Just Another Capitalist houses my thoughts on politics, economics, religion, zombies, and anything else I find interesting. Caustic humor? Check. Insightful opinions? Check. Pirates vs. Ninjas? Check!
I am a resident of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, and have been for nearly all my life. This district is currently “represented” by the Republican Party’s Minority Whip, Eric Cantor. You may have heard of him. He’s one of the three self-proclaimed “Young Guns” as seen in his book. You can see his picture emblazoned underneath “A New Generation of Conservative Leaders”. I find his use of the word Conservative here interesting. I believe this was an unintentional misprint. It is understandable, but I think the phrase they were looking for was “A Newish Generation of Republican Party Men”.
It is awfully convenient for my Representative to pretend that he just arrived at Washington, and that he isn’t part of the “establishment”, so to speak. He would like us to believe that the whole hairy mess has nothing to do with a Superstar Young Gun like himself. I’m sure a Conservative like Mr. Cantor would NEVER do something like, say, vote, not once, but twice, for the TARP bill which encompasses $350 billion in new government spending and bailouts of failing institutions. A right leaning champion for fiscal responsibility certainly wouldn’t have voted in line with the Republican Party, the same Republican Party who led Congress into giving America the largest federal deficit in history at the time. Of course a Crusader for Capitalism like Eric Cantor would never accept political donations from Government Motors, a socialized "business" that is 61% owned by the Government.
Unfortunately, Representative Cantor did do these things, and more. I'm absolutely certain my dedicated public servant will have no problem explaining to me why he voted for these things...you know, sometime, eventually, in the future. According to the aides in his office he isn't planning on holding any sort of town halls or public debates against his challengers for the upcoming election. I guess it must be awfully time consuming jetting about the country signing copies of your narcissistic garbage dutifully serving your constituents abroad.
Mr. Cantor is exceptionally good at talking the Conservative game. He is just as good at walking lock-step with the Republican Party, regardless of values, when it suits him. He is a career politician. He is a party man.
Having stated all of the above, I would like to bring to your attention an independent candidate who has chosen to challenge Mr. Cantor's seat. His name is Floyd Bayne. He is a private citizen, a Richmonder, and (by appearances) a true, Constitution fearing Conservative.
I invite you to read his positions on the issue, and to listen to the interview he's gave to Jimmy Barret (our local morning news guy).
I do not agree with everything he has to say. For instance, I disagree with ending the mission in Afghanistan with anything other than total victory. A return to the gold standard, which Floyd is for, may be a great thing...I'm not sure it's practical.
Still, there is far, far more that I agree with him on. A return to the Constitution. Abolishing Federal programs that aren't mandated therein. Eliminating the IRS and moving to a VAT system. No more bailouts for failing companies!
Floyd Bayne is not a politician. This is a good thing. Floyd Bayne is inexperienced. He is also, therefore, not corrupted. The fact of the matter is, it's not necessarily that Floyd Bayne is the be all, end all for the 7th district. It is, instead, that our so called "Representatives" have forgotten who they work for. It is time for us to take back the Constitutional obligation to We The People, and hold our representatives accountable. We must, as a nation, right or left, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise, tell them with a single voice: "You work for us."
The WaPo reported a few weeks ago that, according to the Census Bureau, 44 million Americans are now considered to be below the poverty line.
"About 44 million Americans - one in seven - lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.
The snapshot captured by the census for 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, shows an America in the throes of economic upheaval.
Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it.
With midterm elections less than two months away, the statistics bare the reality fueling much of the anger toward Washington.
In the Washington region, Virginia's poverty rate rose the most, to 10.5 percent from 8.6 percent. Maryland's edged up half a percentage point to 9 percent. The District's rate was the highest, but it declined from 18 percent to 17 percent."
These numbers are grim, in that they signal the hard times we have ahead of us. Hard times, I might add, that are unavoidable. No matter how much money the feds pour into the economy the fact remains that the market is cyclical in nature, and attempting to siphon off all the negative inertia of the market only delays the inevitable crash, and makes it worse in the process.
If there is a silver lining though, it may be this. America's poverty level is opulent enough to put to shame, for instance, the entire continent of Africa.
This is what Capitalism has given this country: Success in such extreme amounts that the poorest are still wealthy (by the world's standards). Explain to me again why we've all of a sudden decided to quit?
The Conservative media outlets have been abuzz recently, angrily muttering about the audacity of Congress to show a sense of humor. Faux conservative comedian Stephen Colbert was asked to testify before Congress in a hearing entitled "Protecting America's Harvest". From HuffPo:
"Colbert appeared with United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo S. Rodriguez before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. In August, the comedian spent a day working at a corn and vegetable farm in New York state after Rodriguez appeared on his show to discuss UFW's "Take Our Jobs" campaign.
The effort is intended to debunk the theory that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from American citizens and highlight the fact the nation's food supply is dependent on these farm workers."
Please view the video below. Colbert makes some outstanding points. For example, work as a migrant laborer is "really hard". It's worth the watch.
To Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Heritage, etc., etc., I have just this to say:
Every generation has its day. There is a day where everyone from that period can point to and remember where they were, what was happening, and what their reaction was. You cannot, though many commercial enterprises try, to artificially fasten or decide what day this will be. It simply is. For our grandparents it may be Pearl Harbor. For our parents it may be the falling of the Berlin Wall, or the Moon landing. For me and my generation, it is September 11, 2001.
I remember that morning. Nine years ago I was fifteen, and like any other fifteen year old boy, I would routinely sleep in until the crack of noon. Being homeschooled facilitated this greatly, since I was very industrious once awake and could complete my school work at any time of the day. I fell asleep after a good bout of Playstation the previous night and awoke much earlier than intended when my grandmother opened my door shouting “New York is under attack! Plans are attacking New York City!” In my half-asleep mind I envisioned jet fighters exploding over the cityscape. Despite this, and much to my chagrin now, I remember debating with myself whether or not it was worth getting up for. Eventually I decided it was and rolled out of bed. I walked out of my bedroom and into a nightmare.
Every member of my family was perched, motionless, around the TV. I don’t remember the sounds. Perhaps my family was crying, or yelling, or talking. For me, it was silence. Nothing existed except the images on the screen. I saw the one tower burning as newscasters played the scene of the crash over and over again. Debate raged back and forth on the screen as to how this happened.
And that’s when the second one hit.
I was so numb. It didn’t register at first. My mind saw the images, the second ball of flame, but it didn’t register. Once it did, everything turned red. Once I realized the terrible thing that was unfolding before my eyes all I could feel was rage. I ran into my room, grabbed my bamboo walking stick just to have something to squeeze.
I am a proud Virginian, and like any good Virginian I have a healthy distaste for those damn Yankees from north of the Mason-Dixon line. At that moment, though, all I could think was that this was my country under attack. Those were my fellow Americans who were burning and dying before my mind’s eye. I felt so helpless, so powerless, so unable to do anything to stop it.
That was my day. Even so many hundreds of miles distant, occurring in a city I’d never seen, to people I’d never met, that day affected me to my soul. I know I wasn’t the only one. Flags were everywhere. Congress sang “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol. People weren’t rich or poor, liberal or conservative, northern or southern. For one day we were all simply American.
One thing that September 11th demonstrated beyond doubt is that, when the threat looms, despite the sometimes brutal infighting that plagues our society, Americans can put aside our seemingly insurmountable differences and bind as a family.
I am not even able to write this in one sitting. Even so, much of this has been typed through teary eyes. Why should I share something that affected me so personally to all the world? Because we have to. Because we cannot forget what happened, or blunt to pain, or minimize its importance.
Since I’ll be unable to post anything for the coming week due to a variety of commitments I figured I’d throw out a Haversack full of the cool stuff I’ve stumbled upon on the web that I really intended to blog about but never got around to.
#1: Tractor Beams for Realsies, as tested by scientists at the Australian National University. According to the article, the beam can move small particles 1.5 meters, and possibly as far as 10 meters, using nothing but light. While the ability to move minuscule objects with light has existed for years, this new method can move objects a hundred times larger a hundred times farther. Nifty.
#2: Holy Trinity, now in a miniskirt! Feeling that millennia of Divinely Inspired masculine references just weren’t good enough, the Scottish Episcopal Church have “approved the introduction of more ‘inclusive’ language, which deliberately removes references suggesting that God is of male gender”. Now, instead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.
Slightly more offensive is the new uniform of the Bishop.
#3: English 333: ZOMBIES! Displaying levels of w00t that can only be described as epicly awesome, the University of Baltimore professor Arnold Blumberg has introduced a new class to the University’s repertoire. “Eng 333, Media Genres: Zombies” will deal with the most important questions of our time:
”Is "Night of the Living Dead" a simple zombie film or a subtle antiwar statement? Precisely when did viral pandemic supplant nuclear radiation as the lead cause of zombification? And which sort of animated dead has the greater potential to frighten: shambler or sprinter?
Next step: Practical Lab course, featuring training on weapon selection and use in combat. These are life skills, people. It’s important to feed your mind now, so your mind doesn’t feed the dead later.
#4: The dice odds of the game Risk. No gimmick here. Straight up, Kennedy Lemke used a computer “brute force” program to find out what the odds were, precisely. Bottom line: 3 dice have an advantage over two, but only a slight one. 7 wins out of 13.
#5: Public Healthcare in Sweden: Self serve! A Swedish man by the name of Jonas, 32, demonstrated his elation with the new self serve policy of their public healthcare system by being forced to sew up his own wounded leg after waiting an hour to be seen. Of course, while this story has a bit of badass, there is no redeeming quality to a Canadian woman who had a miscarriage while waiting more than three hours in the waiting room to be treated. Government run healthcare: What could possibly go wrong?
I was recently notified of a group in my beloved hometown of Richmond who call themselves the Wingnuts. A friend of mine who happens to serve in the Police Department there has encountered them several times, particularly at community meetings which they frequent, and asked me to write about them on my blog. A quick glance at their website revealed their self proclaimed title: The Wingnut Anarchist Collective. I will bypass a lengthy paragraph on the irony of a group of anarchists organizing to do…Well…anything…and simply say that it gave me a smirk. Their website contains a very sanitized sort of mission statement which indicts with charges of oppression everyone and everything from capitalism to homophobia.
Rather than simply going forward with my preconceived notions of anarchists and write a blog based solely on second hand information (mainly because this method is copyrighted by CNN & MSNBC) I decided that I would take a stroll on down to the Wingnut house and see what they were all about. So, armed with my notebook and pen I went on down to their neighborhood. Here's some pictures I took (though these are from my second encounter, not the first, as I'll explain).
That script you can't really make out reads "We gladly feast on those who oppress us". Yes. That is a pig in a police uniform on the far left side. "In memory of people murdered by the state". When I arrived the front yard was empty and the door was wide open. I cautiously approached, trying to find someone to speak to. Eventually, after I called out and nobody answered, I stepped into the front door and into what I expected to be a lobby but what actually was the apparent living room of the Wingnuts. My intrusion was met with, shall we say, an overwhelming lack of enthusiasm, particularly after I explained the name of my blog and why I was there. (As a side note, I would like to go on the record apologizing for inadvertently entering uninvited into another person’s home. I sincerely thought that the building was more of a “headquarters” for their movement, and seeing the door open, walked in a few steps. No offense was intended.)
I eventually convinced one gentleman by the name of Eric to speak to me on the porch. He insisted that he would be unable to answer even the most basic questions about their beliefs unless he got permission from the collective as a whole. Confused as I was by this strange trend of apparent conformism from a self-avowed anarchist, I left my phone number and he promised to call the next day with an answer.
True to his word, I received a call from Eric the following evening. The basic response was that they were unwilling to answer any of my questions. I did, through a little persistence, manage to get Eric to make a few isolated statements about his group’s purpose. I don’t have a transcript of the call, but thankfully my good friend and entertainer Steve Carell offered to reenact the conversation. See below.
Having found the answer of “I dunno” to be somewhat less than satisfying I determined to take my Crusade to the next level. Two nights later I returned to the house. Standing on public property I practiced my 1st Amendment rights for a time in the form of shouted questions about the group to their members.
The Wingnuts responded with several colorful demands for me to leave, videotaping myself and my vehicle, and then a period of silence. Eventually, they sent forth a representative. Showing a shrewd sense of public relations that would shame any politician, the representative they chose was a young, lithe, highly intelligent, very attractive blond woman with a voice like silk and eyes like augurs. I found the piercing of her left ear, which was actually the cap of a yellow highlighter, to be particularly clever and alluring. She introduced herself as “Moe”. Unlike the rather plain, indecisive, effeminate Eric, Moe seemed to know exactly what she believed in and why. After a bit of small talk she gave me the answers I was looking for.
I’m going to start with some of the back and forth dialogue (all paraphrased summations of the conversation since I didn’t have a tape recorder and the Wingnuts indicated that they weren’t comfortable with recorded conversations anyway). In part two of this blog I’ll dissect the opinions presented and offer my own.
DISCLAIMER! The following opinions were expressed by Moe, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Wingnuts, Anarchists, Libertarians, Catholic Church, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Monty Python, orphaned children, al-Qaida, Communist Party, that-guy-you-met-but-can’t-remember-his-name-so-you-keep-calling-him-man-or-buddy-hoping-somehow-his-name-will-come-up-in-conversation, little old ladies crossing the street, or your mom. You have been warned.
Question: Legislation. How would an “Anarchist Government” function? Who would make the laws? How?
Answer: Ideally there wouldn’t be any sort of central government. The authority would be decentralized as much as possible, and all decisions made on the local level through Consensus Governing.
Question: Consensus Governing. Is that anything like a quasi-Athenian style of direct Democracy?
Answer: No, because direct Democracy doesn’t protect the rights of the minority. Consensus governing focuses on building a consensus with all concerned on the issue until everyone agrees on a course of action.
Question: What happens when you can’t agree? If there is an impasse, what do you do?
Answer: We continue building consensus until everyone does.
Question: What if you can't ever get everyone to agree? Does nothing happen then? Do you simply not act?
Answer: Every group handles this situation differently.
Question: How about defense? How would this society defend itself from external threats?
Answer: With guns.
Question: Great, so a local militia. But, what happens when some person from the next town brings all their guns? Or say the next two or three towns? How would a consensus based society with no cohesive government defend itself from such an external threat?
Answer: That situation won’t be an issue, because the sort of society we envision can’t happen overnight. It would require a fundamental change in the way we currently operate. Essentially, it can’t happen until everyone realizes that “what’s good for their neighbors is good for them” and that there are enough resources for everyone if we work together. By eliminating the need for competition and aggression through a change in society’s fabric we will enact peace. In essence defense is not necessary because of the smaller scale of power that would exist worldwide.
Question: So basically you deal with the problem of human nature by changing human nature?
Answer: Human nature is a product of its environment.
Question: Would you support any sort of armed revolution to enact this change?
Answer: No, absolutely not. You can’t force people to change in the way that is necessary to have a successful Anarchist society. They have to do it of their own free will.
Question: How about currently, in the world we live in now. Could someone who is an Anarchist serve in the military?
Answer: I don’t see how. There are people who claim to be Anarchists who serve, but I don’t see how they can and remain consistent.
Question: “Security Culture” is mentioned repeatedly on your website, but isn’t explained fully. Could you clarify what it means?
Answer: OPSEC. Knowing when and how to say something, and more importantly, knowing how to remain silent when necessary. “Loose lips sink ships”.
Question: I saw that you guys offer food to the local populace, and in particular have a children’s breakfast once a week. What other things do you do for your community?
Answer: We do other food based drives throughout the year. We also do a weekly trash cleanup, write letters supporting prisoners, and offer general support to the community.
Answer: Would your organiz –
Answer: Stop. I’m Answer. You’re Question.
Question: Right. Sorry. Would your organization support the breaking of laws that are perceived as unjust?
Answer: No comment.
Question: Fair enough. Your organization has the slogan “Food not bombs” posted, in particular on that banging truck ya’ll have. What does this mean?
Answer: The government should spend money on food, not bombs.
Question: Oh. Well, that was simple. I mean it was actually pretty obvious. I feel kinda stupid now, even asking that question.
Answer: You should.
Question: Anyway….Well it was nice talking to you.
Answer: …
Question: So…You busy tonight? Wanna grab coffee?
Answer: I work in a coffee shop. I don’t need any more caffeine in my life.
Question: Right. Well, how about some other time? Dinner?
Answer: …
Question: …
Answer: …
Question: Well, thanks again for answering my questions.
I'm a twenty something father of three. I work in the construction industry as cost analyst, which is just as fascinating as it sounds.
In my off time I am an infantryman in the VA Army National Guard, and I've completed two tours in Iraq.
