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Homesteading for the One Percent

(AFP/Getty Images)

Inherited merit is perceived as un-American and justifiably so in the land of supposed equal opportunities. Historically, the “Far West” belongs to the enterprising and courageous pioneer, the indentured servant who paves his or her own way after voluntary conscription, the “failure is not an option” entrepreneur, the hard working immigrant, the colonial self reliant.

Tragically, America’s current housing crisis makes a complete mockery of this vision. More than a policy day late and a refinancing dollar short, now we have turned our underwater homeowners into Katrina-like refugees, disenfranchised in their own land.

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Saturday, January 21st, 2012: The Day Alexandria’s Democratic Party Died

On Saturday, January 21st, 2102, the five Democratic members of Alexandria, Virginia’s City Council voted to approve a fatally flawed waterfront development plan while the two Republican members voted to oppose.

As an activist labor Democrat on a national scale it pains me to admit that Alexandria’s Democratic Party produces elected mutants. Euille, Donley, Pepper, Smedburg, and Krupicka betray everything genuine Democrats are fighting for nationally in rust belt and shuttered economies where not having enough goes without saying. Bereft of Alexandria’s relative abundance, these less privileged cities and townships produce elected Democratic leaders who actually stand for something besides their own venal self interests and dull, uninspired thinking, knowing that the future lies in building a vibrant green economy that defends the working people at the bottom, the ones who play by the rules and who shoulder the burdens. (more…)

The Bane of our Existence

“Sometimes people need to be fired, and sometimes they shouldn’t be hired at all. That’s reality.” So states Washington Post columnist, Kathleen Parker (“Romney’s rivals serve up a heaping helping of pious baloney”, published January 11, 2012). If only it were that simple…the gospel according to job creators.

Surviving the Great Recession with undisputable income inequality now the American norm, unfortunately not the un-American exception; too many unemployed, under-employed, foreclosed, and socially abandoned voters on all sides of the political spectrum are ready for something more useful from our political leaders this election year than a predictable and useless zero-sum debate placing all of the blame either on Wall Street or Washington D.C. In fact, the one percent versus the ninety-nine percent “occupy our public squares” protest-context frames this stand-off as the elites against the rest of us, fingering the collusion between big money and big government as the principal barrier to a more democratic prosperity. Extending this perception means that the powered and monied-up in both principal political parties are in the “peoples’ docket” with the “get out of jail free” verdict going to the most credible, the healers, the ones who lead by example, who turn their backs on trickle down and trickle up, who roll up their sleeves and get down in the ditch dregs with the rest of us as we dig our way out in ways we can believe. (more…)

“Cry, The Beloved Waterfront”… in living memory of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia

This week’s Republican primary in Iowa shows the devastating effects of anonymous, outside special interest money by the Romney campaign that decimated and marginalized the Gingrich campaign.  A good lesson to observe locally because this is exactly what’s happening in Alexandria.  People who don’t live where we live are dictating how we are going to live through the waterfront redevelopment battle that is throwing neighborhood rights under the proverbial bulldozer.

We not only have economic class warfare in Alexandria but geographic inequality and political taxation without representation.  Right on cue, the Waterfront4All “Super Pac” that is front-mouthing the pro-development wish list of Alexandria’s Chamber of Commerce in cahoots with the Washington Post Company who owns the Robinson terminals, is starting to treat residents to premature victory bows in the bars along lower King Street.  Increasingly, Del Ray residents from Alexandria’s “protected enclave” are becoming persona non grata for West Enders and Waterfront residents when running for city offices. The Del Ray “your taxation through my representation” modus operandi, exemplified by what emanates from our current City Planning Commission chair, is to ladle out poorly conceived but bombastically pronounced platitudes regarding what should happen in other peoples’ neighborhoods while counting on never having to guess what construction project is coming home to dinner in “do as I say but not as I do” hoods where City Council and Planning Commission members reside. (more…)

Heaven Prefers the Job Creators

Seen on the Street: the top one percent now sport a “members only” gold-plated lapel pin with the initials “JC” inscribed using blood-red conflict diamonds.

“JC” stands either for “Jesus Christ” or “Job Creators” depending on the eye of the beholder and the smirk of the wearer. The pin is produced as a charity tax write-off by worshipping “Oligarchy Prosperity Gospel” disciples who pray so that only victors get to gorge upon the spoils, the meek are consigned to rate-payer and renter castes, and inherited merit gets taxed at the capital gains 15 percent level with the goal of sparing hallowed wealth accumulators from the excessive burden of having to give back some of what they legally misappropriated. (more…)

“The Green Detox” Union-Cooperative

Rehiring Locally to Reenergize, Rebuild, and Re-green Local Toxic Commercial & Residential Real Estate Assets Throughout selected Metropolitan Regions

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.”

Presidents Obama and Clinton recently announced the revamped Better Building Initiative to increase energy efficiency profiles of both public sector and private commercial buildings through $4 billion in private sector funding which is recovered in full through energy savings. What’s missing from this welcome initiative is a mechanism to inspire local labor involvement and local repatriation of profits so that communities across the country who have suffered from the extraterritorial real estate manipulations and machinations by others get to participate in solutions that support local sovereignty, employment and recovery. The “Green Detox” approach offers to do just this by renewing working and middle class labor mobility, green-habilitating toxic real estate, and extending worker equity on a pay-for-itself basis. This is how and why community activists and entrepreneurs can envision applying “Green Detox” solutions to cities and towns across America. (more…)

Moby Dicked America

In the discarded dog-towns of the Great Recession, the “Moby Dicking” of America – harpooning our whale of a country to dance with the stars for starry-eyed profits – no longer qualifies as a victimless spectator market sport where big game hunters can pay to play for uneven advantages. Outside of paradise, twenty-seven million unemployed average citizens have come up empty, receiving nothing but return to sender job applications this holiday season (Los Angeles Times), with no improvement anytime soon. Our jobless testify to a national disenfranchisement fix, a coast-to-coast underclass that is alive but not well and which has morphed into a signed, sealed, and delivered divorce standoff between global shareholders and local stakeholders, between those who have way too much and those who have much less than enough, between those who decide to buy-back their corporate shares because they’ve confused investing in themselves with investing in their country, and between generations struggling to equate broken, non-recyclable promises with anything positive they were brought up to believe in. (more…)

The American Spring: What Could Go Right vs. What Already Went Wrong

Chris Matthews’ soberly accurate proscription for the current presidency (“Five things JFK Could Teach Obama”) strikes a double chord not only with its content but also because it is juxtaposed in Time magazine’s “Rise of Smart Power” edition (November 7/11)  with a description of foreign policy successes that are less obvious on the domestic front. This dichotomy between getting it fairly right overseas and missing it fairly broadly at home is much more than just a simple failure to communicate and signals an indictment of misplaced priorities and lost opportunities. (more…)

ESIB – October 2011

Save Lives, Cut Costs, Go Local for Energy & Jobs
Building the U.S. Energy Security Industrial Base (ESIB) to Save Lives & Reduce Costs

ESIB Version October 2011

Let Them Eat Poverty

The elemental sleight of hand trick in modern American politics is to divert and channel populist anger into the two traditional party platforms and electorates as imperceptibly as possible so that voters don’t realize they’re going against their declared self-interest. But by 2030 according to current demographic trends when the U.S. will be a minority-majority country deploying ever more sophisticated social media platforms to convene at will – this may no longer be possible. These two developments, identity-based technology and advancing multicultural composition, spell out most clearly why the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is not and will not become the left wing version of the Tea Party. (more…)