It's good to see you. Come on in, leave your shoes in the hallway, we've got fire on the stove preparing lunch for later. In the meantime, browse the bookshelves and plunk down on the sofa with one, or pick out some tunes from the music library, or come in to the kitchen to help with the cooking. Our special blend of tea is steeping and will be right up.

Make yourself at home...

Hey there, dear folks of C99. Things have become increasingly busier here. As some of you know, I’m home with the infant boy all day for ten hours a day, five days a week. For a first time father who is just past the half-century mark, it is rewarding but tiring, to say the least. Then, at the end of last week the whole house traded, in succession, head and chest colds with each other - so I haven’t been able to write as much as I’d like. By the time most of you read this I will have trudged off to play my weekly gig, with a stuffy nose and general head cold discomfort, and be sleeping in hopes of repairing some of it. The wife will be home tomorrow, so I’ll probably take advantage of that to sleep late. Will check in when I can.

As a courtesy I just wanted to say that some of the OT’s may therefore simply consist of highlighting a couple of essays, speeches or books which I’ve found inspiring lately....

Taking a reprieve from keeping up with the daily news, I've instead found myself ruminating on the epidemic of money in politics and the grotesque nature of the "democratically" elected office, which has now become nothing more than a blatant ticket for one to become very wealthy, with no interest in serving the public. The idea, it's clear to anyone paying attention, is to do little as possible to upset the moneymakers who own the politicians. To do that one stalls legislation, pays the obligatory lip service to values and high morals, and then runs out the clock, until one can re-enter in the private sector as one of the 35,000 lobbyists or become a "consultant," or whatever misnomer is given to those on the bribery payroll.

It always comes back to the guys who control the money, as in the banks. Yeah, those guys who wrecked the economy, held the country for ransom and then robbed us for even more. One can only conclude, as Christopher Hitchens did as it was happening in real time, that America has truly become a banana republic.

"America The Banana Republic," by Christopher Hitchens (Oct 2008)

But still, the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it.

And still, in so many words in the phrasing of the first bailout request to be placed before Congress, there appeared the brazen demand that, once passed, the “package” be subject to virtually no more Congressional supervision or oversight. This extraordinary proposal shows the utter contempt in which the deliberative bodies on Capitol Hill are held by the unelected and inscrutable financial panjandrums. But welcome to another aspect of banana-republicdom. In a banana republic, the members of the national legislature will be (a) largely for sale and (b) consulted only for ceremonial and rubber-stamp purposes some time after all the truly important decisions have already been made elsewhere.

Referring to those who had demanded—successfully—to be indemnified by the customers and clients whose trust they had betrayed, the professor phrased it like this:

These are people who want to be rewarded as if they were entrepreneurs. But they aren’t. They didn’t have anything at risk.

That’s almost exactly right, except that they did have something at risk. What they put at risk, though, was other people’s money and other people’s property. How very agreeable it must be to sit at a table in a casino where nobody seems to lose, and to play with a big stack of chips furnished to you by other people, and to have the further assurance that, if anything should ever chance to go wrong, you yourself are guaranteed by the tax dollars of those whose money you are throwing about in the first place! It’s enough to make a cat laugh. These members of the “business community” are indeed not buccaneering and risk-taking innovators. They are instead, to quote my old friend Nicholas von Hoffman about another era, those who were standing around with tubas in their arms on the day it began to rain money. And then, when the rain of gold stopped and the wind changed, they were the only ones who didn’t feel the blast. Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former bosses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have departed with $9.43 million in retirement benefits. I append no comment.

Another feature of a banana republic is the tendency for tribal and cultish elements to flourish at the expense of reason and good order. Did it not seem quite bizarre, as the first vote on the rescue of private greed by public money was being taken, that Congress should adjourn for a religious holiday—Rosh Hashanah—in a country where the majority of Jews are secular? What does this say, incidentally, about the separation of religion and government? And am I the only one who finds it distinctly weird to reflect that the last head of the Federal Reserve and the current head of the Treasury, Alan Greenspan and Hank “The Hammer” Paulson, should be respectively the votaries of the cults of Ayn Rand and Mary Baker Eddy, two of the battiest females ever to have infested the American scene? That Paulson should have gone down on one knee to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as if prayer and beseechment might get the job done, strikes me as further evidence that sheer superstition and incantation have played their part in all this.

