The notion that Barack Obama, or anyone working within the present system, is going to fix the economy, is patently absurd. People better consolidate their living situations, share cars, and get used to living on a very tight budget, because the system has failed, and we are depending on it to fix itself vis a vis the “expertise” of the same minds that got us to this point. It looks like Obama feels as though the fox, JP Morgan CEO and Jamie Dimon, (who made $28.9 million last year) is the right person to guard the hen house as the new Treasury Secretary.

Investors and CEOs see layoffs as cost cutting measures. If they can juggle the books and make the company look like it may do a little bit better for the quarter following the layoffs, they can lure some bargain hunters and squeeze something out of their dwindling investments before they sell. Money is shifting around all the time and only a fool would think that there is no collusion and insider trading as the rule, not the exception. Everyone who talks about “the economy” in quotes in print, or on television in a suit, is speaking from the perspective of an investor. An investor is someone who has so much extra money beyond what they need to live, they have to find a place to put it, and they demand that it always grow considerably. How can you make a dollar grow? At the top of the pyramid, the place where Dimon dwells, you get money lent to you at 1% interest from the Fed, and you lend it out at higher rates. And you can lend out way more than you have.

Those people who talk about one world order, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, and the global elite pulling the strings on puppet governments are now and have always been spot-on. I have always known this, but I tried to play the game for the most part on this blog. But I’m done with that, and I’m going to keep it real from now on, largely because the game is over. It will just take a little time for people to realize that the puppet masters have all of the marbles, and that there is nobody else left with the means to play.

Yes, I shilled for Obama as the campaign waned. I wanted to see McCain lose, and I wanted innocent people of color in America to feel something that they had never felt before. But I never expected Obama to rock the boat. Once he declared that AIPAC’s right to shape American foreign policy was “sacrosanct” I knew where he stood.

I ask you, quite simply: How is this system going to right itself? Corporate America, represented by Dimon and Obama, respond to people being unable to buy things by laying them off. The system is designed to make the rich richer and strangle the worker. Bailouts only help to cover losses at the top, they do nothing for the middle. An auto industry bailout is like an unemployed person taking out a loan to tread water for six months, and at the end of the six months, finding themselves just as unemployed. People are not going to suddenly start buying Chevys and Fords. That money, if it is allocated, will pay the interest on the American auto industry’s debt for a few months, as much as I empathize with auto workers.

A guy who made nearly $30 million last year as CEO of a bank is not the guy to lead the economy out of the mess that his industry created. But he is not being asked to by the people who are really in charge. He is part of an illusion that has been created to keep the masses at bay. But you know what Bob Marley had to say about a hungry mob.

10.) They live in walled, gated, hermetically sealed artificial realities.

9) Everybody around them has to act as though they like and respect them, so they get to live in a fiction of their own creation.

8.) They play golf at the club. Fuck golf, and fuck the club.

7.) The wives of rich men get bored and volunteer their time to things like the art museum, while their employees work every minute of overtime that becomes available. That sucks.

6.) They feel as though they are better than others at birth because somewhere down the family tree they owned slaves and got free labor.

5.) They don’t serve in the military but adamantly support wars and military spending.

4.) The rich support the pinkie ring industry. That sucks.

3.) They pay people to raise their kids, do their laundry, and clean their toilets.

2.) They own sports teams and demand salary caps, but feel that they are entitled to unlimited wealth with no cap.

1.) They lay off and fire working people so that they can add to their own wealth while the economy crumbles.

Last week Zappos.com, that “really cool” online shoe store, laid off 8% of its work force.

I live in Las Vegas, and Zappos relocated here from San Francisco several years ago. I am on Twitter and I follow and am followed by the Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, so I get to read what’s up with the company. Tony is the wunderkind darling of Silicon Valley who sold his first start-up, LinkExchange, for $265 million when he was 24. Zappos wasn’t his idea, but he helped to capitalize the venture that was conceptualized by Nick Swinmurn, who has since, uh, “moved on.”

Tony loves the media spotlight, and he was on Oprah just a couple of weeks ago, and he has been featured on Nightline and in countless print and Internet interviews. He fancies Zappos as a “progressive” company, and apparently, people are willing to buy into what he is selling. Money and power have a way of creating a very pleasant reality.

But this piece is not about dissing Tony and Zappos (not entirely, anyway). I want to use Zappos layoff as a tangible way to explain something that I have been trying to convey for quite some time now.

