In the second year of the ongoing Depression, July 4th rolled around again to remind us of our heritage and of our mission in the months and years ahead. The stock market had lost 6% or more in the week proceeding the fireworks, largely on the continuing gloomy news regarding unemployment. The BLS “officially” obfuscated the reality again, claiming unemployment “fell” to 9.5%--this at the same time 400,000 jobs were shed and the workforce continued to shrink as 1.7 million American out of work fell off the in unemployment insurance rolls in recent months and became “los desaparacidos.” They joined the ranks of millions of others who have disappeared, vanished, and are no longer counted by the BLS as being out of a job. This is how the statistical lies continue to spin from the mill in officialdom, but the market was not fooled. At the same time President Obama's executive branch continues to spew the nonsense that we are in a “recovery,” and BP, having shunted their yacht sailing CEO off camera, continues to roll out soapy commercials featuring new “American” faces put into key company positions in charge of the massive ecological and economic catastrophe we call the Gulf oil “spill.”
In my neck of the woods, Monterey, California, I enjoyed a full weekend hiking Big Sur, getting my mandatory burger in a lodge restaurant under the pine trees, shooting the golden light of sunset on the coast at beautiful Sorbanes Point south of Pt. Lobos, and watching the parade of glitzy cars, clowns, military drill troops, and makeshift floats at the parade in nearby Seaside. I was pleased to see one marching group holding up signs demanding an end to corporate rule of America, part and parcel of the slowly evolving grass roots insurgency in this country, though I think any real protest beyond holding up placards will still be a long time coming. Here we were, celebrating the overthrow of the former legitimate government on this continent, yet, in spite of the grievances so many feel in their gut about the corprotocracy, no effective challenge is ever really mounted by “we, the people.” We're all too busy clipping 20% off coupons and flocking to one day sales at the malls to try and stretch our ever diminishing incomes just a tad further.
In spite of all the money on this peninsula, fireworks were canceled for the second year in a row due to city “budget constraints.” Instead the town threw a big outdoor barbecue on the grassy lawns of city hall, which I attended, camera in hand. The event featured an open house in the old adobe museum where California's original constitution was drafted and signed, complete with a painting of one George Washington by an itinerant painter some 200 years ago. I wondered what George was thinking about the barbecue just outside. Later that evening my partner and I eased down the hill to Cannery Row to join the “Evening on the Bay,” at the swank Monterey Plaza Hotel, eating fresh grilled hot dogs and listening to an R&B ensemble as people danced to the tunes and seagulls watched from private perches on nearby buildings, fountains, and seaside rails. A good time was had by all, as people just seemed to want to forget the gloomy job numbers, and the stock market, and the oil spewing into the Gulf, and celebrate. We settled for watching the fireworks on the local PBS broadcast of “A Capitol Fourth,” and listening to all the old favorite marching tunes, along with a slice of the 1812 Overture as the fireworks reached a crescendo. Indeed, I was “Proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free...”
We get the Monday after the holiday off to rest up, recuperate, and I suppose determine if we've forgotten to do any shopping. The “Monday kind of Tuesday” will come along in due course, and we can go back to the papered over realities of unsolved problems that still plague us and threaten the greatness we celebrated on the weekend past. Congress will pretend it actually passed a financial reform bill. The Republicans will huddle to figure out how they can defeat any further Democratic attempt at extending unemployment benefits, BP will keep drilling those relief wells and covering up the oil on the beaches. A toxic rain will fall gently on the Gulf coast while the northeast swelters in 100 degree plus temperatures, straining electrical grids all through the region. The markets will get back to their game of puts and calls, the banks, (now out of the glaring light of media coverage due to the oil crisis), will get back to their securities trading casino, and we'll all get back to the ongoing Depression. How many more years this thing has to run is anybody's guess. I'll call the recovery when I see it where it counts, on the streets of any-town America, when real job growth and viable production leads us forward, should that ever happen in the foreseeable future.
