THE WEAK IN REVIEW:
Politics
Do Me, Beat Me, Impeach Me, oh God!
It's high time we impeached the President, unless we already did that and I missed it. Impeachment is crowding out every other subject on the home front during the Congressional recess, including even the issues of building a fifty-foot wall around the entire United States, or what to do with Syria, or remembering to ask an aide which one is Syria, or even building a fifty-foot wall around Syria, if it turns out to be one of our states after all.
Yes, impeachment of the President is the hot subject during town hall meetings that legislators are holding in various places that still have town halls all across this great land of ours where the flag waves proudly over the purple grain and majestic fruit, and where all that people ask of their Congresspersons is a fifty-foot wall to provide adequate cover for the coming End Times, behind which (the walls, not the End Times) the militiamen will gather with their muzzle-loading muskets and pitchforks to hold off the government agents who have been electronically monitoring their toasters for years.
In Michigan, Congressthing Kenny Berntivolio recently related to constituents the heartwarming story of how impeaching the President would be — and I quote him here with a catch in my own throat — "my dream come true." Bernitivolio said he couldn't think of any charges yet, but he was working on a few good leads. He said that maybe "someone more qualified," such as a Congressional page or perhaps Glenn Beck's hairpiece, could come up with something better, as he feels a little discumbobulated lately due to the fact that his toaster is no longer speaking to him.
It isn't just our House members who have been thinking really hard about this pressing issue. U.S. Senator Tom Coburn told a town meeting in Muskogee, Oklahoma, as well as all the Okies gathered there to sing country songs in congratulatory self-deprecation, that he did not have "the legal background" to know whether President Barack Obama had actually committed high crimes and misdemeanors. However, Senator Coburn apparently did scrape up the legal wherewithal to note that the President is "getting perilously close." Taking comfort in the knowledge that the Senator is almost on firm legal ground, we can all sleep safe in our beds or safe under our cardboard boxes, or wherever it is we are safely sleeping in these tremendous times in this great country where everything would be perfect if not for our Constitution-hating Chief Executive and his unconstitutional, faking-left-and-going-right regulations.
Clearly, Republicans who have placed impeachment Number One on their summer wish lists haven't thought this thing through, since forty years ago this supposedly Socialist President would have been a Republican. Not that our Congresskids couldn't come up with some really nifty charges if they all frowned really hard together at the same time in the same room while their mommies were all gone for the afternoon, because no one doubts that they have it in them. No, the problem is what they would do if they actually came up with something they could convince themselves was an impeachable offense — and then actually impeached the man.
Because then Joe Biden would be President. Joe Biden! I imagine that would be a little like Alexander Haig assuming command of the Nixon White House, only with more preemptive nuclear strikes against political enemies, and definitely way more preemptive nuclear strikes against political allies.
No, Republicans would do well to cool the impeachment campaign. I mean just talking about it is a lot of fun, sure, and wishing really, really hard for our dreams to come true is very American and all that, but even Democrats don't want Joe Biden to be President. Congress should probably just quit while they're ahead. Yeah, that's it, Congress should just quit. Though it's unlikely that anyone could tell the difference between this particular Congress when it was seated and the one that is still back at town meeting, dreaming its wonderful dreams of freedom, and liberty, and a fat Koch Brothers scholarship for yet another term.
(Doohickey alert)
THE WEAK IN REVIEW:
Economy
Mr. Economy Takes on the WSJ
Editor's Note: Please stand back and try not to let the brilliance of Mr. Economy's arguments damage your eyesight. Remember, Mr. Economy is a professional. The class would be well advised to take notes. You'll find crayons below your seats.
The Wall Street Journal said last week that everything would be great and not just great but stupendous and not just a little stupendous but stupendously stupendous, if anyone at all who made any money at all were not to be taxed at all. Why? Well, as everyone knows it's the people who make any money at all who create the jobs, and we need jobs, right? (Don't think too far ahead or even you amateurs may detect the flaw in this argument before the Big Reveal.) Right? Right!
Consider, the WSJ urges, those formerly obscenely rich people who have made all that money from the self-hypnotized Stock Market the last few years. The wealth of these now very obscenely rich people continues to rise so much that they each can afford two adverbs before even getting to their names, even though the other 90% of us never recovered after our household incomes and net wealth crapped out so much that most of us can barely afford adjectives. And forget nouns!
Here's what supposedly happened, the WSJ reminds us: because we've only taxed them moderately, these capitalist heroes, these noble Howard Roarkes and John Galts, have been able to pour all their new money directly back into the American economy and thereby they have created so many more jobs in the wonderful, high-paying fields of, of... well, wait a minute while I look them up... {compositor, save several pages here to print the many important industries that saw such tremendous growth in well-paying jobs with benefits in the last five years} ...not to mention a new cadre of young professionals going into short-order fry cookery, or as the French say, "Merde!"
So, sure, it all must be true because with investment capitalism, theory is truth. To put it indelicately, rich people are only too glad to pee goldenly on the rest of us, even those homeless people living directly below the street drains, who get the benefit of "trickle-down." And we should be grateful. I'm sure we are. Grateful enough to demand, "Hey, no more taxes for the rich! They've suffered enough, and besides, their pee is delicious!"
Now I don't want to say The Wall Street Journal "knows not whereof it speaks," mostly because I plan to eschew all archaisms in this and all further editions of The Weak in Review, because our news is already so dated only conservatives even remember when this stuff happened. Still, I'm sure the WSJ-folk have read the same economics textbooks and polemics that I have, only more uncritically. Now, just because all of the capitalistic arguments in most of these books are based on false dichotomies illustrated by straw men apparently kept functioning by hallucinogens fed them by economists who haven't checked their dogmatic ideologies against the actual facts for at least twenty years, doesn't mean that what the WSJ thinks isn't completely bizarre and disingenuous. Besides, I paid good money for those two adjectives and now I'm going to wear the suckers out. However, in their disingenuous writers' defense, let us remember that the Straw Man didn't have a brain in that bizarre movie with the scary flying monkeys, so small wonder that sharpening his bizarre arguments against those of a brainless scarecrow has left the disingenuous WSJ man's conclusions several million jobs short of the observable and by-now-double adverb-bizarre truth.
A few numbers, because we can
Since 1983, more than two million good-paying, good-benefit manufacturing jobs have been sent overseas. When 8.7 million jobs were lost during the 2008 recession, those who found work often had to accept lower-paying jobs with fewer or no benefits. Now the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that in the next five years 30% to 40% of good-paying, good-benefit white collar jobs also will be outsourced.
But we should be grateful to the job creators? They should get even more tax breaks for creating jobs in China and India?
Let's look at a snapshot of the new economy, now that the rich are doing so much profitable job creation overseas, and look at some markers showing how all this outsourcing and free trading might be "helping" America's middle and lower classes. (Courtesy of Harper's wonderful Index.)
Average annual tax savings among top 1% of wage earners under Bush tax cuts: $66,384
Average annual income for other 99%: $58,506
Number of jobs lost by African American women during recession: 233,000
During the first two years of the "recovery": 258,000
Average annual cost after financial aid to attend NYU for a family making $30,000 a year or less: $25,462
Ratio of U.S. tax breaks to tax revenue in 2011: 1:1
Percentage change in the incomes of the top 1% of earners during the recovery: +11.2%
In the bottom 99%: —0.4%
Portion of American households that had a higher tax rate in 2013 as a result of the "fiscal cliff" deal: 3/4
Rank of CEO among occupations most likely to attract psychopaths: 1
The rich and their apologists claim that Americans are just lazy bastards who would rather get federal help than work, anyway. (Plus, it's always the victim's fault!) But every American I ever worked with — every single one! — wanted to do a better job than the CEO! We were interested in quality. The CEO just wanted quantity, to make more money for the stockholders. And these are the people who keep saying if you'd just cut their tax rates even more they will be able to create millions of more jobs. In China and India and not here, but millions more! Think of it!
Yes, as the rich always say: "All of this here's MINE!" "And... (unbuttoning fly) ...this is your'n!"
(Virtual doohickey here)
THE WEAK IN REVIEW:
The Arts: Chapter & Verse
CHAPTER
Israel Hernández-Llach, 18, collapsed and died Tuesday after five Miami Beach, Florida, police officers chased and cornered him, and one then fired a taser into his chest. His alleged crime was painting graffiti on the wall of an abandoned McDonald’s restaurant.
Hernández, whose family recently immigrated from Colombia, had received acclaim in Florida art circles as a sculptor, painter, writer, and photographer inspired by his experiences in Colombia as well as the United States. Using the moniker “Reefa,” Hernández painted colorful murals on the sides of abandoned buildings, an activity the police and some property owners consider vandalism.
Thiago Souza, a companion of Hernández who witnessed the killing, described the officers as patting each other on the back and “high-fiving” after the young man collapsed on the ground. “You should have seen how funny it was when his butt clenched when he got tased,” Souza quoted one officer as saying to him, adding, “It was almost like they were proud of what they did.” — RINF
VERSE
Bridge St. Railroad Abutment
for Israel Hernandez
These tagged abutments, chalked
and painted, splashed with a sprawl
of color, interlocked
by a cuneiform scrawl
from cinders to rusty beam,
might tell you something true
if you believe that dream
informs what's real: in blue
and purple, look — eVolVe!
Then layered next, Get Hi! —
and under that, dissolved
by rain and time, Why?
RelaX! might claim it's art
or merely firm command,
but meaning's only part
of message here, and
form's design that knows.
When taggers blazon YES!
to life, and overdose
on glitzy glyphs, suggesting
Truth loves Beauty, and Word
loves World — they still must hide
from city cops who've heard
that art is not on their side.
At night they work; by twos,
or soloing, they dance —
you ever watch them move?
The one who sprays PerChanCe
to dreAm's alive with it,
his choreography
enhancing vital wit,
a soul you almost see.
When tagging's done, he'll spray
one word on a nearby fence
as rattling boxcars make
their counterarguments.