Veteran’s Day just passed, and we are continually reminded about the sacrifices that have been made, and are being made every day, to “protect the American way of life.” Enlisted people and junior officers in the military make very modest incomes, but they are driven by patriotism and sincere love of country in most instances. While they are separated from their families, traumatized, kill, fight, and die, CEOs like Hsieh travel the world like rock stars. They gorge themselves on the finest of food and libations, only too pleased to share their excesses transparently though social networking on the web, their vicarious legions fawning at their cyber-feet .

People who have little to no resources are willing to die for what they perceive as keeping their fellow Americans safe and free. My question is, why don’t coddled corporate icons and their investors have to adhere to even a fraction of that type of commitment to their fellow Americans? How can a guy like Hsieh lay off American workers and actually get sympathy from his adoring fans?

Here’s the thing. If I own a deli and I have five employees, and due to an economic downturn (or a Subway moving in next door) I am suddenly losing money, I have no choice but to let people go. That is sad, but understandable. But this is what Hsieh had to say to his employees in an email that he made public on his Zappos blog (Can you say “blind spot?”):

Fortunately for Zappos, we’re in a much better position than many other
companies. Unlike many other companies, we are still growing and already
profitable and cash flow positive.

Because we are still growing and are already profitable, we do not have to
take as drastic of a step as most other companies of our size. Last year,
we did $840 mm in gross merchandise sales, and this year we are
forecasting to do about $1 billion in gross merchandise sales. However,
when we first put together our 2008 plan at the end of 2007, we were
expecting our gross merchandise sales to be even higher than $1 billion.

Aw, poor Tony, only $1 billion? So you see, the Zappos layoff is not taking place because the company can’t afford to keep these people on so that they can feed their families. It is taking place because in Tony’s perfect world, and that of his investors, anything less than stellar, off-the-charts profit and growth is simply unacceptable. This, to me, is the root of the economic crisis in America. Corporate greed by people who are already obscenely wealthy.

I asked Tony, rhetorically in a Tweet on Twitter, how he thinks that putting people out of work will help the economy? Do unemployed people buy a lot of new shoes? He went to Harvard, and I went to the school of hard knocks, but I still haven’t received an answer.

If I had a quarter of a billion dollars in the bank, and my company was even breaking even while holding steady and not growing, I wouldn’t put people and their families out on the street. Would you? Have you ever seen It’s A Wonderful Life? Schindler’s List? Imagine being in a position to maintain hundreds of millions of dollars of personal wealth without laying anyone off. Would you do it?

There are people walking around the streets and the hills of Iraq and Afghanistan being paid less than $20,000 a year right now out of a sense of duty to their fellow Americans. There are homeless people sans limbs out there who sacrificed everything for the red, white, and blue. But the people who have used the opportunities that the sacrifices of simple, patriotic Americans have provided to them couldn’t care less about giving back.

Is this a moral judgment? Partly…but it is more of an economic statement. The wealthy elite are so utterly selfish and myopic that they fail to realize that their layoffs will only send the economy further into a downward spiral. We already have the highest unemployment rate in many years, and now, here in Las Vegas and in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, where Zappos warehousing and shipping is done, it just became that much harder for the unemployed to get a job.

Hsieh feels real good about himself because he will pay these people that he laid off through the rest of the year. For this, his minions get teary eyed. What a guy. Tony Hsieh always get it all.

It’s not my intention to declare war against Hsieh. He is not evil, he is just a very rich boy in a very gilded bubble. But I love my neighbors, I can empathize with how it feels to be unemployed, and I got their backs (as best a poor guy can). The wealthy elite like Hsieh aren’t only unwilling to sacrifice their safety or their lives for the American dream that only their ilk truly live…they won’t even sacrifice a portion of their profits to keep American families in their homes. Let’s wake up and be willing to let the rich and powerful know that we have X-ray vision, and the emperor wears no clothes.

As I have watched the changing of the presidential guard throughout my lifetime, one peculiarity has always stood out to me. When the Republicans are in charge, the cabinet is going to be solidly Republican and quite partisan. And why shouldn’t it be? When the people speak, they give the winning candidate the mandate to lead, and with that comes the latitude to pick a cabinet that shares the vision and legislative agenda of the president-elect.

Democrats, on the other hand, consistently seem to feel the need for bi-partisanship and centrism, and this has always annoyed me. It is the same thing with majorities in the House and Senate. When Bob Dole was Senate majority leader and Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House, they were anything but bi-partisan, leading the Republican Revolution with absolute partisan conviction. When the Republican majority impeached Bill Clinton, I remember thinking that payback is a bitch. I longed for the day when the shoe would be on the other foot.

It has been for the last two years, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid have consistently squashed impeachment proceedings against war criminal George W. Bush that have been introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, calling them a “waste of time” and “off the table.”

Much has been made of Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff. House Republican leader John Boehner said:

This is an ironic choice for a President-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil, and govern from the center.”

I say that the political process is one of partisanship. We want change, and we want to move to the left; that’s why we voted for Barack Obama, and that is why the Democrats increased their majorities in the House and the Senate. I will be very disappointed if Obama picks any Republicans for Cabinet level positions (with the possible exception of Colin Powell, whose endorsement was very important for Obama).

The Democrats seem unable, or unwilling, to use their power to its greatest advantage. The G.O.P., on the other hand, uses it to the utmost whenever they get any opportunity to do so, and perhaps that is as it should be. We voted for Democrats, and we voted for change, and “staying in the center” is another way of saying “maintaining the status quo.” I encourage Barack Obama to yield to the will of the American people who elected him and be just as partisan in his Cabinet appointments as the Republicans have been, and as John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been. Obama should reach across, but he should reach across the other side of the tracks, not the other side of the aisle.

The election season was a telling time, and the results on Tuesday have demonstrated that the political spectrum has shifted profoundly. I was rather amazed when I saw the pathetic roster that the Republicans rolled out during the primary season, and now I have come to the conclusion that the GOP is obsolete to anyone who knows how to use a computer, is not white, is not racist, and is not an evangelical Christian.

The emergence of Sarah Palin underscored the desperation at the core of the party, and the embarrassing Joe the Plumber mantra concocted by McCain and his handlers further highlighted how out of touch with the real face of America the Republicans are at this juncture. The only thing that the good old boys could brainstorm as a cure for America’s many ills was the to repeat a lie (that Obama would raise the average Joe’s taxes) a million times and hope that it becomes true. The American people were too smart for that.

When you look at the red states, they are places that still harbor a plantation mentality where most people feel that teaching evolution is a sin. McCain carried a bunch of big states out west with very small populations not known for their sophistication, and much of the deep south. The states that the GOP can claim are the places where rednecks rule. Is it politically incorrect to put it that way? Probably, but it’s the truth. The “real Americans” in the eyes of the Republicans reside in states like Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, and Kentucky.

It turns out that a woman who didn’t know that Africa is a continent was placed by the Republicans in a position that would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency. Their biggest spokesman was a deluded, unemployed, unlicensed plumber who feigned concern over a quarter of a million dollar income that he admits he hasn’t made over ten years, much less one. At present, it looks like the standard bearers of the great party of Lincoln are Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

I have often decried the lack of choice that our political system provides. The difference between the two parties is often so slim that it is hard to see how things will be much different regardless of who is elected. I am hopeful that the dreadful state of the Republican party will make space for thought that is to the left of middle-of-the-road Democrats. A new paradigm requires new ideas.

When your party’s best and brightest have boiled down to Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, it may be time for a reality check.

I was moved on Tuesday night, and I could relate to what Michelle Obama said during the primary when her husband was gaining support. I am proud to be an American for the first time in my life. Like many people, when I saw Jesse Jackson standing in the crowd weeping, humbled, I remembered that he was standing next to Dr. Martin Luther King when he was shot. The Dream had actually been realized.

When I first got old enough to read the paper we were getting involved in Vietnam, and the more I learned about it, the less “proud” I was. Pride is in fact one of the seven deadly sins. It is the type of pride that someone like Cindy McCain exudes that enables people like George Bush to feel as though America is entitled to do whatever it pleases, no matter how many people die or how immoral it may be. It is the same type of pride that John McCain’s great-grandfather had, the pride that allowed him the moral authority to enslave other human beings.

Barack Obama didn’t wear a flag pin on his lapel when he first began to run for president, and he got a lot of flack for it. Now I am not a perfect person, but I do have a very good memory. After 911 and in the run up to the Iraq war, the flag became a symbol of support for the illegal invasion of Iraq, the creation of the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, and the Patriot Act that rolled back American freedoms. It symbolized the virtual coronation of George Bush as a military dictator rather than a democratically elected leader of a three pronged government that is beholden to a measured system of checks and balances.

As Jesse Jackson swayed in the Chicago night on Tuesday, he held that same flag in his hand and as I cried along with him. The flag seemed to represent something different on that night than it had for some 230 years previously. I detested the sight of those stickers and antenna flags during the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. I marveled at the “patriots” who let their Chinese made little flags grow dirty and frayed by the elements, and the metaphor inherent in that picture was never lost on me. Yet I sat there looking at Jesse Jackson and I thought that I’d like to go out and get myself a flag sticker and put one on my car. I felt like I could truly identify with my country, perhaps for the very first time.

This blog is about a coming new paradigm, and the election of Barack Obama is an event of great novelty that truly changes everything. It won’t happen overnight, but we have taken a huge step into the future. We have repudiated racism and embraced brotherhood by voting for Barack Obama. We proved that The American Dream, that notion that you can be anything that you set out to be in this country, is actually true.

10.) He never voted against Martin Luther King Day.

9.) Unlike his opponent, he knows how to answer an e-mail.

8.) It tells the rest of the world that Americans are not as bad as they thought we were.

7.) You will pay lower taxes if your income is not among the top 5% of taxpayers.

6.) You won’t have to see or hear Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber for a while.

5.) To finally get our troops home from Iraq.

4.) To prevent McCain’s vision of the total militarization of America, including ex-soldiers being allowed to teach in our schools without proper testing and certification.

3.) Because Obama bootstrapped himself to where he is without military cronyism and old money connections.

2.) Barack Obama is completely in touch with the economic, racial, and generational diversity that is the true face of America, and McCain is completely out of touch with same. Obama more accurately represents all of us.

1.) Because McCain, by his own admission, stood by George Bush over 90% of the time.

As I follow the campaign, I have been led down this road and that by Sarah Palin, from lipstick on a pig to Troopergate, free trips for Alaskan kids (as long as they are named Palin) and big ticket shopping sprees.  Though she is camera shy when asked to talk about substantive issues, I’ve seen her sucking up the limelight on Saturday Night Live.  I’ve watched her “go rogue,” and seen the quotes coming from her own party that she is a “diva.”  I’ve even seen pictures of her legs!

The Sarah Show is a grand and alluring traveling circus, but the reality it, I have not heard a single utterance attributable to her that addresses any of the issues that matter to Americans.  Even if you support Palin, can you honestly say that you have read or heard her lay out a cogent plan for addressing the economy, health care, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?  This woman is running for the vice presidency of the United States of America, and she has absolutley no plan.  Zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

Sarah has several talking points, and all of them are attacks on Obama that hold no water.  Palin and that stiff, disingenuous, zombie McCain keep repeating over and over and over and over again that Obama will raise your taxes, but that simply is not true if you make less than $200,000 a year, and that is 95% of us.

They repeatedly question his connection with Distinguished Professor Bill Ayers, Citizen of the Year in Chicago in 1997.  Obama, Ayers, and many other prominent Chicago citizens participated in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Some other participants included the editor of the Chicago Tribune at the time, Scott Smith; Arnold Weber, the former president of Northwestern University; John McCarter, president of the Field Museum; and Patricia Albjerg Graham, the fomer dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, hardly a “Chicago Seven” type of assemblage.

As for the coffee meet and greet that was held at Ayers’ house, he was, and is, one of the most trusted and respected citizens of the city in which he resides.  And I’d like to add that Chicago is a little bit bigger than Wasilla.  Bill Ayers could inhale Sarah Palin (and John McCain) intellectually in one breath.  This innocent association between a college professor and an aspiring young politician over a decade ago has become one of the cornerstones of Sarah Palin’s candidacy.  We don’t care about that, Sarah.  Students spend thousands of dollars in tuition each year to learn from Bill Ayers, who holds a Ph.D from an Ivy League University, Columbia.  Where did you go to school, Sarah?  Didn’t you transfer five times in six years before finally getting a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Idaho?

I have seen Sarah Palin so often my eyes hurt, and I have heard her nasally whine until my ears have bled, but I have not heard a single substantive intellectual argument legitimizing her candidacy emerge from between her lipsticked lips.  You don’t win a debate by hurling stones at your opponent.  You gain the public trust by outlining a plan that you feel is superior to that of the other candidate.  Sarah Palin’s only ammunition is to distort Barack Obama’s life’s work and his present plan for America , and it is high time that we looked past the style and closely examined the substance.

So the “legend,” Ted Stevens, has been convicted of seven felony counts just eight days before the voters of his state will decide if they will be extending his tenure as the longest-serving United States Senator.  He has vowed to fight the conviction with “every ounce of energy” that he has available to him, and at 84, that may not be much.

This is odd.  Convicted felons can’t vote in Alaska.  So Ted Stevens will be on the ballot on Tuesday, and as of last night, he was only one percentage point behind his opponent, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, in the polls.  Stevens won’t be able to vote for himself, but he may well be elected to the United States Senate.

