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MUPPETEERED

Whether acting in or out as Miss Piggy, Big Bird, Oscar, the Cookie Monster, Kermit the Frog, Animal, Gonzo the Great or Fozzie Bear, according to Goldman Sachs, we, the 99%, are all Muppets in waiting. Those pulling our strings in the name of their own unalienable rights to unearthly wealth creation at our working class expense should be sued by Jim Henson from his grave for breach of contract with the cultural heartbeat and soul of a country that is still a great deal more than the sum of its markets. (more…)

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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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…)

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…)

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…)