There are so many things we could be doing to create jobs now, but having squandered so many trillions to backstop the super wealthy and their banks, we have no money for things like alternatives to our reliance on companies like BP, or alternatives to the way in which we “move about the country.” So we'll just continue to limp along, big business as usual, as more teachers, policemen and firemen get laid off, city and state budgets continue to implode, and the oil we covet so dearly keeps washing up all along the Gulf coast in the long hot summer of our discontent.
Last year I summed up this same sentiment as articulately as I could in an article I called “Rocket's Red Glare.” It asked what the founding fathers would think of the nation if they were alive today, and what they might do about it. But what I was really asking is what are we going to do about it?
In my neck of the woods, Monterey, California, I enjoyed a full weekend hiking Big Sur, getting my mandatory burger in a lodge restaurant under the pine trees, shooting the golden light of sunset on the coast at beautiful Sorbanes Point south of Pt. Lobos, and watching the parade of glitzy cars, clowns, military drill troops, and makeshift floats at the parade in nearby Seaside. I was pleased to see one marching group holding up signs demanding an end to corporate rule of America, part and parcel of the slowly evolving grass roots insurgency in this country, though I think any real protest beyond holding up placards will still be a long time coming. Here we were, celebrating the overthrow of the former legitimate government on this continent, yet, in spite of the grievances so many feel in their gut about the corprotocracy, no effective challenge is ever really mounted by “we, the people.” We're all too busy clipping 20% off coupons and flocking to one day sales at the malls to try and stretch our ever diminishing incomes just a tad further.
In spite of all the money on this peninsula, fireworks were canceled for the second year in a row due to city “budget constraints.” Instead the town threw a big outdoor barbecue on the grassy lawns of city hall, which I attended, camera in hand. The event featured an open house in the old adobe museum where California's original constitution was drafted and signed, complete with a painting of one George Washington by an itinerant painter some 200 years ago. I wondered what George was thinking about the barbecue just outside. Later that evening my partner and I eased down the hill to Cannery Row to join the “Evening on the Bay,” at the swank Monterey Plaza Hotel, eating fresh grilled hot dogs and listening to an R&B ensemble as people danced to the tunes and seagulls watched from private perches on nearby buildings, fountains, and seaside rails. A good time was had by all, as people just seemed to want to forget the gloomy job numbers, and the stock market, and the oil spewing into the Gulf, and celebrate. We settled for watching the fireworks on the local PBS broadcast of “A Capitol Fourth,” and listening to all the old favorite marching tunes, along with a slice of the 1812 Overture as the fireworks reached a crescendo. Indeed, I was “Proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free...”
We get the Monday after the holiday off to rest up, recuperate, and I suppose determine if we've forgotten to do any shopping. The “Monday kind of Tuesday” will come along in due course, and we can go back to the papered over realities of unsolved problems that still plague us and threaten the greatness we celebrated on the weekend past. Congress will pretend it actually passed a financial reform bill. The Republicans will huddle to figure out how they can defeat any further Democratic attempt at extending unemployment benefits, BP will keep drilling those relief wells and covering up the oil on the beaches. A toxic rain will fall gently on the Gulf coast while the northeast swelters in 100 degree plus temperatures, straining electrical grids all through the region. The markets will get back to their game of puts and calls, the banks, (now out of the glaring light of media coverage due to the oil crisis), will get back to their securities trading casino, and we'll all get back to the ongoing Depression. How many more years this thing has to run is anybody's guess. I'll call the recovery when I see it where it counts, on the streets of any-town America, when real job growth and viable production leads us forward, should that ever happen in the foreseeable future.
There are so many things we could be doing to create jobs now, but having squandered so many trillions to backstop the super wealthy and their banks, we have no money for things like alternatives to our reliance on companies like BP, or alternatives to the way in which we “move about the country.” So we'll just continue to limp along, big business as usual, as more teachers, policemen and firemen get laid off, city and state budgets continue to implode, and the oil we covet so dearly keeps washing up all along the Gulf coast in the long hot summer of our discontent.
Last year I summed up this same sentiment as articulately as I could in an article I called “Rocket's Red Glare.” It asked what the founding fathers would think of the nation if they were alive today, and what they might do about it. But what I was really asking is what are we going to do about it?
I'm still asking.
