Van Jones, Obama’s “Green Czar,” finally got booted from the White House.

It’s hilarious to see that the Wall Street Journal reported it as such:

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs,” has been linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

The Journal has, of course, censored the real reasons why Van Jones is gone. No one remembers a 9-11 truther moment from 5 years ago, or cares, and the part about “derogatory comments about Republicans” is a bit anemic, if not laughable. Van Jones was contributing immensely to King Obama’s declining Messiah worship, and so it’s time to clean up Obama’s Dream Team, and get rid of the most radical denizens who are doing his popularity great harm. Van Jones was ultra-controversial not because of Glenn Beck’s show, and not because of FOX news bobbing heads that relentlessly pounded on his tendentious past. Van Jones was compelled to depart because he is not representative of mainstream American.

Van Jones, in obtaining his White House post, received a payoff for his years of tireless efforts in the name of Communism, militant greenism, redistributionism, and yes, anti-white-ism. He came from a radical power structure that was bent on obtaining positions of political power in order to direct payoffs—power, wealth, jobs—to long-time, fanatical associates, and undertake a major campaign to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the minority poor. He was a supporter of the Jena Six—a gang of black boys who engaged in a brutal beating of a white schoolmate—and he co-founded Color of Change, a radical organization dedicated to political empowerment of specific classes of people.

Jones was not a scientist who was dedicated to cleaning up the environment. He, like all people who aspire to high-level political radicalism, had a law degree so that he could move up the ladder of political opportunity. It just so happens that using the cornerstone of environmentalism—a cause embraced and loved by a majority of Americans—was his single greatest launch pad into the political mainstream, which was necessary to give his radical, Communist agenda some political traction. In using the “green” cause to gain attention and influence, he moved quickly through the power ranks, won the adoration of the media, and got noticed for his good deeds by the Left establishment. Look at all of the bullshit “awards” he won, just last year, as he was being placed into position for a mainstream, political appointment. He won a “Paul Wellstone” award, a “creative citizenship” award, and an “eco-entrepreneur” award from Howard University. And his career was kick started twelve years ago by the Rockefeller Foundation—what a surprise! Apparently, in the world of feel-good “awards,” this qualifies as entrepreneurship:

Last year, Jones led a coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups that persuaded the Oakland City Council to provide $250,000 in seed money for America’s first green-collar-jobs corps. He helped draft the Pathways out of Poverty legislation which pledged $125 million to train 35,000 people a year in green-collar jobs. And in February, Jones launched Green for All, an organization whose goal is to procure $1 billion in federal funding by 2012 for green-collar programs. “We are going to have to weatherize millions of homes and install millions of solar panels. That’s millions of new jobs. We need to connect the people who most need the work with the work that most needs to be done,” he says. [Emphasis added]

Do you see the pattern? He uses government money to redistribute the wealth to certain classes and favored causes under the guise of “necessity” due to impending environmental doom. These coercive machinations transpire well beyond Van Jones and his cabal of “creative citizens,” which is one reason why the environmental movement is so evil and anti-liberty. They use environmentalism and heartwarming green stories to make major power grabs and redistribute wealth in the name of saving the planet. After all, who can possibly oppose righteous programs dedicated to “saving the planet”?

Jones says, “We speak for the least empowered folks, the people who didn’t finish high school, the people with criminal convictions, the victims of Hurricane Katrina.” I suppose throwing the “Katrina victims” into that mix earned some more “awards.” The article also says, “Jones has a newfangled rap, but behind the exterior, he is an old-style activist—a political animal who is looking to government to fund his revolution.” [Emphasis added]

Americans, even the suburban androids that willingly recite the received opinion on green religion taught in the public schools, are not ready for a radical, avowed Communist and fanatical redistributionist. Americans are not willing to “fund his revolution,” because his revolution is against people who are successful, educated, middle class, paid legitimately for their work, and who are not among a minority class. Americans, generally speaking, have had it with the constant victimology and flaming up of race wars, and they just want to live in peace.

Lastly, this paragraph from the story in Fast Company is an indication of this man’s vulgar ego.

In Jones’s office, alongside all the speaking invitations are Superman logos and action figures—dozens of them. They’re in his car, too, and all around his house. Sometimes he feels like Clark Kent, he says, and needs to strap on a cape to get the job done. To an outside observer, the big S’s might also indicate supersize hubris. But then, maybe that’s what he needs.

Sayonara Superman. And take your cape and your dolls with you.

Neocon Kathleen Parker has written an amazing piece of tediously conventional anti-Southern trash in the Washington Post. Parker blames the dereliction of the GOP—which has become a party with barely noticeable distinctions from its Democratic opponent—on “ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks.” Miss Parker, in her bigoted sketch making modern Southerners look like slaveholder wannabees, refers to a “sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.”

Miss Parker hilariously hallucinates with politically correct fantasies that bring forth visuals of the glorious North still fighting the Civil War, still trying to end slavery in the South. Perhaps she is fantasizing about a contemporary version of Abraham Lincoln, a known racist, when she comments that the Republicans should collectively “drive a stake through the heart of Old Dixie.” According to Parker, her GOP—the GOP that gave us the Security State, the Patriot Act, myriad wars, a militarized police state, a corporatist Wall Street, and the worst budget snafus ever—is the good GOP. Yet it’s been co-opted by these roving bands of skeptical Southerners, fighting the mega-socialist state being put forth by Obama and his committed minions. How dare they! If only they could all just get along and play the partisan game, we could move forward swimmingly and enjoy our lives under tyranny in unity and peace.

As one who has grown up—and lives—in the land of the glorious, triumphant Union, and as one who has traveled extensively throughout the South since the early 1980s, learning about its people and its culture up close and personal, I have witnessed no greater polarization and racism than right here in the North. In fact, I invite Miss Parker (born in Florida, living in South Carolina) to come up here to Detroit if she wants to see hate, fear, and racism—of both the black and white variety.

Or perhaps, to save time, she can take the time to breeze through U.S. census data. It is well known that the most segregated cities in the U.S. are northern, and in fact, most data shows that they are midwestern industrial cities. Whether or not you use the 1990 census data or the 2000 data, the cities on the list remain consistent: Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago, Buffalo, Gary, Newark, Cincinnati, etc. Yet since a few scattered Southern Republicans oppose the merging of the minds for a Republicrat-Demopublican joint force to subdue liberty once and for all, it must be that hate-racist thing rearing its reptilian head again.

