Unemployment is Killing People

Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter

When considering the effects of unemployment, and the desultory, really uncaring response of the current Democratic administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, to the human devastation of joblessness, it is important to consider the terrible emotional and psychological effects of such unemployment. Such effects are well-documented, but rarely mentioned in articles or blog postings.

A well-regarded 2010 study by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, "The Anguish of Unemployment," quantified the tremendous emotional suffering engendered by unemployment. "'The lack of income and loss of health benefits hurts greatly, but losing the ability to provide for my wife and myself is killing me emotionally,' wrote one respondent to the survey." (See PDF for Powerpoint presentation of results.)

Just last April, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a study that showed that suicide rates rise and fall in tandem with the business cycle. The study covered the years 1928-2007. According to the CDC press release:

The overall suicide rate rises and falls in connection with the economy, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released online today by the American Journal of Public Health. The study, "Impact of Business Cycles on the U.S. Suicide Rates, 1928–2007" is the first to examine the relationships between age-specific suicide rates and business cycles. The study found the strongest association between business cycles and suicide among people in prime working ages, 25-64 years old.

"Knowing suicides increased during economic recessions and fell during expansions underscores the need for additional suicide prevention measures when the economy weakens," said James Mercy, Ph.D., acting director of CDC's Injury Center's Division of Violence Prevention. "It is an important finding for policy makers and those working to prevent suicide."

As a practicing psychologist, seeing clients for almost 20 years, I can say that the current economic depression has had a terrible effect on the people I see. I have also heard about more suicides in a short period of time than I have in years -- actually, ever. While this could be a statistical fluke, and I myself would never draw stark conclusions from the sample of one clinician, the spike in reported suicides is certainly something that fits the known epidemiological risks that accompany high unemployment.

Because of confidentiality issues, I can't talk about my own clients, but let's consider some other academic studies over the years about the effects of economic stressors, such as unemployment.

"After unemployment, symptoms of somatization, depression, and anxiety were significantly greater in the unemployed than employed." -- Effects of unemployment on mental and physical health. American Journal of Public Health, May 1985.

"Controlling for a number of individual characteristics, unemployed individuals are found to suffer significantly higher odds of experiencing a marked rise in anxiety, depression and loss of confidence and a reduction in self-esteem and the level of general happiness even compared with individuals in low-paid employment. This finding highlights the involuntary nature of unemployment." -- "The effects of low-pay and unemployment on psychological well-being: A logistic regression approach." Journal of Health Economics, January 1998.

"Unemployment was associated with an increased risk of suicide and death from undetermined causes. Low education, personality characteristics, use of sleeping pills or tranquilizers, and serious or long-lasting illness tended to strengthen the association between unemployment and early mortality." -- "Unemployment and Early Cause-Specific Mortality: A Study Based on the Swedish Twin Registry." American Journal of Public Health, January 2004.

"Unemployed individuals had lower psychological and physical well-being than did their employed counterparts." -- "Psychological and Physical Well-Being During Unemployment: A Meta-Analytic Study." Journal of Applied Psychology, Jan. 2005.

"SPRC conducted a literature review of relevant research published in the past two decades. The review shows that a strong relationship exists between unemployment, the economy, and suicide. A common “chain of adversity” can begin with job loss and move toward depression through financial strain and loss of personal control. In fact, this chain leads to myriad financial, social, health and mental health outcomes—all of them negative. The most common (but by no means the only) mental health outcome is depression, which significantly increases suicide risk. The associated financial outcomes (such as mortgage foreclosures and loss of retirement security) have not been researched with respect to suicide. However, the potential link is that for vulnerable individuals, losses (whether real or anticipated) that result in humiliation, shame, or despair can trigger suicide attempts." -- "Relationship between the Economy, Unemployment and Suicide." Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC), November 2008.

"There was a strong independent association between suicide and individuals who were unemployed (odds ratio 2.6; 95% confidence interval 2.0 to 3.4) and permanently sick (2.5; 1.6 to 4.0).... The association between suicide and unemployment is more important than the association with other socioeconomic measures." -- "Suicide, deprivation, and unemployment: record linkage study." British Medical Journal, Nov. 1998.

