Housing, housing, housing ... wages, wages, wages

Housing, housing, housing ... wages, wages, wages

And with the middle class no longer earning enough to pay the mortgage ... or the heating bill ... or the fuel cost of the commute ... the handwriting is on the wall ... banks and GSE's (government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) involved in mortgages are going to continue failing until the economy adjusts to what people CAN afford.

Which is a whole lot less than before because the chickens are coming home to roost in high oil prices exchanged for shipping our jobs offshore.

While the cost of everything has been escalating, the wages paid labor are stagnant or falling. We the people can no longer afford our previous lifestyle. And we don't know yet how low we are going to sink in this recession/depression.

And because there is no end in sight (or even imagined) to the real decline in wages ... this IS GOING TO GET UGLY before it is over.

We are not getting out of this one by printing more greenbacks or extending credit ... creating more instruments of debt aka instruments of death to an economy overburdened with them.

We need the production of goods and services having real value in global trade ... out of which labor earns a fair share to pay for a middle class life.

Anything else is smoke and mirrors.

The fact is that many new homebuyers have lost whatever equity they had even if they made reasonable downpayments with what were at the time reasonable terms ... and then have just been laid off by General Motors or whatever. The chaos being caused by the loss of the purchasing power of home equity PLUS the drop in wages -- both in the aggregate (to say nothing of the pain for the individual family) -- is a double-whammy body blow to the US economy.

And what is so disheartening to me at least, is that our fearless leaders have not yet begun to talk about solutions that come close to doing the job of turning the situation around. They are still acting as if all we have to do is take a deep breath, print more money, and issue more instruments of debt to the very enterprises that created this mess ... and the US economy will correct itself on its own ... after they gutted it totally in their globalization schemes.

Kevin Phillips has been giving us chapter and verse on what's been going on ... so we can't say we weren't warned.

We've been squanderng our kids future

Kevin Phillips has a new book out titled Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. Kind of punctuates the greedy insanity of our global financial sector brilliant idiots.

How in heaven's name (anyone else's?) did we get sold a bill of goods that if borrowed to buy stuff we would be building a strong economy? Essentially that we could borrow our way to prosperity. It's nuts.

And on top of that we are participating in one of the greatest transfers of wealth in the history of the human race ... due to the speculative frenzy in oil futures ... which in turn is due to the FACT that the globe is awash in US dollars that have to find a "hedge" against inflation ... which in turn is due to the fact that the government cronies (Treasury Department, Federal Reserve Board, ... U.S. Senate ... ) of our global financial services sector wizards are "printing" money faster than we ever thought possible ... because the whole house of cards they are trying to hold up is too big to allow to fail ... even though we all know it is going to.

And when you think of where our dollars are going for the petroleum products we use ... such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela ... even if not directly ... and their sovereign accounts which can then be used to buy up our national assets ... this is not only crazy, it is traitorous -- in my opinion ( ... which is why I agree with blarneyboy about hanging our speculators from streetlights.)

We are being lied to on so many fronts ... the Consumer Price Index (inflation) has been "adjusted" ... the rate of unemployment is not a true measure of the unemployed ... and talk about our federal deficit:

What's the real federal deficit?
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY,Updated 8/4/2006 9:55 AM ET

The federal government keeps two sets of books.

The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.

The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included -- as the board that sets accounting rules is considering -- the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-02-deficit-usat_x.htm

Our kids are already shaking their heads at how shortsighted we've been ... squandering their future ... selling our birthright of liberty for another shopping trip to the mall ... and now money we spend on the gas we use to get to the mall goes to sovereign accounts so they can buy the malls where we shop ... brilliant!

It's time to lay the Grand Old Party to rest

It's pretty damn obvious that the Republican Party has knowingly participated in the deliberate shredding of our Constitution.

The president swears to the following oath "in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:"

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pioaths.html

We all know there has been a deliberate attempt by the Bush 43 adminsitration to subvert the Constitution of the United States ... and those in the Republican Party who were not leading in the subversion, were acquiescing ... except for a few like Senator Chuck Hagel.

