Shameless Plug for a Dear Friend

In my lifetime, I've met five people who I consider to be smarter than I am. Unsurprisingly, three of them are women, the fourth, quite sadly, is dead. I was best man at the other's wedding.

The three women are:

Georgine Cooper, editor, formerly of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers

Marla Hegel, writer, teacher, student of comparative religious, honorary PhD from Cal-Tech in Environmental Studies, who wrote the book (and continues to update) that is used by the EPA in promulagating its regulations.

And NANCY EFFERT! Who was the heart and soul of the Actuarial Division of Bankers Life & Casualty for nine of the ten years I worked there (I started about a year before she did.) Nancy started as a clerk (after her dad kicked her out of the house and stopped paying for her college education - she was a pre-med major). She eventually went to work for Gary Stanton (formerly of the Actuarial Division) in the Data Processing Division, worked a while for PolySystems INC, an actuarial hardware, software, firmware, liveware company which developed computer programs for the insurance industry, and then finally she worked for CONSECO, the insurance conglomerate from Indianapolis. She was doing DP / IT work for CONSECO when 9-11 occurred, and like so many in the IT bidness, was laid off and had to reinvent herself, which she did, coming back as a financial consultant.

Nancy ALWAYS wanted to know how things worked. While she was still classified as an actuarial clerk, she picked up five different computer programming languages, and was doing work that actuarial students with 3 and 4 exams were doing. She wanted to know how things worked so that THE NEXT TIME, she could do it herself, and she IS and always has been a very quick study.

FULL DISCLOSURE: She was, is, and has always remained a very good friend, who remembers that, back in the day, before my first major depressive episode, I used to be a fun loving irresponsible drunk lacking a certain amount of savoire faire when it came to holding one's tongue in the presence of one's "superiors." I always let 'er rip. Nancy could too, she just never believed in burning bridges; I don't believe in burning bridges, either - I believe in dropping nuclear bombs on them so that they can't ever be rebuilt.

Nancy and I got together with some other very important people from my life this past Saturday. One extremely interesting and important thing she told me was that all the computer programming that has been outsourced to India, Pakistan, China, etc, has NOT been done nor maintained as well as it would hve been by American trained programmers. It seems like that while 23% of the foreign programmers who have gotten jobs at the expense of American-trained and based professionals, are qualified for what they do, the rest (77%) ore not! And thus, those hi tech programming jobs will be coming back to the USA!

HOORAY!



Wall Street comes to McHenry County

The thought of managing investments is a daunting task for most, and for many conjures up notions of utter frustration. A throbbing headache can occur from opening statements from faceless corporations, including your own company’s 401(k). However, the first institutional money management firm based in McHenry County, Crossroads Advisory Group, is determined to change those perceptions.

Based in Crystal Lake, the group combines the education, experience and energy of Meridith L. Hutchens, portfolio manager and founder of Crossroads Advisory Group, with the local talents of Sandra Briggs, chief financial officer, and Nancy Effert, financial planning specialist and client relationship manager adviser for clients of the firm.

“Most people come to us with a random assortment of investments purchased over the years, stocks, mutual funds and annuities purchased through discount brokers or a friendly salesperson,” Hutchens explains. “Couple this with their current company 401(k), IRA’s, and even money left with a former employer, and the result is myriad assets. Many are afraid or simply too overwhelmed to face the challenge of analyzing their investments.”

Hutchens has nearly 20 years of experience in managing portfolios. Her long list of credentials is impressive, and her approach is inviting. Her success in Chicago and later in McHenry County created an expanding business managing the assets of power players in the area. The institutional aspect of her core business is managing assets for corporate retirement plans 401(k), small banks, as well as other financial advisors.

Her money management prowess has resulted in explosive growth as word of her unique approach spread throughout McHenry County. “The phone has not stopped ringing, and I knew I had to get larger office space and bring qualified people to the firm,” she says.

During this growth period, Hutchens came to the realization that the same techniques that had been successfully applied for managing money for institutions could well serve the needs of individual investors.

“It was my commitment to make certain they got solid investment advice, and I was going to need qualified people to help,” says Hutchens.

Making the decision to expand her business did not come easily for Hutchens, however.

“To be able to use my acumen and instinct, I realized was something that I couldn’t reserve for limited clientele — I realized that was what my commitment was,” Hutchens says. “It’s just the art of what I love, which has been inbred in me since I was 15 years old — managing money. I follow over 300 indexes and I’m a little bit of a chart geek.”

The firm got bigger almost overnight. Sandra Briggs performs the role of business manager and chief financial officer for Crossroads Advisory Group. Her role is to help with day-to-day management, provide support to advisers as well as clients, develop financial budgets and forecasts, and maintain the accounting.

Nancy Effert, a wealth management adviser and owner of Effert Financial Solutions in Crystal Lake, was recruited to focus on the client-adviser relationship side. One of her main roles is to provide financial planning services to those who have indicated a desire to work with Crossroads.

Objectivity is a quality that is an integral part of Effert’s role with Crossroads. Effert Financial Solutions remains a separate entity from Crossroads Advisory Group. Not only does Effert serve as the initial point of contact for Crossroads’ clients, but she also continues to work with her own clients at Effert Financial Solutions to determine their needs, whether it be saving for college, retirement, selling a business or simply improving the performance of their current portfolio.

“Wealth management has become an overused buzzword, it’s really about bringing corporations and individuals into financial awareness,” Hutchens says. “And that was the aspect about (Effert) that made me realize that she was the ideal financial planning specialist for Crossroads. (Effert) does not have an agenda to sell financial products; her dedication is to guide clients into a realistic assessment before she recommends an investment strategy."

For Effert, her relationship with Crossroads has expanded her ability to help clients.

“Working with Crossroads is another tool in my tool kit,” Effert says. “When advising a client I may recommend that part of their portfolio be managed by Crossroads, but we may not commit all their investments to Crossroads. Managing risk can include diversification among money managers as well as asset class.”

Expert insight, proprietary tools
Working with Crossroads Advisory Group, not only provides personal service with years of experience, but the group also has access to a number of proprietary tools. One unique tool is the XRoads XRay™, which Hutchens explains, “We call it the XRoads XRay™ because most of the packaged investments, such as mutual funds and annuities, have anywhere from 100 to 500 positions that are constantly in motion,” Hutchens explains. “The software that’s available to the public or elementary financial planning firms is often data that has expired. It can be six to nine months old. With the institutional tools that we have, the data is current.”

Hutchens elaborates, “The XRoads XRay™ also examines asset class weighting which uncovers not only diversification problems but uncovers hidden fees that are built into most investment products. But the XRoads XRay™ doesn’t stop there. The monumental value to our proprietary software and analysis come in the form of analyzing risk exposure beyond historical rules of thumb.

“Our forward looking projection assigns a fiduciary score that drills down deeply into the stewardship and quality of the investments and then recommends eliminating out-of-favor asset classes,” she explains. “This differs significantly from what you will find at big name firms. We don’t have to keep investments we don’t like just to fill prescribed buckets. In other words, a ‘go anywhere’ approach allows us the freedom to capture upside potential while also hedging downside risk. We are not day-traders nor necessarily long-term investors. We seek high quality positions in the total marketplace while not limiting ourselves to stocks and bonds.

“Crossroads opens its analysis and viewpoint to offer alternative investments in such categories as commodities and real estate,” Hutchens continues. “Most investors are unaware that merely taking 25 percent of their portfolio into alternative investments would have significantly lessened the downward spiral of broad based stock and bond investments. In fact, some investment portfolios had positive returns in what many called a catastrophic year for investments. It’s our job to show people these strategies.”

In addition to the specialized tools, Crossroads Advisory Group also has a noteworthy list of clients, including many area accountants, attorneys and a country-western singer.

“I wouldn’t have the clients that I do if I didn’t produce results, so at the end of the day it’s all about producing results,” Hutchens says. “The first way to do that is to limit downside risk and utilize XRoads XRay™ technology to categorize your investments.”

“There are probably 10 economic benchmarks, we call them leading indicators or lagging indicators that the public knows about, but in reality, there are more than 300,” she continues. “And when those signals line up, the outcome, in my mind, is very easy to predict.”

Also, the XRoads XRay™ monitors trading volume as a core driver for all other investment decisions. “It tells us who is in the market on a given day to determine whether or not the activity is healthy or unhealthy for our clients,” Hutchens says.

“What’s really important is examining the quality of activity, what’s going on and where it’s coming from because that is really only based on 15 or 20 factors and that’s what I look at every day,” Hutchens explains. “Being able to determine if short-term traders are driving the market, large institutions, or everyday investors is what drives all of the other decisions. It’s not inside information, it’s just knowing how to read volume, and I don’t think you can buy it in a book and I don’t think you can be taught because it’s something that after 20 years, I know how to do.”

An individualized approach for everyone
The money management service provided by Crossroads is a departure from the widely held practice of owning investments from multiple providers without a centralized focus.

“Being in a mutual fund is a lot like being on a bus,” Hutchens explains. “When that bus comes to a stop, you get on that bus with a lot of people, everybody who got on the bus a mile back and everybody who got on the bus 15 to 20 miles back. You’re in there, you have their cost basis. You can actually buy a mutual fund in October, lose 30 percent and then get a bill for capital gains.”

In contrast, Crossroads’ approach is designed to provide a strategic, and more dynamic approach that is individualized by using separate accounting for each account, not just lumping all the money together, Hutchens says.

“Having institutional portfolio management with Crossroads is like riding in a limo,” she explains. “You get in, you’re by yourself. You have your own cost basis. You are not inheriting a mixed bag of investments….why would you want to buy into a group of stocks, some of which may have already reached their peak?”

While the independence is advantageous, their investments do not go unchecked. Crossroads works primarily with Charles Schwab to place funds in accounts that Hutchens manages. Their practices also are audited for added assurance by Morningstar and Associates.