"Socioeconomic events are known to produce important fluctuations in suicide mortality. Unemployment, in particular, seems related to suicide risk along direct and indirect pathways. Blakely and co- workers’ paper in this issue adds to evidence indicating a causal association between unemployment and suicide. Their results indicate that this association is not attributable to confounding factors linked to the socioeconomic status and that it is only partly related to health selection or mental disorders." -- "Unemployment and Suicide." Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 2003.

Anemic Jobs Help from Washington Assures More Suffering

According to news reports, President Barack Obama has announced that he will be proposing in September a "jobs package" meant to stimulate job growth. The program, which reportedly will include yet more tax cuts, along with some infrastructure spending, appears yet another tepid approach to a problem that is seriously affecting millions of people. In fact, the government has sat and twiddled its thumbs while millions have languished in despair.

Unemployment is deadly. The effects of the capitalist boom-and-bust system seriously damage millions of lives. But with an almost daily bombast of propaganda about terrorism, the populace lives in fear, while wondering how they will make their bills, ground down between anxiety over ghostly terrorists and eviction, or how to put gas in their car, or afford a bus pass. Hopelessness stalks the land, not Al Qaeda. And yet the politicians in D.C. care little or nothing about the suffering their policies cause. Indeed, their pockets are lined with campaign donations from corporations that routinely layoff hundreds of thousands, and ship many thousands more jobs overseas.

Callous disregard for human lives is what links the terrible policies of war and torture with the policies of neglect and indifference towards the jobless. Such callousness is the by-product of a get-rich-quick ethos that worships profit over all else, over worship of a capitalist system that has brought about terrible world wars, massive depressions, colonial atrocities, and even genocide. U.S. society awaits its turn through the meat-grinder of history.

Meanwhile, the politicians only care about getting re-elected. Indeed, the blogosphere is too infected with following the minutiae of the fake political campaigns, while daily, minute by minute, people's lives are destroyed. Somewhere today, perhaps while you were reading this, someone has taken their life because they felt useless, with no hope of gainful employment, their self-esteem ground down, the sense of meaning and connection severed by redundancy and societal disconnection.

We need dramatic, radical change in this country, and we need it now. For many thousands, however, it will come too late. How many more individual lives, how many more families lives will be shattered by mental illness and suicide due to joblessness? The right to a job is the most fundamental of human rights.

Michael Moore Barn-burner: "America is NOT Broke"

I know this has gotten plenty of play on the Internets, but it's so good, it's worth another reposting.

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

Read the whole speech.

Unemployment Spreads Across the Land -- Pictorial

Sending a chill across our political-social landscape. The picture only hints at the human suffering such job losses entail.

H/T Susan Gardner at Daily Kos

Bill Quigly Deconstructs Right-Wing Myths About U.S. "Socialism"

Bill Quigley has written a very well-received op-ed at Truthout, Nine Myths About Socialism in the US. The entire article is worth reading. The right-wings huffing and puffing about the socialist actions of the U.S. government are laughable, if they weren't also seriously deranged. Here's the list of myths, but you'll have to go to the article itself to see how thoroughly Quigley debunks them.

Myth No. 1: The US Government Is Involved in Class Warfare, Attacking the Rich to Lift Up the Poor.

Myth No. 2: The US Already Has the Greatest Health Care System in the World.

Myth No. 3: There Is Less Poverty in the US Than Anywhere.

Myth No. 4: The US Is Generous in Its Treatment of Families With Children.

Myth No. 5: The US Is Very Supportive of Its Workers.

Myth No. 6: Poor People Have More Chance of Becoming Rich in the US Than Anywhere Else.

Myth No. 7: The US Spends Generously on Public Education.

Myth No. 8: The US Government Is Redistributing Income From the Rich to the Poor.

Myth No. 9: The US Generously Gives Foreign Aid to Countries Across the World.

What's amazing is that the truth is the diametric opposite of each of these statements. The right-wing and their media puppets have done a great job in selling a bill of goods to the American people. But it's difficult when every day one wakes up and looks around and sees that the accepted wisdom is so different from what one has been spoon-fed.

The American people will not remain indifferent to such deceit forever, and that is why I offer Myth No. 10: The United States is the freest country in the world.

Fact: According to the New York Times, the United States imprisons one out of 99 of its people. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are incarcerated. Approximately 1.6 million people who live in America, live their lives in cages.

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London. The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times that, or 750 out of 100,000.

Accepted wisdom promulgated by the mainstream media, and particularly (but not only) by its right-wing components, such as Fox News, is mostly a pack of lies. My thanks to Bill Quigley for writing such a concise and informative expose of the mythology of a self-deluded group of ideologues.

A Thing of Beauty in a Barbarous Time

Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis. — Ovid

With the economy imploding, and the wars, and crimes, and torture, and impotent political posturing -- even as the pockets of the people are picked on a daily basis -- there is a time, there must be a time for beauty, for a time apart the madness. We must remember what our humanity is, and why we even bother with the onus of civilization, with its exploitation and its barbarism.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his famous essay, "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences," provocatively asked whether it wasn't such condolences that bound us ever tighter to the chains of oppression:

So long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of men in their common life, the arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They stifle in men’s breasts that sense of original liberty, for which they seem to have been born; cause them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a civilised people....

What would become of the arts, were they not cherished by luxury? If men were not unjust, of what use were jurisprudence? What would become of history, if there were no tyrants, wars, or conspiracies? In a word, who would pass his life in barren speculations, if everybody, attentive only to the obligations of humanity and the necessities of nature, spent his whole life in serving his country, obliging his friends, and relieving the unhappy? Are we then made to live and die on the brink of that well at the bottom of which Truth lies hid?

Let it be remarked here that Rousseau went on to write one of Europe's first and most popular novels, and even composed an opera of his own!

But philosophy is not my intent here, only to select a respite from the sorry spectacle that 21st century capitalism has provided us, and the sure prospect that, unless humanity grab history in its puissant fist, things will only be getting worse.

The following aria and duet from Richard Strauss's opera, Arabella, is some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. The duet between the sisters in the last minute is as close to perfection as one will ever hear in vocal music. Who cares that the subtitles are in another language (Finnish?)?

Enjoy, and remember John Keats' epoch-making words:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

"Ich danke Fräulein - Aber der Richtige" from act I, Richard Strauss' Arabella, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris (2002) -- with Karita Mattila (Arabella), Thomas Hampson (Mandryka), Barbara Bonney (Zdenka), Günter Missenhardt (Graf Waldner), Cornelia Kallisch (Adélaide), Hugh Smith (Matteo), Endrik Wottrich (Elemer), Olga Trifonova (Fiakermilli), Sarah Walker (Kartenaufschlägerin) et al. Christoph von Dohnányi conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

(Oh, yes, the Latin quote at the top, it's from the opening of the Rousseau essay, and is translated, "In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.")

Boom and Bust, from a Notable Economist

While many of us find ourselves swallowed up by the panic stimulated by 24-hour news cable services and the dying daily press, when we consider the current credit crunch and threats of doomsday, it is important to get some perspective on what is really happening.

History provides us that perspective. The following description of the famous economic panic that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble that surrounded railway expansion in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century presents an illustrative example.

The economist writing here looked back at this famous economic collapse and drew some serious conclusions. The parallels between then and now are striking, even if "then" was over 150 years ago (emphases added):

The years 1843-5 were years of industrial and commercial prosperity, a necessary sequel to the almost uninterrupted industrial depression of 1837-42. As is always the case, prosperity very rapidly encouraged speculation. Speculation regularly occurs in periods when overproduction is already in full swing. It provides overproduction with temporary market outlets, while for this very reason precipitating the outbreak of the crisis and increasing its force. The crisis itself first breaks out in the area of speculation; only later does it hit production. What appears to the superficial observer to be the cause of the crisis is not overproduction but excess speculation, but this is itself only a symptom of overproduction. The subsequent disruption of production does not appear as a consequence of its own previous exuberance but merely as a setback caused by the collapse of speculation....

