What Now? - Goal State - The 2000 Watt Society

originally posted 11/08/07 - reposted in January 08, and now reposted for the third time with updated links in the context of discussion of "what now?" change agency and coalition building:

The "2000 Watt Society" is a radical model of efficient, high-quality living being pushed by the Swiss Council of the Federal Institute of Technology. Worldwide average energy consumption per capita is about 17,500 kilowatt hours, working out to a continuous consumption of 2000 watts. But as we all know, that per capita consumption is not evenly distributed. Switzerland, efficient for Europe, uses around 5000 watts per capita; Europe as a whole, about 6000 watts per capita. Developing nations use substantially less -- the average for Africa as a whole is about 500 watts per capita. The US, conversely, runs about 12,000 watts per person. The Swiss Council wants to move the nation as a whole towards a 2000 watts per person goal, not by cutting back on the Swiss standard of living, but by dramatically improving the energy efficiency of all aspects of life.

A document entitled "Smarter Living" (PDF) lays out the details of the agenda:

What Now? (Originally Posted as Change What?)

OK, so we've gotten what we asked for and some of the hitters have already been through asking the hard kwestin, what now? I originally posted this in January of this year addressing what specific things would have to be at the top of the new president's agenda. Submitted once again for your consideration and commentary.

Right off the top, this post should not be mistaken as a criticism of Obama. It's not. I sincerely believe that we American people will absolutely elect the leadership that we deserve.

That said, let's be serious as in E.C. Hopkins class seriousness about the scope of what has to be addressed by all levels of leadership at the twilight of industrial civilization. This means not only the elected administrative manager of political governance, but the proprietor class which sets policy, funds, and directs administrative management embodied in the office of the president.

At the beginning of November I tried to enjoin this type of discussion with the post Goal State - How Do We Get There. (I also reposted this article in January) The current uncritical excitement surrounding Obama's win in the Iowa caucus brings me back to the article that inspired that post in early November. Hoping for a New Deal which paints the problem from the perspective that E.C. labored to get us all to consider. In my opinion, this article gives us a very concrete and constructive place to temper our political expectations for Obamian change agency.

Richard Heinberg's current Museletter consists of a thoughtful essay ("Big Melt Meets Big Empty") concerning the alternative realities of science (physical reality) and politics (political reality). Heinberg identifies the opposition between these two as the key cause of the seeming inability of political institutions in the US and elsewhere to constructively respond to the twin threats of climate change and resource depletion. He advocates working toward overcoming this opposition, to whatever degree that is possible. His key suggestion is that interested groups of citizens develop realistic assessments of the efficacy of various potential policy responses, and that they then use these assessments to create an advocacy program to push for the enactment of desired policies.

Looming in the background for Heinberg, however, are two critical and related specters, either of which would likely doom any constructive initiatives that might be developed: 1) resource wars; and 2) implacable opposition on the part of elites. It seems to me that a fruitful way of looking at these twin threats, is to see resource wars as, in a sense, the bitter consequence of elite opposition to ameliorative policies. That is to say, if, faced with energy scarcity, elites succeed in blocking serious consideration of "powerdown" approaches (like the oil depletion protocol), resource wars become the likely outcome - - the "default" option, as it were. Conversely, if ameliorative policy options are viable, resort to "last one standing" warfare can hopefully be avoided. If this is so, then the question of the potential for elite acceptance of some such policies seems to be the key factor in assessing the possibility of a hopeful outcome to energy transition.

Ultimately, power holders must be convinced that [energy transition] policies, if obnoxious to them now, will be far less destructive to their interests than a complete breakdown of society and biosphere - which is the very real alternative. For a historic example of a similar conversion of elites think of the 1930s New Deal: then the titans of industry had to sacrifice some of their financial power in order to keep from losing it all. Many wealthy individuals never forgave Franklin Roosevelt, whom they regarded as a "traitor to his class," but most of them reluctantly agreed that redistribution represented the lesser of evils.

The analysis offered is original, detailed, and very well worth your perusal. Here's the thing, we're not simply talking about temporary wealth redistribution as a stopgap in order to ensure continuity of the governance status quo. Instead, we're talking about what will be required to transition our entire way of life (or more accurately what remains of it) into an entirely new modus operandi. The plans that have been operationalized under the Bush administration for the transition suggest some rather draconian designs on the future of Americaness - frankly at this juncture - I haven't heard any serious counterproposals to those plans and their continuing unfolding.

