To be a good human being...

“To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.”― Martha C. Nussbaum

The real wealth of the world is in its people.

Martha Nussbaum, "Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach"

Unreported Drone Reports, Tackle Poverty?, and CNN's Pro-Nuke Propaganda

The banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

I am busy this morning so all I'm going to say is go over and read Bill Black over at Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism today: The New York Times Publishes the Most Ironic Sentence of the Crisis « naked capitalism . #epicFail

The only answer is to occupy (I could use your help).  Now I'm headed to work as the trucks won't load themselves...

With the help of the Supreme Court I'm occupying the US Senate race in Georgia.

So i'm pulling a Colbert.  I am a SuperPAC

www.workingclassGeorgia.com 

No more talking to, or volunteering for, US Senate candidates for me.  I'm going to be busy fundraising from my former professor's and their cohorts (a perk of taking a decade to finish my philosophy degree).  

Very Serious People beware---Election 2014 is the year the reality based community occupy the US Senate race in Georgia....

I told the wife the surprise with...  "well the good news is I'm not running for office in 2014..."


But no matter how small a cable buy it ends up being, rural Georgia will have a Professionally made Social Security attack ad directed at whatever joke makes its way out of the GOP primary.  Count on it.  I learned on the campaign trail in 2010 that no matter the party, people wanted Social Security protected from efforts by the 1% to make cuts.

The recent Jane Fonda segment of the Georgia Gang was the straw that broke this Teamsters back.  The reality based community has been shutdown and shut out of the debate in Georgia politics by the crew that just led and fed the inspiration for the GOPshutdown.  The Chamber of Commerce is busy trying to take back the GOP from within the party.  I'll help with a punch or two directed at the Tea Party nuthouse currently running the show in Georgia.  As Chomsky has always noted, we must expand the scope of the debate if we are ever going to be heard.  I think I can help give a little tiny push to help make that happen.  Work hard, hit harder and do lots of homework on the issues. 

Its not like Michelle "No Backbone" Nunn and her band of DC big donors didn't know this was coming. They should have been listening to us.  It took a coordinated FBI led corporate-state suppression effort to disperse us.  Be we are still here.



And thanks to the Supreme Court, rural TV viewers in Georgia will hear one of us (I'll need some help ya'll) say loud and clear Protect Social Security.   Free Speech rules!!

Very Serious People beware---Election 2014 is the year the reality based community occupy the US Senate race in Georgia....

No Backbone Nunn and the Potemkin Primary the Beltway Big Money folks have tried to buy here in the Georgia in the Democratic US Senate Primary gave me an idea...

Er, well after I watched this video I got an idea... as this is a dialectical thing on my part.  Just watch...



The AJC's Jim Galloway notes:

You don’t generally find WAGA’s “Georgia Gang” on YouTube, but clearly an interested party wanted to document Sunday’s discussion of the campaign contribution made by actress Jane Fonda to the U.S. Senate campaign of Michelle Nunn – a fact that the Insider’s Greg Bluestein reported last week.

Watch it above. Boiled down:

Alexis Scott: “That population has aged right out, and Jane Fonda has made a comeback.”

Dick Williams:  “If Michelle Nunn is with Jane Fonda, I don’t need to know anything more.”

Consider the exchange just a foretaste of what’s headed our way next year. But also note something of a family connection here. Fonda’s ex, billionaire Ted Turner, is a major underwriter of former U.S. senator Sam Nunn’s efforts to corral “loose nukes” around the world.

Jane Fonda isn't the actual issue in this segment that stands out the most--its the Tea Party nutjob who is calling No Backbone Nunn a radical leftist.   So we are caught between crazy and the 1% and we need some fresh air and sunshine to fight off this impasse.

Even No backbone Nunn was able to come out after the polls had been conducted to stand firm agaist the Tea Party fringe.  No more Shutdowns!!!  Sadly she couldn't say it in the middle of the crisis when her leadership could have helped push the agenda more towards reality.  No, what this segment shows is the real problem in Georgia politics and its not Jane Fonda.  Its the spineless politicians and crazy fringe who have taken this state and this country down the wrong path.

No backbone Nunn who is busy raising money from the 1% and is obviously going to be a center-right Democrat along the lines of Obama is some kind of radical leftist!?!?  Lol... it'd be satire if it wasn't a mainstream political talk show here in Georgia.

The Very Serious people tell us that candidates have to play it safe and not get caught in the cross hairs of nutjobs who make up whatever they want to and just happen to have the bully pulpit and a radical faction controlling gerrymandered districts here in Georgia.

But the reality based community knows better.  We need politicians with the backbone to have open honest debate with the Tea Party types and stand up for the best ideas; not try to poll test their way to 50% + 1 of the vote.  Between the Tea Party and "swing" voters who don't pay attention till two weeks before election day we've allowed our elections to be reduced to letting those least qualified set the policy and agenda for the US Senate race.

