Tea Parties

Posted on April 15, 2009

So it’s Tax Day, once again, the annual deadline for Americans to pay Uncle Sam his Protection Money to keep him from sending his goons to break our kneecaps or reposess our homes.  This year I’m glad to report that my official legal income was small enough that I had no tax liability, one of the few advantages of being a starving artist I suppose.

What makes this particular tax day interesting is that, thanks at least in part to the urging of Fox News and corporate-sponsored Astroturf (fake grassroots) organizing, there are “tea parties” happening in hundreds of cities all over America to protest Obama’s bailout and the absurd amounts of debt that the Dems are adding onto the already absurd deficits left by Bush.   Apparently it wasn’t enough for the ruling class to run up trillions of dollars in deficit spending to pay for 2 wars over the last 8 years, now that they’ve got a brand new puppet in place our corporate overlords have decided to keep right on spending our money to enrich themselves!  I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’d be lying.

And, when people get outraged – as they should – the corporations set up a fake movement.  Unlike in France and the UK where working class rage at being robbed by the government to finance corporate bailouts has erupted into serious militant and autonomous protests, all America can manage is a made-for-tv series of staged event sponsored by the same corporate elites that got us into this mess.  Just another in an endless string of puppet shows, to let everyone who’s pissed at how we’ve been robbed rant and rave as much as they like without actually changing or challenging anything.  And then, through the magic of Spin, the corporate media will portray that outrage as a Conservative backlash.  Ha!  As though conservatives were the only ones objecting.  Just about every genuine leftist I know (and no, democrats aren’t leftists) is pissed at the bailout.  Ya’ll may remember that I even wrote and recorded a song about it a few months back.  And I’m hardly the only one who’s been speaking out on this issue.

Read more

the riots

Posted on January 31, 2009

a poem by charles bukowski

the riots

I’ve watched this city burn twice
in my lifetime
and the most notable thing
was the arrival of the
politicians in the
aftermath
proclaiming the wrongs of
the system
and demanding new
policies toward and for the
poor.

nothing was corrected last
time.
nothing will be corrected this
time.

the poor will remain poor.
the unemployed will remain
so.
the homeless will remain
homeless

and the politicians,
fat upon the land, will live
very well.

5/5/1992

Does Race Exist?

Posted on July 1, 2008

My last post prompted a few responses. 2 of those were from ‘national anarchists’ and i marked them as spam because i’ve already made it clear i’m not interested in giving them a voice on my blog. they’ve got their own blogs where they can run on as much as they want. Fact is, while many of the NA’s claim to be anti-racist, the fact that they’re willing to work with white nationalists tells me everything i need to know about just how flimsy their commitment to anti-racism really is. (not nationalists who happen to be white, like say scottish nationalists, but white racists who want to create explicitly and exclusively white “nations” in america, australia, south africa, etc. That’s not an endorsement of scottish nationalists either, I’ve got a completely different set of issues with the SNP, but I’ll save that for another post.) So …. yeah. I’m not down with NA’s and i’m not going to approve their comments or dignify them with further response.

The third response, and the one that prompted this post, was from a right-libertarian who asserts that I am wrong and race does actually exist. He provided a link to an article by Ernst Mayr, a biologist, to support his statement. This is my response to his claim:

Read more