If we could get the Libertarian Party to focus more on those things we hold in common — like a functional government we can afford — and less on the peripheries — like legalizing marijuana — I think we could properly bury the GOP.

Save Bear Stearns and starve the world's poor

When Bernanke (the Federal Reserve Chairman) decreed that we would no longer be getting figures on the M3 money supply as he opened the floodgates on money ... where did we expect all the dollars to go when we weren't watching?

Is there any wonder why the price of oil, rice, etc. is going through the roof?

"Bernake's" money has found a home in commodities futures ... dah!

The Federal Reserve has "saved" Bear Stearns and given the U.S. economy a brief respite ... but at what cost to the world's poor?

Time to End "Bernanke Panky?"
By Kevin Phillips
Posted June 2, 2008 | 05:24 PM (EST)
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/time-to-end-bernanke-pank_b_104769.html

Republicans have a lot to answer for ...

So how did the Republican Party leadership allow George W. to call himself a conservative and then ...

• Entangle us in the occupation of Iraq for five long years with no end in sight

• Run up the national debt by not even trying to balance the budget with no end in sight

• Continue the selling of America to foreigners with no end in sight

and so on and so forth ...

Let me put it to you straight ... if you vote for a Republican then you need to have your head examined.

If you don't like the Democrat ... then get involved with another political party. But Republicans? You're kidding, right?

Scott McClellan's epiphany ... is What Happened

Scott McClellan is the alter boy who finally realizes he's been sexually abused by his beloved priest.

He is the person raised as a true believer who discovers his guru was lying to him all along ... and using him ... and then mocking him.

He's the kid in junior high who gets suckered by the smart kids into carrying their water and then made fun of ... the humiliation is deep and lasting.

Scott was dumb enough to believe in George W. Bush ... well past the time when there was enough evidence to discredit the president ... but rose colored glasses are not easily removed from someone like Scott. It took a brutal act of betrayal ... on the part of people Scott looked up to and trusted ... Rove, Libby, and Cheney.

It takes time to assimilate this profound betrayal within one's psyche. Then there is the act of catharsis ... Scott wrote a book. Others go out and shoot somebody.

There is nothing puzzling about this. It fits the facts on the ground.

We need a new word for somethings we call taxes

"Tax" covers a lot of mischief, but it also is supposed to work when we talk about sharing in a common endeavor. It actually has too much negative baggage (rightfully so) to cover that wide a spectrum of meaning. But we have to use the word, whether it carries unintended connotations in our minds or not. For now, let's try to think past the negatives.

A gas tax to cover the cost of maintaining the streets and roads we the people drive on makes sense. If we drive a lot we'll need to keep up the streets and roads more than if we drive less. It also makes sense when it becomes obvious that we have to wean ourselves from petroleum-based vehicular energy. (Peak oil, anyone?) Do we prepare for the future or forget about it?

Again, a carbon "tax" carries the negative connotations of the "tax" word. My view is that we should think about the carbon tax as a reasonable attempt by reasonable people (anyone else been reading The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine?) to assign a cost to an externality (look it up) when the so-called "free" market is not very good at recovering the costs of externalities ... which is why they are called externalities, because the free market doesn't pay for them ... which is why we joke that the free market is great a capitalizing profits and socializing costs.

Just to dismiss a concept out of hand because it carries the omni-negativeness of the "tax" word ... well, it's not too smart. We have to move into the future ... and figure out how to pay for it ... as well as the wreckage of our past. We can't immigrate to another planet ... at least not yet.

Maybe we should come up with a new word for those taxes that actually work by paying the costs of a better life.

If we are being lied to ...

Does anyone not believe we are being lied to by our leaders public and private?

The Consumer Price Index as "the"inflation measure has been "adjusted". Unemployment stats are so far off the mark as to be laughable.

Our political candidates openly pander to us.

And maybe the worst lie of all is that all we have to do to turn the economy around is buy more stuff. Go shopping!

Is that crazy or what? How are we going to pay for it?