If you were listening to the Very Serious People about the war an Iraq, deregulation of Wall Street, the public option in the health care plan, they would have given you an answer and it would have been dead wrong.

Those same Very Serious People are telling us all that the Democratic Primary for US Senate is a done deal.  Now we all know I've tried to recruit Jason Carter; to a whopping 26 signatures.  And I think Dr. Rad is awesome even if he doesn't have name recognition to beat Nunn (I even donated and became a monthly donor which will obviously stop today once you read further).

But the Tea Party circus that controls the GOP and the Fix the Debt crew who have bought and sold the Democrats have one thing in common.  They both feed off of spineless Politicians who either a) don't have the backbone to stand up to the nutcases with calm sober facts, in the case of the Republicans or B) don't have the backbone to turn down dollars from the 1% that demand selling out the working class on policy issues.

The Very Serious People have sucked all the air out of the US Senate race in Georgia and its time the reality based community have someone working hard and hitting harder for them here in Georgia.

Therefore, i'm out of the US Senate candidate recruitment/support business.

I'm taking my cue from Stephen Colbert and am going the Citizens United Route:



So I went to How to Start a Super PAC

Step 1: Pick a Cause or Candidate

The US Senate race in Georgia and the cause?  Giving voice to the reality based community.

Step 2: Pick a Clever Name for Your Super PAC

Stop The Spineless PAC --- because its a Super PAC to stop the spineless politicians not willing to speak out on the issues.

Now the paperwork to the FEC 

To officially launch your super PAC you will need to file what's called a Statement of Organization, or Form 1, with the Federal Election Commission. Check box 5(f) under "Type of Committee."

Also, write a short cover letter to the Federal Election Commission. Here's a sample. You'll want to be sure you make it clear your new committee will be functioning as a super PAC.

You can do that by including the following paragraph verbatim:

"This committee intends to make unlimited independent expenditures, and consistent with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in SpeechNow v. FEC, it therefore intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts. This committee will not use those funds to make contributions, whether direct, in-kind, or via coordinated communications, to federal candidates or committees."

Yeah that is hitting the mail.... (even before the wife knows ---"at least I'm not running for office this year, dear")

Step 5: What To Do With Your Super PAC

As the proud new owner of a super PAC, you are permitted to raise unlimited amounts of money from people including your friends, neighbors and families. But you can also solicit money from political action committees, corporations and labor organizations.

You can turn around and use all that money to produce and air TV commercials or take out a massive billboard along a busy highway to roundly criticize a politician you don't like. Have fun and be creative!

So if I'm able to raise the money we'll be up on TV in Georgia swinging away at Spineless politicians not willing to stand up for good policy.  

If I'm not up on TV in Georgia for the primary and then the general election it won't be my fault. It will be the fault of you, dear reader, for not opening up your wallet (I'll figure out if Act Blue can be the donor route for online donations); and the unions and corporations who fail to give me the unlimited donations I'll now be able to raise thanks to the Supreme Court and "liberty lovers" everywhere who understand that money is speech and we can't be against free speech...ever.

So I have a shitload of work to do.  Bank accounts, raising money, (eh, any of you people know how to make a TV commercial?).  So I guess I'll close with this

A Note of Caution: What You Can't Do With Your Super PAC

This is pretty simple. You are not allowed to use all that money you've raised from corporations and unions to make "direct contributions" to candidates or their political action committees. You also can't take out TV ads or billboards in coordination with any of those candidates or their PACs. This is a fairly gray area, so play it safe and steer clear of planning your attacks with any candidate or elected official.

Sorry Dr. Rad, I won't be able to do that monthly $25 like I had committed--but best of luck and I'm glad you are running.  You seem like a stand up guy, in it for the right reasons.  I don't want to get in the gray area's.  You are new to politics so this might be the first time someone has broken their word to you about money and support they'll be giving you.  But it won't be the last time.  Believe me. But its for a good cause.  I just have to play it safe. The reality based community needs someone working hard and hitting harder for them here in Georgia.  But we can't discuss any of that.  I wish you the best because No Backbone Nunn is clueless, she really is .  But this is a system problem and calls for new approaches, and getting back to basics such as your campaign has been doing.  Keep it up!

For the rest of you readers... Luckily I'm an under-employed, newly minted philosophy grad, and a pissed off Teamster so I've got time on my hands since the Very Serious People have done nothing about the unemployment crisis in this country.

I'm not letting a bunch of beltway insiders in DC buy a Democratic primary--or going to let Tea Party nuts have the only bully pulpit next year when the circus gets done on the GOP side.

Campaign 2014 just got real.  Or should I say... occupied?

-----update----
The mail hasn't been picked up at my house so I'm reprinting the first form and changing the name to Working Class Georgia .

