All posts by Joseph

Towards yet another new cold war

October 15, 2021 Joseph

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. As a society, we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern, circling our somewhat fractured collective memory of the Cold War. It seems we long for the illusion of a simple, good guys v. bad guys conflict, and we will stop at nothing to conjure one up again.

The echoes of the previous Cold War still reverberate, sometimes in odd and almost laughable ways. For instance, this week my Congressional Rep. Claudia Tenney called Pope Francis a communist. She is, of course, an unreconstructed Trumpist just visible under a faded coat of John Birch Society lacquer. But putting aside retrograde small-fry politicians mired in the failed policies of previous decades, we face a much larger problem.

Paging Howard Phillips!

Back in the days before the Internet, crazy people could only make their voices heard on radio and direct access cable television. One of those crazy people was the late Howard Phillips, co-founder of the American Constitution party or Taxpayers’ Party. Phillips had a regular show on direct access in the 1980s and 90s where he would rail against China, show scary videos, and look kind of grisly on his best days.

The reason I raise this is that even back then, this mentality was dated. We used to laugh about Phillips’s big map of “Red China” behind his desk, straight from the 1950s. Now he’s gone, but the anti-China rhetoric is still with us. Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to criticize about China. But people in glass houses …. etc. The folks that angst over China’s policy towards Taiwan probably don’t give Puerto Rico’s status a moment’s thought.

Barry’s pivot, redux

True to form, Biden is resuscitating some of the worst parts of Obama’s foreign policy while preserving some of the worst elements of Trump’s. Both of his predecessors took aim at China, most notably Obama, whose “pivot to Asia” filled me with both dread and anger at the time. (What’s with the “pivot” language? Clearly meant to conjure up images of howitzers, or some gun fighter turning on his heel.)

This is obviously a priority for Biden, as indicated by the fact that he was willing to put the French government’s nose out of joint in service to their planned confrontation with China. They have continued training exercises, started under Trump, with the Taiwanese military, and extended arms sales. What’s more, their pullout from Afghanistan has freed up additional forces that they can devote to confronting China.

Slow-motion train wreck

Look, folks – this is not good. We are heading for a conflict with a nation of over a billion people The policies we are putting in place will eventually lead to military clashes between our two countries, whether intentional or accidental. That would have catastrophic consequences.

We need to stop this madness before it starts. Make clear to your congressional representatives that you do not want this coming war. Tell your friends and neighbors, even the Trump-ites. My guess is that no one wants this to happen, so the sooner we make our voices heard, the better.

luv u,

*Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.*

Usual Rubbish

Putting bread (or perhaps toast) upon the water.

October 8, 2021 Joseph

Well, blown me down. I appear to be talking like a pirate today. Why? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s that scurvy crew who’s planning to make off with my booty. (That’s treasure, by the way, not some part of my anatomy).

Well, as you know, Big Green has never been the best pirate ship on the high seas. We have scuttled very few corsairs over our time, whatever the hell THAT means. I guess what I’m saying is that, well, we are somewhat remuneratively challenged. In other words …. we are a freaking financial flop, full stop. (Take that, full stop twitter bot!)

A balance lower than whale shit

There was a time in our early years when we sought some advice on how to manage our finances. We were putting the cart before the horse, in a sense, as we didn’t HAVE any finances at the time. But like most bands, we expected riches to fall from the sky. Our fear was that, if such riches came in the form of gold or silver pieces, we might be crushed by these great falling projectiles. That would never do!

So we went to the local financial advisor and asked him (and yes, it was a him) what we should do if we ever came into some cash. He asked to see our bank account, and when we showed him the passbook that we had kept from grammar school, his face went white (I should say whiter, actually). That was when we were ushered out. No, really – an usher showed us out, and he was kind of large.

Giving it all away

So what do you do with an asset that has no value? Well, friends, it’s simple – you give it away. That’s what we started to do with our music, and damn it, it caught on. Now bands all around the world give their music away for nothing. True, almost none of them are famous bands. And also true, we’ve had zero influence over them on this. But we’re all on the same page – that’s what counts.

A few weeks ago I talked about the interstellar lengths we’ve gone chasing a few stray quatloos. And I realize that this creates a false impression that we’re merely affecting to be non-commercial. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because we’re chasing money, doesn’t mean we’ve sold out. After all … to sell out, you need something to sell. I rest my case.

Raise the big blue flag

Of course you’ve all heard of Perry’s flag, right? Don’t give up the ship! Well, like any good pirate, we would never give her up, not to some low-down scum of a tugboat operator. And while that flag which bears our name also seems to stand opposed to our principle of giving things away, that doesn’t bother us too much. Anything written on a flag couldn’t be all wrong.

So we will continue pushing out content for no compensation. That’s just how we roll around here. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) does everything HE does for free. Mansized tuber never asks for compensation of any kind. It wouldn’t be right for us to ignore their good example, wouldn’t you agree?

So, look out, opposite shore – here comes some soggy bread!

Political Rants

There’s nothing new under the gun

October 8, 2021 Joseph

There’s a real sense of frustration in center-left circles in the United States. It’s understandable why. The president has proposed a massive bill that will fund a host of badly needed programs. These are priorities the progressive wing of the party has long championed, so in that respect alone, the very fact of this reconciliation bill is a kind of victory.

Now passage of this landmark legislation depends on approval by a 50-50 Senate, which means somehow convincing the likes of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema to vote for it. It is aggravating to watch two self-aggrandizing senators block a bill that has the support of a vast majority of Americans. But that aggravation is nothing new. And I think, despite the drawbacks, we have come a long way over the decades.

The majority that wasn’t

It’s best to remember that we’ve been in worse places before. Back in January 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the Democrats had just sworn-in huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They had a filibuster-proof 60 Senators (for a brief time) and 255 members of the House. So, the sky was the limit, right?

Wrong. Somehow they managed to negotiate the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act down to a ridiculously small size, even though they needed not a single Republican vote to pass it. The final bill was nearly 1/3 tax cuts and far smaller than was needed to put the economy back on track. In other words, they negotiated themselves out of an effective stimulus and reconstruction package.

Barry and the half-nelson

Then there was the Affordable Care Act marathon. That was thousands of hours of committee work, whittling down the legislation to meet an arbitrary cost standard set by the GOP. So the best we could do on health care was whatever policy we could squeeze through the little tin horn that was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Joe Manchin of his day.

Now, you may ask yourself, with 60 or near-60 votes in the Senate, why did they need to observe these restrictions? I think the answer is pretty simple: the Democratic Party was a lot farther to the right in those days, on balance. They and their president were happy to settle for glorified RomneyCare. They were happy to contemplate a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security.

The new way to be

Honestly, the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th Congress would never have even contemplated some of the provisions in the current Reconciliation bill. Opposition to the Child Tax Credit, paid family leave, etc., would have been larger than two senators. That’s because progressives have, in essence, won many of these arguments, thanks to the determined efforts of Senator Sanders and others on the inside, and movements like Occupy Wall Street, BLM, and others on the outside.

Think about it: we are really just a whisker away from some of the most progressive policy changes since the start of the neoliberal era. The whole thing could still go up in smoke, but this is closer than we’ve ever been, and it’s not only tremendously popular but backed by 96% of the Democratic caucus AND the president.

So, we’re making progress. Slower than we like, but progress none the less.

lu u,

BIG GREEN