Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Friday, September 26, 2008

In a Nutshell

Wild speculation in an unregulated market driven by Republican ideology in the 1920's leads to a stock market crash and the Great Depression.

The Republicans are given the boot in the 1932 election, and Franklin D. Roosevelt presides over regulation that goes a long way to controlling speculation.

Ronald Reagan wins by a landslide in 1980, and promptly begins deregulating, talking about how this will help the middle class. A technology boom begins at about the same time, disguising the fact that the deregulation benefits only the top 10%, the financial elite. He also aborts Carter's baby attempts to begin a transition from fossil to renewable fuels, enabled by cheap oil from Saudi Arabia and mortgaging our future to an alliance with the Saudi royal family.

Subsequent presidents continue the Republican policy of deregulation, setting off another wild speculation surge that raises home prices astronomically. Speculators and bank CEO's make out like bandits, and the middle class goes pitifully deep into debt, i.e., gets screwed.

The natural result of unregulated speculation (previously seen in 1929) occurs simultaneously with Saudi peak oil, while the nation is still suckered by a media entirely controlled by multinational corporate interests, Republican economic policy, and George W. Bush's politics of fear.

I give credit to the Bush administration for realizing instantly that something needs to be done. Hoover sat on his hands for over two years, allowing the last banking crisis to balloon into the Great Depression.

But his plan stinks. It amounts to a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the uber-wealthy, while simultaneously guaranteeing a complete lack of oversight and accountability.

Any solution to this financial crisis needs to strictly regulate speculation.

It needs to bail out the homeowner and the middle class, not the uber-wealthy.

It needs to identify where the money is coming from, and pay for it – preferably through cutting defense spending by $300 billion and taxing the wealthy who've enjoyed all the benefits of this "boom" since Reagan took office – in other words, folks making over $250 K per year.

I hope the Republican base – evangelicals – look at this closely, and vote this year based on economic policy. Gay marriage and abortion are done deals, and the GOP won't change them because then their base would be limited to really rich folks. Believe me – if the two women next door get married, it won't affect you. If the woman on the other side gets an abortion, it won't hurt you. They're going to do it in any case, legal or not.

But if you let the GOP continue to make economic policy and deregulate, it will hurt you bad.

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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz