Comment on Jim Hightower Op-ed Posted on Alternet.org

Jim Hightowner has a spot-on op-ed posted at Alternet.org titled The Right-Wing Loons Should Stop Blaming "God" for the Oil Spill

Hightowner's right, gawd didn't cause the BP Gulf oil spill, human avarice and cupidity did. Not only on the side of the oil company executives and their major shareholders but on the side of politicians for campaign contributions and average Americans hungry for cheap shrimp and fish and even cheaper gasoline.

And sorry, even though this oil spill will damage an already endangered eco-system, I can not feel too much sympathy for the shrimp and fishing boat owners and operators, the charter fishing and excursion boat captains. What do you think they used to fuel the engines of their boats so they can shrimp, fish? Their farts?

In the last presidential election these assholes voted for cheap oil. They voted for "drill, baby, drill!" Look at any detailed map of the '08 election. Why in St. Bernard Parish, LA, directly in the path of the oil slick, 71% of the eligible voters cast their ballot for the McCain-Palin ticket and "drill here, drill now!" And I will wager that the older voters of St Bernard Parish overwhelmingly cast their ballots in 1980 for Ronald Reagan, apple pie and SUVs.

Here's how fucking brilliant the American people are:

Despite the spill, 60 percent say they support allowing for more drilling off U.S. coasts, and 53 percent believe that offshore drilling’s potential economic benefits outweigh its potential harm to the environment.

The public is split on the federal government’s response to the spill: 45 percent say it has not done enough, while 43 percent say it has done enough. Poll: Despite spill, support for oil drilling high, MSNBC.com

I was talking about this to a buddy of mine last night. I was complimenting him on his comments to an NPR talk show. But when I launched into my rant about the dumbasses on the Gulf coast who vote for cheap oil, guns, gawd and the right to be as stupid as they can to be, he said, oh, no, no, no. Those poor dumb bastards are "victims," he said, of slick Madison Avenue advertising. They, and the vast majority of Americans, are conned, hoodwinked, bamboozled by a never ending stream of propaganda telling to buy SUVs and big block V8 pick ups.

True enough. But, I countered, you don't have to pay attention to the propaganda. And we've always had the option of fuel efficient vehicles and voting for eco-friendly politicians. But we Americans never took those options. We never learned a thing from the Exxon Valdez or the OPEC oil embargoes of the 1970s. I reminded him of a late mutual friend who, dedicated to the outdoors and the ecology as he was, never in his short life owned a fuel efficient automobile; the guy always owned full-sized vans, SUVs and pick up trucks. Dumbass Americans have gotten used to $3 a gallon gas so what the fuck?

I guess B.F. Skinner is right and Noam Chomsky is wrong, we Americans are little more than pigeons in one of Skinner's electrified boxes dancing to the Investor Class's tune every time they flip the switch.

So next in this oil spill saga the commercial shrimp and fishing boat owner-operators, the charter fishing and excursion boat captains and the owners of casinos and resorts all along the Gulf Coast will start whining and crying that the government isn't doing enough for them. Conveniently they make themselves victims of their own stupidity and want the rest of the country to feel so sorry for them and bail their asses out.

Even the CEOs being grilled in Congress right now are playing the victim: "Oh, fuck, it ain't BP's fault this thing blew up it's Transocean's;" "No it's not Transocean's fault, it's Halliburton;" "Hey, guys, don't get on Halliburton's case, it's BP's fault."

But watch this Fall the dumbasses who are getting drenched in crude will turn around and vote for some sleazy used car salesman of a Republican who will sell them out to the corporations at the drop of a dime. Why? Because the "Lie"-brules are gonna take their guns, kill babies, spit on the American flag and socialize medicine!

Meanwhile the Greens, Socialist Workers and libertarians will run around telling everyone and everything that they are not in big business's pocket and not do a fucking thing as usual. They would rather whine how the system is stacked against third, forth and fifth parties; even enough in clean money, clean election states, where they have no excuses and should be making in-roads, they are not doing anything either!

Face it people, we are screwed and as the late Walt Kelly put the in the mouth of his swamp sage Pogo Possum, We has met the enemy, and he is us!

It's all bullshit if Employee Free Choice Act isn't passed

It's Sunday and this is the day President Obama eulogizes the 29 scab miners who died needless deaths from a preventable explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, WV owned by Massey Energy; the CEO of which should face indictment for man slaughter but more than likely will not and go on his merry way killing gullible scab labor for the greater glory of the shareholders.

As reported by the Washington Post, President Obama plans on ladling out the usual treacle about how these brave men risked their lives, "... all for their families. ...These miners lived - as they died - in pursuit of the American dream." It seems the "American" dream these days consists of owning a nice pick up, a fishing boat, a two-story tract house, an LCD big screen TV and being treated alright by the corporate bastards who own one's soul, q.v. April 7, SimplyErnest.blogspot.com. "Whipped American Worker"

The Washington Post report adds, the president plans on reminding all of we mere mortals, as these 29 martyrs are carried aloft to some coal begrimed Valhalla, "Never forget, they say, miners keep America's lights on."  He will then pledge greater vigilance and detail for mine safety so future Upper Big Branch mining disaster will never happen again.

Now here's why the president's speech is bullshit: nowhere does he mention, at least as reported by the Washington Post, the fact that traditionally unionized mines have safer work environments. While the president waxes poetic on how the dead hero miners and all us consumers of electricity are "...all family. We are Americans[,]" he breaths not a word about the Employee Free Choice Act.

EFCA is a bill that needs even greater legislative priority that "immigration" reform.

The Employee Free Choice Act streamlines procedures for employees to decide on union representation and bargain a first contract. Under this bill, a union would be automatically recognized in a workplace when a majority of employees sign cards stating that they want to be represented by that union. To facilitate agreement on a first contract for employees after the union is recognized, the bill enables either the union or management to refer any disputes about the contract to mediation if an accord has not been reached within 90 days after bargaining begins. If the mediator is unable to reach a deal within an additional 30 days, the dispute will go to binding arbitration with the arbitration agreement binding for two years. Finally, the bill increases penalties for violations of labor law: raising fines, tripling the amount of back wages employees can receive if they are illegally fired or discriminated against for exercising their labor rights, and requiring the courts to seek injunctions against employers, as well as unions, that violate labor laws.
TheMiddleClass.org

But the sticking point is the simple "card check" requirement. As usual the forces of reaction, never champions of democracy unless it suits them, have gone into full cry that card check "would effectively eliminate private voting."  Of course the suburban white boys who pump out this propaganda have never gone through a National Labor Relations Board union-certification vote. Or if they have they have done so from management's perspective and know that management intimidation, management snitches and ballot stuffing are par for the course.

The sad fact is the American worker is so whipped and brainwashed by thirty plus years of right wing radio and television demagoguery, in the sense of, a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power, that he or she accepts the fact that he or she is fungible.  Why do you think corporations and even government agencies have substituted the bureaucratese gobbledygook of  "human resources department" for the older and straight forward "employement office?" As the whipped American worker Kevin Lambert says, "They treat me alright."

If Congress and the president do not make progress on the EFCA then these 29 miners will have died in vain.

Calling Doctor Keynes

O.K., we can piss and moan all we want about how both political parties are in corporate America's hip-pocket and they are. And we can stomp up and down, thump our chests and yell we're not going to vote or we're going to vote Green, libertarian or socialist.

And it won't do a bit of good.

Why? Because for the last sixty years or so the "free market" school of economic thought has been in the ascendancy and it doesn't look as if it is about to be totally discredited at any time in the immediate future. Oh, sure we've just had this "great recession," but the coordinator class fucks who got hurt by it the least are already seeing an up-tick in their stock portfolios so no biggie. Right? Newsweek magazine says "we're back" so it must be true.

And the Investor class bastards who were the root cause of the "great recession of 2008" are reaping even greater financial rewards than their coordinator class employees, life is good again.

So what if a bunch of unwashed, Jesus-loving working class schnooks are unemployed? Keeps the cost of labor down. And through years of clever and not-so-subtle propaganda the dumb fucks of the laboring middle classes are at each other's throats and in the mood to burn down Washington, D.C. Life is great for the Investor class and its coordinator class lapdogs. They are after all modern America's philosopher-kings.

And as all good philosopher-kings they have concocted a noble lie that a "free market" economy is something akin to a force of nature. To the four forces that hold the universe together, gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, add the "free market." As I interpret this noble lie, the "free market" economy works independent of human control much like gravity say. Its effects can be observed and quantified but human intervention to change the course and behavior of the "free market" are doomed to failure. The best way for mere humans to interact with the "free market" is to let it work its magic with as little human intervention as possible.

At least that's what these fuckers tell us. They know its bullshit. They know that the economy does not work like a gigantic farmers' market. They know that their profits go up when competition--that catch phrase of the capitalist catechism which if we groundlings chant it enough will produce low, low prices-- is stifled.

And it has come to pass, as blowback from the Cold War, that our university schools of business are now mere seminars for the ordination of priests to the "free market." Look at recent US Treasury Secretaries from the current Tim Geithner and Bush's Hank "Wall Street Bailout" Paulson to Nixon-Fords' William Simon whose quotation, "There is only one social system that reflects the sovereignty of the individual: the free-market, or capitalist, system[,]" could have come from the pen of Ayn Rand.

America's middle classes are just fucked until we can demystify and demythologize the "free market" and its high priesthood.

Unfortunately the any ideas of an alternative to the "free market" from the ideologically pure left comes down from a gaggle of tenured university fine arts and language professors, trust fund babies, the true leisure class of the Investor class, and a semi-repentant Reagan-era Assistant-Treasury Secretary, himself the architect of "Reagan-omics!" For the most part it is warmed over sophomore year "Radical Students Brigade" Marxism, sans dictatorship of the proletariat.

The tea bagger far right is even more dismal as it is stupid in calling for even fewer federal regulations over corporate power then is already the case.

Look, I have no problem with capitalism if it is kept small and manageable. Nor do I have any problem with aspects of socialist economic principals operating in industries and services which effect the lives of the vast majority of the public, i.e. the electric grid, medicine, education, basic transportation and communications. What I do have a problem with is the "free market" ruling our lives as if it were religion. Economies are neither forces of nature or divinely inspired. They are the most human of inventions after religion itself.

We need to steer a middle course between the Scylla of the marshmallow-Marxism of the ideologically pure left and the wild "free market" Charybdis of the Randian tea bagger right.

The whipped American worker

Behold the face of one Kevin Lambert, a whipped American worker.

Mr. Lambert works for Massey Energy at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, WV, the site of a suspected methane explosion that killed 25 of Lambert's fellow workers.

Mr. Lambert was interviewed by Harry Smith on CBS's "Early Show" this morning. Here's what he had to say:

"We know it's gassy coal," he said. "We know that when - you're gonna hit methane. You don't know where it comes from. Could come from a crack. Could come anywhere. All it takes is a spark. I can't see how they can point a finger at just anybody. It's just methane."

Does he feel Massey, whose safety record has come under scrutiny, is a safe operator?

"They treat me alright," Lambert replied. "There's no safe mines. I don't care where you go. You're not gonna find a safe mine. They could do whatever they want - make all the laws.

"When a man goes (into a mine), he knows that could be it. … You stick your head between two rocks to make a living, you know you're taking a chance. These 25 guys … they died for a cause. Every time you turn your lights on at home … you should think about them guys.

"Everybody overlooks West Virginia. They never think about coal. We need coal. We gotta have coal. Ya gotta have it. Gotta have it. Bottom line - gotta have it."

The printed word cannot convey the impression of the contrived nature of Mr. Lambert's statement: These 25 guys … they died for a cause. Every time you turn your lights on at home … you should think about them guys. Wanton disregard for worker safety is the price we Americans pay for electric energy, eh, Mr. Lambert? Are your 25 dead co-workers martyrs for the American way-of-life, heroes of free market capitalism, not victims?

Mr. Lambert spoke quietly and resignedly when there should have been outrage. But the company, Massey Energy, that owns the mine in which he works and where 25 of his co-workers died was cited 458 time last year for safety violations. Thanks to Massey CEO Don Blankenship's political connections those were ignored, fines never paid. And yet according to Mr. Lambert, "They treat me alright."

I am sure Mr. Lambert is a patriotic American. Perhaps he is a veteran. I am sure he goes to church on Sundays, owns a pick up, maybe a fishing boat. His wife probably works and they have a mortgage to pay and young'ums to feed, cloth and school. I am also certain Mr. Lambert considers himself a rugged individualist who does not need a union boss leeching dues from his paycheck. So he kisses the hand that holds the whip.

What a sad commentary on the American worker.  Not far from Montcoal,  in 1921, 7,000 miners rose in rebellion against greedy mine-owners, their hired goons and corrupt state officials in the Battle of Blair Mountain for the right to unionize. Mr. Lambert may even have ancestors who fought at Blair Mountain but he is whipped, broken. He, like so many American workers, has accepted his fate as a fungible commodity, a thing to be thrown away like broken tool when it is no longer useful.

And so, once the dust is settled and all the bodies are brought to the surface and after all the funerals, Mr. Lambert and his whipped co-workers will put their heads between the rocks knowing full well they too could be free market martyrs.    

News Flash! Nader admits to being "spoiler"

St. Ralph Nader, patron saint of the Ideologically Pure Left, is reported to be considering not running for US Senate from the State of Connecticut!

Nader's Senate prospects hit snag with Dodd's retirement

By MARIA RECIO
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- What's up with Ralph Nader?

The three-time presidential candidate and consumer crusader, mostly under the political radar while hustling a new book of fiction, also has been quietly thinking about doing something completely different: running for the U.S. Senate.
The intriguing prospect of running against embattled Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., in his home state this year has hit a snag, however. Dodd made the surprise announcement Wednesday that he'll be retiring, leaving the race open to a strong Democrat, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

That has Nader, 75, known for his "spoiler" role in the 2000 presidential election, re-thinking his chances.

"The attraction is a three-way race," Nader said in a telephone interview. His voice raspy from a cold, Nader - "I never get sick" - spoke from his home in Washington. "It's less likely to have a three-way race with such a strong candidate."

Blumenthal, who's held the attorney general position since he was first elected in 1990, has a reputation for pursuing consumer and environmental causes.

Dodd was a more inviting target for Nader, who's among the critics of the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee for his handling of the financial crisis and for benefiting from a favorable mortgage from scandal-ridden Countrywide Financial Corp.

Nader was looking at a contest as the third option between a weakened Dodd and a Republican opponent; among the candidates is Linda McMahon, former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.

And what, pray tell, would St Ralph running against Chris Dodd accomplish besides getting an asshole Republican elected?

And getting another asshole Republican elected to the US Senate would get the peasants to rise up how, St. Ralph?

Well, gee, St. Ralph, how'd you like the Bush years? And the Clinton years post-1994, those were great weren't they, St. Ralph?

In some ways I can understand the concept of making things worse before they get better. I've even said myself that these white, suburban fucks making $70,000 a year and less who vote Republican, because Republicans cut the social safety net out from under niggers, spics and all other lazy Democratic welfare dependents, deserve to get a taste of their own medicine when the economy goes tits up. But would that really make these guys more amiable to a more socialist agenda or merely drive them into even more virulent fascism? Well from what I've seen in the past thirty years or so the lower income white collar classes of Suburbia USA are growing increasing fascist, witness the teabagger movement.

My biggest complain with St. Ralph and his ilk of the IPL is that while their criticism of the system is correct they only offer mealymouthed solutions like, people got to get organized, fight the system, buy local, act global and so on, and nothing changes.