Atlanta? Drought anybody? - Is there a single candidate who has shown the perspicacity or gumption to even mention the slow motion catastrophe unfolding in the southeastern U.S.? That's pretty much minimum baseline for a serious operator. That said, I don't see a single serious change agent operator on the presidential event horizon. What I see is a collection of opportunistic faces that will be applied to pre-existing plans and narratives much as lipstick might be applied to a pig or frosting to a turd.

What Now? - Systemüberwindung - II

Originally posted in January `08.

"Materialism is to ill-being what smoking is to lung cancer."

To follow James's analogy with smoking: it took roughly 50 years from the first serious evidence of its harm to health to the point last year when smoking in public places was banned in the whole of the United Kingdom. We are now at the beginning of the cycle and James has played a major part in popularising vital ideas; but ahead lies a long, slow slog against powerful vested interests to win the battle.

The Selfish Capitalist: The Origins of Affluenza

The single most important idea to which James needs to apply all his missionary zeal is that mental well-being is a public health issue. Happiness is not a matter of personal performance and effort ("I've achieved it" or "why have I failed?") but a product of a set of environmental - social, economic and cultural - circumstances. The highly unequal, competitive, materialistic and individualistic cultures of neo-liberal economies produce emotional distress; they cultivate the insecurities which drive hyper consumerism ... and thus they make us ill. In the most telling analogy of the book, James argues that materialism is to ill-being what smoking is to lung cancer.

Drawing extensively on the work of American psychologist Tim Kasser, James argues that our recent increased wealth has come at the cost of the emotional well-being of a large proportion of the population; rates of distress among women in the UK almost doubled between 1982 and 2000. This is true of New Zealand and Australia as well as the UK and the US, in striking contrast with more egalitarian and collectivist countries such as Denmark or Germany. He tracks how "selfish capitalism" generates insecurity and inflates comparisons; how a winner-takes-all competitiveness merely creates losers and a pandemic of low self esteem, with its compensatory pathologies around celebrity and status.

Remarkably, Erich Fromm, the Marxist psychoanalyst and Buddhist writer, foresaw much of this half a century ago and James quotes his prescient analysis of the "passive, empty, anxious, isolated person for whom life has no meaning" and who compensates through "compulsive consumption". There are interesting issues to draw out of Fromm's work about how our mass consumer societies, ironically, cripple personal agency despite their avowals of individual choice, but James doesn't dwell on this. In fact, agency remains a confused thread in his argument: exactly who is the selfish capitalist? And is there a hint of a conspiracy theory as to how selfish capitalism has "hijacked" the English-speaking world to establish a political economy which benefits only a wealthy elite? He refers to an "invisible hand" which suppresses those ideas which challenge selfish capitalism, lulling us all into a false consciousness, but one wishes he would come clean, name the culprits and provide an explanation of why and how they hoodwink us.

So now what? Any proposals for system overcoming? (and no, this is not a mean liminal jab at brother Obama's nicotine jones...,)

The Next President

NYTimes | This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

Get t'Steppin!!!!

A brief musical interlude and well wish for all those who didn't get what they wanted last night.

Electoral Jumbotron

Change Gone Come....,

Christian Science Monitor | The notion of sacrifice – asking Americans to give something up for a greater good – appears to be coming back into political vogue after decades of being seen as a poison pill.

Both major-party presidential candidates are emphasizing the need for individuals to shoulder responsibility for changing the direction of the United States, though they do so in different ways.

Personal sacrifice and service to the nation are central themes of John McCain’s candidacy. His campaign motto sums it up: “Country First.”

On the stump, Barack Obama cites the merits of sacrifice, calling it central to patriotism and urging Americans to help change the country’s direction – whether by turning off the television so children can study or by supporting higher taxes for wealthy corporations and individuals.

Both candidates have also called for expanded national service programs and lamented the Bush administration’s failure to tap the outpouring of civic and patriotic sentiment after the 9/11 attacks.

Not since President John Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” has the rhetoric of sacrifice sat this well with the public. Concern that the US confronts a huge crisis in the form of a global financial meltdown, plus an untapped desire since 9/11 to help the nation more, makes the public more receptive to the idea that sacrifice can be noble instead of just inconvenient.

What will defeat do to the Republicans?

NYTimes | You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place. [...] But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

Nationalizing Critical Technologies

Washington Post | In two recent speeches that have attracted little notice, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, has called for a radical new relationship between government and the private sector to counter what he called the "malicious activity in cyberspace [that] is a growing threat to everyone."

One approach would have the government take equity stakes in companies developing technical products, in effect expanding the practice of In-Q-Tel, the CIA entity that invests in companies.

Another proposal is to provide the same protective capabilities applied to government Web sites, ending in .gov and .mil, to the private industry's sites, ending in .com, which Kerr said have close to 98 percent of the nation's most important information.

He also suggested that the government ask insurers whether they cover "a failure to protect intellectual capital." That way, Kerr said, the insurers, through their premiums, "provide an incentive for companies, in fact, to pay attention to protecting their intellectual property."

In the past, Kerr said, when the director of central intelligence or the FBI chief faced similar problems, they would meet privately with leaders of companies involved in new technologies, seeking cooperation and perhaps access to their products. "What's the modern equivalent of what used to be done?" Kerr asked.

"We have a responsibility . . . to help those companies that we take an equity stake in or those that are just out there in the U.S. economy, to protect the most valuable assets they have, their ideas and the people who create them," he said.

Peak Capitalism

Peak Capitalism: Our Opportunity to Choose Between Survival and Collapse (27-page PDF) Lionel Orford

Our World is beset by a Sustainability Emergency.

Maintaining Essential Services

Governments throughout the developed world will probably need to directly intervene to create a command economy to ensure that the economic collapse does not cause the breakdown of essential services. It is important to understand that this is a failure of our economic system rather than a failure of the actual means of production of our essential goods and services.

Many millions of people who have lost their incomes will need to be provided with food, water, housing, medical care, electricity and sewage treatment. It is proposed that this be achieved through government issued ration system that provides every person with their essential needs. Such rations would need to be non-transferable so that a no black market in rations is possible.

A system of fuel rationing will be required to ensure that the available fuel is dedicated to the production, processing and distribution of food and other essential services as the supply of oil dwindles. This will entail a progressive shutting down of as many non-essential commercial and private activities as required to reserve sufficient fuel for essential services.

The end of deflationary trade

From the AU Business Spectator;

The global shipping crash continues to get worse and this morning’s GDP data shows the US recession is already deeper than 2001 and probably 1990-91 as well.

Meanwhile the International Monetary Fund seems determined to make the whole thing worse by imposing the most ruinous strictures on supplicant nations.

Yesterday the Baltic Dry freight rate index fell below 1000 for the first time in six years and last night it fell another 40 points to 885. In June the index was 11,900, so it has fallen 93 per cent in a few months – a crash far worse than anything ever seen in the stockmarket.

The spot daily rental for a Capesize ship is now $6365, down from $234,000 per day over the space of a few weeks. Maybe that previous price was absurdly inflated, but at $6365 it is just $365 above the average daily cost of crews and fuel.

As a result the world’s ports are filling with empty ships because shipowners can’t afford to run them, as well as some full ships because the owners of the cargo won’t unload without a bank letter of credit, which banks are refusing to supply.

Shipping companies are starting to file for bankruptcy in increasing numbers as they breach loan covenants, and a shipping researcher, Andreas Vergottis of Tufton Oceanic has told Bloomberg that a fifth of the world’s dry bulk companies may soon have negative net worth because the market for second hand ships has collapsed and the value of their fleets is below outstanding debt.

Like property-based loan agreements, shipping companies’ debt covenants have loan to value ratios that are typically 70 per cent. As the value of their fleets decline, banks are making margin calls.

If you think it's bad for global shipping, (and I know, you weren't thinking about this topic at all, despite what I told you some weeks ago about grain shipments), just think about what a hellified effect the current financial crisis must be having on airlines and air-based cargo transport!!!!

Beyond Voting

From the Bureau of Public Secrets;

THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”:

(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token
democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues — apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in “democratic” regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don’t even know who they are. . . .

In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.) If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil.

Even in the rare case when a “radical” politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few “progressive” measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come.

As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them!”

Can We Save the World Economy?

Can We Save the World Economy? from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

George Soros, global financier and philanthropist, founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations network, and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business, New York University.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Moderated by John Roberts of CNN.

An open and frank conversation on the breakdown of financial markets around the world and if we can save the global economy. Will the Wall Street bailout plan work? What steps need to be taken in Europe and Asia to stem the market’s downward spiral? Are we headed for a global recession? Three of the leading minds in global economics will discuss the options.

Facing Crude Reckoning, Russia Strikes Deal with China

A little quick dot-connecting.

From the Earth Times we read ANALYSIS: Russia faces crude reckoning over oil prices, and then in the UK Telegraph we find that Russia strikes lucrative oil deal with China;

Moscow - The splurge of oil profits feeding Russia's years of growth has turned sticky with falling production and energy prices. This double whammy is threatening to undercut the government's economic policy as the industry that is its main source of revenue takes a battering from the country's worst financial crisis in a decade.

Scooping huge oil windfalls into state coffers over the oil industry's boom years from 1999 to 2004 has been at the root of Russia's ideology under former President Vladimir Putin.

The surplus helped pay back a national debt as part of a therapy to recover from the humiliation an impoverished Russia suffered by the Soviet collapse and then move toward a resurgent foreign policy.

It went to a sovereign-wealth fund as insurance for storms like the one which buffeted financial markets last month. And it went to subsidize domestic energy prices and a planned array of social renewal programmes.

The policy was to maximize the state's share of industry profits through high taxation and intervention.

But the floor fell out from under Russian industry at a time when leaders like state energy giant Gazprom were on a major debt-financed buying spree. Stocks of Gazprom and highly-leveraged Rosneft led a market crash last month that sucked 70 per cent of the value out of Russian shares from their peaks in May. Slapped with million-dollar margin calls by foreign lenders, Lukoil, Gazprom, Rosneft and TNK-BP asked the government for help and were promised 9 billion dollars to roll over their debt.

Rosneft and state pipeline monopoly Transneft won a reprieve last week, obtaining a credit from China under a high-level deal signed with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Moscow to build a long- awaited pipeline link with Russia.

The deal became possible as the drop in energy prices leveled the playing field in a drawn-out pricing dispute between Moscow and Beijing.

The planned pipeline is to reroute Siberian oil and gas now destined for European markets, in the latest warning to Western leaders of realignment provoked by the current market turmoil that could upset the West's energy security.

Situations are evolving so rapidly now given the financial solvents at work bubbling throughout global political alignments, it's sometimes difficult to keep track of exactly what's going on. We DO however, know who has lots of money, who has lots of oil, and who has little of either....,

Stop Giving it Away!!!

Iran will cut its crude oil production by 199,000 barrels a day from November 1, the country's oil minister was quoted as saying Friday.

The minister, Gholam Hossein Nozari, said the production decrease is in line with an OPEC decision last week to cut production by 1.5 million barrels a day in response to a sharp fall in oil prices, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Nozari said that OPEC may hold another urgent meeting if crude prices don't rebound.

Benchmark crude prices slipped below $65 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, extending declines after data showed the U.S. economy contracted in the latest quarter.

Iran is OPEC's second largest oil exporter and has traditionally opposed any crude output increases by OPEC, arguing that it would cause prices to fall.

Iran produces 4.2 million barrels of oil per day. The country's recoverable oil reserves are estimated at 137 billion barrels, or 12 percent of the world's overall reserves.

Venezuela wants OPEC oil output cut and price floor

CARACAS, Oct 30 (Reuters) - OPEC should cut oil output by 1 million barrels per day, possibly before its next scheduled meeting in December, and should set a minimum price target of $70 or $80, Venezuela's oil minister said on Thursday.

Rafael Ramirez said global demand for crude oil had slipped by 900,000 barrels per day because of global economic turmoil and warned sinking prices would cause oil investment to collapse worldwide.

"We estimate that at $70 per barrel the point arrives when projects now in visualization or in development begin to be abandoned in a massive way. This is not good for anybody," Ramirez said after opening an auction to develop three oil blocks in Venezuela's Orinoco heavy crude region.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries chopped production by 1.5 million bpd last week to stop oil's slide, after prices more than halved from a high of $147 hit in July. At around $65 a barrel oil is at its lowest level since mid 2007.

Was It Deliberate?

At Beyond Oil, K. Deffeyes speculates;

In a fascinating piece in the October 16, 2008 Denver Post, W. Jackson Davis points out that peak oil probably triggered the present crisis, but he says that economists were blindsided as if "a 'secret signal' sent out in 2007 slammed the economy with soaring energy and food costs, and the free-fall of housing prices." Could it have been an actual signal message?

* Was the signal actually sent?
* Who would have wanted to do it?
* How could it have been engineered?

The motivated parties would have to have been nations; this one is too big for Osama bin Laden. Here is a list of the usual suspects; I have no direct evidence that any of them were actually involved:

* Russia, the #2 oil producer in the world, reverting to its Cold War tendencies
* Nigeria, involved in violent controversy with the major international oil companies
* Venezuela, with the agenda of Hugo Chavez
* Any or all of the Arab oil exporters, because of the US automatic support of Israel

Let's entertain the hypothesis that representatives from several of these countries were having afternoon tea at an international meeting. One of them said that he had an economist in a windowless basement office who said that the US economy was a house of cards and that a five-percent additional drop in world oil supplies after 2005 would collapse the US economy. (All of them had read Hubbert's Peak and Beyond Oil.) The conversation turned to implementing the idea. A deliberate cut in production would be too obvious. However, the welfare of the US economy was based on imports, not on production. The trick would be to increase in-country oil consumption, leaving less to export. All of these countries had price controls on gasoline. Maintaining the price controls and letting some of that additional national income from high oil prices trickle down to the middle class would do the trick. ("Middle class" is defined as owning, or being able to acquire, a car. Import second-hand gas guzzlers from the USA.) Nothing would seem to change locally, but globally the sky would fall. Here are some regulated gasoline prices, converted to US dollars per US gallon:

• Russia $2.10 per gallon
• Saudi Arabia $0.91 per gallon
• Kuwait $0.78 per gallon
• Nigeria $0.38 per gallon
• Venezuela $0.12 per gallon

Those prices are from CNNmoney.com in 2005; sources at other times put Venezuelan gasoline at five cents per gallon. If some of the oil profits worked their way down to the local consumers, a huge amount of oil would disappear from the world market. Exports would go down, taking the US economy down with it. As it happened, the house mortgage card got the naming rights for the overall collapse, but it was the energy and food costs that pulled the mortgage card out of the house of cards. At least for Russia, it backfired. Their banking system is in turmoil. However, Russia would not be the first arsonist to get burned after setting the fire.

OPEC is caught in a replay of the late 1970s, with the market for oil and the price of oil collapsing. The OPEC response on October 24, 2008 was to cut back production to support the price. If my fantasy hypothesis is true, a production cutback only amplifies the problem. In the wake of the October 24 OPEC announcement, the price of oil went sharply down.

I close by repeating my initial warning. I have no direct evidence that one or more countries deliberately initiated the financial collapse. However, as so often happens, I cannot disprove the hypothesis.

Be sure to click on both links as each presents a interestingly flat gaze view of the current situation.

A Final, Frantic Looting of Public Wealth

Naomi Klein in the Guardian | The Bush gang's parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth. The US bail-out amounts to a strings-free, public-funded windfall for big business. Welcome to no-risk capitalism.

In the final days of the election many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don't be fooled: that doesn't mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door. At a recent Senate banking committee hearing, the Republican Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. "How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?" Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bail-out.

When European colonialists realised that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.

Nothing so barbaric for the Bush gang. Rather than open plunder, it prefers bureaucratic instruments, such as "distressed asset" auctions and the "equity purchase program". But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese - a final, frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.

How else to make sense of the bizarre decisions that have governed the allocation of the bail-out money? When the Bush administration announced it would be injecting $250bn into US banks in exchange for equity, the plan was widely referred to as "partial nationalisation" - a radical measure required to get banks lending again. Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary, had seen the light, we were told, and was following the lead of Gordon Brown.

In fact, there has been no nationalisation, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish

Populism Arising....,

Chris Hedges at TruthDig| The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.

I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.

Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.

These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.

Eleventh Hour Rorschachnoir......,

Comes now my friends Submariner and Bro. Makheru with broadly divergent views on life in the belly and on what a possible Obamamandian management cycle portends....,

You're wrong Makheru. Barack is tougher than all these fools. He is what JayZ would be if he were a politician. He is beating white boys at their own game. Unfortunately, you and many others wouldn't be happy unless Barack said "fuck all y'all" and proclaimed his uncompromised support for Jeremiah Wright, reparations, and mass transfers of wealth. Your criticism is misguided in substance. What you wish to happen is, by definition, revolution. To work and succeed within the political system requires the maneuvers made by Obama. You may call him soft or weak but I got much the same comments while growing up in Jamaica, Queens if I read a comic or novel on the bus. In the final reckoning I was a young resident in charge of the ER when I saw the fellow working in housekeeping. Barack will be your next POTUS. He will make the same concessions and retreats as his predecessors(remember Reagan's response after Beirut or G.W. afetr Tbilisi?). He will commit similar treacherous acts at home and abroad. If you think all our past presidents are waffles then fine. But if you would try to make Obama something uniquely compliant than you are verifiably wrong. JFK, his most similar counterpart in my estimation, reluctantly made LBJ, a man he and Bobby outright hated, his VP. JFK openly stated that if he followed his desire for detente with the USSR that the JCOS would lead a coup against him. Another thing. White people aren't tough. They're just mean brutes. Tough isn't shooting mooses, chopping trees or chewing tobacco. It certainly isn't going out buying guns days before the election. Nor is it the pugnacity of your more sincere racists. That's a cover for anxiety. And Craig's favorite white boy led off with it.

White boys are just so weak and insecure. Never seen a tough one in my entire life.-- Doc Sub Dr. Sub, I assume you must have lived a sheltered life. While moving around Dixie I’ve met a lot of white men who are as tough as nails. I’ve had confrontations with these people; I’ve worked side by side with them, sawing down trees and splitting wood, and I’ve rubbed elbows with them in their bars. I’ve faced these people eye to eye and deep down inside, they respect strong Black men. They would never respect a waffling waffle like Barack Obama, who has no sense of loyalty to anything other than his political career. [Brad, 42, and Margaret Marcus, 47, who were at a Fairfax County shooting range recently with their two children for weekly target practice, said they sped up the purchase of two semiautomatic rifles that had been banned during the Clinton administration because they feared they could become illegal again if Obama wins. The couple, who run an online retailing business from their Ashburn home, said they viewed Obama's remarks about protecting the Second Amendment as campaign trail "pandering."] Personally, I’d rather deal with a redneck, raw-bone Dixie cracker any day, than those back-stabbing paternalistic white liberal elites who support Obama.

fascinating....,

As Gas Prices Go Down, Driving Goes Up

NYTimes | Doug Guidry gave up drag racing and boating last summer when gasoline prices shot up. Billy Castaneda put off trips to Houston to see his grandchildren. Randal Shul stopped playing paintball with his buddies to save gas.

Now, with gasoline prices dropping, all three men are hitting the road again. “Gas going down means freedom, even when everyone is worried about the economy,” Mr. Castaneda said as he filled his 1995 Oldsmobile 88 to drive 125 miles to Houston the other day.

The sharp decline in gasoline use earlier this year — with volume down nearly 10 percent in some weeks — suggested to many people, including the automobile companies, that a permanent change in American habits might be at hand. But with gasoline prices falling drastically in recent weeks, some American drivers are returning to their old ways.

What is happening in this blue-collar bedroom community of refinery, food processing and casino workers reminds energy analysts of what happened the last time the oil price collapsed. The frugality of the 1970s, when oil was high, eventually gave way to an era when people drove longer distances, lived farther from work and traded in their cars for minivans and then sport utility vehicles.

“Driving habits die hard, and they can reincarnate quickly,” said Christopher R. Knittel, an economist at the University of California, Davis, who studies gasoline demand. In the late 1980s, he added: “As soon as gas prices fell, there was no real incentive to drive less anymore. If oil prices continue to fall and the economy recovers, I would expect consumers to return to wanting larger and less fuel-efficient cars.”