Oh right, the global financial wizards/gurus will invent new instruments of debt so we can borrow what we need to be able to buy what we want.

Need I tell you, this is crazy.

Acquittal!?

"A Queens judge on Friday acquitted three detectives charged in the shooting of Sean Bell, who died on his wedding day in a hail of 50 police bullets."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/nyregion/26bell.html

Sean Bell is shot to death
in New York City
outside a strip bar
at four A M.

By the police
firing fifty shots

Sean Bell wasn't the one
the police thought had the gun.

Only the police had guns.

Fifty shots!

One police officer emptying, reloading, emptying ...

blam
blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam
reload
blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam

Thirty-0ne shots among fifty shots!

Only the police had guns.

Sean Bell wasn't even the one
they thought had the gun.

Acquittal?!

Are you kidding me?

Note: I will research the testimony on the sequencing of the 31 shots by the police officer who emptied his gun then reloaded to be able to keep firing. It is the dramatic heart of this poem ... -hgl

An Easter Update: Thoughts on religion

Religion is our encoding of our tribal identity in ritual, liturgy, and dress allowing us to recognize friend from foe, particularly among strangers. A particular religion involves both the concept of perfection — or God — and the concepts of how best to meet the challenges we have identified as replicable in the human experience of existence, as well as what they mean and why they occur.

Note: I am most familiar with the Christian religion, and I have been reading in Buddhism off and on for most of my adult life. (But I am certainly no authority on Buddhism, and merely claiming personal -- rather than scholarly -- familiarity with the Protestant Baptist version of Christianity.)

The leading "thinkers" in human history have realized that there is a "standard instruction set" encoded in our biochemical processes that guide the organization of our perceptions and thoughts as well as the responses to them. Religious thinkers identify this "standard instruction set" as ordained/given by God.

For example, we have learned that we treat those we recognize as friends different than we treat those we recognize as foes, and that we automatically are wary of a stranger until we determine the stranger's status, and we know from experience that a tactic of an enemy is to get their foe to let their guard down by considering the enemy a benevolent party to the engagement ... a la the Trojan Horse.

What I find most appealing about theoretical Christianity is that it invites all human beings to explore friendship through a commitment to the concept of Jesus as perfection. And I find the concept of Jesus as perfection to be an ideal that offers the most hope for humanity to live in peace. The traditions of the Judaic-Christian religion heritage provide the admonition to progress from our "isness" to our "oughtness", ever mindful of the dynamic tension in the struggle. Although I must say, the evolving interpretation of Christianity by many politically dominant religious leaders has not proven to provide the best path toward peace, nor was King David of the Old Testament a particularly peaceful leader. (Note: I do not believe that a "God" exists in the meaning of "God" expressed in the Christian Bible.)

I accept the challenge of the struggle to become what I believe I ought to be. And that it is my commitment to my concept of human perfection, to my "God" ... which in itself is dynamic ... that identifies me as a "religious" person, and my "religion" is the path I have identified to follow in my commitment.

This all melds back into my understanding that my existence -- coming out of the evolution of human existence -- preceded my awareness of my existence, and that -- therefor -- my awareness is organized by my existence folding back upon itself ... so that I am capable of choice ... which is an essential characteristic of the an intelligent life-form. I can, in fact, choose to learn how to choose based on reason.

I would even suggest as worth examining, the idea that it is the concept of an ideal of human perfection in the form of God that initiates choice because as reality unfolds/evolves, whatever God was defined to be carries with it the limitations of past experience, never able to anticipate all that we will learn about ourselves and our world in the cosmos. The cosmos continues to surprise us. Even adding "omni" to our God's attributes does not drown out the call to our renewal of choice in the face of new experience, as Joshua challenged the Israelites in the Old Testament, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." - Joshua 24:15, KJV Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2008. 24 Mar 2008. http://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/Jos/Jos024.html#15

Confronted with the dialect of "isness" vs. "oughtness" -- individually within each of us -- we are thrust out on the unfathomable (we do not know were we go with any certainty) depths of the awareness of our individual existence to choose, and through our actions express our faith in a path ahead. Even choosing to do nothing is a choice.