In the years of prosperity from 1843 to 1845, speculation was concentrated principally in railways, where it was based upon a real demand, in corn, as a result of the price rise of 1845 and the potato blight, in cotton, following the bad crop of 1846, and in the East Indian and Chinese trade, where it followed hard on the heels of the opening up of the Chinese market by England.

The extension of the English railway system had already begun in 1844 but did not get fully under way until 1845, In this year alone the number of bills presented for the formation of railway companies amounted to 1,035. In February 1846, even after countless of these projects had been abandoned, the money to be deposited with the government for the remainder still amounted to the enormous sum of 514 million and even in 1847 the total amount of the payments called up in England was over £42 million of which over £36 million was for English railways, and £5 1/2 million for foreign ones. The heyday of this speculation was the summer and autumn of 1845. Stock prices rose continuously, and the speculators' profits soon sucked all social classes into the whirlpool. Dukes and earls competed with merchants and manufacturers for the lucrative honour of sitting on the boards of directors of the various companies; members of the House of Commons, the legal profession and the clergy were also represented in large numbers. Anyone who had saved a penny, anyone who had the least credit at his disposal, speculated in railway stocks. The number of railway journals rose from three to twenty. The large daily papers often each earned £14,000 per week from railway advertisements and prospectuses. Not enough engineers could be found, and they were paid enormous salaries. Printers, lithographers, bookbinders, paper-merchants and others, who were mobilized to produce prospectuses, plans, maps, etc; furnishing manufacturers who fitted out the mushrooming offices of the countless railway boards and provisional committees — all were paid splendid sums. On the basis of the actual extension of the English and continental railway system and the speculation which accompanied it, there gradually arose in this period a superstructure of fraud reminiscent of the time of Law and the South Sea Company. Hundreds of companies were promoted without the least chance of success, companies whose promoters themselves never intended any real execution of the schemes, companies whose sole reason for existence was the directors' consumption of the funds deposited and the fraudulent profits obtained from the sale of stocks.

In October 1848 a reaction ensued, soon becoming a total panic. Even before February 1848, when deposits had to be paid to the government, the most unsound projects had gone bankrupt. la April 1846 the setback had already begun to affect the continental stock markets; in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Amsterdam there were compulsory sales at considerably reduced prices, which resulted in the bankruptcy of bankers and brokers. The railway crisis lasted into the autumn of 1848, prolonged by the successive bankruptcies of less unsound schemes as they were gradually affected by the general pressure and as demands for payment were made. This crisis was also aggravated by developments in other areas of speculation, and in commerce and industry; the prices of the older, better-established stocks were gradually forced down, until in October 1848 they reached their lowest level.

Perhaps, if you read all the way through, you would have guessed the economist in question was Karl Marx, writing in November 1850 for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue. His analysis of how the boom and bust cycles of capitalism persist was worked out a long time ago now. But, of course, "Marxism" is relegated to the dustbin of history by the triumphant U.S. rulers, who believed that the fall of the Soviet Union meant the eclipse of Marxist socialism.

But no great thinker or scientist has to worry that their ideas will be lost. The earth revolves around the sun, and gravity affects all celestial bodies, no matter how much the Roman Catholic Church had condemned Galileo. The anti-evolutionists can pillory Darwin, but evolution continues nevertheless, every day, as the continuing crisis over evolving bacteria and the problem of finding new antibiotics to combat them makes clear.

And capitalist cycles of overproduction, speculation, and economic recession/depression continue no matter how much free market ideologues produce diatribes (with a twinkle in their eye) over the demise of Marxism, denouncing either its error, or its lack of contemporary relevance.

Yet today, the failure of the capitalist system looms as a mighty sword of Damocles above the heads of billions, living as we do in a very interlocked world of economic ties. We depend on each other now more than ever. Yet antiquated systems, whether they are based on religious doctrines or Harvard Business School economic models, threaten the survival of us all.

Even more, these antiquated national systems form the basis of an international organization of nation states existing in competition with each other. The ruling class fetishizes competition as something good, until the irrationality of individuals -- or at another level, of individual nation states -- seeking gain at the expense of others degenerates into economic collapse, evoking the nightmare of the war of all against all, producing, perhaps, a third and devastating world war.

The defeat of the bailout plan in Congress early this week saw a temporary alliance of free market ideologues, eschewing state intervention (falsely) as "socialism", and a nascent populist or leftist opposition opposing a giveaway to the richest speculators and capitalists who got us in this position in the first place.

Neither group has yet grasped what was widely known only a generation or so ago: capitalism is doomed to create these cycles, and with it untold suffering. The effort to create socialist states and an alliance of same in the world met with horrendous defeat in the 20th century, victim of unremitting attack by the non-socialist world, and of its own internal weaknesses and irrationalities (e.g., trying to believe socialism could be created in a single country, irrespective of the rest of the world's organization or economy, which was the program of Stalinism).

Oh disbelieving reader, ask yourself this: if Marx could accurately predict the kind of scenario we are seeing today over a century ago, perhaps there is far more of value in Marxist analysis than you thought. Today, it is a scary thing still to be called a "communist," just as it was in Marx's time. The epithet persists as a form of unconscious recognition that something terrible is amiss in our world. It is not like being called someone who believes in the divination of the future by means of examining animal entrails; it is not an object of humorous ridicule. It is something to be feared. There is force, yet, in the word. That's because it represents something repressed. It represents the eruption into modern consciousness of a necessary truth. And the time has come to grab that truth again and wrest it into the world as a tool against the exploiters.

Eating Shit

And that's a pleasant way to describe the bailout in the works by the corrupt politicians of the United States, these narcissistic, craven sellouts, who couldn't bring themselves to stop their own country from invading another and killing 100,000s and displacing millions more, who couldn't stop their military interrogators and gestapo-like spies from torturing thousands. These moral zeros are about to send something just under a trillion dollars to the scions of finance capital. These latter have lived high off the hog, raking in millions, and in some cases billions of dollars, off a pyramid credit scheme, leaving us -- the suckers -- to pay up for a generation or more when their con finally went spectacularly bust, unraveling into a wilderness of economic "instruments" and "derivatives" so convoluted and intertwined that no one could ever untangle it.

So long, dreams of universal health care. Adios, decent educational system for all. Eat shit, crumbling infrastructure of bridges and roads and public buildings. Die, pathetic human beings flooded by unfixed dikes in hurricanes, or straining for unreachable help in a major earthquake, crushed by masonry, wood studs, and national indifference. (And fear not, fearsome Mars, our honorable military, filled with honorable men and women and rockets and bombs and infrared sensors and shrapnel-stuffed "devices," will not be touched by the cost of the precious bailout, but expands and expands even unto world domination!)

Selfishness rules the nation now. It always did, but now it sits on the crown seat, so that each and every one of us may walk by and pay obeisance to king god capitalism, untouchable, beyond criticism, beyond repair, leering down on you and me and our bedraggled children, prostrate, struggling to survive.

This is like standing and looking at the long, long sweep of empty seabottom, pulled back by the massive tsunami current, and waiting for cataclysm. They have announced the total bankruptcy of the system, and you still don't believe you'll have to pay the bill.

Poor, silly, deluded us.

But no fear, for German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill told us "how to survive" as far back as 1928. Here's your new bible. Here's the unbridled truth. Asking the question that ought to be asked, and soon the only question with any relevancy:

What keeps a man alive? It's his compulsion
to steal and cheat and kick his fellow man in the face.
We have to eat the shit without revulsion
and turn our backs on the human race.

You have to kill your neighbor to survive.
It's selfishness that keeps a man alive.

A More Sober Perspective (than me)

Edger over at Docudharma conjured up a quote from Nouriel Roubini regarding the unnecessary bailout. Roubini is professor at NYU's Stern School of Business. The selection below is from his blog, RGE Monitor:

Whenever there is a systemic banking crisis there is a need to recapitalize the banking/financial system to avoid an excessive and destructive credit contraction. But purchasing toxic/illiquid assets of the financial system is not the most effective and efficient way to recapitalize the banking system. Such recapitalization - via the use of public resources - can occur in a number of alternative ways: purchase of bad assets/loans; government injection of preferred shares; government injection of common shares; government purchase of subordinated debt; government issuance of government bonds to be placed on the banks' balance sheet; government injection of cash; government credit lines extended to the banks; government assumption of government liabilities.

A recent IMF study of 42 systemic banking crises across the world provides evidence on how different crises were resolved. First of all only in 32 of the 42 cases there was government financial intervention of any sort; in 10 cases systemic banking crises were resolved without any government financial intervention.

[snip...]

So this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the financial firms (not just banks but also other non bank financial institutions); with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money.

[snip...]

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.

FYI: Link to "discussion draft" of the new "bipartisan" version of the bailout bill, circa September 28, 2008, approximately 106 pages long.

Tinfoil or Purposeful Paranoia: Is There a Coup Being Planned in the U.S.?

Like so many obscure warning signs, in and of themselves possibly unrelated or ridiculous when placed in combination, the chaos that seems to be swirling around the U.S. elections in the final week of September is unsettling.

First, the U.S. ruling governmental clique announces that financial Armageddon is at hand, unless Congress hand over approximately a trillion dollars to the direct control of the executive branch, under the ostensible leadership of the Secretary of the Treasury. While met with much derision and suspicion, it appears some version of this demand is going to be met with bipartisan support this week or next. (As I write this, breaking news announces an agreement has been made in Congress for Bush's $700 billion bailout.) Meanwhile, even such stalwarts of the system as the top archbishops in the Church of England are blaming the capitalist system itself for this crisis.

Second, there is the strange maneuvering of GOP Presidential candidate, John McCain, and his ersatz VP candidate, Sarah Palin. Both are running to cancel their debates. Palin will barely even speak to the press. And now McCain took the opportunity of the financial crisis to announce a suspension of his campaign!

McCain's move is unprecedented, and raised eyebrows and fueled the rumor mills of Washington, D.C. From afar, the whole apparatus of the election starts to feel somewhat shaky, or as U.S. comedian/talk-show icon, David Letterman, put it, "This doesn't smell right."

State of Emergency?

So with the economy supposedly tanking, the GOP candidate ducking, and Congress staggering to satisfy their financial backers, while avoiding massive constituent anger at home, we get this third knock upon the door:

Thursday, September 25, 2008:: For the first time ever, the US military is deploying an active duty regular Army combat unit for full-time use inside the United States to deal with emergencies, including potential civil unrest.

Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army's component of the Pentagons Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the stated mission of defending the US homeland and aiding federal, state and local authorities.

Army Times reports it this way:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

Now, active-units have helped out in emergencies before, such as during Hurricane Katrina, but this seems to be something very different. This is no hurricane deployment:

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack....

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

So this is no ordinary deployment, and the 1st BCT is no ordinary brigage. They are the "Raider Brigade"!

In March of 2003, the 1st BCT was the first element of the 3d Infantry Division to cross the border into Iraq. The Raiders moved quickly north, fighting around the clock with regular and unconventional Iraqi troops.

After weeks of constant fighting, the Raider Brigade captured the International Airport, the primary strategic objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Brigade earned its reputation – Raiders First! – as the first unit to fight its way into Baghdad.

Bringing the war home

Where is this sense of governmental emergency coming from? There's been no attack. Only weeks ago, the government bigwigs were adamant the "fundamentals" of the economy were strong. They were certainly painting a pretty picture upon a far more grim canvas than they would admit, but Armageddon? the army deployed with beanbag bullets and huge "non-lethal" weaponry to subdue "civil unrest." I must ask... what the fuck?

The one common denominator in all this is the fact that Bush and the GOP stand to lose power, and a subdued citizenry may have an executive in power that, while Obama is clearly no revolutionary, may allow an empowered populace to go farther in taking control over events in this country than the financiers, generals, and politicians wish to let things go.

Are they ready to end democracy, even the figleaf of it that remains after stolen elections and infomertial campaigns have robbed democracy of most of its content and left it a brittle, empty shell?

One thing is clear. Nothing is sacred to those who hold power. Their greed and lust to hold onto power, and their fear of being held accountable even the tiniest bit, appears to have whipped up the ruling elite into a frenzy of fear-mongering, impulsive theft, and a trigger-finger when it comes to oppressing anything that could challenge their power in a real way. We only have to look to the massive police presence and crackdown during the national political conventions to see how intent the ruling class is on maintaining the facade of "order."

In modern terminology, anything that threatens that facade is "terrorism" -- even legitimate political dissent and protest. Maybe even a legitimate political campaign. If the country weren't transfixed by the Wall Street mega-drama, the population should be calling for the de-deployment of the 1st BCT from U.S. soil. We don't need them for civil unrest emergencies... or does the government know something we don't?

It's starting to smell really bad in this country. Something feels like it's afoot, something more than the ordinary electoral tomfoolery. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. Consider National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51:

... [which] specifies the procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency." Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

The directive specifies that, following such an [catastrophic] emergency, an "Enduring Constitutional Government," comprising "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government," coordinated by the President of the United States, will take the place of the nation's regular government, presumably without the oversight of Congress.[3] .... The directive specifies that the president has the power to declare a catastrophic emergency and does not specify who has the power to declare said emergency over.

I know this posting will forever classify me as a paranoid freak to those responsible types who like to pejoratively label their opponents and file them away. But if you think I like to think this way, then you're the one with a problem. I didn't like to think the country I live in could aggressively start a war, kill hundreds of thousands and make millions refugees, with minimal protest at home. I didn't like to think the U.S. government, in conjunction with many scientists and members of the medical and psychological establishment researched torture for decades, then saw to its implementation.

I just hope this is one nightmarish fantasy I don't have to live to dislike having come true.

[After posting this, I came across this article by Naomi Wolf over at AlterNet:

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom....

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

WashPost: Wall Street Steals Billions from Shareholders

Also posted at Daily Kos

OK, so the Washington Post article today doesn't stay "steal." The headline reads Dire Year on Wall Street Yields Gigantic Bonuses. And how big were these bonuses? Reportedly larger than the GNP of of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria, or more precisely, $39 billion dollars in year-end bonuses for the top five Wall Street firms. Meanwhile, shareholders in three of these five firms lost $80 billion dollars.

Now I know that economics is supposed to be the "dismal science," but who knew how dismal? The shareholders of these companies may want to pause and consider the math. The money out of shareholder pockets, much of which comes from institutional investments by union funds, IRA mutual funds, state retirement agencies, etc., goes directly into the pockets of a handful of the super-rich. Meanwhile these same firms plan to ax "at least 4,900 jobs as losses mount from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market."

Ah, this is capitalism.

Of course, Wall Street understands:

Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Bear Stearns together paid $65.6 billion in compensation and benefits last year to their 186,000 employees. Year-end bonuses usually account for 60 percent of the total, meaning bonuses exceeded the $36 billion distributed in 2006 when the industry reported all-time high profits....

"To many people, it will be shocking and questionable," said Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search. "People in New York in the world of investment banking will understand it. It's critical that pay is still there or you're going to lose really good people."

Something doesn't add up, and it's this: A small group of individuals have appropriated the massive wealth produced by a vastly larger number of individuals. So some people will wind up on the street, and lose their homes, and have their lives seriously disrupted or destroyed, all because another, much smaller bunch of people might walk off their jobs if they don't receive millions of dollars, even tens of millions, in extra money each year.

Call it government by extortion, an economy run on massive theft and fraud.

The candidates for president -- almost all millionaires themselves -- might raise enough outrage to summon up a soundbite on this. But don't hold your breath.

We need real change in this country. But it won't come until the American people rise up and demand it.

How hard will the bankers and corporations have to squeeze? How many lives will be destroyed before the irrationality of allowing such giant discrepancies in wealth will be recognized for the intolerable evil it is?

This story suddenly elicited an old tune in my head, Woody Guthrie's old ballad about "Pretty Boy Floyd":

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.