In addition, both Hutchens’ style of money management, as well as Effert’s customer service, has left both of the women with complaint-free regulatory records at their respective businesses.

Crossroads’ services are open to those who might only require a financial plan to those who may want a more active institutional approach to managing their portfolio.

“The kind of asset management and attention that we provide has always been thought to only be available to the higher net worth,” Effert says. “Technology advancements within our industry have made separate account management available to lower asset levels.”

Clients also can determine their preferred level of involvement with Crossroads Advisory Group.
“People have a dial, they can control what they want here,” she says. “If they want one-time advice, that’s fine, they can turn that dial down. If they want a personal CEO they can turn the dial up, but there will never be a hidden charge or one that is not pre-approved.”

The company also offers a range of institutional services, Hutchens says, “We would really like to show the businesses in McHenry County that you don’t have to settle for a 401(k) plans with limited options and high internal costs. This will be the next mountain to climb.”

Thinking local
The women also remain loyal to McHenry County and are all long-term residents. They are dedicated to giving back to the community and maintaining their headquarters in the area. The combined experience and maturity of the group provides a well seasoned perspective.

Hutchens, Effert and Briggs also remain committed to Crossroads Advisory Group, as they sum up:
“We are highly motivated and excited to offer these services to our community,” Briggs remarks. “We have a passion for what we do, and I believe it shows.”

Effert continues, “If the last 18 months have proven anything it’s that the mathematically perfect world does not exist.”

Hutchens concurs, “We have witnessed a paradigm shift; no longer will investors accept a pretty 100-page financial plan that paints a rosy picture. Now, more than ever, it’s essential to have active monitoring with institutional level tools.”

For information on Crossroads Advisory Group contact Meridith L. Hutchens and Nancy Effert, 8600 U.S. Highway 14, Suite 2E, Crystal Lake, 815-455-1777.

Copyright © 2011 Northwest Herald. All rights reserved.

Staged a party here chez Insanity - but first a golf outing!

Yes, of course, BLAME BARB! Get those excuses in order. Hell, I don't care, we had a grand time. FIRST of all, while my dad and I were awaiting the maddening throngs at the Barrington Park District Golf Course, he said, "there won't be any body out here for golf. It's just too cold."

"I'll bet you a dime at least one player shows."

And show, she did, Nancy, with a laugh in her face!

So, we trotted over to the first tee (225 par 4, dogleg left - unless you hit your drive about 75 yards, in which case, it becomes a 150 yard par 4!) and I pull out my 7-iron, planning on hitting a high hard draw. W E L L ... instead, I get the damn low straight ball, right into the trap. Nancy (we had each taken three clubs - 22 degree metal, putter, 5-iron for Nancy, 7-iron for me) pulls out the 22 degree club and R I P S it, about 145 (we are into the wind) into the fairway bunker, about 4 feet behind me, also in the bunker).

So, she kind of muffs one out, and I show her my duck-billed platypus stance (feet spread out) for nipping a fuller shot cleanly off a fairway bunker. I lift my head and hit it all chuncky, we are still looking for the gawd damned piece of sheeit golf ball, but, I decided to toss one down, and play it.

Nancy muffs her third, I leave mine just short of the green. Nancy hits her fourth on, about 6 feet away. One thing is quite evident, she has IMPROVED from "back in the day," and is clearly better than Susan B. Gillies ever was when I played with her, ALTHOUGH, that was a long time ago, and if Susan ever retired to the land of luxury and took lessons from instructors as good as the one Nancy has, Susan is probably a single digit handicap player by now.

I chip it tight, take the putt. Nancy hits it a litte too far to the left, EXCEPT, that there is water (cold water, very cold water) in the cup, that she notes as she picks up her ball and we proceed to the next tee, #2, 157 yard par three, straight away, sand traps guarding the green both front left and front right.

I chilly dip a 7-iron leaving it about 50 yards short of the green. Now I must immediately beat nancy to the punch line: "Does your wife play golf too?" I inquire, of myself. "Yes, and she beats me like a baby seal," I reply, with disgust. Nancy hits a VERY high shot (the rubber tees under the mats are very high on most holes out there) but she hits it absolutely squarely.

"Move it wind, move it right," I exhort. YES, dammit, I talk to golf balls in flight. You think this is ridiculous, that nothing I can say will impact the ball after it is struck, its flight is begun, and gravity eventually reigns it in? Well, your thoughts sure align with much of modern scientific theory, but let me ask you this: If it doesn't matter whether or not I DEMAND great things of my balls (or any body else's balls) then so be it; BUT - what if it DOES make a difference, if CHAOS THEORY is correct and that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of a globe is the catalyst for a tsunami that emanates from the other side? In which case, do you now want to sit silent, sit passive, and wait while your loving golf ball is thinking to itself, "What's the matter, mon? Ye cannae e'en cheer me awn? You dun believe in me mon? Where is the laddie of yer yewt dat once played 54 holes wid me, and THEN ya cheert and and ya roart and ya extorted me on as if ya wuz a true believer. What happened to yer faith, laddie? Ah, would but that ya cud play wid your balls like ya wuz a chilt one and again."

And thus and so, I continue to play with my balls like I was a child again. And it is GOOD! And I call out to the heavens, exhorting them on, to do the aerodynamically impossible; to do the topographically unlikely; to do my fawking beck and call, dammit, mon, dontch know?

And, sumbit mutha humpah, there be daze when I swear by the daze still left, we'll not only walk in fields of gold, but the damn ball be LISTENIN' to me, and it HEEDS MY CALL because it knows that I believes in it, and thus, it believes in me.

All things are connected - (Chief Seattle)

There are more things on this earth than are dream't of in your philosophy, Horatio (William Shakespeare)

I get all fast and wristy in my chipper shotter and leave the piece of crap short. Shit. Then chip to 6", take the gimme. "Hole's full of water, Nancy," I tells her, jest to let her know. "Okay, I'll lag," she replies, and does, saving her fingers from the chillin' of the cold water in the cup.

Next hole, Nancy's honors. She hits a dishonorable shot, but, LIKE YOU CHUCK, she has her excuses all lined up. The tee is just too high for this club, which is actually a tight lies metal club. OOPS - my apologies Nancy - you wuzunt making excuses, you were stating a simple truth: Damn tight lies clubs are meant to get your ass out of tight lies, not to hit a ball that is 2" off the friggin mat!

"Take a mully," I tells her. She does, and hits a very solid shot, but, again, we are into the teeth of a Northwesterly gale force wind; has to be 35 mphs.

Now, I am gonna' show her how GOOD I am. Weight pressed forward, hands pressed forward, aimed plenty far to the right (235 yard par 3, slight dog leg left, OB left (the train tracks), 100' tall trees to carry over if you take a direct line from the tee to the pin, a little pond about 110 yards out just to annoy you if you hit a snap hook, with a fence line paralleling the rail road tracks. This is one of the two fence lines we need to take seriously, The other to-be-taken-seriously fence line protects the parking lot and nursery behind the fifth green from being invaded by a herd of raging golfers with bad backs that can't climb through or under its wooden rails, and can't high step over it. HOWEVER, the wooden rail fence behind #1 green is NOT OB, because it is still park district property, although, on a Saturday afternoon, there will be either lots of soccer players (as was the case), or baseball players (as would have been the case April-August).

I RIP the 22 degree club, with a draw, low trajectory, brilliant friggin' shot. The wind beats it down, like a field master on a southern plantation in the 1800's relentlessly giving 100 lashes to some uppity slave thought to be a rabble rouser. It is important to beat the hell out of the suspected rabble rousers, otherwise, their mind set will affect the throngs, and when you are out-numbered by a factor of 100's to one, it would not do for the slaves to come to realize that their numerical advantage alone was sufficient to overthrow their oppressor's yoke, and gain, ultimately, freedom for their race, freedom for their tribe, but a the very-much-alive threat of an early termination of this mortal coil.

When people are willing to lay down their lives for a cause greater than their own solipsistic selves, then they are truly empowered, even more so than when engaged in acts of procreation, or intercessory prayer, and because one is only willing to lay down one's life for a cause greater than one's own ONLY when that cause is righteous, in the end, RIGHTEOUS WINS, as would discover the peoples of French Indo-China (better known as Vietnam), the peoples of Afghanistasn (time and time and time and time and time again - the first three v. the Brits, the fourth v. the Ruskies, and now, finally, against us, the USA, the greatest force for military murder and military destruction ever unleashed upon the face of the earth. FINALLY, and thank fawking Gawd, lest the tear-or-eests win and the American way of life, Capitalism (okay, I'll concede, corporate welfare state), Democracy (okay, again, I'll concede, a Republic - if you can keep it), Christianity (okay, again, I'll concede, the founding fathers were deists, who believed in a Creator of the Universe, but further believed that He had withdrawn from active participation in the affairs of this world; the arrogant fools - they mostly believed in the righteous of the institution of slavery too, which should tell you about all you need to know about most of them; it was a convenience, and fortunes could be made upon the backs of slave labor - the arrogant fools never recognized the miracle God Almighty bestows upon human kind day after day after ceaseless day - the miracle of TIMING - the irregulars survived Valley Forge (Washington despised the irregulars - undisciplined, many had to be flogged, for their own good, of course, and they wouldn't even fight in nice taught lines, as was done in the theaters of the bloody (to the troops) wars in Europe, but fought from behind trees, shot, fell back; they would not stand to fight a vastly superior force, well trained in close quarters combat, they would not stand to fight a far-better armed force; no, they shot, retreated, reloaded, shot again, until their cover or their shells ran out, and then ran lie Calloway to safety. Hardly military men, these. BUT THEY WERE THE ONLY TROOPS HE HAD, AND HE WAS FORCED TO FIGHT WITH THEM, FOR THERE WERE NONE OTHERS ANSWERED THE CALL; these men were insurgents - by definition, an insurgent is a native to the soil that an imperial armed force seeks to control in order that the armed forces sovereign monarch rule and control the peoples and their resources by force of arms. The Brits (and the Hesseians subsequently, the Brits, having over-extended their forces in their always doomed and ill-fated quest to rule the world, and having VASTLY underestimated the resisting force that the guerilla war fare fighters would put up, the Brits would be forced to acknowledge eventually, got a small taste of defeat - by a nation of British-born subjects who merely wanted to make their fortunes in America and trade with Britain, which was a win-win situation for Great Britain, until King George III decided he needed to raise more money for the further imperial adventures in Europe, in Africa, in the Balkans, etc, etc, etc. The resultant loss of trade was perhaps 100 times greater than the tax revenues that would have been raised by the tea tax.