For example, I can decide whether a stranger is a friend or foe or nothing of note ... and then what to do about it, or not. I can decide to learn how to make friends of foes, or not, and then decide to go about doing that, or not.

And because I can imagine a better world, I can choose to try to bring that better world into existence, or not.

I believe the most fundamental choice is whether I act to benefit myself irrespective of the effect on my community/tribe, or I act to benefit my community/tribe irrespective of the effect upon myself.

Christianity teaches that the first option, or greed, is the root of all evil, and that the second option, or the giving up of one's own life for others, is the greatest love we can have. And in framing our options it circumscribes our choices as Christians.

The vaunted MBA mantra that acting to benefit myself provides the greatest benefit to my community goes tilt upon any reflection beyond the statement on the surface.

Christianity also proposes that all humans God's children, are destined to become friends.

That addresses my Christianity, my existentialism, and my atheism. What is left is to consider my transcendentalism ... which to me is simply that my awareness transcends my concept of God ... because God is the product of my past awareness and present reality unfolds in the present into the future as a dynamic process of adaptation based on the past correctly anticipating possibility emerging in the present but never "knowing" exactly what is in store.

Ah yes, deregulation ...

"Deregulation" was the buzz-word ... the group identifying slogan aka tribal dress of the moment ... right up until the sub-prime mortgages started falling apart. We are now re-examining the meaning and worth of "regulation" ... surprising how many times we can re-invent the wheel, don't you think?

What is "regulation"?

As the noun "regulation":

1. a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, esp. to regulate conduct.
2. the act of regulating or the state of being regulated.

"regulation." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 14 Mar. 2008.

As the verb "to regulate":

1. to control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.: to regulate household expenses.
2. to adjust to some standard or requirement, as amount, degree, etc.: to regulate the temperature.
3. to adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation: to regulate a watch.
4. to put in good order: to regulate the digestion.

"regulate." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 14 Mar. 2008.

Starting with the basics, we regulate weights and measures, minimum-maximum limits such as highway speed, minimum qualifications such as education plus experience plus licensing exams. These forms of regulations most of us would recognize as positive "influences" on the our communities, and we quickly can imagine negative outcomes if they were removed.

The common denominator for positive regulatory outcomes is that each can trust the other to perform as expected in a given transaction ... which dramatically increases the efficiency of transactions, thereby adding measurable to the value of the regulation. If one can process a thousand transactions in the time it would otherwise take to -- let's say -- process ten, the savings per transaction is huge ... adding tremendous value to the use of the regulation.

Take for instance if we now have to examine every child's toy coming into the USA from China for lead, the increase in cost for those toys will become staggeringly high.

When the customer doesn't have to bring their own measuring cups and tapes to the store to assure the accuracy of the amount of goods being purchased; when the driver doesn't have to play bumper cars on the freeway in order to travel; ... and when the borrower doesn't have to wonder if the lender is disclosing the real terms of the loan to the borrower's level of understanding -- in other words, can once again trust his/her local banker without the help of a lawyer.

Yes, the more complex the transaction, then it is conceivable that the regulations should reflect the level of impact the failure of trust will have on the community. It is one thing to have a three shells and a pea game of chance to be taking place in a back alley, and quite another for homes to bought and sold based on a similar shell game.

However, regulations can also interfere with the efficiency of transactions. Some of the most egregious of these negative impacts stem from politically based bureaucracies imposing fees and restrictions with the clear intent to reward a political party/entity ... especially the party/entity that historically benefits most from an increase in government employees, paid for by the increase in fees.

The speed traps along highways that interrupt the smooth flow of traffic to generate the local town's revenue through tickets to non-local drivers.

Here in New Jersey we recently defeated a strong effort by the Governor to pay the costs of a State government engorged with new employees beholden to the Democratic Party with a turnpike asset monetization scheme euphemistically titled "Governor Corzine's Financial Restructuring and Debt Reduction" plan.