I once considered Parker, who has written some wickedly fantastic social commentary, to be a constructive ally in the war against stupidity and political correctness. However, something called “9/11” happened that united the Republican party around the neocon party line, drumming up support for total state, total war, and the suppression of individual liberty through the Bush-Cheney faction’s “war on terrorism.”  The you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us religion that materialized post-9/11 caused even the tongue-in-cheek conservatives, like Parker, to go bonkers with plastic patriot disease.

The neocon Republicans like Miss Parker—I’d rank her as Neocon Lite—cherish their alliance with Washington establishment, hence the cozy relationship with left-leaning media outlets such as the Washington Post. As Salon writer Glenn Greenwald once noted:

The Washington Post does more to advance neoconservative ideology than The Weekly Standard, the American Enterprise Institute and Commentary combined.  But Post columnist Charles Krauthammer—and so many like him—fantasize that they’re surrounded by a Liberal Media that oppresses, persecutes and silences them.  Just ponder the levels of delusion and self-pity necessary to believe that.

Some of these writers, like Parker, occasionally get sassy toward the establishment on muted issues such as political correctness, feminism and environmentalism, but overall, adherence to bread-and-butter issues as race, war, the war on terror, the Security state, and the current White House political doctrine is self-evident. Kathleen’s bio in the Washington Post states her claim to fame:

But it was in the days and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that her attempts to “inject a little sanity” established her as a premier commentator. Her writings in support of American troops, first-responders and other front-line participants in the war on terror were among the reasons The Week magazine named her as one of the country’s top five columnists in 2004 and 2005.

In a catfight that I’d pay to see, Ann Coulter, who can oftentimes belt a high-and-outside knuckleball over the left field wall, paid a visit to Parker’s column in her August 13 polemic.

The latest fake insider/whistleblower is Kathleen Parker, the Barry Lynn of the South. Fresh off her mainstream media tour as a Sarah Palin-hating “conservative,” Parker is now a self-proclaimed Southerner blaming opposition to Obama’s policies on the region’s reputed racism.

… But Kathleen Parker has leapt into the fray to explain that the opposition to Obama’s agenda is pure Southern racism. And she’s from the South, so it must be true!

As she put it on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball”: “One word, Chris—one word. ‘Confederacy.’ I mean, you know, the South is very—I live there, OK? I want to make that clear, too, because I’m not bashing Southerners.”

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Since Kathleen Parker, a declared Southerner, is in fact ignorant of history and can only recite modern scuttlebutt that will please her colleagues in the media and Washington D.C., I’ll remind her of the scholar Alex de Tocqueville, who said, in Democracy in America, “Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.” Some things haven’t changed in the last 150+ years, Miss Parker. Y’all come on up here and learn for yourself instead of flinging rhetoric from the establishment pulpit known as the Washington Post.

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]]> Articles by Karen De Coster tag:takimag.com,2009:article/1.9103 2009-07-31T16:26:06Z 1999-11-30T00:00:00Z Karen De Coster rothbardiancpa@yahoo.com

News Flash—Blacks Like Malt Liquor!

Black Entertainment Television (BET) refers to me as “a White blogger.” But they got my name wrong.

It goes back to this blog post from July 7, 2009, where I commented on Detroit councilwoman JoAnn Watson, who referred to the Billy Dee Williams Colt 45 malt liquor billboards, which are located in the city of Detroit, as “racist.” My argument went like this:

Well, true, this billboard only appears in the city and not the ‘burbs. How dare we be honest and admit that white people generally don’t like malt liquor and thus they are not a target market for the product. Burton snowboards and Birkenstocks are not marketed toward black folks because they are generally not buyers of those products. Why does everything always have to be drawn and analyzed along racial lines, and made into some corporate conspiracy against blacks?

This article by Eddie B. Allen, Jr., a Black writer who lives in Detroit, appears on the BET website, dated July 29, 2009. Mr. Allen quotes me as such:

“Well, true, this billboard only appears in the city and not the ‘burbs,” writes White blogger Karen de Coster. “How dare we be honest and admit that White people generally don’t like malt liquor and, thus, they are not a target market for the product.”

By the way, I did not punctuate that sentence the same way (making it a dishonest quote), nor did I capitalize “White.” However, Mr. Allen, or perhaps his editor, chose to rehash my quote, and then Mr. Allen conveniently chose to omit my subsequent comments:

Burton snowboards and Birkenstocks are not marketed toward black folks because they are generally not buyers of those products. Why does everything always have to be drawn and analyzed along racial lines, and made into some corporate conspiracy against blacks?

The essence of marketing is that somewhere there is a target market for the product that is being advertised. The market can be drawn along racial lines, income brackets, geographic areas, gender, class, religious lines, or age group. Buicks were always marketed toward older, white men—though General Motors has since tried to break down the perception that the Buick is exclusively an old geezer’s car. Buyers of Birkenstock and Teva sandals are almost always white, and the consumers of these products also tend to hold certain political views and promote predictable lifestyles. A Birkie wearer is much more likely to be spotted in Portland or Durango as opposed to inner city Detroit or the outback of Arkansas. Locally, where I live (Detroit suburbs), I glimpse billboards for pricey jewelers and fine dining on the west side, in ritzy Oakland County, and I see billboards for Hooters and domestic beer on the east side in blue-collar Macomb County.

Marketing gimmicks may not always be in good taste, or even moral, but they are created for the purpose of drawing customers to certain brands by appealing to their emotions and discrete habits. Accordingly, referring to malt liquor ads as “racist,” without justification for such a designation, is hysteric victimology.

In the case against Malt Liquor ads, who exactly is the racist? Billy Dee Williams? Or the Pabst Brewing Company? A corporation, as a whole, cannot be racist, so who in the corporation holds racist views? An executive in the marketing group? The entire Board? The CEO? The guys who devised and pitched the ad? Who? In the midst of all of these hysterical “racist” claims about malt liquor advertising, there are never any explicit, coherent arguments behind the allegations. Instead we get piffling and tempestuous declarations claiming victim status because of some big, bad, undefined enemy who is deemed “racist” via arbitrary verdict. Why doesn’t Mr. Allen, as a reporter, take the time to explore these claims deeper and bring forth some substance?

Mr. Allen then writes the following:

But critics from Missouri to Michigan find the slogan tragically ironic. Malt liquor, they argue, “works” all too well in the Black community, and has contributed to alcoholism and stagnation for years.

Malt liquor, indeed, contributes to alcoholism, just as casinos play a role in gambling habits and heroin contributes to drug addiction. I can dig up plenty of low-income, white folks who have had many Budweisers contribute to their alcoholism and stagnation as well. My neighbors serve me up a reminder almost nightly. Budweiser is, of course, marketed heavily toward the white working and middle class, as well as poor white people because they make up a large segment of the Budweiser market. Is Budweiser bigoted? Do the people of Budweiser hate blue-collar workers and the poor?

The Malt liquor market is clearly dominated by black consumers. In the illuminating online article, “A Story without Heroes: The Cautionary Tale of Malt Liquor,” the author cites numerous quotes from studies and books which reveal that black consumers make up as much as 75 percent of the malt liquor market. The author also considers targeted marketing and malt liquor and points out the brand influence imparted by advertising.

A common charge against brewers of malt liquor is that they use targeted marketing on vulnerable black audiences. In fact, all marketing is targeted. You will never see an ad for denture adhesive on MTV, and you will never see an ad for the Apple iPod on an episode of “Golden Girls.” No advertiser pays to send a message to consumers who are not likely to use their product or service.

Advertising cannot sell you something you do not want. People commonly abstain from buying malt liquor, cigarettes, tampons, and fishing line, in spite of seeing ads for these products all their lives.

Advertising does influence brand selection. Businesses advertise so that when you do go shopping, you will choose Maytag instead of Whirlpool, Kohler instead of American Standard, Birdseye instead of Green Giant, and yes, Kool instead of Newport, Colt 45 instead of Olde English.

In terms of stereotyping, blacks are often associated with watermelons, BBQ ribs, hip-hop, and yes, malt liquor. Whites are associated with country music, cheap white zinfandel, and overpriced, triple-shot “grande” lattes with non-fat, extra-hot milk and a shot of sugar-free caramel syrup, with exactly three squirts of whip cream on top. In fact, the website Stuff White People Like became immensely popular by stereotyping and lampooning people who cling to giddy fads and elitist tendencies, but only because it was originally perceived as making fun of white folks. Yet SWPL did not escape the wrath of the Racism Police. It was said ‘round the Web that by defining what one group of people like (white people), the site’s authors were thereby defining that which all non-white people (minorities) didn’t like, and therefore that was stereotyping, which was immediately equated with racism. Think you can digest that?

In this age of obscene political correctness, the use of epoch stereotypes is considered to be so evil as to be on par with a crime. But then again, thinking the wrong way can be a crime. “Hate crimes,” which are supposedly crimes of “thought,” have been validated by government decrees that punish the purported thought process behind the crime, in addition to the criminal act itself.

Frankly, the preoccupation with discrimination and the creation of victim classes escapes me. When I look at the abundance of allegations of “racism” and “discrimination,” and calls for hate crime legislation for every new victim class, I just don’t get it. I can’t make sense of the victimology ruse and the constant obsession with the notion that someone somewhere doesn’t like you because of a particular property you have that they don’t share. My gender was formerly an elevated victim class, but in this era of numerous victims dueling for the distinction of being singled out for attention, it seems women no longer get any special status. I guess I’ll have to find some other idiosyncrasy that will foist me into the casualty class.

The one mistake consistently made by the PC Language & Thought Police is in thinking that their fixation with this stuff, along with bringing constant media attention to their issues, is beneficial and “healing” for society. Instead, it just continues to fan the flames of old race wars and start new wars if the old ones don’t catch on too well.

In fact, it’s enough to make one think that it’s entirely intentional.

I’ve come to admire Michele Bachmann, especially since she nailed Timothy Geithner to the wall while repeatedly asking him what provision in the Constitution gave the Treasury Department the authority to manage markets and the financial services industry. On that note, I found this story to be delightful. Try to not laugh at the last paragraph.

This is a plucky move by Bachmann. The census is a critical pet project for the Obama administration, and forcing people to accept it at face value, without reservation, is important for maintaining eternal citizen obedience to this invasive and unconstitutional endeavor.

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Now, before you write me and say, “Ms. DeCoster, those Republicans .... where were they when? ..... how can you? ... don’t you know that?...” forget it, don’t write me and bring that up. I know all that and have written about it elsewhere. Yes, I know that most of the Republicrats didn’t give a tinker’s damn about reckless assaults on liberty while their guy was heading up the plunder party. But Michele Bachmann, like a few others in Congress, has received an education in liberty courtesy of the Ron Paul Revolution. Moreover, educating (and radicalizing) those who have the political power to screw up our lives has been a big part of the Revolution’s success.

We should be delighted each time Republicans sound like libertarians and we should welcome these pivotal moments. We have to keep on pushing the enlightenment process forward. Understand that the election of an arrogant, power-hungry Marxist (who happens to be a Democrat, thereby pissing off the Republicans) is a significant opportunity for us to move in and educate angry conservatives, especially those who are seated closer to the margins. The fact that the Republicans are sounding like classical liberals or libertarians so that they have ammunition to counter the Obama strategy is not a bad thing.

Look at Ron Paul’s HR 1207 bill, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009. He started with no co-sponsors, the list built slowly, and then it picked up steam until over half of the House of Representatives came to co-sponsor it. Michele Bachmann was an early supporter of that bill, and she has been marvelous on many occasions. I am hoping that she, and others like her, will continue to move forward on many issues critical to the anti-state movement. If we can capitalize on Republican resentment over the Obama regime and its war on freedom and free markets, we need to do it, and as often as we can. Along the way, we should welcome those Republicans who are having a change of heart and supporting Ron Paul’s ideas and his vision. We should even welcome Rush Limbaugh’s occasional lapse into quasi-libertarian belligerence, if it serves to spark further skepticism from his android listeners. 

Be mindful that Bachmann is actually intelligent, unlike Sarah Palin, who is a trained monkey and came out of nowhere, thanks to her gender, sprightly sparkle, and the problems with McCain’s uninspiring, snooze-a-rama campaign. Bachmann is also articulate and pretty—which is never detrimental to a woman in politics—and comes across as steady and confident. The attribute of hers that gives me hope is her tendency to reveal recurring signs of un-Republican-like behavior.  Questioning the constitutionality of the census and making Timothy Geithner stutter like a pickled parrot are just a couple of strong points in her favor.

