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A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon The so-called “sit in” on the floor of Congress is a cynical and hypocritical joke, leveraging the image of the Southern Freedom Movement and piggybacking on secret, arbitrary terror watch and no-fly lists imposed by the Bush-Cheney administration after 911. Where was the sit-in when Congress cut $5 billion from food stamps, the sit-in for a living wage, or against police murders and mass incarceration or the stolen California primary vote?
Dems Congressional “Sit-In” A Cynical, Hypocritical Election Year Stunt A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon The so-called “sit-in” on the floor of Congress launched by House and Senate Democrats is a fraudulent and transparently cynical exercise in partisan branding and election year theater.
Brands neither mean what they say nor say what they mean. Brands are marketing devices, calculated to evoke a desired set of emotions, to call forth real or imagined memories in an audience, independent and apart from facts or logic. Atlanta congressman John Lewis and his colleagues are leveraging his rep and the “sit-in” brand for their resonance with the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Keen observers on social media pierced the hypocrisy almost immediately.
“Color me unimpressed,” wrote Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, author of from Black Power to #BlackLivesMatter (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/From-BlackLivesMatter-to-Black-Liberation) in a Facebook post that was shared thousands of times almost immediately.
“Where was the sit-in when Congress was cutting $5 billion from food stamps? Where was the sit in where is the sit-in for affordable housing as Congress continues to cut HUD to shreds? Where is the sit-in against police brutality in our cities? Where is the sit-in against the Supreme Court ruling yesterday that guts the Fourth Amendment and revives 'stop and frisk' policing? Where is the sit in to demand equitable funding for our nation's public schools? Where is the sit-in to end racism and the criminal justice system? This smacks of election year tomfoolery...”
Worse still, the so-called “sit-in” piggybacks on the secret and arbitrary “no-fly” and “terror watch” lists, which some of those same Democrats denounced back in the Bush Cheney era. Back then they rightly pointed out the criteria for landing on those lists is secret, and once on the list there is no appeal and no way off, though the State Department does revoke your passport, also without appeal. Government places people on those lists it cannot charge with any crimes. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the government has placed Muslims on the no-fly and terror watch list when they refused to infiltrate and inform on their neighbors, or when their names were similar to someone else's. Democrats, like California Rep. Barbara Lee once opposed hysterical and secret government blacklists noting that any sort of activist out of favor with the government could land on these lists.
But now it's election year and they have very few issues to differentiate themselves from the other capitalist party. So they want to use the secret government blacklist and the civil rights brand to score meaningless points against Republicans.
Congressional Democrats are not stupid. They know perfectly well they could be sitting in to end these secret lists. They could be sitting in to explain how the second amendment was put in the Constitution to permit armed slave patrols, and land theft and genocide against Native Americans. They could be sitting in for a living wage and universal single payer health care, or cutting the Pentagon budget by two thirds. Instead Democrats deliberately chose to sit in for this, instead of forgiving student debt, instead of addressing climate change or black unemployment or mass incarceration.
Since John Lewis and his hypocritical crew are just as much the party of the one percent as Republicans, their disputes with Republicans are confined to carefully staged food fights between meaningless brands. This is the party that wants to control Congress instead of Republicans.
This is why it's time to chuck both the one-percenter capitalist parties, and do something completely new. For Black Agenda Radio I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com (http://www.blackagendareport.com/).
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and co-chair of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.
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(http://www.thebellforum.com/)
(http://www.thebellforum.com/)








ba radio commentary (http://www.thebellforum.com/category/other/ba-radio-commentary)




More... (http://blackagendareport.com/sit-in-hypocrisy)

Man, how ridiculous Democrats are. They are charlatans to the bone. Often, many Democrats will not even realize they are phony scammers - it has all been so internalized. And none of them, not a single, fucking Democrat has any shame, at all. Name one! You can't, because they are all royal class shitters, grifters, con-artists; two-bit barkers for crappy tent show that ran out of crowd appeal over half a century ago. And now they're groveling around on the floor of the House, singing protest songs and chanting slogans they none believe (even if some once did). It is a sorry spectacle, an embarrassment to gutless shills everywhere. The Republicans should have just stood around pointing and laughing. Trump should use the footage of this awful mess in his campaign ads...Clinton sure won't...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClsIJtnUYAA-zhu.jpg

Sums it up...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClsIJtnUYAA-zhu.jpg

Sums it up...

Perfect. Shows how fucking dishonest these world class assholes are.

This is a broad commentary on BAR (amongst other things) rather than a specific comment on "the Sit In" (which just needed a catchy name a la the infamous French "Sitzkrieg").

Bruce/BAR hammer on two fronts: unremitting social criticism and (related, but not the same) the complete and total breakdown of capitalist society (social crisis, economic crisis, etc). In the past BAR has pointed to the odd lack of concomitant POLITICAL crisis in the United States (especially in the 2012 election). It is here that the (lack of) power of BARs analysis betrays them. Even four years ago the point was arguable (the signs of deep cracks and fissures ran much deeper than the Tea Party) but now it is become even more obvious that the political alliances forged over 80 years ago on the eve of a Counter Terror gone very wrong (from their perspective) have frayed to the point of breaking and will no longer hold.

If real Socialist revolution produced a 100 year Interregnum (anax once quipped it knocked them sideways for a century) that period ends Now (1917-2016). We're about to see what capitalist rule really looks like.

If we're to have any positive impact aside from being an echo chamber for BAR etc, it falls on us to elevate the dialogue. BAR is doing good work (and certainly we are called on to contribute in the same vein) but there are multiple angles/axes from which to attack.

If there is any power in our materialism it has to rest on the basis of our ability to understand the world in a coherent way rather than piecemeal.

If real Socialist revolution produced a 100 year Interregnum (anax once quipped it knocked them sideways for a century) that period ends Now (1917-2016). We're about to see what capitalist rule really looks like.

We are living it now. It is more insidious than dystopias imagined by Trot snitches or drug addled petty booj. Those were crude approximations, the distance between the real and common understanding has never been greater. People have less of an accurate idea of what's happening in distant places than the did in the 19th century. The scientific consensus on matters of climate/environment is paid lip service then effectively ignored even as evidence and body counts rise. Surveillance is becoming ubiquitous, imprisonment is more common than any point in history, police violence is endemic. What passes for culture and entertainment gravitates towards Huxley's "feelies". We have alway been at war with AlQueda/ alQueda is our ally, with no exlpaination even asked for by the courtiers. And all this without the iron glove, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Old white folks will be equated with welfare queens, you can see this shaping up in the coverage of the Trump campaign, and social regression will be presented as good and necessary, perhaps even cool:


Social Security Isn't Going Away — But It Is Going to Get Worse
By Michael D. Tanner

January 30, 2015 | 4:05 pm
Seventy-five years ago, Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont received the first American Social Security check. Ida, who lived to be 100, ultimately collected $22,888 in benefits. Because she had paid only $24.75 in Social Security taxes, the national retirement program turned out to be a very good deal for her.

Unfortunately, it's not such a good deal for today's young workers. Thirty year olds now will be lucky to receive a 1.5 percent return on what they pay into the system, far below what they could earn from investing that money privately. In fact, many will die before they get back what they paid in, let alone collect any extra return.

That's because Social Security operates very much like a pyramid scheme. When you pay your Social Security taxes, none of that money is saved for your retirement or invested. Instead, every cent you pay in is used to provide the benefits to those who are already collecting. When you finally retire, your benefits will come from the taxes paid by the next generation of workers — your children and grandchildren.

Unauthorized immigrants paid $100 billion into Social Security over the last decade. Read more here.

Like any pyramid scheme, Social Security was able to deliver a windfall to early recipients like Ida Mae, who received their benefits when there were lots of workers and only a few retirees. Today, however, Americans are living longer and not having as many babies, meaning there are more retirees and fewer workers to support them. In 1950, there were 16.5 workers supporting every retiree. Today, there are 2.8. And by the time today's young workers retire, there will be just over two.