One more thought ... for the deregulation tribe ... the most efficient safeguards of the public interest are the rights of the whistleblower to be protected in his/her job combined with an actively vigilant and independent press.

Note: This post was written in response to a discussion I had yesterday evening with a brilliant young college student over free market concepts. I continue to think about the relevancy of the cogent arguments she made. I respect her point of view enough to explain my own in response.

The day the debt came due

Joseph Racioppi posted this in a column of his titled Subprime mortgage mess just a symptom of what ails us on NJ Voices yesterday, Monday, January 21 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — when Wall Street was closed:

Our entire economy is debt based. The Federal Government is in debt $10 trillion. New Jersey is in debt billions and billions and many Americans are "maxed out" on credit cards. Rather than addressing the problem of a debt based economy, our leaders try to find more ways of continuing the spending that runs the economy. When our leaders, after September 11th, tell us to "go shopping", that says a lot.

This was my response for today, Tuesday, January 22:

How prescient of you, Joe. This may be the day the debt comes due.

The above the fold main story on the front page of the NY Times this morning was headlined: Awaiting Wall Street's Open, Asia Market Plunge.

The lead paragraph read:

"Stock markets across Asia plummeted again on Tuesday, and European markets saw volatile trading, as anxious sellers worried about the global ramifications of a slowdown in the United States."

Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/business/worldbusiness/23cnd-asiastox.html

It's going to be an "interesting" day: "The Day the Debt Came Due"?

Do you think we the people will finally get it ... as Pogo told us: "We have met the enemy and he is us" ... or will we in more typical fashion start looking for scapegoats?

Personally? I'm rereading Thomas Paine's Common Sense ... and it is making a lot of sense.

Need I add, "Duh!"?

Hoo boy!

The New Jersey Star-Ledger poses this Q&A in its editorial, Foreign money to the rescue, January 19:

"Is foreign investment a bad thing? It is not."

This was my comment in response:

That's like asking if drinking water is a bad thing. Depends on how much you drink. Too much water and you upset your electrolytic balance, the brain swells, and you die ... or something like that.

Let's start with some economic basics that the common person can understand. (I have to do that because I am not an economist and I have never read one who has ever gotten economics right over time outside of tightly controlled models ... which is kind of like pouring sand through a funnel into neat little cone-shaped mounds on a beach on a windless, sunny day below the high-tide mark and thinking they are going to last ... but I digress.)

First, if you don't produce something of real value, you are not creating wealth. Money has no "real" value, it has "virtual" value relative to its ability to help exchange things of real value between strangers ... close and far. Money has value if the two parties to a transaction using money BELIEVE the pieces of paper they are using has the exchange value (translatable into real things of real use value -- like food that actually keeps us from starving to death) printed on it ... or something like that.

Now if you take something of real value and you auction it off to people who want it (think it desirable and worthwhile to own, like a house -- hint, hint) with an excess of money to spend (either their own or what they can borrow ... 'cuz that's the job of the Fed to insure we have enough liquidity to get the things we want 'cuz we're a nation of consumers), they will in all likelihood pay more for it than they would have otherwise. If they then turn around and get even MORE money for it than what they paid because others in turn bid higher with the extra money they have or can get ... well, the PRICE of that something will go up. Do I have to say, "DUH!"?

Let's not get too complicated here ... if a nation reduces the amount of real things of value that it produces ... and starts a bidding war on the things of value it does produce ... while the Fed keeps printing money so we can all bid as high as we want for something ('cuz -- you guessed it -- we're consumers now!) what do you think the outcome will be?

And you have economists with mathematical models who tell us this imbalance of real production to virtual wealth is what is real? and can continue indefinitely? and folks fall all over themselves BELIEVING it when they see with their own eyes that the real wealth of our nation has been deteriorating ... while the dollar amount (virtual wealth) of the money supply has been growing?

And now that our money has been siphoned off to the oil producing nations and the goods producing nations because our vaunted economic leaders thought it better to pass along windfall profits in a "free" market rather than "tax" ourselves for our own rational benefit ... you say there is nothing wrong here because this is the way the "free" market is supposed to work?

And I'm not supposed be laughing until I start crying?

From my notes about Milton Friedman and the so-called "free" market:

Milton Friedman, the guru of profoundly influential monetarist and laissez-faire ideas of the past few decades has pulled the plug on free markets ... maybe without realizing it.

From NPQ, the New Perspectives Quarterly:

Free Markets and the End of History

Friedman | ... "Free markets" is a very general term. There are all sorts of problems that will emerge. Free markets work best when the transaction between two individuals affects only those individuals. But that isn't the fact. The fact is that, most often, a transaction between you and me affects a third party. That is the source of all problems for government. That is the source of all pollution problems, of the inequality problem. There are some good economists like Gary Becker and Bob Lucas who are working on these issues. This reality ensures that the end of history will never come.

Intrepretation: Because transactions using the medium of money ALWAYS affect a third party, there is no such thing as a "free" or "unfettered" market in terms of the customary definition of the economic term. The reason for this is the clear fact that all costs incurred in the production and distribution of goods and services are not paid for out of the monetary selling price of the goods and services ... only the reimbursement of "ownership" costs ... so what is "free" about free markets is their being free of the costs they incur to others than the legally defined owners of the goods and services for sale--sellers and buyers.

http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2006_winter/friedman.html

Read that again: Because transactions using the medium of money ALWAYS affect a third party, there is no such thing as a "free" or "unfettered" market in terms of the customary definition of the economic term.

Need I add, "Duh!"?

Y'know, if something is too complicated for us common folks to understand ... when it affects our daily lives ... then we probably should figure something else out ... because the brilliant idiots are gonna screw things up trying to get more than their fair share of the real wealth ... which as the Good Book laid out: greed ... aka the love of money ... is the root of all evil.

All us working folks are asking is to give us the opportunity to go to work and create real wealth, and then be paid our fair share of what we have helped create. That's pretty darn simple. You'd think these geniuses could figure that out. Or ... could have figured out how not to screw it up.

Got a lot of "Duhs!" in this piece.*wink*

Too late for Hillary to go authentic on us

Apparently Hillary Clinton teared up yesterday in her bid to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party for president.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's eyes welled up and her voice broke repeatedly Monday as she talked with voters in a restaurant about her campaign for the presidency.

The former first lady was making a last-minute pitch for support as she spoke on the eve of the state's primary, with polls showing her trailing Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Asked by a sympathetic voter how she keeps going in the grueling campaign, she replied, "It's not easy. It's not easy."

"And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do," she said, her voice catching.

-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/07/hillary-tears-up-on-the-c_n_80254.html

I can try to understand her feelings. I have witnessed them in others all too frequently now that I am in my 70th year. Here she is having lived her whole life in pursuit of a goal ... clawed, scratched her way to the top of the heap, done everything she thought she had to do to earn the prize ... remnants of opponents strewn left and right ... and it begins to dawn on her that it's been in vain. In fact, the very life she lived is now her biggest obstacle.

It's not fair!

I think she is really saying, "It's not fair, Bill!"

Sibel Edmonds on YouTube

References:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12166

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_mej_080107_times_of_london_blow.htm

A Political Tsunami: Obama's win in Iowa

For those of us who remember Bobby Kennedy's win in California before he was assassinated, Barack Obama's win yesterday in Iowa is a similar earthquake. The energy generated by the audacity of hope in our youth will again transform an epoch.

The youth turnout in support of Obama was huge. It represents an opportunity for we the people to alter the course of our nation in a historic manner. This is a politcal tsunami.

It will be interesting to watch the old guard politicians try to plug the breached dikes.

Note 1: Originally posted as a comment on the Star-Ledger's NJ Voices website in response to the John Farmer's column, For two also-rans, it's crunch time.

Note 2: According to the results of the entrance polls for the Iowa caucuses posted on CNN's website, Obama was supported by 57% of the 17-29 age group, and 42% of the 30-44 year olds.
(See http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#IA )

New Jersey MUST apologize for slavery

Out of our reflections on our past, our history ... we create a narrative of existence that we then teach ourselves ... to guide us into the future.