Actions in Bachmann’s favor are that she voted against the Wall Street bailouts, opposed the auto industry bailout, questioned Bush’s plan to increase troops in Iraq, opposed greater subsidization of student loans, opposed light bulb tyranny, correctly blamed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for their part in the economic meltdown, opposes a one-world currency, has spoken out against mandatory government service, and isn’t fooled by the political agenda of the global warming alarmists. Bachmann also understands how Warren G. Harding’s lack of economic intervention in the 1920-21 Depression allowed the economy to rebound quickly (she’s been paying attention to Tom Woods). She has even spoken about the roles of Hoover, FDR, and the Smoot-Hawley tariff in magnifying the Great Depression, in spite of mixing up some of those facts along the way.

Without question, there are many concerns swirling around Bachmann, such as the fact that she comes from a Christian fundamentalist background and has, in spurts, shown support for the Iraq war and large-scale aggression in the Middle East. She also speaks too much about “anti-Americanism.” However, along those same lines, when Bachmann went on MSNBC’s Hardball and said that members of Congress should be “investigated” for anti-American views, perhaps the response from her five democratic colleagues in the Minnesota House delegation was even worse than her own conduct. Those democrats issued a statement that said, “For Michele Bachmann to go on national television and say that members of Congress should be investigated for ‘anti-American views’ calls into her judgment and her ability to work in a bipartisan way to put the interests of our country first in this time of crisis” [emphasis mine]. To the contrary, her ability to remain independent, and her refusal to follow behind the (bi-)partisan pack, is one of Michele’s great strengths.

Sure, Bachmann’s fundamentalism might presents some problems, and it’s unlikely to change; however, considering we’re facing Obama fast-paced socialization of the country, we should welcome combatants like Michele Bachmann who are willing to step up and challenge the regime on some pivotal issues.

Bachmann regularly attends Ron Paul’s Washington lunches where a small, informal group gathers to hear a variety of radical speakers—such as Tom Woods and James Bovard—who are hand-selected by Ron Paul. She’s read Meltdown, the book by Tom Woods, which succinctly explains the economic collapse from an “Austrian” perspective (and doesn’t blame the whole thing on “greed” or “deregulation”). And according to Woods:

I’d like to see Bachmann continue along her path, learning from Ron Paul and finding her rebel roots. And she appears to be educable! Which is more than you can say for most everyone else in Congress. And she’s not afraid to stand in the firing line on her own. Let’s watch this lady carefully over the next couple of years. There may be many more bright moments.

Ron Paul, who’s long been a man on a lone crusade, needs all the assistance he can get on the House floor. With all the controversy being created by the hubristic Thief-in-Chief, there’s a bustling market for rebellion, and Ron Paul’s Revolution is just now rolling into prime time.

Don’t Suspect a Friend, Report Him!

As most of us know, Kansas City, Missouri is a haven for international and domestic terrorists. Pakistan and Afghanistan are small potatoes compared to this insurgency stomping ground. The kooks who tend to flourish in Missouri are young, law-abiding liberty-seekers who advocate Ron Paul’s limited-government ideas; third-party proponents who supported Bob Barr’s presidential bid; and constitutionalists who stand behind Chuck Baldwin’s push to inform the masses of the menace posed by our unconstitutional government.

Recently, a Freeman in Missouri pointed out a website to me that he saw advertised on the local tube: PrepareMetro KC. The purpose of the website-courtesy of the Metropolitan Emergency Managers Committee-is to convince the comfortably numb among the masses that they can “help detect and prevent terrorism.” The website reports:

Terrorist operations begin with extensive planning. You can help prevent and detect terrorism—and other types of crime—by watching out for suspicious activities and reporting them to the proper authorities. Watch for the Seven Signs of Terrorism:

   * Surveillance
   * Seeking Information
   * Testing Security
   * Acquiring Supplies
   * Suspicious Behavior
   * Trial Runs
   * Getting into Position

The Metropolitan Emergency Managers Committee is kind enough to include a video version of “Identifying Terrorists for Dummies.” In the video, actors play out the seven signs so you can learn what a terrorist looks like. Accordingly, “anything out of the ordinary” is deemed a “possible terrorist plot or threat,” and it is stressed that such abnormal behavior must be seriously assessed and investigated. At 3:55 of the propaganda production, a jogger runs by a man on a park bench writing in his notepad. I looked for signs of grenades, big ole bombs ‘neath the bench, or an assemblage of scary-looking darkies toting box cutters in the background, but no such thing is apparent. However, since spending time alone to write in a notepad outdoors is a highly suspicious, deviant, and subversive activity, the jogger, disturbed by the sinister notebook, stops to pull out her cell phone and call the police.  She’s being a good girl, executing the kind of response the chief fearmongers desire from a model citizen. This stuff is like chicken soup for the loyalist soul. We’re all Soviet snitches now.

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Whenever my father would see this sort of thing cropping up, on TV, in ads, or in the general attitude of the populace, he would remark, in a tone of repugnance, “We are a nation of helpless idiots.” Thus I developed the ability to discern the sensible from the absurd while growing up.

The propagandists who dream up these lame security alerts circulate the idea that none of us are ever safe because there are terrorists everywhere, and thus we, the loyal citizenry, must be aptly trained so that we may detect the telltale signs of the guerrillas among us. And the perception that these propaganda campaigns attempt to implant is that our greatest threat is domestic terrorism. They may be our friends, neighbors, the plumber-a lone guy on a park bench-or the church member who insists on homeschooling his kids. Either way, we need to learn how to ferret out those seditious types and report them to the Proper Authorities.

Among my favorite disinformation campaigns are the interminable announcements that blare from the foghorns in government airport terminals. “REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS PERSONS OR ACTIVITY…REPORT ANY UNATTENDED BAGS…REPORT ANY STARBUCKS CUP OR SLICE OF PIZZA CRUST LEFT UNATTENDED…” Report, report, report. Tell, tell, tell. 

So why airports? Since airplanes have become flying Greyhound buses, and airports have become ground zero for the dumbed-down lumpen proletariat, the listenership at airports is ripe for inane propaganda. In a place where people are herded like cattle and searched like criminals, it’s not hard to break down their already unenlightened state and further melt their mindset toward a helpless condition. Similar to the military recipe for breaking down individuality, Homeland Security’s TSA aims to break down any resistance they may face from any individual. Because you have to be somewhere and have little or no alternative to flying on a quasi-governmental Greyhound bus, and because you must pass Go before you collect your $200, you have no choice but to enter through the TSA’s turnstiles of terror. At this point, people are intimidated and uncertain, which leads them to look for something that provides comfort. So the TSA goons ensure you they are working to help you, protect you, and keep you safe. They scare you, make small talk with you, and then pretend to secure you. So suddenly, people feel better and the feelings move from being intimidated to granting approval and thanks. The psychology of the process is quite simple and rather perverted, but it works on the majority of the herd.

The government’s anti-terrorist propaganda seeks not to dumb down the populace, but to convince people that they are already dumb, helpless, and uninformed, and so its purpose to “pull them up” through its awareness campaigns that enlighten one from the level of boob to educated informant. Moving to such heights does wonders for the self-esteem of idiots.

As much as the state perpetuates this nonsense and the scaremongering in order to keep the masses in favor of its “protection” (thus paving the way for the funding and expansion of government), remember that whenever the government-either federal, state, or local-plants the ideas of “everywhere and always there are terrorists,” there are willing citizens who voluntarily latch on to these ideas and take great pleasure in promoting and spreading that mentality. Behind the federalized Homeland Security operation there lies an abundance of state, county, and local autocrats who are more than happy to adopt and spread the message of fear and the necessity of state security.  Their rewards are power, position, and monetary gain. On top of that, the majority of the masses who are being sold the security message are willingly-and often enthusiastically-buying the government’s prescription.

The tyranny of the masses is, and has been, a significant apparatus for serving the government in its crusade toward a totalitarian agenda. As long as the majority of the people are so passive as to welcome the government’s false sense of security, it will have an audience to which it can market its duplicitous spin. And when those same people accept the propaganda as meaningful and necessary, they grant it legitimacy and engender its growth.

This essay is dedicated to my father (1926-2008), whose powers of discernment and evaluation were second to none. My Dad, an inventor who refused to ever use the patent system, chose not to trademark his very original expression.

I received a very interesting email from a reader. He said he is helping a friend’s daughter write a college essay on xxxx speech, and “after much mutual painful time spent, she still didn’t seem to grasp it—not the language, but the principle and its application.  They were only sentences to her, not statements she could understand. She is an honors grad, with many plaudits and by all accounts an excellent student. But she can’t seem to correlate the xxxx speech to modern times.”

I was engaged by his email because I reflect on this dilemma often. The answer to why people seem smart but can’t think is not so complicated as it first appears. There are plenty of (supposedly) “smart” people who can be trained, like a monkey, to cram for an exam (or exams); get a college degree; remember procedures related to an occupation; take steps to complete a task, etc., etc. It is the use of critical thinking that demonstrates the difference between being smart and possessing intelligence (intellectual ability).

As a Certified Public Accountant working for many years in public and corporate accounting, with lots of colleagues who are endowed with CPAs, MBAs, etc., I am not hesitant to say that there are many very well-trained monkeys in the workplace, but very few critical thinkers, let alone any of those really strange birds, autodidacts. Most “A grade” college students are intellectually impotent outside of the classes for which they have had to “cram.” Thus others who lack the same critical thinking skills and powers of discernment base the plaudits given to most of these kids on erroneous assumptions.

College “honors” mean zero, zip, nada. Even worse are the silly “honors” attributes bestowed on public high school students. Honor student? Dean’s list? Give me a break. These kids can be taught to study for tests and pass them with an A or B, but most of them don’t have the wherewithal to tackle and solve everyday problems in their simple home lives.

As to the “honor” kids who are regarded as exceptional, when they grow up and work real jobs they can go down one of three paths:

1) They may have little work ethic, a lack of common sense, or limited (or no) ability to think, and therefore they are barely passable—or substandard—as employees.

2) They can apply themselves and remember their tasks and do what they are told to do (or be trained to tell others what to do—think “managers”), and therefore they are sufficiently good employees and appear competent, at least on the surface, because they get the work done.

3) They can stand out above others because they a) are self-directed b) have unbounded ambition c) can critically assess situations and apply problem-solving techniques d) will create ideas and bring them to completion e) are motivated to learn new skills f) and they can communicate succinctly via written word or verbal expression.

My assessment is drawn from my many years in corporate America, dealing with extraordinarily bright people, competent people, and mostly, those people whom I refer to as the “daily transactional types”—the ones who need to be trained what tasks to do on what days, and they will do it, but don’t dare ask them to think, and don’t expect them to assess or analyze anything that falls outside of their neatly-designed, one-dimensional box.

I can tell you about accountants with MBAs who never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, even when these institutions headlined the mainstream news each day. I can tell you about a CPA who won’t read non-fiction books because the “big words” are too intimidating. Most of my colleagues have never read a book—especially non-fiction—since the college days. Newspapers may make it into their daily regimen because, for most people, reading a newspaper is predictable in content and scope, and therefore it lacks the intimidation factor of a hardbound paperweight with hundreds of pages of unforeseen words and ideas.

In fact, some of the best accountants I know are people who:

1) Did not do well in college and/or failed the CPA exam several times before passing.

2) Are not CPAs.

3) Have no accounting degree or any formal education therein.

4) Attended what are deemed “inferior” colleges.

Understand that corporate America desires mediocrity in filling its job ranks. Mediocre people are smart enough to get the job done but they are not so bright that they can cause upheaval for the established blue bloods. They are willing to be pigeonholed, trivialized, or dumbed-down in exchange for a sense of belonging within a collective framework. Mediocre people are less likely to overpower their superiors. They secure only the necessary amount of formal education needed to paint the right picture on their resumes.

Formal education is just a process. It is an approach for starting a career and sustaining a suitable occupation, because nowadays a college degree is necessary for so many well-paid jobs. People don’t want to do hard labor anymore, as with the skilled trades, so they compile their honors certificates and squirrel away in the classroom, even if they aren’t committed to bona fide personal enlightenment. Formal education doesn’t mean diddly-squat if a person cannot raise himself above the level of a task-driven android and engage many of the endless possibilities for knowledge on the job, and especially, in intellectual life outside of the place of employment.

For many people, their job is their life because it is something they are “trained” to do. It’s all they have outside of kids, a lawn to cut, and golf on Sundays. For me, my formal education garnered me an established career—a satisfactory and oftentimes challenging occupation that both feeds and funds my passions. If I knew little about the world outside of my job, the one-dimensional life would crush me with boredom and leave me with the life of a trained monkey.

I’m still a youngster—right on the borderline between Baby Boomer and Generation Xer. I’m considered to be cool, I still say “hip,” but I’m old-fashioned. I dress less-than-conventional, and in fact I am labeled by my friends as retro. I like short skirts, open necklines, and form-fitting, flared jeans, but I don’t like the skanky or sleazy look. And I dislike anything frumpy or old ladyish.

But I reckon I am considered to be fashion intolerant when it comes to the mass acceptance of nauseating apparel conventions concocted by slick individuals who devise ludicrous ways for satisfying peoples’ desire to look absurd. Thus my overall lack of admiration for the fashion intelligence of the masses has lead to this misanthropic musing on four current fashion fetishes that are a source of irritation for me whenever I am in public.

The first item up for assault is crocs. These are hideous, plastic shoes that come in colors which rival children’s toys. They are appalling yet everyone wears them. A friend of mine called them “the lazy person’s shoes.” Indeed, you don’t have to think about what to wear and you don’t have to bend down to buckle or tie anything. Just slip on a pair of the neon-colored, plastic junk things and they go with everything. What’s worse is that men wear these things and it makes them look like girly-boy weenies. While I am out and about—restaurants, stores, wherever—I see whole families wearing them. In west coast coffee shops they are the standard shoe code. A few weeks ago I was in a west coast, upper-middle class java retreat when a family of four walked in and each one of them was wearing different color crocs. Dad was sporting neon green. True individualism! Why ban smoking when you can have just as much authoritarian pleasure banning those unsightly things? Believe it or not, crocs even come in camouflage for men, and that ain’t a pretty sight.

The second thing I loathe is the wearing of flannel pajama pants in place of real pants. Laziness compelled young kids to start wearing their flannel pajama pants in public and so clothing manufacturers caught on—a new fashion! They marketed to the stupidity of the follow-me masses and made pajama pants for all-day use. One may ask: why do people wear pajama pants out of the house? Because modern humans are, by nature, accommodating followers who lack the wherewithal to be skeptical or employ critical thinking skills. They do what other people do without question. If other people wear pajama pants to Applebee’s or the movie theatre, they will follow the fad. In fact, Michael Jackson wears pajama pants in public. But Michael Jackson also cuts up his facial parts and bleaches his skin, so, whatever.

The pajama pants travesty is primarily a female trend. And I say female because it’s not just young girls—older gals wear them, too.

Women who are pushing well into the forty-something age bracket are wearing these when they are out with their daughters who are also wearing them. Isn’t it nice that Mom is willing to pal around with her teenagers and join the fool’s parade? I’ve got a newsflash for Moms with protruding bellies and expanding hips in flannel pajama pants in public: someone should put you all in a corner in a state of “time out” and flog you until you come to your senses. Since when do friends let friends leave the house in pajama pants?

Now for the worst thing: ask me how often I see people out in public wearing pajama pants and crocs? Well, don’t ask me because it’s too annoying to think about.

Another really imbecilic style that is considered “fashion” is the skinny jeans look. Every one of these things ever made should be hung on a clothesline and shot with multiple pulls on the trigger of my Remington 20-gauge. This would probably catch on as a fad (hole-filled skinny jeans), and people would start shooting at their jeans and I could become a wealthy entrepreneur by patenting and producing such nonsense.

These jeans, just because they are called “skinny jeans,” are not meant to make you look thin. The “skinny” refers to the fact that they have a skinny cut and are meant to emphasize a “skinny leg” look.

Problem is, skinny people don’t look good in their namesake jeans. Girls always look distorted and chubby, even if they are truly thin. Skinny boys wear them and it makes them look feminine or androgynous. Some are after that look, so it’s suitable. If kids in skinny jeans aren’t bad enough, we now see older people—women and men—wearing these things because the kids wear them. The kids look bad in them, but the parents look ridiculous and embarrassing. Why do parents think that they can wear the same clothes as their fashion-frenzy, follow-thy-leader teenage children and look good? Just this week I saw two women my age walking in the mall, shopping together, wearing skinny jeans and 4-inch heels. They both looked like lopsided potato sacks on stilts.

Skinny jeans attempt to accentuate the thinness of the legs—even if the wearer’s legs are not genuinely thin. Thus it follows that the width of the waistline will be over-emphasized. A thin woman’s waistline looks the width of a middle linebacker’s shoulders in skinny jeans. I once grabbed a pair of skinny jeans and tried them on for purposes of testing my own intolerance. They were enormously uncomfortable and they made my waistline (size 2-3) look like a plastic bag overstuffed with Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Another fad on the receiving end of my contempt is anything from Hollister. Young kids are addicted to this overpriced, low-quality clothes retailer. For purposes of private empirical studies I have walked around a Hollister store twice—just recently I was in the store at the Mall of America near Minneapolis. I have to hand it to the company marketing execs—they know how to capture a market with nothing but brand-powered momentum. The kids go to Hollister stores to buy something, anything with a Hollister logo because they have been taught that they are judged (and they will judge others) based on a logo on a t-shirt or the bag that carries it out of the store. A Hollister clothing item means that you are someone of value. The same t-shirt, were it to come from Kohl’s, could not possibly add to the self-esteem of the professional consumer child.

Hollister is a religion among the suburban middle class wanting to be popular. Shopping at that money trap is a way of life for kids whose self-esteem is based on what they know about what other people think about the way they look. Hollister stores have a freakish atmosphere that siphons the kids in: the entrances look enticing from the outside, there are no windows, and they play obscenely loud music inside. Once inside, the stores are dimly lit (so you can’t see how crappy the clothes are) and mysterious, yet they are intentionally arranged so that it is difficult to squeeze through the aisles without bumping into everyone else. Hollister clothes for males are in the contemporary style: androgynous and cut for the starved-skinny look.

On a few occasions I have seen one of the fashion crimes of the decade: adults wearing Hollister clothes when they are with their children. That is a part of the “let’s be pals” mentality that parents want to convey to their children. They listen to the same music and wear the same genre of inane clothing, and thus give the impression of being juveniles on steroids. I predict that Hollister is a credit bubble business that will one day go away. Hopefully. 

Clearly, I had to bring this article to an end at fashion atrocity number four—otherwise, disparaging remarks may have gotten out of hand. I could go on and on about how easy it is to sell copycat, self-esteem-in-a-box to a bunch of credit card-enabled twits who, in their desperation to be individualists who look just like everyone else, will snap up just about any obnoxious trend that comes along.

Just don’t condemn me for being cantankerous and intolerant. You, too, can be the same if you try hard enough.

I went to Bath & Body Works at the mall one morning just before the Christmas shopping season. There I was, an adult with a good job and a career, and I was scrounging for sales and coupons so that I could spend $10 and get items worth $33. In the checkout line there was a woman and her daughter—the girl was about 10 years old and very chubby. The woman was buying a bunch of expensive lotions, fragrances, etc., and she put it on a charge card. The clerk asked the lady for her email to update the computer, and the lady replied that the items were “her daughter’s purchase.” So the girl, with a huge smile on her face, gave the clerk her email and got her bag of luxury-item goodies. The child then turned around to leave the store. I then noticed the words plastered on her t-shirt in huge, obnoxious letters:

I Love to Shop
AND SPEND MY MONEY
All the Time

Unfortunately, that little girl is merely a poster child for the rest of America’s children as a result of the intemperance of the bubble years, brought to us by the government’s money machine, the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s expansion of credit and the money supply gave birth not only to all those “no money down” subprime mortgages but the “buy now, pay later” culture of credit-card debt, mountains of which the American public piled up throughout the Greenspan/Bernanke years.    

So there was Mom, teaching her child that at 10 years old she too can have luxury items at premium prices, because life is all about spending money (Mom and Dad’s money) and accumulation. Perhaps Mom should be teaching her young daughter about preserving her body and health for the long term, instead of blasting through the malls putting her random desires on charge cards? The child’s obesity, the adult luxury items on a credit card, the t-shirt declaring that accumulation brings pleasure—these are all signs of a depraved and appalling culture that is destroying a large segment of the current generation. Parents are zealously passing on their financial irresponsibility and spiritless lives to their children. That woman’s brainless imprudence will become that poor child’s future.

Years of credit bubble-ignited consumer excesses in America have produced one aftermath that is markedly tragic—the professional child consumer. Children learn, from a very early age, that life is enabled by money because it is money that buys them all the stuff they want to own. Kids have become professional consumers. They covet so they buy, courtesy of parents who are financial slaves to their children’s infantile impulses.

Don’t blame the kids—they have grown up as the progeny of shop-a-holics. They have been taught to relieve boredom by going to the mall and aimlessly wandering, looking for something to buy, whether or not it is desirable or useful. In fact, whole families frequently roam the malls, going from store to store, passing the time because the parents are bored and don’t have a clue about inspiring their children to engage in cerebral or productive activities. Kids, especially those in the suburban middle class, seem to have little interest in hobbies, crafts, or self-centered activities.  They are not content to be alone. They must be surrounded by people and things that entertain and amuse; the mall has become the new home away from home.

Shopping and buying has become a form of therapy for this generation. Purchasing new things makes kids happy. At times it seems to define their existence. It’s only a short-term happiness because they soon get bored and want something else. Whereas hobbies engage and shape the mind for the longer term, discretionary shopping as a means of ‘entertainment’ provides a temporary stimulation that only lasts as long as the shopping trip or purchase.

A truly unfortunate development is the compulsion to shop among young boys. Where it was once the male posture to loathe and avoid malls, young males have become every bit as addicted as the girls. Instead of spending time shooting shotguns in the woods and blowing up things behind the garage with chemistry sets, they obsess on buying skinny jeans and overpriced, paper-thin t-shirts from Hollister.

Kids and parents alike are fools for peer pressure, and thus they usually want what other people have. One bizarre trend that has become painfully apparent is young, middle-class girls being in possession of posh items such as a Coach purse—which typically cost $350 and up. Not only is this a sign of financial folly, but it only reinforces the perception that these kids are adept at identifying luxury consumer items and maneuvering the purse strings of their parents until they get the object of their obsession.

Another most remarkable phenomenon of the present times is the epidemic of big bash blowouts for kids. For instance, birthdays and special events used to be times for intimate celebrations with close family and friends. Outside of the truly wealthy, these celebrations were generally simple and inexpensive. The boom years, however, produced the mindset that children must have elaborate gatherings. Every communion, birthday, and graduation is now an historic moment that demands an oversized, exorbitant party at a rented hall or other notable venue such as the local yacht club, pricey bistro, beach house, or other suitable parlor with rental options. I guarantee you that among discerning consumer-children and their upwardly parents, the neighborhood VFW hall is not an option. Every event in a child’s life therefore becomes a big party to spend big dollars—each kid has to have a social gathering more impressive then the last event hosted by some other kid at school. The parents feed this mentality by endorsing the child’s grandiloquent wishes, and then they fund it. Usually, it’s another priceless Mastercard moment. Kids scoff at the thought of a birthday party at the home, inviting a few of their best friends. How unworthy they’d feel!

Of course, there will always be people who will blame the corporations and their peddling techniques. Granted, there is a pervasiveness of marketing campaigns aimed at children, but it is the adults who choose to plant their kids in front of the babysitting boob tube or drag them around the malls as a hobby, perpetually exposing them to the over-commercialized facets of life. The spend-o-rama habits of the bubble-addicted masses have facilitated the perfect target market for companies looking to capitalize on kids who heavily influence family spending habits and financial decisions. Gone are the days when parents said “no” (and when no comebacks were accepted). So let’s not blame it on the “evil” corporations and marketing titans. The shop-and-spend tone funded by government monetary policy is cultivated and encouraged within the home.

Perhaps the worse outcome in all of this is that kids have been taught to consume, consume, and consume more, but they never learn that they have to be a producer in order to become a consumer.

Young children are strangers to hard work or chores, and teenagers are no longer expected to get a job outside of the home and produce in order to consume. Thus they don’t learn the importance of working, saving, developing practical options, and arranging priorities. Instead, kids learn to make meaningless brand distinctions, they discover what things merit bragging rights, and they become proficient in keeping up with the Joneses.

Producing and saving just isn’t going to cut it with these kids. They have been trained to splurge beyond their means and have not been taught to plan for their futures. And this generation, unless they modify their behavior and slash their consumer compulsions, may very well have some bleak prospects ahead of them.

Because real wages have not been rising, the growth in consumer spending could only have been financed through borrowed money. Debt, which allows consumers to have cash on hand that hasn’t been earned or saved, has given Boobis Americanus the ability to live beyond his means, at least for a little while. And a great many have taken up this “pay later” lifestyle, accumulating a great many houses, cars, and other things.

A favored form of debt for funding extraneous purchases has been the home equity line. During the housing bubble, homes became virtual ATMs. Whereas home equity was once used for purposes of improving the home for the long-term, it became a source of quick cash for reckless buyers eager to turn their home into an instant showplace. First there’s the actual house, then comes the Martha Stewartization, followed by the furniture, the landscaping, the lighting, the additions, the appliances, and on and on.

The government’s mantra since the days of the New Deal has been the “right to own a home.” In the modern version of “the American Dream,” a starter home is treated as a humiliation, as everyone has the right to own a great, big home in an esteemed neighborhood, and preferably one of new construction and with all the bells and whistles. The term “being house poor” used to be a negative connotation. During the bubble it became a bragging right.

Even worse, home equity has been funding the purchase of everyday consumer durables, especially those items that tend to be discretionary in nature. Home equity has funded the kind of purchases that should be funded from earned, saved monies. A perpetually (and rising) line of credit induces consumers to “bite” at the availability of easy money at low rates, and thus they take the cash and spend their way to a perceived prosperity.

For the average person, “things” have become identical to wealth. They equate the accumulation of “stuff” with “being loaded.” Accordingly, everybody has been well-heeled in these bubble times. The availability of debt at bargain rates and the glory of immediate accumulation due to debt quickly erodes the values and common sense of people.

Some of the more pompous—and truly false—signs of prosperity can be seen within the automobile bubble. With the onset of the have-pulse-will-loan credit market, auto consumers have been bypassing common sense for a bloated sense of reality. Everyone deserves the biggest, the best, and the most custom vehicle they could dream up—and one’s income shouldn’t mater. People with mediocre wages purchased Escalades, Lexus SUVs, and other luxury-type vehicles, with many of these cars costing far more than the purchasers earned in a year. Additionally, the roads are now littered with brand new cars that have expensive aftermarket wheel sets, tires, boom-boom stereo systems, and gaudy-but-costly custom trim. In fact, stock, solid-transportation vehicles are no longer sufficient for the spoiled masses enjoying an overdrawn standard of living. Debt has funded the majority of these extravagant purchases, yet we call it “prosperity.”

Auto consumers have not been compelled to pay market rates for their cars because they lease perpetually at discounted rates or get ultra-incentives from automakers desperate to keep the assembly lines moving with the UAW gang breathing down their necks. Leases have been a financial disaster for the auto companies, but the wild impulses of buyers, fueled by below-market interest rates, propped up that racket long enough so that Lexus and Mercedes dealers were popping up in wholly middle-class neighborhoods. Both Chrysler and General Motors have discontinued or cut back their unworkable lease programs. Additionally, buyers have not been required to put substantial down payments on new vehicle purchases. Cars have come on the cheap, with pushed-down interest rates, no down payments, and terms extending the payment plan to six or seven years.

Accordingly, with the housing market imploding and the entire banking system resting on wilted stilts, Americans are left with a devalued dollar, escalating costs of living, a massive federal bailout of Wall Street’s derelict financial management, and the nationalization of some of the country’s largest banks. The standard-of-living squeeze has made its way to Main Street, slowing down the spend-o-rama of the middle class, as retail sales numbers are starting to hit the skids.

The bursting of this bubble and its unwinding could result in some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. People—especially younger folks—who have been reared on the splendiferous way of life that debt offers, will be resistant to changes which will require lower time preferences (longer term views) and more careful planning in terms of shuffling around priorities. As Main Street endures a stifling credit crunch; inflation; increasing interest rates; scores of home foreclosures; cut-off of home equity lines; a job market squeeze; soaring federal, state, and local taxes; and the inability to manipulate low-interest credit cards to cover shoddy financial decisions, there will be restlessness amongst the masses, especially from those people who have never had to live within their bona fide financial means.

Some of this anxiety has been witnessed already, as lenders who are taking back homes in foreclosure have been dealt some vile vengeance from bitter homeowners who take to vandalizing their homes before they vacate the premises. This problem is said to be present in almost half of all foreclosure cases nationwide. The response from lenders has been to take the most economical path and actually pay the vacating ex-homeowner to refrain from leaving behind a trail of destruction as leaves his property.

The worst part of the contraction will clobber Main Street with a shortage of the consumer credit that became an addiction for so many individuals. The price we pay will be oodles of socialistic legislation aimed at containing the fallout in order to further sustain the fictitious prosperity a bit longer. Central planners act on the notion that the unhappy reality of hitting bottom can be delayed indefinitely. Thus the cycle of fiction will be lengthened, turning a headache into a migraine, and perhaps even worse.

The central planners in Washington, along with the Federal Reserve, planned and fueled an unsustainable standard of living across the country, from the neighborhoods of McMansions to the ghettos. The impending bust will affect us all, regardless of whether or not we partook in any of those easy-credit orgies sponsored by our leaders in Washington.  

The federal bailout of negligent Wall Street firms is analogous to the government enacting laws that enable certain people to visit a casino, spin the roulette wheel, and pocket gobs of cash when they win—and if they lose, get subsidized so they can go back and do it all over again.

After two votes in Congress, and a week of disinformation, scare tactics, and threats, the glitterati of Wall Street have finally realized their ambition: They have managed a coup that enables them to occupy the halls of power, overseeing and manipulating the very financial markets that either make them or break them. Consider them “made” and the rest of us broke.

On Monday, September 29, the House originally rejected the bailout bill, with 228 brave “nays” stopping Bush & Co. in their tracks. As the week went on, congressmen were bought and bullied, and many lost their nerve. Tons of pork was tossed in to buy votes. Representative Gabrielle Giffords voted “nay” on Monday, but then her vote was purchased with some solar tax credits, which were added to the final version. Other morsels include auto-racing tracks, tax benefits for fishermen, welfare for rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and a healthcare provision forcing insurance companies to provide for specified mental health coverage.

When pork didn’t work, ultimatums were issued. Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, whose a