BUT, as my dearly departed brother John was so oft wont to say, "I digress."

Nancy hits her second on the green, checks out the cup, once again, a very wet landing spot. She makes an easy four. I hit a hard-low half-seven iron approach shot that lands 6" behind the hole, but it was so low, it can't stop in its tracks, and ends up rolling about 30' beyond the pin. I also make 4.

Fourth hole, 215 yards par three, straight away, OB left (well, no fence, but parking lot, Irish Bakery, Days Inn, parking lot strongly suggest OB left), gaping bunker protecting the front right half of the green. Nancy, still with the honors, tees off with the 5-iron. Sheeit, the broad was serious about that tight lies club being wrong. She hits a very nice shot, about 160. I take a very smooth, very slow backswing and RRRRRIIIIIPPPPP the best 22 degree metal club of my life, which lands just short of the green, and then, the muthah rolls off over the back edge of the green. One of the five longest tee shots I've ever hit on the hole, 235! What a difference a wind makes!

Nancy hits it on, observes that there is no water in the cup, and damn near makes her 8' putt. I look up and make a wrist wave at my chip shot which rolls 10' past the hole. FAWK, another friggen' Bogey, mon.

Last hole, 140, par three, bunker guards the left side, tree limbs hang out intimidating you into keeping it to the right of their branches, which requires that you aim 15 yards to the right of the pin.

We make two inauspicious fours, and after the first five holes, we are tied!

Nancy quips, "if I'd have known you were going to be counting, I would have taken it much more seriously."

"Hell, Nancy," says I, "If you'd have just quit missing your putts to keep your hands from freezing you would have kicked my butt!"

No reason to tell the players what the game is until after you've won, I always say.

And then we had a great time at lunch - my friend and long-suffering bridge partner Tom Sucher showed up, and brought me a Verner's Cola. Later, my sister showed up. Tom talked with my old man, which was a good thang. Ralph has had constipation (I think he calls it an upset stomach) for almost four weeks (Well, apparently his bowels are working again, I get a descriptive play by play account of "the movements" from him each day. Ralph has lots of friends, but they just want to take him out. Nobody really wants to talk with him (he's boring) or give him a chance to open up and talk about his feelings; his sense of loss having been with her for almost 65 years; but, Tom is very wise in the matters, and, besides, it was a chance for just us girls (Will, Mark, Nancy) to rip roar it up with yucks.

Mo to Follo'

All my best wishes for you and yours
May peace and blessing flow down upon your house like living waters
With Love to you, and ALL YOU LOVE,
Mark Raymond Ganzer

What Are You Going to Do? Beyond A Demanding Occupation by NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Four weeks into its life, Occupy Wall Street has already confounded both critics and well-wishers. Far from twittering away its energies after an initial burst of enthusiasm as predicted (or feared), it appears to have touched something in average Americans in every corner of the country. Nor does the lack of visible leaders seem to affect its durability; a long list of visible issues no doubt more than making up for the absence of prominent names.

This by itself is one huge achievement. Too long have American politics been muddied by the insistence on glitter, the distraction of television charisma extinguishing fundamental political debate.

More significant by far is its other contribution. Packing a wallop the size of Texas, the Occupy movement’s “99% versus 1%“, has hit home as no other phrase in recent times. Like Gandhi’s brilliant 1942 slogan, Quit India, it says it all. That it is here to stay needs no more proof than Dean Baker’s smart heading to his article this morning, “David Brooks, Bard of the 1%“. Like the term, “Catch-22″, 99%-1% is now an indelible piece of the national lexicon. And just as worthy are its authors of this famous praise of the novel’s author, “if Mr. Heller never writes another word, his reputation is (still) high and secure.”

In a sense, then, a great battle has already been won. The usual presidential year network-ballyhooed emptiness of non-issues and side-issues is ready to be replaced by a simple and stunningly obvious statement of fact; one that underlies so many familiar problems – jobs, education, housing, health…even the Patriot Act and the wars real and virtual. Imagine a campaign speech that starts with, “Does the Declaration of Independence begin with, ‘We the 1%’?” Capable (but hopefully, untainted) hands could run that single statement all the way to the end zone, whether the uprights lie in a state legislature, a Governor’s mansion, the Capitol, or the White House.

To many, a disquieting aspect of the Occupy movement is the myriad of slogans that animate its throngs. Even in a relatively small city, an Occupy rally may boast of several dozen unrelated themes, each expressing some issue dear to its proponent. Recently there have been several articles suggesting that these disparate strands be streamlined into two or three succinct demands. One such article by Rand Clifford outlined three focused demands:

1) End corporate personhood

2) End the Fed

3) End military adventurism

Nothing wrong with these, or other equally logical, demands. But I have an even more basic problem, with the entire notion of ‘demanding’. Let me explain.

More than three decades ago in New Delhi, India, I was attending a protest seminar. Speaker after speaker denounced the double dealing and mendacity of the government. At the end of two days of such berating the assembly was set to pass a resolution making demands — of the same government! It was left to one of the last speakers, the writer and thinker Arun Shourie, to gently touch upon the incongruity here. Instead of asking such a supposedly terrible government to do something, he suggested, why don’t you say what you will do? His words have always remained with me.

Similarly, here you are, assembling on the streets because the politicians have sold you out, the higher judiciary has judges who sup with the Koch’s, and the 1% who own all three branches of government don’t care a hoot about you, your jobs, or your lives. To paraphrase what Arundhati Roy once wrote of the Indian elite, they have seceded from their own country and fellow citizens to form a virtual republic. You have recognized what is happening and denounced this 1% as conniving, ruthless, greedy, rapacious, self-serving, even traitorous (what else is profiting by sending jobs overseas, or making fortunes out of national calamities). At the end of it all, you want to make demands… of…these same people and their hirelings?

Instead the Occupy movement needs to have simple things that its supporters can do. What we demand of ourselves makes the difference, not what we demand of the other side [see The Banality of Hype].

When the British Raj, on behalf of the English textile tycoons, decimated the native spinning and weaving cottage industry in India (globalization ain’t all that novel), Gandhi did not run for the Viceroy pleading for increased Indian production quotas. Instead, he went to the Indian people asking them to boycott foreign cloth and wear Indian homespun, even though it was costlier and coarser. It sparked a revolution all its own.

Many years ago in 2004, I wrote an article called American Swadeshi, suggesting that John Kerry or any other American politician could start a prairie fire by doing something similar in America. Kerry, and Obama after him, were never serious about the hemorrhaging of American jobs. The Republicans, of course, actually think outsourcing and Free Trade are all part of Divine Purpose. This is therefore something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will do. It has to be done by us.

A very simple idea, then. Each time you go to the store, whatever you are buying, note where it is made. If it is made outside the USA (as it is 99% of the time – another 99%-1% issue!), ask the store if they have a made in the USA substitute. If not, either leave saying that you will look for another store where an American-made equivalent is available, or tell them that you will stop buying this non-American-made product after six months. And do. Thousands and thousands of customers insisting on American-made products will make for a groundswell of consciousness, besides sending word up the chain to the 1%, where dollars and cents light up attention as no demand can.

As another well-known slogan goes, Just do it.

NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN lives on the West Coast. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com

The Consciousness of Guilt Is It Immoral to Vote for Obama? by MIKE WHITNEY

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I don’t like mixing politics with morality, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. What I mean is this: how can anyone cast a ballot for a man who they know will continue to kill people in other countries merely to advance US policy objectives? That’s the question people need to ask themselves.

Under normal circumstances, I can understand the “lesser of two evils” theory of voting, just as I can understand why people would think that Obama would be better president than his GOP opponent. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? After all, we’re not just talking about which candidate might be more inclined to protect Social Security or Medicare. We’re talking life and death. The question is whether one is willing to throw their support behind a policy that kills people in exchange for the presumed protection of Social Security?That’s a pretty cynical calculation.

Knowing what we know now, we can say with 100% certainty that Obama will continue killing people wherever he deploys the US military, the US intelligence services and US drones. How can anyone in good conscience sign on to that type of thing?

Now I know people will say,”If you don’t vote for Obama, you’re handing the White House and our children’s future over to crackpots and extremists”.

This is a very persuasive argument, but it’s also misleading. The real issue is whether one is willing to support the administration’s policies, policies that we all know will continue to kill defenseless women and children wherever the US is involved.

At present, there’s only one antiwar candidate on the ballot, Ron Paul. And while I bitterly disagree with him on economic and social matters, these issues pale in comparison to America’s homicidal foreign policy. If the balloting were held today, I would vote for Paul in a heartbeat and I would try to convince others to do the same.

