricting part 2

New Jersey, thanks to the shifting national population, has lost a congressional seat -- a reduction that will take place with the 2012 election. That means someone is going to lose his job.

Mark Magyar, in NJ Spotlight today, outlines some of the possibilities -- all of which start with the four most southern districts (three Republicans and a Democrat) staying somewhat in tact. The remaining nine will need to be squeezed, though two -- Donald Payne's and Albio Sires -- are likely to expand a hair and not change their political composition.

That leaves seven Congressmen in the redistricting crosshairs. The four Democrats -- Rush Holt, Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman -- have held their seats for some time and are highly popular in their districts. Two of the Republicans -- Scott Garret and Rodney Frelinghysen are longtime veterans, while Leonard Lance is completing his second two-year term and would seem to be the man most likely to lose out.

New Jersey has been a relatively reliable blue state since 1992, when it tipped to Bill Clinton in the presidential race. Democrats have won every senate race in the state since 1978 and Democrats have held a majority of the state's congressional seats for better than a decade.

Republicans, however, have been making gains in the state again, though not by much. Chris Christie won the governor's race with less than 50 percent of the vote and the Democrats managed to lose just one legislative seat (though Republicans captured a majority of votes cast for legislative candidates statewide).

The final shape of the map will, in all likelihood, not shift power much in the state. Holt and Pallone, unless the new districts gut their basic core of support, seem unlikely to lose to Lance.

In the end, the current 7-6 split is likely to move to 7-5 -- which will do little to alter the larger Congressional makeup or change the impact that New Jersey has in national politics.

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Economic myths unmasked, courtesy of Robert Reich

Robert Reich outlines the seven economic myths that continue to strangle our economy in a perceptive post today.

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The fallacy of free trade (another reason to #occupywallstreet)

There is no doubt that trading across borders can have a positive impact on American jobs, but only if trade pacts are structured to support workers and consumers and not to create a race to the bottom of the wage barrel.

That's why unions and much of the manufacturing sector are opposing new trade deals with Pacific Rim partners. The problem with the pacts, as critics point out, is that they are designed to allow companies to chase labor and have little to do with expanding markets.

The primary benefit of the deals, they say, is that corporations are able to produce goods more cheaply for consumption in the United States.

“We don’t have a free trade agreement with Great Britain, which could actually buy American products,” said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, which opposes the agreements. “Instead we have this penchant for doing free trade agreements with countries that are low-cost manufacturing centers. Why? Because multinational companies aren’t looking at this and saying, ‘It will be great to make things in Ohio and send it to South Korea.’ No, they’re looking at this and saying, ‘It will be great to make things in South Korea and send it to Ohio.’ ”

Making things in South Korea may make them cheaper, but it means fewer jobs here -- and the ones that do remain end up paying less. That flies in the face of Henry Ford's dictum that you have to pay your workers enough to allow them to buy your products.

The problem is that we have bought into the false notion that we can have truly free trade and that free trade implies a lifting of rules. The fact is, all trade pacts have positives and negatives -- and even the freest of trade operates under specific rule sets. What we think of as free trade today is a pro-corporate construct that only considers cost. A different set of rules is possible that could prioritize sustainability, high-paying jobs, workplace safety, etc.

The trade issue, like so much of our economy, has been framed in such a way as to benefit the corporate classes and not the rest of us -- which is just another reason the #occupywallstreet protests continue to grow

#OccupyWallStreet: Here's as a good a reason to protest as any

From The Huffington Post:

While most Americans aren’t expecting their incomes to rise with the cost of living in the near future, more than 60 percent of Wall Street professionals say they anticipate their bonuses will be higher or the same as the bonus they earned in 2010, according to a recent survey.

Sixty-two percent of Wall Street workers said they’re expecting a bonus that’s in line with last year’s or higher, according to a survey from eFinancialCareers.com. And while still a firm majority, that’s down from last year, when 71 percent of survey respondents said they expected the same or higher bonus than what they received in 2009.

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The conservatives' religious test

When Texas Pastor Robert Jeffress called Mormonism a cult during the recent Values Voters Summit, the media went crazy. The political classes went to town and Mormonism and evangelical Christians were under the microscope.

But the narrow focus on the cult comment meant that the media missed the larger issue -- which is that Jeffress (and by extension, the larger conservative evangelical movement) believes that only Christians should be elected to the presidency.

"In a few months, when the smoke has cleared, those of us who are evangelical Christians are going to have a choice to make," Jeffress said. "Do we want a candidate who is skilled in rhetoric, or one who is skilled in leadership? Do we want a candidate who is a conservative out of convenience, or one who is conservative out of deep conviction? Do we want a candidate who is a good moral person, or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?"

Perry, arriving on stage after Jeffress' introduction, said the pastor had "hit it out of the park."

In remarks to reporters after Perry's speech, Jeffress called the Mormon church "a cult," according to another reporter who was present.

Jeffress has made similar comments in the past.

"I believe we should always support a Christian over a non-Christian," Jeffress said in 2008. "The value of electing a Christian goes beyond public policies. ... Christians are uniquely favored by God, [while] Mormons, Hindus and Muslims worship a false god. The eternal consequences outweigh political ones. It is worse to legitimize a faith that would lead people to a separation from God."

The Perry campaign responded by saying Mormonism was not a cult and other major Republican candidates -- Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman -- have refused to weigh in on the question.

Mormonism, as I said, is not the issue here. What is the issue is Jeffress' assertion that non-Christians should not be considered for public office -- a point none of the candidates has been asked to comment on. As far as Jeffress is concerned,

Such a belief should be anathema in a nation that protects the rights of its citizens to worship -- or not -- as they like that has explicitly avoided any religious test or oath for office-holders. Every candidate should be asked where they stand on this.

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#OccupyWallStreet: The Times gets it -- a surprise

The New York Times has weighed in on the protests in lower Manhattan and its verdict is a bit of a surprise, given that much of the media coverage has been pretty dismissive until now.

The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people.

While the protest was triggered by college-age men and women, it is "more than a youth uprising."

The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.

The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.

It is an analysis the left has been making since before the crash of 2008 and the failed bailouts of American industry. The restructuring of the American economy over the last 40-plus years -- the move away from manufacturing to finance -- has meant that the economy no longer supports the working and middle classes. Wage-earners have no place in an economy built on speculation, which uses money as raw material to make more money without leaving anything of value behind.

It leads to a redistribution of wealth -- but not one that aids the poor. It pushes money upward, into the hands of those who already have it, stagnating wages and leaving the poor with few options and no safety net.

Think about it: The economy, by traditional measures, is stalled and yet we have witnessed record corporate profits. Unemployment -- both the official number and the broader measures designed to describe the real employment situation -- remains at numbers not seen since the early 1980s. We are laying off teachers and police officers, allowing our school buildings, bridges and roads to decay, but we are not willing to bump up tax rates for the rich to Clinton-era rates -- which were not exactly onerous.

How has this happened? First, we are the victims of a corporate coup. Corporations control our lawmakers and run our government.

Second, we have stayed silent. The left, in particular, has allowed itself to be co-opted by the Democratic Party, silenced by a fear that breaking ranks with the Democrats will create an opening for a Republican victory at the polls.

In practical terms, this has been a disaster. President Barack Obama, called a socialist by the know-nothing right, has repaid support from his left flank with derision and triangulation, following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton.

So the protests stand as the best news on the political front in years -- a chance for the left to separate itself from the Democrats and stake out their own responses to the shifting economic sands on which we are forced to rebuild.

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Sputter, cough, stall -- welcome to the new economy

The Huffington Post headline from earlier today pretty much says it all:

Stuck in the Mud

The headline, since replaced, neatly sums up the fate of the American economy as we steam toward the end of 2011 and full-bore into a presidential election year. The numbers back this up. As The Huffington Post reports,

The U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.1 percent, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers beat economists' expectations but barely keep pace with population growth, reinforcing the growing fear among many that the labor market recovery is dead in the water.

"We are still making no progress on a recovery that's going to bring people back to work," said Harvard economist Lawrence Katz. "What I see is an economy that can't create enough opportunity to do more than just absorb the new population. Which is not much of a feat."

A chunk of today's headline number is attributed to the 45,000 striking Verizon workers who were not counted in last month's report and are now back to work. The report revised the number of new jobs added in July and August upward, but the average over the last four months was still a paltry 64,000 new positions -- well below the 100,000 to 150,000 jobs that economists generally believe are needed to account for population growth and lower than the average of the prior 14 months of job creation.

Meanwhile, the share of the unemployed who have been out of work for six months or longer crept up to 44.6 percent from 42.9 percent, as the number of long-term jobless increased from roughly 6 million to 6.2 million -- up from a year ago. More than 2 million of those Americans have been out of a job for more than 99 weeks. Another grim detail: The number of Americans working part-time because they have been unable to find full-time work increased by 444,000 to nearly 9.3 million.

The nicest thing we can say is that the economy is stagnant. There is no growth, nothing that offers any sense of optimism in the economy. That is why the protests on Wall Street are spreading.

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The revolution starts now

Jon Stewart, as always, has found a way to cut through the absurdity of a mainstream press trying to marginalize a growing populist movement just two years after it overplayed the conservative Tea Party's import, helping the right-wing movement grow.

But rather than explain this, I'll leave it to Mr. Stewart to explain:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Let's be clear. The protests in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street are more than a side show. They are a natural outgrowth of the disregard with which the government and America's financial elites hold the American people. Like Peter Finch's Howard Beale in Network, they are screaming "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore."

That's why the specifics of the demands are irrelevant.

It’s true, as many have pointed out, that they don’t have a list of well thought out demands, but the demand to have such a list is just their elders trying to bring them to heel. The fact is, they don’t have to know just what they’re doing, any more than a writer or filmmaker has to understand the book being written or the film shot. It’s not a necessity. It’s not the price of admission. If there’s one thing that’s obvious and heartening, as my friend, the novelist Beverly Gologorsky, said to me while we oldsters circumnavigated the park, “The overwhelming feeling I have is that no one here is planning to go home any time soon.”

Never have they been more needed. Theirs is certainly a movement, like the ones in the Middle East, inspired in part by economic disaster and aimed at an airless political as well as corporate/financial system controlled by the 1% left out of the signs in the park hailing the 99% of Americans whom Occupy Wall Street hopes to represent. It’s a world set on screwing just about everyone in that vast cohort of Americans without compunction, shame, or even, these days, plausible deniability.

And screw us they have. Unemployment remains high, foreclosures have not abated, the cost of health care continues to rise, as do taxes on middle class taxpayers (in the form of state and local taxes), and we are told that our problems are being caused by greedy teachers and cops and not by a war-addicted government whose election campaigns are funded by the very people who should be brought to account for the country's downward spiral.

But the TV pundits still make fun of the hippies in the crowd (forgetting the absurd site of grown men dressed as colonial revolutionaries and wearing tea bags from their tri-cornered hats). What we are witnessing in lower Manhattan and throughout the country is exactly what is needed -- a rebellion designed to take back the American government from the financial elites, who think they own our government.

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Congratulations, Mr. Transtromer

The work of Tomas Transtromer is not always easy, but the effort is worth it. Congratulations to Sweden's treasure for winning this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Bloomberg, check your cops

The video from today's protest, via Huffington Post and You Tube. Huffington Post has not been able to verify when exactly this is from -- it is supposed to be tonight -- but it really doesn't matter. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to order an investigation.

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Grand jury only option as tensions rise in New Brunswick

Walter Hudson, of the National Action Network.
Photo Credit, Maxwell Barma, New Brunswick Patch.

I wasn't on Throop Avenue the night that Barry Deloatch was shot by New Brunswick police. Few people were, which has left huge questions to answer in the wake of the death of the 46-year-old New Brunswick resident.

In the nearly two weeks since the shooting, city residents have protested and a number of community meetings -- including one tonight -- have been held in an effort to bridge what is becoming a growing divide between the police and city government on one side and its mostly minority citizens on the other.

A tort claim -- essentially a civil suit -- is in the offing and a Latino group has asked that a grand jury be convened to get answers, both about the shooting and the conduct of New Brunswick police more generally. The Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey

issued a five-page release naming New Brunswick Police Officer Brad Berdel as the shooter, as well as naming Officer Dan Mazan as his partner involved in the foot chase toward the alley at 105 Throop Ave., where Deloatch was shot.

The press release also detailed findings of “use of force” reports the group said it reviewed on Berdel and Mazan for 2010, noting: “the two primary officers in Barry Deloatch’s death were involved in 10 separate reported force incidents, and that 80 percent of these incidents “involved using force against Black and Latino men.”

Berdel and Mazan, however, were not among what the report called the “Top 10” city police officers, representing less than 7 percent of the entire department, who “were responsible for 34 percent of the force incidents during 2010.”

Police officers and their supporters may not like the request. They may view it as an attack. But the relationship between the police and the prosecutor's office is too close, while the city's residents have apparently lost faith in law enforcement.

The only way to repair the relationship -- one that must be fixed if the city is to become safer -- is for police to open their books and open their doors to the public in the form of an independent grand jury, to do so voluntarily and to make every effort to show that the department is cooperating.

Fighting the request for an investigation and keeping the public at arm's length will only guarantee that the situation will get worse.
 

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• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Getting things done and getting rid of cops

Chris Christie became the darling of the national media because he is said to be getting things done. But is he? Read this piece from today's New York Times and let me know what you think.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The big news is no news

Photo Tim Larsen, Governor's Office

Gov. Chris Christie is officially not a candidate.

But the recent dance he has been doing with the Republican Party and its donors says quite a bit about the dissatisfaction that exists within the GOP with the motley crew that has been chasing the nomination.

Photo Tim Larsen, Governor's Office

The front-runners remain Mitt Romney, whose career has taken him all over the political map and who was rejected by the GOP in 2008, and the absolutely loony Texan Rick Perry. Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul and the long list of minor players, continue to chase the brass ring, as well.

My question is this: Does it matter? Can any of these guys beat the incumbent at a time when the incumbent is vulnerable? And if they can, shouldn't that scare the hell out of us?

Barack Obama's spotty record and his continuation of Bush policies on torture and the terror war have left him without a real base and have deflated the enthusiasm that swept him into office in 2008. He has earned our dissatisfaction and anger and probably should be facing a primary challenge from someone like Russ Feingold.

The protests on Wall Street are as much a reaction to the Obama presidency as they are to Wall Street greed -- Obama, like Bush and Clinton before him, has colluded with the big banks and financial firms to save them from serious regulation or reform.

But my prediction is that the prospects of a Perry or Romney presidency ultimately will draw enough liberals to the polls to allow Obama to squeak by and win a second term. Do not underestimate how much of a motivating factor fear can be.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Comment live on the Christie announcement

Patch has opened its live blog to take the pulse of New Jersey on Gov. Chris Christie's apparent decision not to run for president.

Join us here, on my blog, or go to one of our Central Jersey sites: princeton.patch.com, southbrunswick.patch.com, newbrunswick.patch.com, lawrenceville.patch.com, eastwindsor.patch.com or eastbrunswick.patch.com.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Has the left found its voice?

The media has finally taken notice of the protests on Wall Street and it just may be taking them seriously. As it should.

The reality is that the Wall Street protests are far larger and sustained than the early Tea Party rallies and, now that the protests are spreading into other communities, it is clear that we are looking at something much bigger than just a fringe effort.

But it has to be about more than just signs and chants. Direct action, as Chris Hedges wrote last week, is a must in this time of corporate domination, but it has to be accompanied by a detailed explanation of why capitalism has failed and where we must go from here.

Corporate capitalism is about profits -- and doing everything and anything possible to maximize those profits, including leaving the sick to die and the economically disenfranchised to grasp for crumbs or pick vegetables in sweltering heat for almost nonexistent wages.

Government's role should be to act as protector of the weak, as leveler of the playing field -- to make sure that corporations provide the services they have promised or to prevent them from dumping their waste on the public (literally and figuratively). But corporations have taken over the government and gamed the system.

Farm subsidies once meant to keep small farmers afloat now result in corn so cheap we use it in place of sugar, while the cost of fresh produce puts it out of reach of most in the lower classes, especially those in America's depressed cities. Oil companies suck at the public teat and then turn around and gouge drivers and lobby Washington to gut what's left our regulatory apparatus. And we make the banks whole without any strings or anything to ensure that the banks would keep credit flowing.

The list is long and seemingly endless and it leaves us with just two choices -- give up or fight back. Sitting back and leaving it to a corrupted political process is the same as giving up. The protesters on Wall Street know this.  It's time the rest of us figured this out.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.