What’s Good for Wall Street Is Only Good for Wall Street

By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 25, 2008

One trillion dollars. Now that’s some money. When all is said and done, that is roughly the amount it will take to save that shining beacon for all the world to follow, American predatory capitalism.

What could $1 trillion buy you? Well, you could buy a failed war in Iraq for about that much. In contrast, it would cost $55 billion a year to wipe out child poverty in the U.S. And not doing anything about child poverty costs us $500 billion a year.

Some experts are telling us that this bailout of Wall Street by the taxpayers - with no oversight, no strings attached, no obligations for those who seek the bailout - is necessary to prevent a total collapse of the economy. As for this, I say don’t give it to them. After all, we were always told that the free market, the invisible hand, unencumbered by government regulation, will take care of itself. The Wall Street robber barons would never find such charity in their hearts for the common folk. They would tell us that we can’t depend on government handouts, that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and play by the rules.

And what’s in it for us?

We certainly don’t need a 9-11-style commission to state the obvious, that this financial meltdown is the result of greed. It has finally put to rest a number of fallacies:

• The first fallacy is that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street, and that increases in worker productivity lead to wage increases. If that were true, then as Wall Street boomed, the average family would not have witnessed a stagnation or decline in their standard of living. Capitalism depends on making a profit, so they say, and if that means cutting wages, then so be it.

• The second is that Wall Street hates socialism. Not true. Apparently, they love socialism for the few, socialism for themselves, and to hell with everyone else.

• The third is that deregulated free market capitalism, served up for public consumption, is the best thing since shrimp and cheese grits. The reality, however, is pretty clear. Deregulation is a proxy for greed and excess, allowing the hustlers to run their hustle unencumbered, in the light of day, and with the sales receipt in hand for the government they just bought and paid for, and these swindlers have the sales receipt to prove it. Unregulated markets give you mortgage scams, a polluted environment, and now a wrecked economy.

So, why should we bail out companies that have been run into the ground, with jobs slashed or outsourced, while the heads of these ruined enterprises are rewarded for their failure with $40 million golden parachutes? Why should we throw good money after bad, and feed a fundamentally broken system that has no accountability to the public? And who is going to bail out the common, everyday people? The money always seems to be there for certain things, such as war profiteering and corporate bailouts, and of course, that massive upward redistribution of wealth that is eviscerating the poor, the working class and middle class. If we are going to have a good old-fashioned, socialist-style bailout for some, why can’t we have it for all?

Those of you who read the Color of Law column regularly know that I often refer back to Dr. King, and I think he has provided some words that are perfect for the situation in which America finds itself. He said that we, this nation, needs a “shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” and a “radical redistribution” of wealth and power. Sounds good to me. Perhaps there is no better time than the present.

Some people say that the New Deal saved capitalism from communism. Others say it saved America from capitalism. Still others say it saved capitalism from itself. What is certain, however, is that conservatives have done everything in their power to remove the last traces of the New Deal. And it is that very assault on the vestiges of the New Deal - with its relief for the unemployed, economic recovery and reform of the financial system, and greater acceptance of trade unionism as a counterbalance to corporate power - that helped create today’s hot mess in the financial sector. It will undoubtedly take a move as dramatic as the New Deal, if not bolder, to make things right.

But if the entire system is not reformed, with an eye toward bringing economic justice, changing the configuration of the economic pie and removing the stranglehold that corporations have on this society, then we have a problem.

Fake Mavericks Denigrate a Long Tradition of Community Organizing

By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 18, 2008

The Republican Party made it clear at their 2008 convention that they have no love for community organizers.

The overwhelmingly white crowd in Minnesota cheered at the speech made by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - GOP vice presidential candidate and Trojan Moose - mocking Senator Barack Obama’s community organizing experience. “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” Palin told the party faithful in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Although her remarks were directed toward Obama, it is clear that her ultimate target was community organizing itself. And the GOP is no friend of community organizing, particularly when community organizing helps the poor, the powerless, the disenfranchised, and, especially, people of color.