As for those who choose to vote for Obama; that’s fine, only, please, don’t pretend you don’t know what the consequences will be.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

The Bandit Economy The Myths of the Market by PAUL CANTOR

OCTOBER 13, 2011

“Greed is good,” said Gordon Geko played by Michael Douglas in his academy award-winning performance in the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street. “Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

“Not so!” say the hodgepodge of individuals occupying Wall Street. Indeed, if there is one single issue they agree upon it is that greed is responsible for our current economic morass. And they are right. Greed led Wall Street traders to mislead their customers about the risk of the assets they sold them and that in turn led to the 2008 market crash and the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Nevertheless, the view that greed is good continues to resonate with many because it is consistent with Adam Smith’s observation in the Wealth of Nationsthat in a market economy individuals are “led by an invisible hand” to promote the interests of society. The baker, for instance, doesn’t bake bread to mitigate hunger. She bakes bread in order to exchange it for money she needs to purchase other goods. Yet hunger is eliminated just the same.

But because their goal like Smith’s before them is to make the case for fewer government regulations what Gordon Geko and other miracles of the market mythmakers fail to point out is that the invisible hand is also responsible for the kind of malfeasance that led to the Great Recession. And to further their case they have a mantra that along with the invisible hand includes the myth of consumer sovereignty, the myth that an individual’s income is a measure of her contribution to society, the myth that market economies breed democracy, and the myth that markets when left to themselves lead, in the words of one economic textbook, to “the particular mix of goods and services most highly valued by society.”

Consumer sovereignty is the idea that in market economies consumers determine what gets produced. Hence we should not blame the bankers and Wall Street traders for selling us a bill of goods and walking away with our money while we lost our homes and our savings went up in smoke. They were just giving us the loans and mortgaged backed securities we asked for. But of course that is not true if they were lying about the risk embodied in the assets they were selling.

The myth that an individual’s income is a measure of her contribution to society, furthermore, is belied by the fact that a world-class athlete like Serena Williams earns many millions while a world-class high school science teacher earns a tiny fraction of that amount. And the myth that markets breed democracies is belied by the fact that the highly unequal distribution of income and wealth that results when markets are left alone to allocate resources undermines democracy.

The democratic ideal, after all, is one-person one vote. But in the market it is one dollar one vote. Hence those who have the most dollars have the greatest say in determining what gets produced and the greatest ability to bankroll the campaigns of favored politicians and pay lobbyists.

Finally, what about the myth that markets lead to the production of those goods society values most? Just ask yourself whether people would mind if we traded some of the automobiles we produce for better public transportation systems.

“These kids just don’t understand how the world works,” said the Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore on Fox News, referring to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. But in fact the protesters understand the question Geko was addressing when he made his greed is good speech better than he, Moore and others for whom the myths of the markets are gospel. Economists call it the principal/agent problem.

Think of our country as USA Inc. We are the owners or principals. Our elected representatives are our agents. We want to design an incentive compatible set of rules to ensure our agents act in our interests and not just the interests of a small group of Wall Street traders and wealthy benefactors who have made out like bandits while we have lost jobs and homes. That is the message, pure and simple, that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are sending the rest of the world.

Paul Cantor teaches economics at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut.

A New Challenge to the Corporate State Criminalize Fracking by RUSSELL MOKHIBER

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Activists in New York have drafted legislation that would criminalize the practice of hydraulic fracturing – also known as fracking.

The law was drafted by the Sovereign People Action Network (SPAN) of Ulster and Green counties.

“In early summer, seeing so many anti-fracking people across the state pouring their time, resources and hopes into the State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), we began drafting a law to rip decision making from this illegitimate agency, and drive it into our state legislature,” Richard Grossman, one of the members of SPAN, told Corporate Crime Reporter.

“Our law criminalizes fracking and fracking-related activities,” Grossman said. “Corporate frackers would be Class C felons.”

“In August, a bunch of anti-frackers from different parts of the state, representing various anti-fracking groups, participated in three sequential workshops I presented on at the New York Green Fest gathering in Western New York,” Grossman said.

“Some decided to join SPAN on criminalization.”

“Together we came up with the current draft of the law. We are now creating a new coalition group to concentrate on compelling the legislature to pass our law.”

“This law is not a magic bullet, of course. We could never pass it unless we build a mass movement in New York.”

The legislation has yet to be introduced into the New York State legislature.

“We met with a state Senator who wanted to learn more about it,” Grossman said. “But he was pretty resistant. That’s okay. This work will take time.”

Grossman wouldn’t identify the Senator.

“To his credit, he met with us twice,” Grossman said. “He was patient and courteous, we had some healthy conversations.”

“We have no illusions about the New York State Legislature. But theoretically at least, that is where laws are made. And that’s where sovereign people go to instruct our representatives. Our approach to our legislators is: we wrote this law – now you pass it.”

“But we know we can’t do that until we build a formidable statewide movement that is not only talking about fracking as a destructive technology, but also about illegitimate rule by a very small corporate class.”

“We’re hoping to move the exciting struggle to prevent the fracking of New York State from the dead end, energy sink regulatory realm to the place where sovereign people make law, decide what is anti-social behavior.”

“We have no illusions about our state legislature. Both houses are tyrannies. Most of the legislators are colonized. We understand that part of our task is to re-make our legislature, and our legislators. And that to do this, anti-frackers and others confronting diverse assaults of illegitimate private governance must build a powerful state-wide movement.”

“Our new state-wide coalition is only now coming together. We haven’t begun taking our message across the state. I can say that whenever any of us talks to folks, their response is – of course fracking should be criminalized, should be declared felonious.”

“But we’re still under the radar,” Grossman said. “I don’t think it will take long to emerge. Think back to the evolution of the anti-nuclear movement.”

“The fracking struggle involves most of the giant corporations of the country, not just business and industrial corporations, but also law corporations and insurance corporations.”

“The whole corporate class and its vast usurping structures of governance and propaganda are behind fracking.”

“The reasons are clear: the corporate class is committed to endless more.”

“The fuel for endless more is constantly expanding energy.”

“So people opposing fracking for oil and gas and water are standing up not just to a few giant energy corporations, but to the entire corporate class, and to their vast corporate state, just like the anti-nukers of yore.”

“In New York, people are already organized in hundreds of groups. We think this legislation will help unify anti-frackers, so that one day in the not too distant, the State of New York will declare fracking, corporate frackers, and fracking-related activities to be Class C felonies.”

“We will be provoking conversation and discussion about the histories and realities of minority rule and usurpation that we’ve been talking about here. It’s my hope that unlike the anti-nuclear movement – that magnificently stopped the construction of 850 nuclear radiation factories – New Yorkers will criminalize fracking in ways that begin to challenge the corporate state, that set new and liberating conversations in motion, that begin asserting we the people’s authority to govern our communities and our state.”

Rusell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.

[For the complete transcript of the Interview with Richard Grossman, see 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 40, October 17, 2011, print edition only.]

An All-American Occupation The Street of Torments by STEVE FRASER

OCTOBER 13, 2011


Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing demonstration-cum-sleep-in that began a month ago not far from the New York Stock Exchange and has since spread like wildfire to cities around the country, may be a game-changer. If so, it couldn’t be more appropriate or more in the American grain that, when the game changed, Wall Street was directly in the sights of the protesters.

The fact is that the end of the world as we’ve known it has been taking place all around us for some time. Until recently, however, thickets of political verbiage about cutting this and taxing that, about the glories of “job creators” and the need to preserve “the American dream,” have obscured what was hiding in plain sight — that street of streets, known to generations of our ancestors as “the street of torments.”

After an absence of well over half a century, Wall Street is back, center stage, as the preferred American icon of revulsion, a status it held for a fair share of our history. And we can thank a small bunch of campers in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park for hooking us up to a venerable tradition of resistance and rebellion.

The Street of Torments

Peering back at a largely forgotten terrain of struggle against “the Street,” so full of sound and fury signifying quite a lot, it’s astonishing — to a historian of Wall Street, at least — that the present movement didn’t happen sooner. It’s already hard to remember that only weeks ago, three years into the near shutdown of the world financial system and the Great Recession, an eerie unprotesting silence still blanketed the country.

Stories accumulated of Wall Street greed and arrogance, astonishing tales of incompetence and larceny. The economy slowed and stalled. People lost their homes and jobs. Poverty reached record levels. The political system proved as bankrupt as the big banks. Bipartisan consensus emerged — but only around the effort to save “too big to fail” financial goliaths, not the legions of victims their financial wilding had left in its wake.

The political class then prescribed what people already had plenty of: yet another dose of austerity plus a faith-based belief in a “recovery” that, for 99% of Americans, was never much more than an optical illusion. In those years, the hopes of ordinary people for a chance at a decent future withered and bitterness set in.

Strangely, however, popular resistance was hard to find. In the light of American history, this passivity was surpassingly odd. From decades before the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century through the Great Depression, again and again Wall Street found itself in the crosshairs of an outraged citizenry mobilized thanks to political parties, labor unions, or leagues of the unemployed. Such movements were filled with a polyglot mix of middle-class anti-trust reformers, bankrupted small businessmen, dispossessed farmers, tenants and sharecroppers, out-of-work laborers, and so many others.

If Occupy Wall Street signals the end of our own, atypical period of acquiescence, could a return to a version of “class warfare” that would, once upon a time, have been familiar to so many Americans be on the horizon? Finally!

What began as a relatively sparsely attended and impromptu affair has displayed a staying power and magnetic attractiveness that has taken the country, and above all the political class, by surprise. A recent rally of thousands in lower Manhattan, where demonstrators marched from the city’s government center to Zuccotti Park, the location of the “occupiers” encampment, was an extraordinarily diverse gathering by any measure of age, race, or class. Community organizations, housing advocates, environmentalists, and even official delegations of trade unionists not normally at ease hanging out with anarchists and hippies gave the whole affair a social muscularity and reach that was exhilarating to experience.

Diversity, however, can cut both ways. Popular protest, to the degree that there’s been much during the recent past — and mainly over the war in Iraq — has sometimes been criticized for the chaotic way it assembled a grab-bag of issues and enemies, diffuse and without focus. Occupy Wall Street embraces diverse multitudes but this time in the interest of convergence. In its targeting of “the street of torments,” this protean uprising has, in fact, found common ground. To a historian’s ear this echoes loudly.

Karl Marx described high finance as “the Vatican of capitalism,” its diktat to be obeyed without question. We’ve spent a long generation learning not to mention Marx in polite company, and not to use suspect and nasty phrases like “class warfare” or “the reserve army of labor,” among many others.

In times past, however, such phrases and the ideas that went with them struck our forebears as useful, even sometimes as true depictions of reality. They used them regularly, along with words like “plutocracy,” “robber baron,” and “ruling class,” to identify the sources of economic exploitation and inequality that oppressed them, as well as to describe the political disenfranchisement they suffered and the subversion of democracy they experienced.

Never before, however, has “the Vatican of capitalism” captured quite so perfectly the specific nature of the oligarchy that’s run the country for a generation and has now run it into the ground. Even political consultant and pundit James Carville, no Marxist he, confessed as much during the Clinton years when he said the bond market “intimidates everybody.”

Perhaps that era of everyday intimidation is finally ending. Here are some of the signs of it — literally — from that march I attended: “Loan Sharks Ate My World” (illustrated with a reasonable facsimile of the Great White from Jaws), “End the Federal Reserve,” “Wall Street Sold Out, Let’s Not Bail-Out,” “Kill the Over the Counter Derivative Market,” “Wall Street Banks Madoff Well,” “The Middle Class is Too Big To Fail,” “Eat the Rich, Feed the Poor,” “Greed is Killing the Earth.” During the march, a pervasive chant — “We are the 99%” — resoundingly reminded the bond market just how isolated and vulnerable it might become.

And it is in confronting this elemental, determining feature of our society’s predicament, in gathering together all the multifarious manifestations of our general dilemma right there on “the street of torments,” that Occupy Wall Street — even without a program or clear set of demands, as so many observers lament — has achieved a giant leap backward, summoning up a history of opposition we would do well to recall today.

A Century of Our Streets and Wall Street

One young woman at the demonstration held up a corrugated cardboard sign roughly magic-markered with one word written three times: “system,” “system,” “system.” That single word resonates historically, even if it sounds strange to our ears today. The indictment of presumptive elites, especially those housed on Wall Street, the conviction that the system over which they presided must be replaced by something more humane, was a robust feature of our country’s political and cultural life for a long century or more.

When in the years following the American Revolution, Jeffersonian democrats raised alarms about the “moneycrats” and their counterrevolutionary intrigues — they meant Alexander Hamilton and his confederates in particular — they were worried about the installation in the New World of a British system of merchant capitalism that would undo the democratic and egalitarian promise of the Revolution.

When followers of Andrew Jackson inveighed against the Second Bank of the United States — otherwise known as “the Monster Bank” — they were up in arms against what they feared was the systematic monopolizing of financial resources by a politically privileged elite. Just after the Civil War, the Farmer-Labor and Greenback political parties freed themselves of the two-party runaround, determined to mobilize independently to break the stranglehold on credit exercised by the big banks back East.

Later in the nineteenth century, Populists decried the overweening power of the Wall Street “devil fish” (shades of Matt Taibbi’s “giant vampire squid” metaphor for Goldman Sachs). Its tentacles, they insisted, not only reached into every part of the economy, but also corrupted churches, the press, and institutions of higher learning, destroyed the family, and suborned public officials from the president on down. When, during his campaign for the presidency in 1896, the Populist-inspired “boy orator of the Platte” and Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan vowed that mankind would not be “crucified on a cross of gold,” he meant Wall Street and everyone knew it.

Around the turn of the century, the anti-trust movement captured the imagination of small businessmen, consumers, and working people in towns and cities across America. The trust they worried most about was “the Money Trust.” Captained by J.P. Morgan, “the financial Gorgon,” the Money Trust was skewered in court and in print by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, subjected to withering Congressional investigations, excoriated in the exposés of “muckraking” journalists, and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads.

As the twentieth century began, progressive reformers in state houses and city halls, socialists in industrial cities and out on the prairies, strikebound workers from coast to coast, working-class feminists, antiwar activists, and numerous others were still vigorously condemning that same Money Trust for turning the whole country into a closely-held system of financial pillage, labor exploitation, and imperial adventuring abroad. As the movements made clear, everyone but Wall Street was suffering the consequences of a system of proliferating abuses perpetrated by “the Street.”

The tradition the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have tapped into is a long and vibrant one that culminated during the Great Depression. Then as now, there was no question in the minds of “the 99%” that Wall Street was principally to blame for the country’s crisis (however much that verdict has since been challenged by disputatious academics).

Insurgencies by industrial workers, powerful third-party threats to replace capitalism with something else, rallies and marches of the unemployed, and, yes, occupations, even seizures of private property, foreclosures forestalled by infuriated neighbors, and a pervasive sense that the old order needed burying had their lasting effect. In response, the New Deal attempted to unhorse those President Franklin Roosevelt termed “economic royalists,” who were growing rich off “other people’s money” while the country suffered its worst trauma since the Civil War. “The Street” trembled.

“System, System, System”: It would be foolish to make too much of a raggedy sign — or to leap to conclusions about just how lasting this Occupy Wall Street moment will be and just where (if anywhere) it’s heading. It would be crazily optimistic to proclaim our own pitiful age of acquiescence ended.

Still, it would be equally foolish to dismiss the powerful American tradition the demonstrators of this moment have tapped into. In the past, Wall Street has functioned as an icon of revulsion, inciting anger, stoking up energies, and summoning visions of a new world that might save the New World.

It is poised to play that role again. Remember this: in 1932, three years into the Great Depression, most Americans were more demoralized than mobilized. A few years later, all that had changed as “Our Street, Not Wall Street” came alive. The political class had to scurry to keep up. Occupy Wall Street may indeed prove the opening act in an unfolding drama of renewed resistance and rebellion against “the system.”

Steve Fraser is Editor-at-Large of New Labor Forum, a regular at TomDispatch (where this originally appeared) and co-founder of the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books). A historian of Wall Street, his most recent book on the subject is Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace. He teaches history at Columbia University.

Latin American Social Movements and the Occupation of Everything From Argentina to Wall Street by BENJAMIN DANGL

Latin American Social Movements and the Occupation of Everything
From Argentina to Wall Street
by BENJAMIN DANGL
Massive buildings tower over Wall Street, making the sidewalks feel like valleys in an urban mountain range. The incense, drum beats and chants of Occupy Wall Street echo down New York City’s financial district from Liberty Plaza, where thousands of activists have converged to protest economic injustice and fight for a better world.

As unemployment and poverty in the US reaches record levels, the protest is catching on, with hundreds of parallel occupations sprouting up across the country. It was a similar disparity in economic and political power that led people to the streets in the Arab Spring, and in Wisconsin, Greece, Spain and London. Occupy Wall Street is part of this global revolt. This new movement in the US also shares much in common with uprisings in another part of the world: Latin America.

This report from Liberty Plaza connects tactics and philosophies surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement with similar movements in Latin America, from the popular assemblies and occupation of factories during Argentina’s economic crisis in 2001-2002, to grassroots struggles for land in Brazil.

Latin America: Economic Crisis and Grassroots Responses

Almost overnight in late 2001, Argentina went from having one of the strongest economies in South America to one of the weakest. During this economic crash, the financial system collapsed like a house of cards and banks shut their doors. Faced with such immediate economic strife and unemployment, many Argentines banded together to create a new society out of the wreckage of the old. Poverty, homelessness, and unemployment were countered with barter systems, factory occupations, communally-run kitchens, and alternative currency. Neighborhood assemblies provided solidarity, support and vital spaces for discussion incommunities across the country. Ongoing protests kicked out five presidents in two weeks, and the movements that emerged from this period transformed the social and political fabric of Argentina.

These activities reflect those taking place at Occupy Wall Street and in other actions around the US right now. Such events in Argentina and the US are marked by dissatisfaction with the political and economic system in the face of crisis, and involve people working together for solutions on a grassroots level. For many people in Argentina and the US, desperation pushed them toward taking matters into their own hands.

“We didn’t have any choice,” Manuel Rojas explained to me about the occupation of the ceramics factory he worked at outside the city of Mendoza, Argentina during the country’s crash. “If we didn’t take over the factory we would all be in the streets. The need to work pushed us to action.” This was one of hundreds of businesses that were taken over by workers facing unemployment during the Argentine crisis. After occupying these factories and businesses, many workers then ran them as cooperatives. They did so under the slogan, “Occupy, Resist, Produce,” a phrase borrowed from Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), which has settled hundreds of thousands of families on millions of acres of land through direct action.

In 2008 in Chicago, when hundreds of workers were laid off from the Republic Windows and Doors factory, they embraced similar direct action tactics used by their Argentine counterparts; they occupied the factory to demand the severance and vacation pay owed to them – and it worked. Mark Meinster, the international representative for United Electrical Workers, the union of the Republic workers, told me that the strategies applied by the workers specifically drew from Argentina. In deciding on labor tactics, “We drew on the Argentine factory occupations to the extent that they show that during an economic crisis, workers’ movements are afforded a wider array of tactical options,” Meinster said.

Many groups and movements based in the US have drawn from activists in the South. Besides the 2008 occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, movements for access to water in Detroit and Atlanta reflected strategies and struggles in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where in 2000, popular protests rejected the multinational company Bechtel’s water privatization plan and put the water back into public hands. The Take Back the Land movement in Florida, which organized homeless people to occupy a vacant lot and pairs homeless families with foreclosed homes, mirrors the tactics and philosophy of the landless movement in Brazil. Participatory budgeting in Brazil, which provides citizens with direct input on how city budgets are distributed, is now being implemented by communities across the US.

These are just a handful of movements and grassroots initiatives that provide helpful models (in both their victories and failures) for decentralizing political and economic power, and putting decision making into the hands of the people. In the face of corrupt banks, corporate greed and inept politicians, those occupying Wall Street and other spaces around the US have a lot on common with similar movements in Latin America. Besides sharing the same enemies within global banks, international lending institutions and multinational corporations, these movements have worked to make revolution a part of everyday life. And that is one of the most striking aspects of about what’s happening with the Occupy Wall Street movement right now.

Occupying Wall Street

The organization and activities filling Liberty Plaza in New York are part of a working community where everyone is taking care of each other and making decisions collectively. During a recent visit, a kitchen area in the center of the park was full of people preparing food for dinner with donated cooking supplies. Other spaces were designated for medical support, massage therapy, sign-making and meditation. One area was for the organization of recycling and garbage; people regularly walked around the park sweeping up debris and collecting garbage.

A massive People’s Library contained hundreds of books along the side of the park. As with the cooking, sign-making and medical supplies, the movement had received donated materials and support to keep these operations thriving. Occupy Wall Street also has its own newspaper, the Occupy Wall Street Journal, copies of which were being handed out in English and Spanish editions on nearly every corner of the park. A media center where various people sat around computers and cameras provided ongoing coverage of the occupation.

Within this community were pockets of areas with blue tarps and blankets where people were resting and sleeping, having meetings or simply holding home made signs on display. Singing, drumming, chanting, guitar and accordion playing were also going on in a wide array of places.

Ongoing meetings and assemblies, with hundreds to thousands of participants, dealt with issues ranging from how to organize space in the park and manage donated supplies, to discussions of march plans and demands. Police outlawed the use of megaphones, so people at the park have just been relaying what others say during these assemblies by repeating it through the layers of the crowd, creating an echo so everyone can hear what is said.

At the Comfort Station, where well-organized piles of clothes, blankets, pillows and coats were stacked, I spoke with Antonio Comfort, from New Jersey, who was working the station at the time. Antonio, who had his hat on backwards and spoke with me in between helping out other people, said that the donations of clothes and sleeping materials had been pouring in. People had also offered up their showers for activists participating in the occupation to use. While I was at the station someone asked for sleeping supplies for an older man, and Antonio disappeared into the Comfort Station piles and returned with an armful of blankets and a pillow.

“I’m here so I can have a better life, and so my kids can have a better life when they get older,” he said about his reasons for participating in the occupation. Everything at the station had been running smoothly, Antonio explained. “Everybody works together, and it’s very organized. We’ll be here as long as it takes.”

Adeline Benker, a 17-year-old student at Marlboro College in Vermont who was holding a sign that said, “Got Debt? You are the 99%,” told me that for her – like many other young students participating in the occupation in New York and elsewhere – it was all about debt. “I will be $100,000 in debt after I graduate from college, and I don’t think I should have the pay that for the rest of my life just to get an education in four years.” Benker said this was her very first protest, and her first time in New York City. When I spoke to her, she had been at the occupation for a few days, and would be returning the following week.

Down the sidewalk was activist Tirsa Costinianos with a sign that said, “We Are the 99%”. Costinianos said, “I want the big banks and the corporations to return our tax money from the bailout.” Costinianos had been at the occupation on Wall Street every weekend since it started on September 17th. “I love this and I’m glad we’re doing this. All of the 99% of the people should join us – then we could stop the stealing and the corruption going on here on Wall Street.”

Ibraheem Awadallah, another protester holding a sign that said “Wall Street Occupies Our Government: Occupy Wall Street”, told me, “The problem is this system in which the corporations have the biggest influence in politics in our country.”

These types of encounters and activities were happening constantly in the ongoing bustle of the park, and underscore the fact that this occupation, now nearly into its third week, is as much of a community and example of participatory democracy as it is a rapidly spreading protest.

As the late historian Howard Zinn said, it is important to “organize ourselves in such a way that means correspond to the ends, and to organize ourselves in such a way as to create the kind of human relationship that should exist in future society.” That is being developed now within this movement, from the leaderless, consensus-based assemblies, to the communal organization of the various food, media and medical services organized at the occupation.

Similarly, movements across Latin America, from farmer unions in the Paraguayan countryside to neighborhood councils in El Alto, Bolivia, mirror the type of society they would like to see in their everyday actions and movement-building.

As Adeline Benker, the 17-year-old student at the Wall Street occupation said, echoing the struggles from Argentina to the Andes and beyond, “We need to create a change outside of this system because the system is failing us.”

Benjamin Dangl’s new book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press) is on contemporary Latin American social movements and their relationships with the region’s new leftist governments. He is editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. Email BenDangl(at)gmail(dot)com.

Is Mitt Romney Ready for the World? The Romney Doctrine by LAWRENCE S. WITTNER

If current polls are correct, Mitt Romney seems likely to become the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and the next president of the United States. Therefore, we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address—delivered on October 7 at the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina—and ponder the question: Is Mitt Romney ready for the world?

Romney began his speech with a heavy dose of fear. Iran, he warned, could well become “a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, [and] dominating the world’s oil supply.” Indeed, “Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.” In Afghanistan, the Taliban might well “find a path back to power,” with the country sinking “back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule.” Pakistan’s instability could end up placing nuclear weapons “in the hands of Islamic jihadists,” while “the malign socialism” of Venezuela and Cuba could “undermine the prospects of democracy” in Latin America. Then, of course, there are the heavy dancers. China’s leaders could well take that nation down “a darker path, intimidating their neighbors, brushing aside an inferior American Navy in the Pacific, and building a global alliance of authoritarian states.” And Russia might well “bludgeon the countries of the former Soviet Union into submission, and intimidate Europe with the levers of its energy resources.” Nor should people forget “Islamic fundamentalism, with which we have been at war since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Fortunately, though, there is help for a beleaguered world on the horizon. “God did not create this country to be a nation of followers,” Romney explained. “America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers.” Instead, “the United States should always retain military supremacy.” As president, he would not “wave the white flag of surrender” but, rather, “devote” himself to building “an American century.” As he explained: “The twenty-first century can and must be an American century.” He would “not surrender America’s role in the world. . . . If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your president.”

And how, exactly, would this American century be achieved? To provide the major pillar for the new order, Romney would “reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts.” (The fact that there were no defense cuts during the Obama years—indeed, that Obama took office with an annual Defense Department budget of $513 billion and, as of September 30 of this year, had an annual Defense Department budget of $530 billion, plus increased spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—seems not to have thrown Romney off stride.) In the production of new U.S. warships alone, Romney promised to increase the annual number from nine to fifteen. He would also dramatically upgrade the (still unworkable) national missile defense system. “In an American century,” he argued, America needed “the strongest military in the world.”

Of course, this military behemoth (currently costing almost as much as the military forces of all other nations combined) would have lots of work to do. In Afghanistan, for example, Romney would call a halt to plans for U.S. military withdrawal. Meanwhile, he would “speak with our generals in the field, and receive the best recommendation of our military commanders” as to “the force level necessary to secure our gains and complete our mission successfully.” That might require a lot of troops, a lot of money, and a lot of time.

Throughout his address, Romney never acknowledged that, at least on occasion, U.S. foreign policy might have been plagued by faulty judgments or methods. Naturally, then, he did not mention the unnecessary Iraq war, the past U.S. support of Osama bin Laden, or other embarrassing ventures. This assumption that the U.S. officials can never err—with the notable exception, of course, of the evil Barack Obama—is implicit in Romney’s promise that he would “never, ever apologize for America.”

Despite this nationalist emphasis, Romney did not entirely omit reference to the United Nations and other international institutions. But he discussed them in a very demeaning way. “Too often,” he declared “these bodies prize the act of negotiating over the outcome to be reached. And shamefully, they can become forums for the tantrums of tyrants. . . . The United States must fight to return these bodies to their proper role.” Nor did he see any reason to obey them—or the international law they represented—when it did not suit the U.S. government. He observed: “While America should work with other nations, we always reserve the right to act alone to protect our vital national interests.”

Romney’s speech was also noteworthy for the international issues he did not address. They included nuclear arms control and disarmament, global climate change, world health (such as the AIDS epidemic), and the tottering global economy. Presumably he did not consider these important—or at least capable of being dealt with through the instrumentalities of a massive military buildup and an American century.

One wonders what citizens and statesmen of other nations think of this potential world leader who argues that his country is confronted everywhere by malignant enemies, must forever be militarily supreme, is exempt from following international law, can do no wrong, has been created by God, and must dominate the planet for the rest of this century. Perhaps, in addition to questioning whether Romney is ready for the world, we should ask: Is the world ready for Romney?

Lawrence S. Wittner is emeritus professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

Letter to NAMI - the myths of mental illness (in truth - t'ain't no such thang)

I regret to inform you that my mother, Anne Ganzer, died on 31, July, 2011. Please remove her from your mailing list, and also from any financial solicitation lists. Please DO NOT SOLICIT my father for money for your worthy organization. The expenses of the funeral and celebration service and brunch, the loss of her social security income (my father is a retired state of Illinois teacher, and they did not pay into social security, and as a result get nothing out of it for their teachers' salaries).

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

====================================

Anne did get a lot from her affiliation with NAMI - although so much of what you have to offer is predicated on the unfounded hypothesis that there exists a classification of diseases known as "mental illnesses." Nonetheless, there powerful dynamics and bonds can be developed when people who have shared experiences come together specifically to speak of those experiences, engage honestly in dialogue, and to let their true emotions out, to share one another's common burden, thereby making the load far more easy to carry.

That said, it mist be noted that a reading of the DSM IV will lead the reader to the most obvious and basic of all conclusions: that (almost all) of those conditions classified as "mental illness" have no etiology - there is no way to predict the path the alleged "disease" will follow from one individual to the next, nor even to make generalizations accurate enough to have predictive utility, save for this:

A "mentally ill-labeled" human being {MILHB} will ALWAYS seek to go off their medications, and once they stop, they will almost invariably eventually (and rather sooner than later) return to a depressed state (although up the initial cessation of the meds, the MILHB will do some things which appear, most assuredly based on more recent and depressed (even severely depressed) behaviors to be quite out of character {OOCB}.

But the OOCB, the unbounded joy, optimism, enthusiasm, etc, etc, etc, can be perfectly and logically explained and understand by this analysis:

After an extended duration of depressed feelings, where the depression is palatable, when the human body's own healing mechanisms {HBOHM} begin to reach a point where they can quell the depression and reverse it, ridding itself of the things (thoughts, ideations, dreams) forming the root cause(s) of the depression (invariably different degrees of loss, which may be psychic or more tangible, depending on the individual. There are a wide varieties of responses to loss - ranging from rage to grief, to denial, to acceptance, with a couple of others tossed in between.

Furthermore, it is quite unlikely, given that since most of the mental health "experts" {MHE} who have known the have known the MILHB only in a depressed state (only here is one normally willing to voluntarily surrender his will to taking anti-depressants; a person experiencing a so called "manic episode" {ASCME} only when depressed, as any of you can attest), will never voluntarily surrender the joy and celebration of that moment in time when the depression has been eradicated while the body's attempt at achieving homeostasis through electro-magnetic-bio-chemical changes, has overshot the mark, that the MHE has sufficient knowledge of the "normal" range of emotions and behaviors of the so-called (and entirely mis-labeled) "mentally ill" client.

And too, especially in the case of the parents of a child who has left "the nest," gone out on their own, established themselves in their career, the social circles, their spiritual circles, their various communities, have a CLUE about what that child has become to the other people with whom he (the universal "he" intended to include all human being - male, female, trans-gendered) have the foggiest or faintest clue about what the child has become; about how that child has blossomed; about what that child has morphed into. And parents being flawed to the extent that they are not perfect, and most of them falling short by omission (things not done for) rather than commission (things done to), are typically NOT ready to even want to know what their child has become (unless the adult child is typically getting many accolades; an accoladed child's honors somehow or another rub off on its parents).

One trained in the scientific method would logically draw these following conclusion, which could then be tested experimentally:

(1) Major depressive episodes are hellish for every one involved.

(2) Medications for MILHB merely mask symptoms; they do not get to root causes.

(3) Until the root causes are fully understood, dealt with, and explored, and options
for coping with the root causes are emplaced, the MILHB will exhibit "classic"
symptoms of bipolar
illness, either being "too sad" or "too glad," in the eyes of those legally
empowered to make such judgments.

(4) The human body is a miraculous creation, and at all times attempts to keep itself
in a state
of balance (homeostasis). When body functions become severely compromised, what is
required of the body to reverse the effects invariably will "over shoot" the mark,
and the
results will be a "relapse" into the previous state.

(5) The most effective therapy to lead a MILHB out of the wilderness of one extreme or
the other is a combination of medication, talk therapy, diet, exercise, choosing to
be around mentally healthy people.

(6) If "mental illnesses" really were medically based, then one could be cured of their
mental illness. Such is NOT the case of the MILHB, for that person can NEVER
RECOVER FROM THE INITIAL MISDIAGNOSIS.

(7) The diagnostic tools for classifying any of the so-called mental illnesses come
from a laundry list of about 20 behaviors. For a specific "illness," between nine
and twelve laundry list behoviors are selected, and a MILHB who exhibits three or
more of these is deemed "to have it!"

(8) Enough is known about the history of DSM-series and the classification of mental
illness to further support that "mental illnesses" are not illnesses at all, but
merely a labels used to classify a MILHB and prescribe a treatment program
(typically by injecting potentially lethal drugs to counteract the MILHB's bio-
rhythms). Because a canon of literature exists, it is virtually impossible to sue
a mental health professional for malpractice in the event a MILHB's proscribed
medication management program cause serious damage, even including loss of life.

(9) Further evidence that the DSM-series defines not a family of illnesses, but serves
only to assist the reader of said series to label a MILHB is suggested by what were
formerly included as "mental illnesses," e.g:

Excessive masturbation
Homosexuality
Chain smoking

and by recalling that in the earlier days of classification, the hall mark
distinction between a so-called "manic depressive" and a "schizophrenic" was
social-economic class: the upper classes were labeled "manic depressive" and had
available rather nice rehabilitation hospitals, while the "schizophrenics' " lot
was rather far more bleak.

And thus we arrive at where we are today, with four cohorts permanently vested with propagating the belief that there exists such a thing as a group of illness which are called "mental illnesses:"

The pharmaceutical companies who spend a fortune advertising anti-depressants
on TV so that the patients can tell the doctor what they need to prescribe!

The psychiatric community at large, including the teaching colleges and
universities.

The legal profession which uses "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdicts to let
perfectly guilty well off white people get out of paying for their crimes and
having to be left to live amongst the "savages - frequently of darker hue" in the
lower 99.

Since "mental illness" is not a classification of disease, but rather a describer of behaviors, the American Psychiatric Association, The American Medical Association, and all the teaching hospitals which have programs dedicated to behvior modification, have been committing medical malpractice for the duration; they have kidnapped human beings (involuntary commitments), poisoned human beings (injection of potehtially lethal drugs against the patient's will), and slandered and libeled human beings because, while one might be cured of cancer, one can never be cured of the various mental illness labels.

What NAMI provides is talk therapy, for the family and loved ones of the MILHB, and possibly for the MILHB too (if they are willing attend meetings, which, I suspect, usually they are not). You share your experiences in a non-judgmental environment where everybody has experienced pretty much the same thing. That is comforting, and reassuring, and by voicing one's feelings, one releases them from the grave in which they were buried alive; one has an opportunity to be healed and made well again.

However, for as long as programs of treatment focus only on the symptoms, and not at getting to understanding the root cause of the loss which triggered the depression, the roller coaster ride is but one word, or one triggering event away from taking off again.

Your organization is worthy. It can BE better and DO better.

Thank you for your attention to these matters,

Sincerely,

MARK RAYMOND GANZER, who has had the following labels placed on me at various times:

Bi-polar
Manic-depressive, axis II, hypomanic state
Schizophrenic
Paranoid schizophrenic
Alcoholic
Manipulative Personality Disorder
Fractitious syndrome (also called Ganser's syndrome; how ironic)
Borderline personality disorder
Obsessive compulsive disorder

In other words, one real sick mother fucker.

What a crock of fucking bull shit; one from which I refuse any more to eat. You can be cured of the label by moving to where you are given a fresh start, a chance to prove (or disprove) your worthiness and value to community; where your past matters not, only your present, only your future. You must bury your past and treat as dead all those who love you, but believe you to be sick, all the while refusing to investigate their own pathologies.

Peace and blessings upon you, your family, your loved ones, your home, your organization, and your community,

Mark Raymond Ganzer

Democratic Senator’s Ads May Break New Ground

October 12, 2011
Democratic Senator’s Ads May Break New Ground
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

This is a very dumb headline, for which the reporter cannot be blamed. "May Break New Ground?" Are you kidding me, it either will or it won't. If it's DIFFERENT in tone and/or content from the countless attack ads we've become so inured to then it PROBABLY will break new ground. Let us read on to see what's what?

WASHINGTON — A new series of political advertisements on behalf of an embattled Nebraska senator could open the door to a flood of similar ads financed by outside groups and even businesses working directly with political candidates — a sharp departure from past practice.



The ads are innocuous enough on their face: Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat up for re-election next year, is featured on television and radio commercials discussing Social Security, the national debt, war veterans and other hot-button issues. What is remarkable, campaign finance lawyers and political operatives say, is that the ads were produced and paid for by Democratic Party officials in Nebraska and Washington — with the senator’s close involvement as their star.

What the fuck is remarkable about THIS? That he actually addresses real ISSUES, to my mind, is the remarkable thing. If ads are being produced and the politician is NOT involved, well, how the fuck can you expect the ads to work? The pol is the "boots on the ground" who knows when he's sinking like a stone and when he's got the crowd's interest and support.

Federal campaign rules restrict politicians from “coordinating” their advertisements with outside groups except under certain circumstances. Politicians — worried about tripping over the legal restrictions — have usually shied away from working directly with outside groups on ads. Instead, “issue” ads paid for by outside groups will typically hit on broad themes without focusing so squarely on a single lawmaker.

Holy fucking shit. What kind of federal campaign rules are THESE? Who the fuck invented them? Who voted for them. THIS IS THE REAL FUCKING STORY, WHICH IS QUITE LIKELY TO BE MISSED BY THE REPORTER! Enquiring minds will read on.

The Nebraska ads, which have cost Democrats more than $600,000 to run so far, could change that practice in a way that has wide implications for the 2012 elections, when 33 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs.

Note how we find out how much the ads cost, but nothing about why the friggin' law is so fucked up to begin with!

Indeed, American Crossroads — the powerful and well-financed Republican group formed with the help of the former White House aide Karl Rove — filed a request on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission asking for a formal ruling on whether it could “adopt the tactics” of Mr. Nelson in coordinating footage of politicians up for re-election.

Okay, I think I'm starting to get it. The laws were passed by democrats (surprising that Karl Rove asks permission

for anything. He never needed to when His Excellency "W" was king (under the Presidency of Dickhead Chay-Knee)

American Crossroads said in its request that it “may wish to produce and distribute similar television and radio advertisements” featuring incumbents in the 2012 campaigns. The group said that because it was “especially sensitive” about rules banning improper coordination with a candidate, it wanted to check with the F.E.C. first to make sure such ads would be legal.

Okay. Smooth Rovian play - bringing to the attention of the FEC the possible breach of the rules while simultaneously trying to get the okay to go ahead with a nuclear option (which basically will allow outside interests to toss more money into the election campaign than federal laws otherwise permit.

American Crossroads ran into “headaches” in 2010 when it ran ads supporting Rob Portman, then a Senate candidate from Ohio, said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the group. To avoid charges of improperly working with Mr. Portman, the group used only publicly available footage of the candidate — yet Democrats still filed a complaint asserting that the advertisements crossed the line.

But we never see Democrats fight for a recount in a Presidential election! Fucking feckless surrender monkeys!

If the F.E.C. now says outside groups can film candidates and work with them to produce ads — as Mr. Nelson’s do — “that would open up a whole new avenue in advertising and advocacy that previously has not existed for us,” Mr. Collegio said.

The maneuver may ultimately haunt Democrats, Mr. Collegio added. “By trying to be clever in helping Nelson,” he said, “they may be opening up a can of worms they may not have wanted to open up.”

Sounds like the Republicrats believe their image -making propaganda artist campaign folk can do better than those retained by the dems. Possibly, but, the Republicrats need viable candidates, and they don't really have many of them.

Even though the ads were underwritten by Democratic organizations, in this instance the parties are considered to be operating as independent organizations engaged in issue advocacy rather than promoting the candidate himself. Under campaign rules, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee would be allowed to spend $240,000 in coordination with Mr. Nelson’s campaign.

Paul Johnson, campaign manager for Mr. Nelson, said in an interview that the Nebraska Democratic Party had spent $600,000 to $700,000 so far on the ads, which began running this summer. A “vast majority” of the money has come from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, he said.

In one ad, the senator stares straight at the camera and portrays himself as a Washington outsider — different from Beltway politicians who “don’t get it” and value politics over all else.

Yeah, sure, politicians are FOREVER running as Washington DC outsiders, and they jump on the gravy train the moment they get erections ... er .... elected.

“Obviously, we got to consult on it,” Mr. Johnson said of the ads, “but it was driven by the party. They were the big dogs on this.”

Mr. Johnson said he was confident the ads complied with F.E.C. rules limiting coordination between a candidate and outside groups, and he noted that party officials financed similar ads for Mr. Nelson in 2006.

He and other Democrats said the ads do not run afoul of the rules in part because they do not come within 90 days of next year’s election — a blackout period for coordinating efforts — and they deal with “issues” without expressly urging Nebraskans to vote for Mr. Nelson.

But some Republicans disagree.

Here we are in serious danger of actually getting some NEWS!

Even as American Crossroads seeks to follow Mr. Nelson’s lead, the Republican Party in Nebraska has filed a complaint with the F.E.C. charging that state Democrats and the senator had gone on a “massive spending spree” that violated campaign rules.

The state Republicans argue that Mr. Nelson’s “issue” ads are really veiled campaign messages meant to get him re-elected, and that state Democrats have far exceeded the $240,000 limit they are allowed to spend in coordinating such political work.

Well, DUH!

Campaign finance watchdogs said they were particularly troubled by the prospect of groups like American Crossroads, or Democratic counterparts like Priorities USA, using hidden, unlimited donations from private corporations to finance ads in conjunction with the candidates themselves. The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the Citizens United case allowed companies to donate money to outside groups for “independent” political expenditures — but not to the candidates themselves.

Whatever THAT means!

“That’s really the problem here — the whole notion of corporations spending unlimited funds,” said Donald Simon, counsel for Democracy 21, a nonpartisan group favoring greater campaign restrictions.

“The door has been opened,” he said, “and the only question is how many corporate spenders are going to walk in.”

ANSWER: Each and every fucking one of them!

Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the Nebraska ads reflect the inability of the F.E.C. — hobbled in recent years by political gridlock — to put in place and police campaign finance rules.

In examining the Nebraska ads, Professor Hasen said, “I think the practice stinks like a skunk, but at first blush it doesn’t appear to be illegal under the F.E.C.’s precedent.”

“We’re in this brave new world of campaign finance, so we’re seeing all sorts of things we never saw before,” he said. “Nelson does this, and if he’s successful, then you’ll see others going this route. People push the envelope, and no one pushes back.”

Brave new world of campaign finance? HELL, haven't campaigns been financed since th 2nd election?

But for conservatives like Brad Smith, a law professor and former F.E.C. commissioner who favors deregulating campaign laws, the move toward a more direct political role for outside groups is welcome.

It's welcome for me too, probably for different reasons than any Brad Smith might have to say.

“Are they pushing the envelope?” he asked. “Well, we haven’t seen much like this, and we might start to see more of it. They’re at the forefront — the cutting edge, if you will.”

Gail Collins is a hack; a witless hack, and probably a lezzie too (her and MoDo settin' in a tree - cat cat cat bitchin 1,2,3

October 12, 2011
The Gift of Glib
By GAIL COLLINS

Right now you’re probably asking yourself, how did Rick Perry do in the big Republican debate in New Hampshire this week?

Um Gail, do you have a LIFE? T'ain't none-buddy out here in reality land what's gots time to even thinks 'bout what that sheet-kickin' red-dick piece of Texas crap care 'bout dem republicdumb deBACKelles.

He did great! It turns out that Governor Perry has a big energy plan, known as “The Plan I’m Going to Be Laying Out.” When he does, it’s going to be the answer to almost everything. We know that because no matter what Perry was asked, he talked about the plan. Which will involve “the American entrepreneurship that’s out there.” And a whole lot more. When he’s ready to tell you.

Tickay Dickay did the same damned thing wid his plan to get our skinny whiate (and fat black) asses outa 'Nam too - but back den in da day - t'ain't no way some REEporTAGE wuzza' gonna' go holding Trickay's Dick to the fire. (Dat would be a changin, just like duh times, as dee bo' BobbAY Zimmuhmayahn done sang his skinny ass off about.

For the rest of the time, Perry pretty much sat there like a large boulder with good hair, while the remaining members of the gang attacked Herman Cain, the former fast-food chain president turned Republican front-runner, about his economic plan.

"Good hair" duh Gay-"Y'all Colon gal dunn gots her ass off on rippin sweet, sweet Molly I's monicker for duh guv off - Sweet Sweet Moly I use ta call dee guy "Good Hair!" (And you can look it up and it still be vewy true!)

This is what we’ve come to. A presidential debate about the 9-9-9 plan.

9-9-9 is the sine qua non of the Cain candidacy. It would scrap the tax code and give us 9 percent corporate, income and national sales taxes. He mentions it every 10 seconds. (Opening statement, he got it in by 5.)

Dem COE PO' RAY SHUNS, dem bouys, dey still be findin' waze to makes deir feeuheral tax bite EQ duh ZEE ROE! Dat be what daze a'payin' dem smart tax 'ccounting fucks all dem fad big bux.

I have never heard anybody discussing the 9-9-9 plan in the real world, but obviously I hang out in the wrong places.

GAY Y'ALL, yuh LooNay Tune BEEYATCH - yo' ass do'nt be hangin' out in no real wurld, no how, no where, no weigh!

The organizers and the candidates felt the need to really get into this, and, as a result, Tuesday night in New Hampshire will go down in history as the 9-9-9 plan debate.

Sooth sayuh fo' HighYuh - the big G-String lady done goes off un makes a proposal which she'll forget about 'bout duh time MoDo be tungin' her PUSS-SAY.

(Here is how presidential primary debates go down in history. The tapes are stored in a moisture-proof vault in a civil defense cave in Indiana. If the world as we know it should come to an end, the surviving members of our species will be able to relive these deeply American contests and pass their knowledge on to their children. Soon, they will go forth and repopulate a world in which all the boys sit around looking smug like Newt Gingrich and all the girls sound like Michele Bachmann. That is what they mean by “the living will envy the dead.”)

Must give credit where it's due, here. This is the most god-damned funniest fuckin' thang that I hay-yea-have read TWO-PHUCKIN'-DAY!

Among the elite cadre of Americans who have been thinking about 9-9-9, a good number have determined that it won’t raise enough revenue. “The problem with that analysis is that it is incorrect,” announced Cain firmly. I do admire the way he does this. If I could convey that tone, I would win every argument in my family just by saying “The problem with that analysis is that it is incorrect.” And there would never again be a discussion of renting a limo for a family viewing of all the Cincinnati Christmas lights.

Also, Michele Bachmann pointed out that 999 turned upside down is 666, which would make Cain’s tax policy the mark of the devil. Cain seemed to find that amusing, but he looked a little peeved when Jon Huntsman suggested 999 might be the price of a box of pizza.

That, people, was the sum and substance of the wit and humor of the New Hampshire Republican debate. Jon Huntsman also tried to make a joke about gas, but we are not going there.

Cain, in an attempt to pull down his competition, asked if Romney could name all 59 points in his 160-page economic plan.

Now I strongly suspect that Mitt could name all 59 points. I bet he repeats them at night to put himself to sleep. (“lower marginal tax rates ... more free trade agreements ... mmmmzzzzzzz.”) But he didn’t fall into that trap. He whipped out the seven pillars of Romneyism, which support the 59 points and can, therefore, be packed into one 30-second response. If you ignore Charlie Rose yelling in the background.

The guy has pillars for his points. No wonder he’s winning.

There were other high points — Gingrich accused Romney of starting class warfare by advocating an end to the capital gains tax only for investors making under $200,000 a year. He also said Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be thrown in jail for their bill to reform Wall Street financial practices. Herman Cain said Alan Greenspan was the best Fed chairman in recent history. Michele Bachmann gave the fact-checkers another great night of error-correcting. It was the usual good time for all, except you do kind of wonder what the heck gives this particular crowd of people the right to be the nation’s official presidential contenders. What do they have in common? Intelligence? Appropriate experience? A large base of followers? Not so much.

What have they got? They’ve all got glib.

Except one. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for Rick Perry. If he wasn’t Rick Perry.

As things stand, the Perry camp is apparently planning to keep their guy in the background during debates and hit Romney over the head with mean commercials. That shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe they’ll include the day Mitt drove to Canada with the family dog on the car roof.