Does that mean Social Security won't be there when they're ready to collect? No. As long as there are people paying into the program, retirees will be able to take benefits out. Unlike a pyramid scheme, Social Security cannot go broke as long as the government can make future generations pay taxes.

But if fewer young workers are there to support each retiree, one of two things will have to happen: Either those young workers will have to pay more (tax increases) or retirees will have to get less (benefit cuts).

To pay all the benefits promised in the future, Social Security would have to increase the payroll tax by as much as half, or slash benefits by 23 percent.
The government has already raised Social Security taxes more than 40 times since the program began. Initially, the maximum tax anyone had to pay was $60, or 2 percent of the first $3,000 in wages paid by both the employer and employee. Today, people pay 12.4 percent of their first $118,500 in wages. Even after inflation, that's a roughly 1,490 percent increase.

To pay all the benefits promised in the future, Social Security would have to increase the payroll tax by as much as half, or find that revenue elsewhere. The government can always cut benefits, but without a tax increase those benefits would have to eventually be slashed by 23 percent. That would be very hard for seniors who depend on the program to get by.

Until recently Social Security ran a surplus, taking in more in taxes than it paid out in benefits. That extra money was used to purchase government bonds, which became so-called Trust Funds to pay future benefits. Of course, once a bond was purchased, the money used to buy it became general revenue and was spent by the government. So the Trust Funds are simply an accounting measure of how much money the Social Security system is owed by the federal government. The bonds are basically IOUs.

That's not to say that the government won't make good on that debt. It always has and likely always will. But the money needed to redeem the $2.8 trillion in bonds currently in the Trust Funds comes from the government's general revenue — that is, the taxes being paid by today's workers. There's no free lunch.

The Trust Funds will be empty by 2033. That's the point at which Social Security will either have to make that 23 percent cut to benefits, or raise taxes by about half.

America shouldn't just fund Social Security — we should expand it. Read more here.

There is only one other answer to Social Security's growing crisis: Let young workers who wish to get out of this pyramid scheme to do so, and save a portion of their taxes for their own retirement through personal accounts. Allow that money to be invested in assets that earn a return, such as stocks, bonds, annuities, and so forth. The average annual return on US capital investment over the last century has been roughly 7.28 percent after adjusting for inflation, far better than what young people can expect from Social Security.

The program will have to change in the future. But as we debate Social Security, it is vital that young people be involved. They have the most at stake.

Michael D. Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @MTannerCato

https://news.vice.com/article/social-security-isnt-going-away-but-it-is-going-to-get-worse

More of the same from 'the other side of the aisle':


Op-Ed The new racial generation gap

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5681fdab/turbine/la-oe-1229-frey-racial-generation-gap-20151229-002/750/750x422
Students protesting discrimination and a lack of diversity on campus occupy an administrative center at Occidental College in Eagle Rock on Nov. 16. (Los Angeles Times)
William H. Frey
In the 1960s, a flip but still effective aphorism summed up the rebelliousness of youth: “Don't trust anyone over 30.” As it turns out, that admonition is a much more fitting bumper sticker for today's student activists than it was 50 years ago. Young people now — the post-millennials — face a far deeper generational divide than the one that separated baby boomers from their parents. And the nation faces a far more serious crisis if that divide cannot be bridged.

By 2023, whites will comprise less than half of the U.S. population under age 30... [This puts] recent campus protests into sharp perspective.
The wave of mostly white, mostly middle-class boomers that flooded college campuses in the 1960s got swept up in a variety of causes — Vietnam, civil rights, feminism. They questioned authority in ways their Depression- and World War II-era parents never did. Yet it could be argued that most of them had little reason in general to object to the status quo. They had benefited from post-World War II prosperity and government programs, such as the GI Bill, that allowed their parents to raise them in comfortable suburban homes and send them to free, decent public schools. Later, Great Society initiatives such as the Higher Education Act of 1965 enabled them to attend college in historic numbers at a reasonable cost, and there were jobs in the offing after graduation.