But what really sticks in my craw about the leading lights of the American IPL like St. Ralph is that most are members in good standing of the coordinator class with the financial wherewithal to withstand only the most severe of economic downturns. And like their opposites on the reactionary right, leaders of the IPL are for the most part products of the nation's leading institutions of higher learning. Quoting from "Can We Rescue the Republic Before the Dark Politics Take Over?" by Kirk Nielson, posted at Alternet.org, December 25, 2009,"...Harvard, Yale, Princeton and most elite schools "do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think." Elite universities are in the business of producing "hordes of competent systems managers" not critical thinkers. And there is the crux of the dilemma of what ails the United States.

Politics is firmly in the hands of one, and only one, socio-economic class, the coordinator, or system manager, class. My short hand for the difference between establishment Democrats and Republicans is simple: Democrats are lawyers, Republicans are insurance salesmen. That may seem overly simplistic but all one need do to verify it is scan the biographies of US Congressman and Senators.

The great genius of the coordinator class since the end of World War II was to create the illusion that the United States was a truly classless society, as opposed to the faux classless societies of the Soviet Union and Maoist China, where all its citizens had a chance to move up the economic ladder.It wasn't true fifty years ago and it is even less true now.

Good article posted at Alternet.org on Cerberus Capital.

Cerberus Capital: Literally Blood-Sucking the Poor to Make Their Billions

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted January 9, 2010.
Wall Street vampires. Lately, a lot of Americans, including myself, have used the bloodsucking monsters as a metaphor to describe the Wall Street billionaires who rule us, and who are ruining us. Like so many awful stories of the past few years, it turns out that these Wall Street vampire-billionaires really exist, literally. Like all vampires, they live in remote castles, and they feed themselves by luring poor, desperate humans into their dens, hooking them into blood-pumping machines and sucking out their plasma for mind-boggling profits.

Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless leveraged-buyout firms (or “private equity firms” in PC-speak), recently made a $1.8 billion killing on its human plasma investment, a company called Talecris. Talecris was purchased for a mere $82.5 million just four years earlier, meaning Cerberus made 23 times its investment on human plasma. This was accomplished by the most savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to impoverished human plasma donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by restricting supply (a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission accused Cerberus Plasma Holdings of “operat[ing] as an oligopoly”), and then selling the refined products to the most desperately ill—patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis and autoimmune deficiencies. The products cost so much—one, IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) cost twice the price of gold as of last summer—that American health insurance companies have been dropping or denying their policyholders in increasing numbers, endangering untold numbers of people.

Tomas Asher, chairman of a company that trades in plasma, described the business this way: "It's like selling hog bellies or wheat or beef. It gets sold all over."

Profiting from ruined American lives is nothing new to Cerberus. (The company takes its name from the legendary three-headed attack dog of Greek legend who guards the gates of Hell, making sure no condemned soul ever escapes. How appropriate.) Cerberus is the same shady fund that bought Chrysler and GMAC in 2007 and drove them into the ground, blamed everything on unions (even after firing 30,000 Chrysler employees), and dumped the companies onto American taxpayers—but only after lining up tens of billions in taxpayer-funded bailout funds. Cerberus is led by some of the most aggressive "free market" Republicans of our time. The chairman of Cerberus is former Treasury Secretary John Snow, who oversaw the destruction of America’s economy while serving under Bush from 2003 to 2006, bragging during his tenure, "We are the envy of the world."

Snow bragged again in 2007 after Cerberus acquired Chrysler, "Over 25 years ago, when Chrysler faced bankruptcy, it turned to the United States government for assistance. Today, Chrysler again faces new financial challenges. But it is private investment stepping in to inject much-needed support." A year later, Snow was running around Washington begging and screaming for government handouts.

Joining Snow as international chairman for Cerberus is former Republican Vice President Dan Quayle, the pampered imbecile who couldn’t spell “potato” correctly. Two more perfect vampires couldn’t have been invented than Quayle and Snow for the America of the Bush Era—peanut-brained, sleazy jerks.

The top vampire in Cerberus is the fund’s founder, billionaire Stephen Feinberg, a major Republican Party campaign donor with a hardcore fetish for Harleys and big guns. Supposedly Feinberg was very uncomfortable with taking all those socialism-esque billions from American taxpayers. The New York Times described him as "a longtime free-market enthusiast and a Republican who never envisioned himself needing the government for help.”

My Comment

The true genius of evil bastards like Cerberus founder Stephen Feinberg is that they have the where withal to control the media and the message to get those who suffer the most due to their financial shenanigans to defend and even admire them.

As noted in the article above Feinberg and Cerebus:...bought Remington, America’s oldest firearms manufacturer, and since then they’ve snapped companies making everything from bullets to silencers... And what was one of the biggest unfounded rumors circulation round the right wing moron-o-sphere? the Barack Obama ammunition ban. At the height of this lunacy NRA members were urged to buy a lifetime supply of ammunition. And, of course, when this NRA fueled and funded panic created shortages of ammunition, not only for gun dealers but law enforcement, the NRA blamed the president.

I can imagine Feinberg and NRA vice-president-for-life Wayne La Pierre meeting for congratulatory sessions of mutual masturbation for hoodwinking their working class stooges once again, and for a tidy profit.

Why does Karl Rove hate the USA?

Well, George Dubya Bush's favorite turd blossom is still collecting a check. This time from the Wall Street Journal, the tabloid bible of the Investor class.

Today we find Rove cheer leading for the United States' economic collapse as he raises the specter of the "scary" federal budget deficit.

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.

Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which asked voters if they'd rather boost "the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits" or keep the "budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover." Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.

Ominously for Democrats, concerns over spending have recently helped to flip the Gallup generic ballot to now favor Republicans by four points (48% to 44%). Last year, Democrats held a 12-point generic ballot advantage. The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. By comparison, in the run-up to the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans first eclipsed Democrats in March of that year, when they gained a one-point advantage, before falling behind Democrats until the fall.

Mr. Obama's spending choices are dragging congressional Democrats into ugly electoral territory where many are likely to meet a brutal fate next fall.
WSJ.com

Now Rove may be right when he pens The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. So-called political "independents" in the United States are a fickle lot who always put person comfort and income before the good of the country. The most extreme of these crybabies are the so-called "teabaggers," the Sarah Palin-skirt sniffers who have had more than their fair share of TV face time.

Now if Karl had been paying any attention at all to balancing federal budgets he might have typed in "balanced budget dangerous for economy" in his Google search bar, he might have stumbled on this Business Week op-ed by Robert Kuttner from 1996:

A balanced budget requirement, especially one locked into the Constitution, would deepen recessions. Federal spending now provides countercyclical elastic to buffer business cycles automatically. In recessions, state and local revenues fall, and the demand for public expenditure rises. Increased federal outlays operate as automatic stabilizers, rising as state income falls. A constitutional amendment mandating budget balance would throw that process into reverse.

In recessions, the federal government, like the states, would have to reduce its own spending to match reduced revenues. Federal fiscal policy would become pro-cyclical instead of countercyclical.

A balanced budget requirement, especially one locked into the Constitution, would deepen recessions. Federal spending now provides countercyclical elastic to buffer business cycles automatically. In recessions, state and local revenues fall, and the demand for public expenditure rises. Increased federal outlays operate as automatic stabilizers, rising as state income falls. A constitutional amendment mandating budget balance would throw that process into reverse.

In recessions, the federal government, like the states, would have to reduce its own spending to match reduced revenues. Federal fiscal policy would become pro-cyclical instead of countercyclical.

Public discourse about the deficit is now out of sync with fiscal reality. With Congress and the White House moving toward balancing the budget via the appropriations process, the great deficit crisis is ending. It was a product of the fiscal imbalance of the '80s and early '90s. That, in turn, was a monument to the failure of supply-side economics. But thanks to the deficit reduction of the Clinton years, the budget is now on a sustainable path. We are nearly back to where government can again use fiscal as well as monetary policy as tools of economic management.

So there you have it. As cogent reason for continuing deficit spending until the current financial and economic crisis has passed.

Yet for a short-term political advantage, Republican control of both houses of the federal Congress, Rove and the entire wing nut universe is willing to risk the total economic collapse of the nation and the economic ruin of the very class of Americans who subscribe to this simplistic economic point of view.

More "poor" Paula....bleech

Here's an update to yesterday's post concerning the American Idol "judge" Paula Abdul and her whining campaign for a bigger slice of the American Idol-pie.

That paragon of American journalistic excellence, People magazine is polling its online readers on the question: Should Paula Abdul come back as a judge on American Idol?

Here's a sample of the comments

Silkrose July 20th, 2009

Yes, she should be back. I would miss her.

barbara July 20th, 2009

i love Paula. Yeah….. whatever she & the CEO’s decide. I, for one, would LOVE HER TO COME BACK. but it’s out of my hands ~~~ GO PAULA….”"” YOU “”" ARE THE FASHION DIVA~~~~~~~~~~

nichol July 20th, 2009

If Paula goes, im not watching and im asking my friends to do the same.. They brought Kara in hoping we’d get use to her and it would be ok to dump Paula but i dont think so..

Michelle July 20th, 2009

KEEP PAULA IT WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME WITHOUT HER PLEASE KEEP PAULA PLEASE

SA July 20th, 2009

Paula is AMAAAAZING… our generation just sucks so we don’t appreciate such artists from the past. She should be back!

I could go on but what's the point. You'll notice the major of posters seem to be female and young.

And scattered throughout the comments are some very pointed remarks, almost to the point of hatred, on new "Idol" judge Kara DioGuardi, a woman whom I, and I suppose anyone, knew anything about until her addition to the "Idol" judging staff. Though Ms. DioGuardi does have at least one fan

Danielle July 20th, 2009

I think Kara is a good judge. She actually makes sense, unlike Paula. I think Paula should have been gone a while ago and the addition of Kara was a smart one. Honestly I have to fast forward on my DVR every time Paula talks because I literally cannot watch her. She makes me cringe. I find that she says the same things over and over again and I also think she takes whatever Kara says and paraphrases in her own jumbled words. It’s time for Paula to move on so this show can continue to thrive.

And one "Idol" fan does get the equation right

Valerie July 20th, 2009

First, this is just a ploy by Abdul to get more money and more press…

Secondly, if they are going to have a singer as a judge, they should at least be able to sing. Abdul couldn’t sing her way out of a paper bag unless it was over-engineered with too much reverb and dubbing, etc.

Get someone in there who knows what they are talking about and has something constructive to say.

Yes, this is all bullshit publicity engineered to boost the ratings of Fox television's flagship program. A leaking flagship that is set to crash on the rocks of bloated salaries, inflated egos and diminishing amateur talents.

But the saddest fact of the "People" piece is those who are defending some one who clearly does not need defending. Ms Abdul will get her money and the stupid show will go on.

But in the skinner-box that is early twenty-first century America, the pigeons are dancing to the tune paid for by Wall Street's elite. As long as the unwashed remains fixated on the comings and goings of "celebrities," whom the right wing bloviating class labels "Hollywood liberals" and "liberal elite," then the folks who brought you the Dot Com-bubble, the housing-bubble and the TARP bailout-bubble will happily continue in their criminal ways.

Over paid, under worked and distorting the economy

Today's title can describe any mass-market entertainer in the Western world today, including your favorite professional athlete. If there has been any force over the past thirty to forty years which has distorted the industrialized world's economy it is the inflated salaries of mass-market entertainers.

The trend is particularly acute here in the good, ol' USA. Why else would "aging" soccer star, or "footballer" as they call them across the pond, David Beckham sign a $250 million contract with the L.A. Galaxy, a struggling Major Soccer League (MSL) franchise in a "major" market? Certainly it wasn't for the shear love of the sport.

But overpaid, aging sports superstars isn't the topic of today's rant, overpaid, under worked aging pop entertainers is: To wit one Paula Abdul.

It seems that the 47-year-old singer-dancer is in a bit of a snit:

Paula Abdul may not return to “American Idol” for a ninth season, her manager claimed in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“She’s not a happy camper as a result of what’s going on. She’s hurt. She’s angry,” David Sonenberg, the “Idol” judge’s manager, told the newspaper on Friday.

Sonenberg, who said that he became Abdul’s manager just weeks ago, at the end of June, added that he has yet to receive a proposal for a new contract for Abdul.
TheMoneyTimes.com, July 19, 2009

It seems that the "I'm not a pill popper" ex-pill popper is miffed that non-singing, non-dancing American Idol fluffer, Ryan Seacrest has pinned a $45 million, three-year deal to continue hosting the show. Allegedly the $15 million-a-year Seacrest is numbered among the "producers" of the hit Fox television "reality" show, being the rational for the big bucks. Seacrest, by the way, is the perfect right wing/libertarian/coordinator class personality Fox parent company, News Corp, owner and CEO Rupert Murdoch trawls for: White, suburban, two-parent household--daddy's an attorney, momma's a trophy wife--boy, who never did a lick of hard physical labor for a buck in his life though he will tell anyone who cares, and many who don't, that, now that James Brown's in the cold, cold ground, he's the hardest working man in show business. In short, Glenn Beck without the personality.

But of course this turn of events did not set well with Ms Abdul. Well, boo-hoo-hoo. I'd be happy getting a tenth of whatever Abdul gets for publicly making a stunning, middle-aged ass of herself on TeeVee.

But why should anyone care?

Ms. Abdul has fans who care and, like the aging diva, think she's getting a raw deal from Fox. And it is because of her fans that I care. So distorted has America's values become that legions of teenaged welfare-moms, minimum-wage divorced mothers and assorted under-paid and unemployed or under-employed fans think that it is just O.K. that a middle-aged woman with so-so singing and dancing abilities is remunerated beyond her true level of talent. In a sane world Paula Abdul would be making a decent in a Vegas lounge.

In a sane society Paula Abdul would be a nobody, but she is not. In all likelihood, should she follow through with her threat to quit the top-rated American Idol, she will sink into the obscurity she so well deserves so this is only a well coordinated stunt to get a few extra coins in her purse.

But we do not live in a sane world...at least in the middle latitudes of North America. We honor and reward people for who they are, or were, rather than what they do. The only intrinsic thing that a Paula Abdul or a Ryan Seacrest does is make it possible, merely by being face-talent for a wildly popular television show, for Rupert Murdoch to remain obscenely rich. As long a King Rupert gets his substantial cut, more than likely Ms Abdul will be back on the American Idol panel with her equally over paid and under worked colleagues.

We Americans are conditioned to believe that the professional athlete, the television actor and the movie star is worth oodles of cash because he or she is the best at whatever it is that he or she does. This may or may not the case, the scale usually falls on the "not" side of the register.

There will always be a certain amount of income inequity in any economic and political system. Perhaps this is a good thing too. But what the enormous salaries of the superstar professional athlete, TeeVee personality and movie actor do is provide cover for the even larger, more obscene amounts of money their ultimate bosses in the corporate boardrooms receive. After all even Oprah works for some one else.

If anything, our over paid, under worked entertainment superstars are part of the minor nobility, along with doctors, lawyers and the occasional reservation-casino Indian chief, in what is evolving into a "free market" capitalist version of feudalism. The Rupert Murdochs of the world are our petty kings, their sons heirs apparent, and all the rest of the Wall Street nobility our petty princes, dukes, counts, barons and so on down the line. For the rest of us the future looks bleak indeed.

After all, say our modern kings and princes of finance, labor is a fungible commodity. And as long as the unwashed can remain deluded that it matters more to them that a Paula Abdul is paid millions per year for setting at a desk, judging the talented as well as talentless, than what Walmart pays them to stock shelves, mop-up puke and chase down shopping cart all will be right with the world.