And before we leave the theme of falls and collapses, I hope you read the findings of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that followed the plunge of Interstate 35W in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River last August. Sixteen states, after inspecting their own bridges, were compelled to close some, lower the weight limits of others, and make emergency repairs. Of the nation’s 600,000 bridges, 12 percent were found to be structurally deficient. This is an almost perfect metaphor for Third World conditions: a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash.

As he then reminded us that, not one person resigned, no one in authority apologized for losing the savings of millions and millions of hard-working people, not one CEO was then prosecuted for what we later found out to be deliberate criminality in duping homeowners and investors alike, while we accepted the "stupid mantra" of TBTF.

"A Humane Word from Satan" is one of my favorite Mark Twain pieces satirizing the false piety of the criminal businessmen who as a matter of course indulge in persistent bribes of all manner.

[The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain. - EDITOR.]

To the Editor of Harper's Weekly.

Dear Sir and Kinsman,- Let us have done with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller's gift? The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards. Bequests, you understand. Conscience-money. Confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the Board decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and generally for both?

Allow me to continue. The charge must persistently and resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller's contribution is incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts. It makes us smile - down in my place! Because there isn't a rich man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax board. They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick. Iron-clad, so to speak. If there is one that isn't, I desire to acquire him for my museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates. Will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion of it? Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like - for the present. But by and by, when you arrive, I will show you something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! Sometimes a frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time.

To return to my muttons. I wish you to remember that my rich perjurers are contributing to the American Board with frequency: it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is I that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as I have said: since the Board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from Mr. Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the courts say what they may?

Satan.

Philanthropy - what a load of crap. Like Twain says, it's merely conscience money. Every time I see another RW greedy bastard's name emblazoned on something, such as the criminal Wall St hustler/casino capitalist Steve Schwarzman's on the NY Public Library, or Home Depot monopolist/mammon worshiper Ken Langone's on the NYU Medical Center or silver spoon-fed Libertarian fraud David Koch's on Lincoln Center, it makes me red with anger.

Fact is, there would be no need for their "philanthropy" if we had an economic system in which these bilkers of the public funds would be forced to pay their taxes back into the government that provides the infrastructure in which they perform their tricks. Instead, they take full advantage of loopholes, employ ever-growing batteries of lawyers to keep their status quo boondoggle, and then get to come out looking like some kind of doers of good will for society. They're not. Because most of it is blood money; every last drop squeezed out of workers, pensioners and manipulating the numbers.

These should be our targets. The oligarchs and global financial elites, who game the system and leave us with the bill.

How much more will it take?

So...what's going on with you?

Back in the kitchen we're listening to:

(Kevn Kinney is the guitarist/songwriter of the band Drivin' n Cryin', who put out their first record in 1986. He's a real Americana troubadour, a working class storyteller, a hopeful romantic. I always dug the simple mantra he would end one of his spontaneous tales of American life with, which was usually, “All you really need in life is a couple friends, a full tank of gas, and a good cup of coffee.”
The first tune on this album is such a bittersweet masterpiece. It's always gave me a sense of warmth and comfort when times might get tough. Hope you enjoy it too.)

Reading/Browsing List:
C.L.R. James, "The Black Jacobins"
Glen Greenwald, "With Justice and Liberty...For Some"
Frederick Douglass speech on John Brown
Charles Dickens, "The Curiosity Shop"
Henry Miller, "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare"

Roasted Mediterranean Branzino with Red Potatoes

Place sliced lemons inside fish, and cut slices into the side skin. Only salt and pepper, but a generous sprinkling of fresh oregano. Cook on 500.

Halve small red potatoes, cover in olive oil and rosemary, and add thinly sliced onion. Roast in oven on 375.

Lemongrass Chai Blend

heaping scoop of dried Thai lemongrass
shards of cinnamon bark
a few cardamom pods
a few black peppercorns
A few cloves
fresh chopped ginger