Back then, public investments in America's families and youth were embraced by older generations who wanted their children and grandchildren to achieve the American dream. The situation — and the demography — is much different today.

The younger population of the U.S. is now highly diverse. Racial minorities, who are not always from the middle class, represent roughly half of the students in the nation's K-12 public schools. That level of diversity is destined to increase: Since the 2010 census, in 46 out of 50 states and in nearly 9 out of 10 of the country's 3,100 counties, more white youths have turned 20 than were born or in-migrated. By 2023, whites will comprise less than half of the U.S. population under age 30. More important, the entire white working-age population will decline by 12 million over the next 15 years because of aging and retirement; that means young Latinos, blacks, Asians and other minorities must take their place.

This new diverse majority of young people will have far fewer advantages compared with the white-majority boomers in the '60s. Although high school dropout rates among young black and Latino students have been falling, four-year college enrollment is well below whites', a situation compounded by high attrition rates. Should these patterns continue, the nation will see an absolute drop in college graduates after 2020. Moreover, income inequality is hitting the younger minority generations particularly hard, as evidenced by their continuing high rates of child poverty. It is still the case that many blacks and Latinos attend highly segregated, under-resourced public schools and lack the finances and guidance to get into postsecondary programs that are the best pathways to the middle class.

These facts, and America's inevitable demographic future, put recent campus protests into sharp perspective. The complaints voiced by black, Latinos and other minority students (and their white allies) strongly indicate that a racially prejudicial environment still exists at four-year colleges, which remain more white (61%) than the students in the K-12 pipeline. Yet it is imperative that minority students succeed at these colleges. These slow-to-change institutions must successfully invest in diversity, making minorities' contributions, voices and concerns central to their educational mission.

The message needs to be heeded beyond college campuses as well, by public officials, corporations, even city police forces: Investing in the success of today's diverse youth is critical for the entire nation, which needs a productive labor force and its attendant contributions to Medicare, Social Security and other programs.

The baby boomers in particular need to hear the message. Now in their 50s and 60s, too many of them are more concerned with lowering their taxes than investing in the younger generation. Given the choice between a larger government that offers more services and a smaller government with limited services and lower taxes, white boomers are far more likely than millennial or Gen X minorities to choose the latter, according to a 2013 Pew survey. And it has been shown that those states with the largest gains in minority children, but mostly white seniors — including Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona — rank among the lowest third of states on a measure of child well-being that includes education, health and other areas in which state government programs can assist.

Such attitudes among older whites — the only growing segment of the white electorate — shouldn't necessarily be interpreted as racist. Instead they reflect a fear of the unknown, potential negative economic consequences for themselves, and a lack of personal connection with the younger generation outside their own families.

When the nation's college students return to campus after winter break, it would be understandable if they added a new slogan to their petitions, tweets and picket signs: “Don't trust anyone over 30, and especially don't trust anyone over 50.” Older, white Americans need to recognize diversity's importance to the nation's future, and once and for all realize that the 1960s are long gone.

William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a population studies professor at the University of Michigan, is author of "Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America."

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1229-frey-racial-generation-gap-20151229-story.html

When Cato & Brookings are on the same page it looks like ruling class consensus to me. Uh-oh.

Social Security Isn't Going Away — But It Is Going to Get Worse
By Michael D. Tanner

Wow, Mr. Tanner, you sure explained thing good! But why didn't you mention that rich folks don't have to pay into Social Security? If all the rich folks paid in the same percentages on ALL their money that all us peasants do, wouldn't that make a difference? Aren't they citizens, too? Don't they have a share in the welfare of all their fellow citizens? No? Hhm...

When Cato & Brookings are on the same page it looks like ruling class consensus to me. Uh-oh.

Yeah, and everything couched in terms of competition between generations and races - no mention of capitalism.

Surveillance is becoming ubiquitous, imprisonment is more common than any point in history, police violence is endemic.

That stuff is expensive -- monetarily in terms of production and equally in terms of morale. Those are signs of the imperialists losing their grip. There is no such thing as the "new normalcy" because normalcy was always the exception -- and extremely pricey to boot.

That stuff is expensive -- monetarily in terms of production and equally in terms of morale. Those are signs of the imperialists losing their grip. There is no such thing as the "new normalcy" because normalcy was always the exception -- and extremely pricey to boot.[/COLOR]

You know, that was always the flaw in Morgan's (I think) statement that he would just hire half the working class to kill the other half. There is no profit in that - only expense. And when he would have been finished with the killing, he would have wiped out his reserve labor army and there goes wages right up. I know he was speaking figuratively (only in a sense), but it is cheaper to slowly boil that frog than to throw it into a bubbling pot.

You know, that was always the flaw in Morgan's (I think) statement that he would just hire half the working class to kill the other half. There is no profit in that - only expense. And when he would have been finished with the killing, he would have wiped out his reserve labor army and there goes wages right up. I know he was speaking figuratively (only in a sense), but it is cheaper to slowly boil that frog than to throw it into a bubbling pot.

No, I literally mean that Panopticon Planet would invalidate the capitalists as a class. They NEED civil society (=bourgeoisie society) to function. Hence the massive dissonance that shoots all the way through to the heart of their political projects, especially in America.

No, I literally mean that Panopticon Planet would invalidate the capitalists as a class. They NEED civil society (=bourgeoisie society) to function. Hence the massive dissonance that shoots all the way through to the heart of their political projects, especially in America.

Anax said, "Why would I work for you if you couldn't throw me in jail?"

The bourgeoisie do need a civil, bourgeois society. They need order and discipline and predictability. So, the way this society appears to be spinning out of balance is detrimental to the ruling class, but not much. The profit derived from this society is still growing - it is all a cost/benefit analysis isn't it? Maybe not overtly, or even consciously, but as long as profits grow...

The profit derived from this society is still growing - it is all a cost/benefit analysis isn't it? Maybe not overtly, or even consciously, but as long as profits grow...

That really doesn't follow except to the crowd that wants to introduce terminology like "self-valorizing" (which is taking a turn onto the wrong side of Hegel Street).

Profits come from sweat. If its not going to be yours then you gotta extract it from somebody else (workers). And that sweat doesn't bottle itself.

Push come to shove, when ya gotta have order & discipline yesterday just dial FASCIST! Please read the Consent Form. Guarantee good for 1000 years or communism, which ever come first.

That really doesn't follow except to the crowd that wants to introduce terminology like "self-valorizing" (which is taking a turn onto the wrong side of Hegel Street).

Profits come from sweat. If its not going to be yours then you gotta extract it from somebody else (workers). And that sweat doesn't bottle itself.

Granted, but if the disruptions in society reach a point where the "civil order" is incongruous with bourgeois social needs, then the ruling class must either take a Roosevelt path or a Mussolini one, right? I suppose it depends upon whether the working class is organized and represented by a true working class political party, or not, how we deal with it.

Granted, but if the disruptions in society reach a point where the "civil order" is incongruous with bourgeois social needs, then the ruling class must either take a Roosevelt path or a Mussolini one, right? I suppose it depends upon whether the working class is organized and represented by a true working class political party, or not, how we deal with it.

The "Roosevelt path" is exactly what is at issue. It is not possible to replicate such a path because it is not possible to replicate the circumstances from which it derived. This is borne out by the complete and total failure (on every level) of political liberalism in the ensuing period. Once the good times stopped rolling any claim they had to accomplishments vanished in an instant.

As for the Mussolini path, its important to understand not only the social ramifications of fascism but also its political significance (not just its content but its RULING CLASS backing). Why do they unleash and against who? (in general we can answer but there is no concrete form yet)

All of which is to say -- you forgot the third path: barbarism.