4 Comments

1. Mindless Sheep says:

   February 15, 2013 at 3:05 AM

   Intermission:

   youtube.com/watch?v=ohj1wiy6PFo

   Reply
2. James says:

   February 15, 2013 at 12:46 AM

   http://candobetter.net/?q=node/823
   http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=blog/905

   How decades of privatisation have impoverished NSW, 1 Oct 2008

   NSW’s record seems to confirm that privatisation is, indeed, just old-fashioned plunder as practised by the Conquistadores, Vikings, Mongols, etc. Revenue generating assets paid for over previous decades by taxpayers have apparently been sold off for no better reason than to line the pockets of private investors, bankers and stockbrokers.

   Reply
3. Mindless Sheep says:

   February 14, 2013 at 11:39 PM

   If you were a chick I would …. you.
   You are the best thing to happen to the “truth” movement in a long time.

   Keep up the good work Eric.

   Reply
4. Hansa Junchun says:

   February 14, 2013 at 12:16 PM

   Hi Eric,

   Thanks for another great program. On the subject of the Democrats and their sagging support for unions, I believe you referred to this situation in the last program, and it got me thinking about it for the whole fortnight since.

   I came to the conclusion that the DNC has been overtaken by “Roveists”. That is to say, campaign operatives inside the DNC marveled at Karl Rove’s campaign methods in 2004 and decided to fully implement them.

   Rove’s methods, of course, involved massive television ad exposure at an unbelievable cost, nowhere better illustrated than in the last election, where I’m sure the near entirely of the seven billion dollars went into the pockets of the four or five corporate media giants.

   By adopting Roveist methods of campaigning, the DNC likewise has foresaken a larger part of its traditional “boots on the ground” type of organizing. This may be a calculation based on declining union membership as a whole. The DNC likely decided that it is easier to go Roveist and sell out to the corporate media giants than attempt to restore some vigor to the unions.

   That’s just my personal conclusion. You are already aware I am not a fan of the public sector unions. But to be honest, I sympathize with the decline of the private sector unions in the face of global corporate hegemony, whose cornerstone is military imperialism.

   Though still a believer in capitalism, I accept that capitalism has been murdered. And, as the death of capitalism coincided with the death of the unions. In this tragic case, we are fellow mourners at two side-by-side funerals.

   On the subject of unions raising their own candidates for public office to challenge neoliberal imperialists in the DNC, I must issue stark warning: tread carefully. Look what happened to Occupy, and what happened to the Tea Party.

   In the first case, and correct me if my timeline is wrong, but did the crackdown on OWS not occur two days AFTER the Obama campaign publicly invited OWS to join the 2012 campaign? After the invitation was made on an autumn 2011 day, OWS raised and effigy of Obama as a Wall Street stooge — garishly denouncing the campaign’s attempts to co-opt the movement.

   The day after that, the police and the truncheons came out. And that began the dismantling process. The message was clear: if you do not work for us, you will be dissolved.

   In the case of the Tea Party, in 2010 grassroots organization succeeded where the GOP had miserably failed, even with the evil genius of Karl Rove: a huge grab of Congressional seats, flipping the House out of the President’s grasp.

   And what then? Most of the new Tea Party freshmen were turned to the dark side of the GOP, towing the line dictated by Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan. And what happened to the few principled hold-outs?

   Well, they trampled all grassroots on the right: Ron Paul people were declared persona non grata, while Tea Party activists were handed over to the tender mercies of the DNC to be denounced and hounded. The 2012 debacle was the result of Roveist surrender to the corporate media giants, but they could not accept responsibility for their laughable defeat.

   No, they immediately turned all frustrations against the remaining Tea Party personnel who refused to bow to the Roveists. They were purged at the national level and the bloodletting is now underway at the state level.

   Taken together, this is a strong signal that, regardless of which side of the totally fabricated left/right paradigm one takes, only highly concentrated power at the very center of the two parties matters; from there, all directives and decrees and propaganda trickles down to the disenfranchised party members, whose loyalty is measured in dollars in the PAC, not in time out in the field doing the hard work.

   Maybe I’m all wrong about this, but then, seven billion in corporate media profits makes for strong evidence.

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