And while the GOP standard bearers - including Palin, the Manchurian candidate Senator McCain, 9-11 pimp Rudy Giuliani, former sleeping presidential candidate Fred Thompson, and empty suit Mitt Romney - have given little indication that they have worked an honest day in their life or improved the human condition, they would sit in judgment of those who have dedicated everything, and sometimes sacrificed their lives, in the name of social justice.

Now, I should say in the interests of full disclosure that my wife and I have a background as community organizers - she has worked in children’s health, political and labor campaigns, while I have experience in racial justice, police brutality, voting rights and media justice. It is hard work, and perhaps the most fulfilling you will find. You are helping real people solve real problems in their lives, and you see and feel the direct results of your actions.

Community organizing helped bring us an end to slavery, Jim Crow and apartheid, voting rights for women and African Americans, and humane working conditions. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad were a perfect example of effective community organizing, as was Dr. King’s Montgomery Bus Boycott, or Gandhi’s ability to bring the British Empire to its knees through nonviolent civil disobedience. When you think about it, Moses and Jesus were community organizers as well.

Conservatives throughout the ages have done what they could to stop this brand of community organizing, for the sake of staying in power, getting paid, keeping others down, keeping the whole pie for themselves, whatever. And today’s conservative crowd in early twenty-first century America, a frighteningly bankrupt coalition of entrenched interests, scam artists, profiteers and the Christian Taliban, is no exception. They thumb their noses at the New Deal reforms and the regulatory state, even though their own regime of deregulation and upward wealth transfer (also known as unbridled greed) has destroyed the American economy for the second time in eighty years. They spit at the civil rights legacy and programs of diversity, at a time when the ranks of the Brown, non-Christian, foreign language speaking and foreign born in the U.S. is increasing in dramatic fashion.

And most of all, they yearn for judges who are strict constructionists in interpreting the Constitution (translation: Black folks picking cotton, women in the home, LGBT people ostracized and invisible, etc.). They are more than aware of the transformative nature of community organizing, and they would erase all the positive effects that community organizing has had on public policy, legislation and court decisions.

These counterfeit mavericks, reformers and compassionate conservatives who claim to put country first, whatever that means, want to take us back to the days before the people woke up, and they are counting on you to go back to sleep.

GOP Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel with McCain-Palin Ticket

By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 11, 2008

When I look at the 2008 Republican ticket for president and vice president, I can’t help but ask: What kind of Simple Simon nonsense is going on here?

At the top of the ticket you have John McCain, whose only claim to fame was that he was captured by the “enemy”. Not much of a qualification for the White House, one would conclude, although I know that this area of discourse is sacrosanct. At best, the man is average and mediocre, stale and stilted, uninspiring and crotchety. No domestic policy beyond drilling for oil and corporate giveaways. And a foreign policy consisting of war, war and more war. You get the impression that after four years of this man, he would likely have the U.S. at war with anyone and everyone, building on the disastrous policies of the warmongering idiot Prince George.

Then, of course, there is Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, a state with a population half the size of Philadelphia. Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of about 5,000 at the time, and was nearly recalled. Lest you find yourself impressed with job titles such as governor, remember that George Bush once was governor of Texas, and we know how much good that did us.

For a political party that claims to value merit and qualifications, and doesn’t want people of color to get any unfair handouts, the Republicans once again have shown that they will scrape the bottom of the barrel to find their “talent,” their leaders and standard-bearers. Those who should be the benchwarmers become the starting lineup. They did it in the Bush Justice Department, filling that once prestigious agency with intellectual duds who met the right-wing ideological litmus test. They did it with FEMA, placing a horse show judge in charge of relief efforts in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Palin is the epitome of a lightweight to say the least, the GOP’s cynical answer to Hillary Clinton, but with none of the intelligence and none of the qualifications of that able yet flawed former candidate. And when Palin’s background is scrutinized, the party that cares little about women’s rights plays the sexism card.

But here’s what we do know about Palin. She billed Alaska taxpayers for 312 nights she spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office. She is under investigation for intimidating state officials into firing her state trooper brother-in-law.

Palin believes in creationism. She would preach to the rest of us about family values, and is against reproductive rights and contraception. She believes gays can be “converted” through prayer. And as Palin parades her hair licked family - complete with pregnant teen daughter and the daughter’s “fiancé”, shotgun pointed at his back - the governor cut funding to Covenant House Alaska, which provides housing to pregnant teen mothers. As far as foreign affairs are concerned, she believes invading Iraq was a task from God. And while Obama, a U.S. senator, has been thoroughly and incessantly scrutinized about his experience, Palin just received her first passport in 2006.

Together with McCain, this counterfeit superduo portrays itself as mavericks that will change Washington, although their campaign is managed by lobbyists and Rovian operatives, not to mention that their party has ruined the nation in eight years.

The ability of McCain and Palin to divorce themselves from reality is staggering. At their convention in Minnesota, with only 36 African American delegates, or 1.5 percent of the total, the Republican Party was able to act as if Black and Brown people simply do not exist in America. That is just as well, given that the GOP has painted itself into a political corner by appealing to its Neanderthal base - embracing intolerance and religious zealotry, and making itself into America’s version of the Afrikaaner National Party during apartheid. The Southern Strategy has come full circle for the Republicans. A party that depends on white identity for its bread and butter, despite rapidly changing demographics, is destined for a well-deserved demise that I will celebrate.

Yet, the McCain-Palin ticket is banking on the proclivity of the American electorate to act against its economic self interests, emphasizing “culture war” issues rather than the pocketbook issues that actually matter. Everyday people have taken a severe beatdown in America over the past eight years, but gluttons for punishment that they are, have we had enough? My sense of optimism demands that this latest incarnation of Reagan and Bush will fail, but time will tell.

Please Excuse Me While I Grieve For My Son, Ezra

 
















By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com
September 4, 2008

Please excuse me while I grieve for my boy…

The other day I was walking through the maternity ward
At Pennsylvania Hospital,
And a nurse asked me if I was an expectant father.
I told her no, my baby just died.
Later that day, a man asked me if I was expecting a baby,
I told him no, I just lost my son.

You haven’t heard his story, because it hasn’t been told,
And yet he is unable to tell you, so I will speak for him.

His name is Ezra Malik Katz Love,
And he came to us during this season,
Pregnant with the promise of hope
And filled with the possibilities of change,

Ezra gave us so much joy in such a short time,
But what do you do, what can you say,
When you have to give birth to your child
The day after he died.

Please excuse me while I mourn my beautiful boy Ezra…

How did he get this name?
Ezra means helper in Hebrew; he was named in honor of Eugene,
His mother’s mother’s father.

Malik means king in Arabic, Melech in the Hebrew,
Named in honor of Marion, his mother’s mother’s mother,
But also named in honor of Malcolm and Martin, of course.
And Mahatma and Medgar for that matter.
All of them left us before their time, before their work was done.

Ezra Malik - a beautiful boy, a remarkable boy,
He borrowed his mommy’s eyes, lips and rosy cheeks,
And his daddy’s nose - and the trademark Love family forehead,
And he has a full head of black hair.

But where on Earth did he get those long legs?
Perhaps it was from some distant ancestor, African or Jew,
Who had to cover a lot of ground in a short time,
Someone who was heading up some social movement,
Fighting the powers that be, or running away from them,
Or running towards them,
Or driving out the oppressors from the land,
Or setting the captives free.

Please excuse me while I mourn my little man, my Ezra Malik…

I saw my boy for only a brief moment,
Held him in my arms and kissed him on the head,
But I had many joyous conversations with him
When his mother was his home,
I told him about the world and about his family,
About his grandparents and his cousins, and his two cats,
And he was a good boy, he always listened,
He responded to his daddy’s words by kicking his mommy’s belly
…with those long legs of his.

I wanted to see him grow up,
But the Universe had other ideas, other plans for him,
Perhaps I’ll never understand,
I’ll always wonder what could have been, what would have been,
What should have been.

So, please excuse me while I grieve for my son Ezra…
I miss him, and I love him very much.