Each of the seven counts that Stevens has been convicted of are punishable by up to seven years in prison.  So If he’s elected, will Stevens be casting his votes in the Senate from behind bars?  This is surreal.

John McCain has repeated ad nauseum his disdain for pork barrel spending.  He says that this is what is wrong with Washington, and he aims to clean it up.  But in fact it is the felon Stevens, McCain’s fellow Republican and Palin’s neighbor, who is the leading offender.

Sarah Palin would like us to think that she is a down-to-earth hockey mom who stood up to the culture of big oil influence and corruption that is Alaska politics.  But her brief time on the national stage has revealed a complete disregard for the public trust at every turn.  She handed the keys to the governor’s office, and its influence,  to her husband, a lifelong big oil employee.  She charged the state of Alaska per diem payments for time she spent in her own home.  She charged the citizens of Alaska for hotel rooms and plane tickets for her children.  She also took freebies and used her influence to sidestep zoning snags in order to sell her house in Wasilla.

Now there are quotes coming from McCain campaign operatives that Palin has “gone rogue,” and that she is “a diva” who takes no advice from anyone.  The thing that is disturbing about this is that John McCain gave her the chance of a lifetime, and she seems to be throwing him under the bus before our eyes.  That, to me,  is despicable.

Let’s keep it real.  Alaska is run by big oil.  Stevens and Palin represent big oil.  But Stevens may be representing big oil in a striped suit soon, calling in his votes from a prision pay phone, and that would be an apt picture that accurately portrays the state of the Republican brand circa 2008.

I saw where the Dow has dropped 500 points today, and the story says that the reason why is because investors are worried about corporate earnings.  They don’t feel as though these earnings will grow, which means that the value of stock in these corporations probably won’t go up.  So people sell the stock, and its value decreases.

The word “socialism” is being tossed about a lot these days, particularly by John McCain and that fashion plate Sarah Palin, who was done all that she can to keep Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue on a growth trajectory.  When you are given free six figure wardrobes, a per diem from the taxpayers of your state for staying in your home, and free trips around the country for your kids, its easy to do your part to fuel an economy based on consumption without regard for sustainability.

The reality is that Wall Street cannot fix itself because the system, (sorry John McCain and George Bush) is not fundamentally sound.  It is broken, and it is irrepairable.  I predicted a breakdown in the housing market years before it happened, and I’m going to tell you something today: Americans will be screaming from the rooftops for socialism in the very near future.

Yahoo! is a case in point.  Yesterday they announced lower than expected earnings, so they are going to lay off 1500 workers.  Let’s say that Joe the Plumber, or Joe the Anything, is looking for a job around Sunnyvale, California, where Yahoo! is located.  Today, his (or her) chances of getting a job just got a lot less likely because here comes 1500 unemployed people to join Joe scouring the help wanted pages.

But what really happened at Yahoo!?  The CEO Jerry Yang, co-founder David Filo, and majority stockholders at Yahoo! fired these 1500 Americans and put them and their families in peril.  Those with mortgages may well default.  They won’t be able to buy things from…well, from Yahoo!, which will damage the company even more.  And this is not Joe the Plumber firing one of his three laborers because he simply does not have the money to pay them.  This is a totally solvent company that reported earnings in excess of 50 million dollars last quarter.

Yang, Filo, and the top shareholders at Yahoo!, and their counterparts at all companies, are multimillionaires, some of them billionaires.  They don’t mind at all if they put people out of work while still retaining their millions.  And remember, the more jobless Joes that are out there, the harder it is to find a job.  And jobless Joes can’t buy anything, so when this elite top 5% of the earners in America lop off heads so they can maintain their obscene, lopsided advantage, the economy as a whole suffers along with jobless Joe.

My point is that the top 5% who own most of the stock have created an economy that is sinking because it is top heavy, and their response to their own failure is to heap more suffering on the average Joe while they sink the economy and pressure the government to bail out their bad investments!

The obvious reality is that corporate profits are not going to increase.  Are our wages increasing?  Is there a sudden boon of good jobs? Why would we expect corporate profits to continually rise?  Yet, that expectation is the foundation on which our “fundamentally sound” economic system is built on.  When “free market” companies like Yahoo! throw families out onto the street, what should they do?  Where should they turn?  If it is socialism to require Jerry Yang and David Filo to either keep these people working or divest themselves of some or most of their obscene excess, accumulated on the backs of these very people, I say bring it on.