We as a people write our bibles, our stories ...

It takes time and distance to put things in perspective ... and correct the lies we previously told ourselves out of false understanding, a false narrative ...

False in the sense that our beliefs were wrong because we had been taught a false narrative of our past ... and these beliefs were proven wrong when we finally had the courage to examine them in the light of new evidence, new revelation.

An apology for slavery is not just important, it is necessary. We need to plant that marker in our collective consciousness, our narrative of our existence ... reminding ourselves how wrong we can be at times.

Note: Originally posted as a comment on the Star-Ledger's NJ Voices website in response to the editorial, Apologize for slavery:

The evil that men do: trial by jury

Trial by jury ... or the threat of trial by jury has too often become the denial of justice to the accused ... for reasons worth exploring in our nation.

From Hillel the Elder, a famous Jewish religious leader:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, then when?

That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.

If the last quotation seems familiar, this is how it is attributed to Jesus in KJV of the New Testament:

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

- Matthew 7:12

Please read the following:

Juror in Long Island Killing Says He Was Pressured Into a Guilty Verdict
Article By
By COREY KILGANNON and NATE SCHWEBER
Published: December 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/nyregion/25jury.html

Colorado Hearings Re-examine ’87 Murder Case
By KIRK JOHNSON and DAN FROSCH
Published: December 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/us/27fortcollins.html

Their are many -- too many -- stories being accumulated in the annals of injustice. Some of the most egregious cases are chronicled in the:

Innoncence Project

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

If ever there was a stench of evil in a land ... have we become so used to it that we do not smell it? Or are our slogans for our type of justice such tribal marks that we dare not question them individually for fear of being turned upon ourselves? When will we question the evil we do to others?

"If not now, then when?"

Putting Ayn Rand to rest ... finally!

Please read Paul Krugman's column in today's (Friday, Dec 21) NY Times:

Blindly Into the Bubble
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/opinion/21krugman.html

Alan Greenspan was/(is) a brilliant idiot who wrapped old fashioned greed in the false Ayn Rand ideology of free market Capitalism ... destroying the safeguards that are needed to protect ANY market from thieves and charlatans. Even the ancients knew you had to have things like uniform weights, that some things cannot be left to the goodwill of the transient carnival vendors with no stake in the village.

I am tired of the "us vs. them" around here ...

Whites vs. blacks, GBLT's vs. straights, one religion against another, and on and on and on .... while it's really rich vs. poor.

America, the rich folks have got us laboring folks fighting among ourselves ... jumping up and down. Are we trying to get the attention of the rich folks so they will invite us to join them?

Here we are squabbling over a Democrat US Senator from New York running for President, Hillary Clinton, who shouldn't even be running on a Democratic ticket anywhere in Yankee territory -- and I ain't talking baseball.

Hell, they are making the street-hole covers for New York City in India under sweatshop/slave labor conditions, for chrissakes! We all know what has happened to fair labor practices under the Clintons ... they kiss up to the global corporationists to advance their personal political careers and leave the working families groveling for crumbs from the rich folks feast.

The United States of America is sliding down a Democrat greased slope to banana republic status ... with nothing left to break its slide ... while we the people are totally distracted by fighting over the dwindling scraps falling from the platters we deliver to the table.

And there are so many of us who believe this is a "God thing" based on our devotion to religious belief ... and who are so far removed from practicing what they preach, using their doctrines as tribal identifiers rather than guides to life ... that it's pretty damn obvious that we are going to need the kind of upheaval brought about by the depression of the 30's to actually get this nation back on track ... if it can get back on track and not descend into fascism.

Hope? What's hope got to do with it? We need practical solutions. We need jobs that pay a living wage ... that also don't destroy our health as we work.

That's not socialism or communism ... that is "fair is fair"-ism in a nation as wealthy as ours.

Note (January 5, 2008): Barack Obama has won a transforming political victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Hope" may have a lot to do with it! -NCS