30 years late, but....have SuperPac will fight back!

----update part deux---

We are live: http://workingclassgeorgia.com but not quite ready for all that cash you are going to send me online.

I just pulled a Colbert.  Rural Georgia will have a pro Social Security TV comercial October of 2014 beamed in to living rooms--mark my words.

The 1% are right--- Free Speech rules!!!!

Don't like political polarization or economic discord? Do something about it.

Far too many people want to shake their head in opposition to the rising political dischrod, the rising economic instability, and yet want to do nothing about election reform or anything to stop the focus and fixation on allowing and promoting Government policies that transfer the bulk of the gains uppwards.  Michelle "No Backbone" Nunn, loves to complain about the things "Washington doesn't get" and has a vapid empty response about leadership.

Gerald Minack has a good post over at Naked Capitalism on the rise of Us vs. Them economy which just so happens to mention nothing about empty platitudes as a part of the solution.

 Us Versus Them « naked capitalism 

Rising political polarisation in the US has gone hand-in-hand with rising income inequality, falling top-end tax rates, lower taxes on business, rising leverage and higher asset prices. These trends may be coincidental, but they seem to reinforce each other. The medium-term risk is that some of these trends reverse, as occurred after the 1920s.

Congressional political polarisation and income inequality in the US are at multi-decade extremes (Exhibit 1). The polity is split; incomes are unequal.

The rise in polarisation partly reflects electoral gerrymandering that has sharply reduced the number of contestable seats (Exhibit 2). Only 20% of House of Representatives seats would change hands on a 5% swing. This increases the centrifugal influence of the party members who dominate the increasingly-decisive party primary elections.

However, rising political polarisation pre-dates the decline in contestable seats: it started as incomes became more unequal. Inequality has not risen because the rich got richer faster than the poor. It increased because the income gains of the past 30 years have gone to the top 1%. Average income for the bottom 99% is now unchanged in real terms over the past 40 years (Exhibit 3). The rising tide did not lift all the boats: it floated a few yachts.

In 2012 the highest-paid 1% earned 21½% of total income, according to academic Emmanuel Saez (http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/). This is the highest share since the 1920s. The lift in top-end income mainly reflected a rise in business income and salary payments. Exhibit 4 shows the source of income for the highest paid 0.1%, as a percentage of total US income. The income share of the highest paid did not increase just because capital has done better than labour: it also reflects the increase in the share of salaries going to the highest paid.

If we want to all play nice and get along then we have to do something about the massive spread in Gini coefficient, its that simple.  If we do, we'll all be happier and live longer because of it.

Political rights do not originate in the Legislature...

"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace . Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution."

— Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947^[14]

via Anarcho-syndicalism - Wikipedia,

Michelle "No Backbone" Nunn strikes again...

In the middle of the #GOPshutdown fight when it was time for real leaders to stand up and speak out  against the hostage takers and Tea Party crazies--Michelle "No Backbone" Nunn was afraid to take a stand...

Nunn $raising email on shutdown: "neither side of the debate is facing the very real imperative to address our growing national debt" #gapol
— Daniel Malloy (@ajconwashington) September 27, 2013

Well, now that the dust has cleared (and obviously the polls taken) and everyone from the Grandma down the street, to the US Chamber of Commerce, and even Grover "drown the Government in the bath tub" Norquist is criticising the #GOPshutdown Nunn has finally decided to be bold and side with the rest of us and call for No More Shutdowns!!!

Way to take a stand Michelle, it'd be hilarious and such a classic reminder of why Nunn is wrong for Georgia if it wasn't so pathetic and dangerous since she's the candidate funded by the 1% this election.

Nunn is probably making symbolic gestures that say and show absolutely nothing about who she really is fighting for and what policies she actually supports because she can't take an actual stand on issues that matter.  The 1% won't allow her to stand up for working people of Georgia.  Michelle "No Backbone" Nunn is looking to hand the keys to the 1% once in office.

Nunn's economic views have been called nonsense by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

It looks like even the Democrats in Georgia have to make up nonsense about out of control government spending http://t.co/jDykQzkr28
— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) October 5, 2013

and she's done nothing but use Pete Peterson Fix the Debt talking points all campaign.  That's why Nunn is making an empty statement after the crisis has passed and even GOP members of Congress are admitting it was a mistake.   Now that no one wants to shutdown the Government again Nunn is calling for us all to stand with her and say NO MORE SHUTDOWNS!!--This is the kind of bold Democratic leadership[sic] that got us in to Iraq.

Orwell once had some insight about the political language and vacuous statements coming out of the Nunn campaign this election.  It has been an exquisite model in saying a whole lot without saying anything at all and we as Democrats have been down this road before...

Better to vote for a No Name this primary than "a name" funded by the 1% who has no spine...  

Costly grace is not always enjoyable...or popular

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” 
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer