Notes on Chris Brown, Rihanna and notable woman-beaters of recent history…

Anyone who’s spent any portion of the past couple of years perusing either my Facebook page (arguably the greatest of its kind, ever) or my recently award-winning Twitter feed (thanks again, Jax Mag!) can discern two facts straightaway: 1) I love pro-wrestling; 2) I hate Chris Brown. If I need to explain why, I can only offer congratulations on getting out of your vegetative state, or GITMO, whichever applies to your specific case. My fiery distaste for this glorified minstrel was inflamed yet again by his feuds with WWE Champion CM Punk and country singer Miranda Lambert (both of whom could probably kick his ass), as well as the news that he’s collaborated on two new tracks by Rihanna, who of course is best-known for being repeatedly punched in the face by Chris Brown, and not really minding that much.

To each his own—and these are two peas in a pod. Whereas Brown has spent the past few years trying to balance his need for public absolution against his obvious inability to change the mentality that got him that situation to begin with, Rihanna has spent that time glorifying her abuser and his type in songs, videos and elaborate stage shows built around the single unifying theme of all of Rihanna’s music: S&M. The world erred in viewing that incident as domestic violence, and Rihanna as a helpless victim of an abruptly abusive male. In reality, the beating was just one small, public part of a long-term sadomasochistic relationship between two people who grew up being abused, and whose profession requires them to project self-destructive messages to the urban fans who, being rubes in the most fundamental sense, take their gimmicks seriously. Their job is to help normalize this shit, and make it cool.

The Chris Brown camp—aka the “I don’t hit girls, but if any girl ever gives me a halfway plausible excuse, I look forward to doing so” crowd—makes a very good point in his defense: He did nothing unusual in the larger context of pop-culture. To single him out is unfair, and hypocritical. Brown is not the first famous guy caught beating the crap out a woman, but he is the first who’s ever had to apologize more than once, if only because there were pictures.

A short list would fill this column; a full and detailed list would fill this entire issue, and it’s surprising no one’s actually tried that yet. After looking into the subject, I was disturbed to see that many of my favorite artists, writers and musicians hit their wives, girlfriends, or even strangers; some are well-known, others less so. This list is meant to include only convictions or plea bargains, admitted incidents, incidents that occurred in front of witnesses, or individuals who have been accused by multiple women.

Marv Albert, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Big Pun, Biggie Smalls, Riddick Bowe, Jackson Browne, Jim Brown, Bobby Brown, Glenn Campbell, Jose Canseco, Nick Carter, John Daly, Miles Davis, Elijah Dukes, Eminem, Mel Gibson, Jimi Hendrix, Terence Howard, Joe Jackson, Rick James, Sean Penn, Jason Kidd, Sugar Ray Leonard, Lex Luger, Sugar Ray Robinson, Tommy Lee, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Moses Malone, Steve McQueen, Shawne Merriman, Harry Morgan, Mos Def, Bill Murray, Tito Ortiz, Pablo Picasso, Kirby Puckett, Busta Rhymes, Axl Rose, Randy Savage, George C. Scott, Charlie Sheen, Christian Slater, Dick Slater, Wesley Snipes (accused of beating Halle Berry), Phil Spector, Kevin Sullivan, Tone Loc, Stalin, Daryl Strawberry, Hunter S. Thompson, Ike Turner, Mike Tyson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sid Vicious, Yanni. And you know who was one of the most notorious woman-beaters in recent memory? Mr. “peace and love” himself–John Lennon! Hell, even Ric Flair has been accused of domestic violence. (Note: For legal reasons, and to save space, no local examples are cited here, but everyone knows who I’m talking about.)

What can we learn from all this? Nothing.

Let’s also note that the Chris Brown/Rihanna debacle points to a common problem in dealing with domestic violence: What do you do when the woman forgives and embraces her accuser? Rihanna fans who were disgusted by the beating she took have now been forced, by her, to put money into the pocket of the man who did it. All her so-called “friends” and family who went to her birthday party just a couple weeks ago were compelled not only to tolerate Brown’s presence as he nuzzled up to her, but also to reportedly sign confidentiality agreements saying they wouldn’t tell the media he was there—and they did it!

And, lest the world come down too hard on Rihanna’s deplorable behavior in all this (which sets a new low, even in this category), let’s not forget that things could be worse. The example of Halle Berry looms, pointing toward her future, in a best-case scenario. At worst, well, one shudders to think. Hopefully she does, as well.

OccupyJax: The End of the Beginning

Much like music (especially jazz), politics has been an obsession of mine since adolescence, which now covers a period of nearly 20 years. And in that whole time, I’d say that the first Occupy Jacksonville rally on October 8, 2011 was without question one of the greatest days in my life as a political junkie. The part of me that once scoffed at Hunter S. Thompson’s assertion that politics is “Better Than Sex” can now almost appreciate his sentiments, having seen that movement develop over the past six months or so, and the tremendous upside it’s had since.

Within a few weeks, members of Occupy had decided to take up the full-time, 24/7 encampments that defined the movement nationally, voting almost unanimously to begin the Occupation downtown on November 5, 2011. The four-month anniversary of the Occupation’s start arrived on March 5, but by that point there was no Occupation to celebrate, because the General Assembly voted the evening of March 3 to break down the camp two days earlier. I walked by, during a break in the Warehouse Studios benefit show at Thief in the Knight, and found out shortly after. I sat with four of the leaders at Burrito Gallery, debriefing over tacos and beer. It wasn’t a sad time—more like watching a friend’s graduation.

OccupyJax was one of the last of its kind in this country; where other cities saw the end weeks ago, ours stuck around long enough to do what no one ever expected was possible—to end it on their terms. Having run the most progressive political campaign this state has seen yet in this century, I can appreciate the patience and stamina that entailed. (Funny: While writing this column, at 6:23am on the morning of the 5^th, news broke via WJXT that Occupiers in West Palm Beach had chained themselves to an old courthouse building downtown—further proof that, no matter what the haters say, they’re absolutely serious.)

So, what was accomplished in this stage of the movement, besides pedagogy? Well, it offered a disgusting display of widespread, coordinated police misconduct, which has been called out by professionals in that industry–like the police chief of Seattle during the WTO protests of 1999; the actual inventor of pepper-spray (who personally trained 10,000 officers to train most of the others) went on the radio to cite multiple cases of his own directions regard the use of these chemicals being disregarded. Had he not done that, we’d probably not know that the tear-gas being used to brutalize pro-democracy protesters in Egypt was actually supplied by US corporations—a useful tidbit.

It showed folks that even our most liberal politicians aren’t acting quite as progressively as their supporters might “hope”, and that conservatives are willing to violate the Constitution if it means suppressing political dissent. Occupy should have been the beginning of a progressive surge that stymies the upward trajectory of, how you say, “lunatic right-wingers”, in this state and nationwide. Instead it stands right now as another example of how Democrats have kept a defensive, compliant posture instead of challenging for those big-money spots the President needs to implement the policies he’s promised.

And it provided many thousands of people (especially young people) with direct, useful experience in political science, which they can carry on into the high-schools, colleges and professional careers; it’s the birth of the new political elite.  Around the country, friendships were forged, love affairs begun and ended, strengthened and made more complex (in ways surely both good and bad). It won’t be long before the first batch of Occubabies is born; sadly, the first one died, in utero, after its mother was tear-gassed and kicked in the stomach while Occupying Seattle—the movement’s first martyr.

Occupy also generated millions (if not billions) in economic stimulus for most cities where it occurred. Locally, the failed initiative to give $1.25 million in taxpayer money to JP Morgan Chase was stalled-out in large part because of the efforts of OccupyJax, along with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and others. Personally, I think it was great for downtown business, but others would certainly disagree.

OccupyOne thing is certain, here and nationally: The end of formal Occupation does not, in any way, mean the end of the movement itself. In fact, they may be now poised to achieve on a level previously unseen in the realm of progressive politics. Having already done the impossible, the next logical step is moving on to the extremely unlikely, and there is no better time than 2012. All the critics, who wanted the Occupiers off the sidewalks so badly, may now end up wishing they had just left well enough alone.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 6, 2012

Top Billin’: Sonny Rollins booked for 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival.

Mayor Alvin Brown was the star at a press conference held Thursday morning, Feb. 9, to formally announce the 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival, which will be held downtown May 24-27. The big news coming out can be summed-up in just two words: “Sonny Rollins”. Jazz fans will need no further embellishment, but for the uninitiated (and becoming a hard-core jazz fan is kind of like an initiation): With the sole exception of Dave Brubeck, Rollins is the world’s greatest living jazz musician, a man whose influence permeates almost the totality of the music in the 60+ years since he first made his name in post-bop New York.

One must note, also, the presence of two other masters among a lineup that is still being finalized: Chick Corea and Terence Blanchard. But the booking of Rollins, who at age 82 does not play concerts that often anymore, and rarely outside the areas more epicentric to the music, is a major coup of historic proportions. He is probably the most important musician to work our festival since those peak years when Dizzy Gillespie headlined multiple festivals toward the end of his life. But that was the ‘80s—a whole different world. The idea of Sonny Rollins appearing in Jacksonville, Florida in 2012 will, for some, be interpreted as a sign of imminent apocalypse; a heavy cynic might wonder if the world is destined to end the day before.

By attaching his name to the festival, Brown does it a service by basically making the festival brand symbiotic with his own. This is a great move, for his own interests, and it also puts a bit of pressure on him to make sure the festival’s long-term momentum is maintained. There were deep initial concerns about its very future coming into this year. Funding for Office of Special Events (which also oversees things like the World of Nations festival and Veterans Day parade) had been in some jeopardy during the last few years of budget battles; while truly significant cuts were not made, the specter of such cuts—and their disastrous effect on the city’s cultural identity—was often invoked by the Peyton administration in its later years.

Those fears, stoked by Peyton, caught fire soon after Brown succeeded him. Those now-infamous staff cuts last year hit the OSE hard, resulting in the elimination of its two top people. Theresa O’Donnell-Price and Christina Langston-Hughes were two of the unsung heroes of city government in the first decade of this century, skillfully implementing the mayor’s mandate to restore the vitality of a festival that had seen better days. Last year’s festival turned out to be their last at the OSE and, headlined by Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers, one of the best ever. But Brown, at that point less than a month in as Mayor-Elect, was on vacation at the time, so he missed seeing what they could actually do—and within a few months, they were shown the door as unceremoniously as everyone else.

Losing them both, simultaneously, was the biggest blow to the festival as an institution since the scandalous staff cuts at WJCT that led directly to the collapse of the festival under its direction in the late-‘90s. It was a dark day for local jazz fans, that’s for sure, and anxiety about the future has only built-up since. Initial buzz on the 2012 festival has already gone a long way toward assuaging many of these concerns, but more can be done. In a nutshell, there should be a heavy representation of local artists at the festival, the businesses of the Urban Core need to be better-integrated into the overall experience, and the City should take the lead in establishing an even stronger presence for the festival in media, both in terms of social media, as well as trying to strengthen relationships with local and national media.

After WJCT basically washed their hands of the logistics, and the country caught its first taste of the post-9/11 economic instability, it was a gamble to invest public money in the Jazz Festival. (Bear in mind, there are people who oppose its public funding even now, despite the overwhelming evidence of disproportionate upside, in terms of economic impact. If all public monies could generate such direct and visceral return on investment, the whole world would be different right now.) But Peyton did it anyway, in early signs that he was far more moderate than he ever got credit for, and I think we can all agree that the gamble paid off.

It’s entirely likely that, had anyone else become mayor in 2003, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival would have never survived into the 21^st century—the third century of jazz music, which was born in Storyville, New Orleans, in the late 1800s. For this, Peyton will surely someday join Jake Godbold among former mayors enshrined in the festival’s Hall of Fame. At this rate, Brown may end up there, too. He’s got a real gift for the kind of retail politics that work so well in the south, and initiatives like this put those skills out-front.

Having written more about the festival’s modern incarnation than any other reporter (if not all of them, combined), I can say that he’s done the two things I’ve always recommended the political leadership do: 1) Take advantage of the festival’s ability to bridge gaps among citizens, and 2) Bring Sonny Rollins to town. It will be curious to see if the national jazz media gives the festival a bit more hype now; we’ll see about that.

Big Top Brawl: Ringling Bros. sparks protests over elephant abuse (with a lengthy disgression related to the depravity of SeaWorld).

Hey, kids: The circus is coming to town! I bet you can’t wait, right? Sure. It is reasonable to assume that we have all had some type of fascination with circuses at some time in our lives, and why not? The visual spectacle of exotic animals and aerial artistry makes a profound impact on the minds of kids; for most, it is the first truly huge, overwhelmingly awesome event of their lives. For most people, it’s just a passing fancy, a relic of childhood soon displaced in our minds by visions of comely contortionists, chicken geekery and other Jim Rose-style freaky, while many are instantly hooked, and remain so forever.

Either way, the circus facilitates our collective introduction into the carny arts and ignites a creative spark that never really goes away. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is the gold-standard of such operations, and it rarely fails to draw rapturous crowds as it packs every venue it hits on the road. A business that began in rickety canvas tents, waterproofed with highly-flammable chemicals, now commands top dollar in some of America’s biggest and most-prestigious arenas, from Madison Square Garden on down. Fans come from miles around for the acrobats and the clowns, but what really masses the marks are the animal acts—specifically, the lions, tigers and elephants. It is this, the most popular aspect of their operation, that has proven the most controversial, and a local organization is working to make sure their latest visit to Northeast Florida does not come off without a hitch.

Jax Protest takes a narrow, specific focus on what they characterize as the maltreatment of elephants trained to perform under the big top. Their website is replete with relevant data, as well as pictures that speak for themselves. “For animals in circuses,” they write, “there is no such thing as ‘positive reinforcement’—only varying degrees of punishment and deprivation. To force them to perform these meaningless and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks and other painful tools of the trade. In the Ringling Bros. circus, elephants are beaten, hit, prodded and jabbed with sharp hooks, sometimes until bloody. Ringling breaks the spirit of elephants when they’re vulnerable babies who should still be with their mothers.” Brutal stuff, all of which Ringling denies, of course.

The group denounces Ringling not only for the harshness of their training methods, but also for the conditions in which the animals are forced to live, work and travel: “Constant travel means that animals are confined to boxcars, trailers, or trucks for days at a time in extremely hot and cold weather … Elephants, big cats, bears, and primates are confined to cramped and filthy cages in which they eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and urinate—all in the same place. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus boasts that its two units travel more than 25,000 miles as the circus tours the country for 11 months each year. Ringling’s own documents reveal that on average, elephants are chained for more than 26 hours straight and are sometimes continually chained for as many as 60 to 100 hours.”

“JaxProtest members are a 100% volunteer group,” they write. “We come together to help those who have no voice. We are teachers, MMA fighters, web designers, stay at home mothers, retired military, students and everyone in between.” The group plans to protest all seven of Ringling Bros. planned performances at the Veterans Memorial Arena downtown, which are spread out over four days between January 19 and 22. To this end, they have partnered with like-minded organizations like the Girls Gone Green, the Animal Rights Foundation and OccupyJax. Headhunter Muai Thai also supports Jax Protest; the fact that some of its members train there makes for a nice counter to the widespread perception of animal-rights activists as, well, geeks. (They’re in the Relson Gracie Academy on Beach Blvd., and worth checking out.) It also makes sense, given the elephant’s prominent positioning within Thai culture. Another collaborator, the Lotus Elephant Sanctuary, has gone so far as to begin preparations to establish its own wild elephant preserve in Laos.

I’m not much of a circus fan (though I do try to catch the awesome all-black Universoul Circus on their yearly swing through the area). While the animal-rights aspect of the argument is plenty compelling, for me the issue pivots on the question of children’s rights—specifically, the right to not be traumatized by these periodic animal freak-out sessions that have, on occasion, been precipitated by the mistreatment of animals. If an animal ran amok in the crowd or maimed its handler in the presence of kids, that outfit should be banned from that particular city forever, and investigations should immediately commence into any possible causalities. Ringling has a responsibility to lead on this issue, so that smaller circuses cannot use any laxity up-top as an excuse for failure down below.

Ringling has so far been able to avoid the disgusting, depraved moral and ethical lapses of SeaWorld, whose executives are some of the biggest pieces of scumbag trash anywhere in the United States today—and if you know any of them, please tell them I said so! The Tilikum debacle should have been sufficient to shut the whole thing down. Instead they were able the a) basically bury the negligent homicide of their own employee by claiming the victim got herself killed through her own incompetence, then b) keep a killer whale known to be lethally-dangerous to its own species and to people (including its closest human companion) performing for the public, whose children will absolutely be forced to watch that thing kill again, on their dime.

Ringling Brothers should be mindful of the piss-poor example set by SeaWorld (not to be confused with “Sea World”, an entirely unrelated Australian company that does pretty much the exact same thing, but better and safer—they like to make that clear). Tilikum was born in the wild, abducted at age two, separated from his family and forced to live with older, non-related orcas that physically abused him on a regular basis. He was trained at Sealand in Canada, using methods that included deliberate starvation, and perhaps worse.

It was there where he killed a 20 year-old female trainer in 1991; it was deemed it an accident—he didn’t do it, he just helped the others do it—and they kept him working. Like a pedophile priest, he was transferred—appropriately enough, to Florida, a state that openly, gleefully encourages the presence of all violent predatory animals, even those that aren’t human. Whether his history raised any red flags, or whether his new handlers were even informed of that history, remains unclear, but since this is Florida we can presume they did know, and just didn’t care. Well, obviously, they don’t care, and never did—we have the public record to tell us that.

They found a man’s naked body in his tank in 1999. SeaWorld said the guy sneaked in drunk, which implies that they kept a known killer under such lax protection that someone could get into the tank when the park was closed, even if they were drunk and naked. Luckily, it was not some intrepid pipsqueak looking to get a closer look at the beautiful orca, or a terrorist hoping to channel Tilikum’s insane killing power for jihad. His third killing, in 2010, fit the modus operandi of the first: grabbed by the orca and thrown around the pool until dead. Dawn Brancheau was a 16-year veteran who knew this beast better than anyone, so she didn’t die quick, unfortunately for her; her jaw, ribs and neck were broken and her spinal cord severed before she drowned, paralyzed, at the bottom.

At least a dozen people had to watch that woman die, but were powerless to save her. It was SeaWorld’s job to keep her safe, and they neglected that duty so profoundly that the park’s continued existence is a disgrace. Brancheau should be a martyr for workplace safety, and the video of her death should be made public, so Americans will understand the pressing need to put these people out of business. Instead, OSHA issued a whitewashed report, a bullshit $75,000 fine, and Tilikum was back entertaining the masses a year later. As the kids say, “OMG!” Suffice to say SeaWorld is so depraved, even Tommy Lee has voiced concerns.

Among the dozens of serious attacks on humans by killer whales, only one has happened in the wild, and that was in 1972. Either the captivity contributes to the aggression, or humans have somehow successfully captured only the most violent specimens. One should note here that Tilikum, who’s spent 28 of his 30 years captive, is himself implicated in 75% of all documented human deaths related to orcas, which makes a compelling case for causalityg. In this increasingly unstable economy, all it takes is one unfortunate incident to torpedo a company, even one as big, as rich and as historic as the Greatest Show On Earth. Just one more elephant, or a single overly aggressive lion, could do to the entire circus industry what fires, economic depression, two world wars and brutal train-wrecks could not: Kill business forever. So, it’s probably best not to beat them, right? Sure. We’ll see how that works out for them.

http://www.jaxprotest.com/

http://www.facebook.com/Jaxprotest

http://www.facebook.com/events/304820789556769/

jaxprotest@gmail.com

http://www.lotussanctuary.org/

http://www.thegirlsgonegreen.com/

http://www.fourfeetforward.org/

http://www.animalrightsflorida.org/index.html

http://www.headhuntermuaythai.com/

sheltonhull@gmail.com; January 2, 2012

Money Jungle: The Sound and the Fury

The Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band is something any true music fan must see at least once in their life. There are other bands, and they are excellent, but the 100 is the band. It’s not an outfit for the lazy or the slow of mind, because they exist on perfection in all aspects of their performances, from musicianship to the choreography. For every person in the band, there are ten, if not 100, who would take their spot immediately if possible. And, when the standards are that high, it’s always possible.

As such, it’s hardly surprising that the FAMU band would now find itself embroiled in a scandal rooted in the perfectionism of such a perfect band. What does shock the senses, though, is the level of violence this scandal entails. Stories of fraternity hazing, sometimes to the point of death, abound in our culture, but rarely is it this bad. Pranks, paddlings, forced-marches, water-boarding, wire hangers bent into Greek letters and used as branding irons on bare flesh (an old George W. Bush specialty, allegedly)—we’ve heard all this. In extreme cases, maybe some nude wrestling, or a raid on Geronimo’s tomb, or a fatal bender; most deaths in college hazing seem to be from alcohol poisoning and/or blunt trauma from falling off of something. Almost never do they kill each other on purpose.

That is point #1 to this whole thing: It takes significant malice, cruelty and focus to dish out a beating like that boy endured, in defiance of his screams, his crying, his bleeding. There is no possible way they did not know exactly what they were doing, and what the consequences would be. Unless he did something horrible that has not been made public yet (which is entirely possible), it appears he was executed by a group of his own peers for nothing more severe than a mistake made in performance. If that’s true, then his assailants are psychopaths, flat-out, and their defenders have enabled a low-tech lynching.

Had a black man died like that at the hands of white people, all hell might be breaking loose right now. Had some black woman gotten her femurs broken by, say, a bunch of cops, the odds of lethal blowback would hover somewhere just shy of 100%. But because the beating was done by their fellow African-Americans, it cannot be so simple, because these kids are products of a culture that, on the whole, celebrates violence while openly protecting the worst offenders as if it’s part of some collective duty.

(To be fair, note in consideration of those names epicentric to the Penn State scandal—names like McQueary, Paterno and that dirty bastard Sandusky—that all those names sound vaguely Catholic. Not that it means anything, necessarily, any more than the ethnicity of the FAMU beat-down boys. But it’s worth noting that Catholics have had a special, unseemly history of looking the other way in regard to this very specific form of systematic abuse, thousands of times all over the world—and that’s just what we know. In fact, the current Pope, through his many years a ranking church official working out of his native Germany and later the Vatican, is himself directly implicated in the very same kinds of behaviors ascribed to school officials at FAMU and Penn State, but no one’s weeping on their vestments.)

FAMU fans imply that some double-standard is in play, that this hazing scandal gets more attention because the principals are black. Well, of course, but it goes far deeper than that. The truth is that the American people worship authority and never fail to find new and creative ways to subjugate themselves. If control-structures do not exist, people will create their own. It makes perfect sense that an institution founded in the spirit of lifting black people into a higher plane of existence would come to incubate a culture of sadistic brutality that, quite frankly, is the sort of thing one usually expects of white people.

We’ll never know how many kids took beatings in that band, because most of them will never speak of it, not if they’re smart. I doubt you could get their stories for any price, because the stigma of snitching defies any upside, any pretense of justice. A long-term predator like the vile Sandusky surely knew well how to scout his victims. It should be no surprise that most of his victims have so far been described as young black males, because 1) He’s a football coach, and that’s just the demographics of it, and 2) Those kids grow up in a culture that openly declares it will not tell the cops about anything, even child-rape. And had that boy at FAMU not died from his injuries, he would have kept his mouth shut, as would everyone else involved. And that is why racial profiling exists—real talk.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 29, 2011

Money Jungle: Weakness Is Provocative

Weakness Is Provocative

Since the Occupy Jacksonville movement began, I’ve studiously avoided making comments about it in this space, mostly so I could see how it was handled by the authorities. Having witnessed much of their disgraceful behavior firsthand, I feel now obliged to speak my peace. The city’s crackdown on the Occupation going on outside of City Hall is humiliation for all citizens of a city that, let’s face it, routinely goes out of its way to humiliate itself.

Those of us who labor daily against the perception that Jacksonville is a sub-literate cesspool of racism and religious dogma, a place whose land, air and water are so polluted that the only things that grow here consistently are criminals, have seen our effort rebuked yet again. Whether it was corrupt fire inspectors in the 1990s or the disastrous DART raids of a couple years ago, our “leaders” have remained keen to waste law-enforcement resources on bullshit, despite ample evidence that their methods have actually empowered the organized crime groups that, let’s face it, control far more of this city than any silly old church.

The situation also tends to confirm the mayor’s political cowardice to those handfuls of observers for whom the question remained in doubt. Brown’s tenure has mostly been defined by throwing key supporters under the bus, while retaining much of the core of the administration that preceded his—the one he was elected largely in opposition to. From day one, Brown has acted like an embattled incumbent; it’s almost like he anticipates being there for just one term, a historical aberration, a failed experiment in the craven new style.

The Occupy movement represents, perhaps, the last significant opportunity to address the issues of corporate greed and economic and social inequality in non-violent fashion. It’s scary to think that, when young people organize to assert their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association, the establishment reaction is viscerally negative.

Councilman Don Redman has been a constant presence at Occupy events, playing the role of amiable scold. Unless he’s secretly a part of the 99% (and some think he may be), he has devoted extraordinary amounts of his personal time harassing a bunch of kids who have not yet been trained in how to deal with hatemongers. Whatever the needs of the voters in his district, they should know those needs fall second to Redman’s need to bother the protesters. The recent crackdown indicates that it’s Redman, not Brown, who calls the shots as far as how this was handled. Speculation has already begun that the term-limited Redman may join what will surely be a wave of politicians seeking to unseat an already-weakened mayor Brown; Sheriff John Rutherford, who’s been at odds with the mayor and his own union, remains at the top of most lists, but more will come. Because weakness is provocative.

But let’s say this much for Redman: At least he showed up. Brown and other members of the Council have basically adopted the policy of other city leaders nationwide—that of running their mouths about things they have no understanding of. It makes sense that Brown, who bounced back and forth between the Beltway and Corporate America, would be ignorant of the underlying economic reality. It makes sense that his populist campaign rhetoric would be a front for more of the same-old, same-old. It makes sense that our visionary new leader is a just a cut-out caricature, eager to conform to stereotype.

Because as we’ve seen with President Obama, the first job for any black executive-branch pol is to act forcefully to retain the confidence and support of the white business leaders who brought them to power. Hence, the firings, politically-motivated. Ironic that a mayor who was elected largely on a promise to encourage growth downtown has signed-off on suppressing the only people who can actually draw numbers into downtown on a weekend without promising football or free food. It’s further ironic that most of the local Occupiers either voted for Alvin Brown or actively worked for his campaign. Well, they won’t next time!

Our mayor has apparently forgotten that he won by the closest margin in local history, and that it was the support of young progressives that kept him in the game back when elites were focused on that shoddy Hogan-Moran-Mullaney horserace. I’ve heard many Democrats in recent months wish aloud that Audrey Moran had just a little bit more guts, hadn’t been so passive in response to conservative attacks, had tried to reach out to progressive a little bit more instead of prostrating for the business community like everyone else has. Of course, it’s unlikely that she would have handled OccupyJax any differently because, overall, this movement exists to show the people of this country that our leaders have not only abnegated their responsibilities, but have deliberately acted against the best interests of this country.

Why? Because they are on the take. Every single politician in this country is hopelessly corrupt, whether they want to be or not. The system of campaign finance ensures that whoever wins any election is probably already bought and paid for by foreign capital. Those of you who complain about Brown now have forgotten  that he was trained by Bill Clinton, arguably one of the most morally bankrupt human beings to ever walk this earth. He learned his lessons well, but it remains to be seen how much the voters themselves have learned.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 24, 2011

Money Jungle: Deficits and Debt, Credit and Control

I’m writing this on August 1, as President Obama is trying to secure a deal with Congress to raise the ceiling on our national debt (currently hovering around $14 trillion, or 98% of GDP) and avoid possible default on America’s financial obligations. This is the kind of political theate rWashington specializes in.

Of course, longtime readers of this column already know the subtext: America is broke, and has been for the better part of a decade. Osama bin Laden’s master plan to bankrupt the “bleed”Americadry through a series of ill-conceived, poorly-planned and ineffectively-executed military adventures in all of the wrong countries worked so well that we had to blow his brains out just to silence his constant snickering. The national debt has more than doubled (from $5.7 trillion) since 2000, and is projected to exceed $22 trillion by 2015, or 134% of GDP. Anyone who thinks any of this will ever be paid back, or that it’s even possible, is either lying or insane. Maybe both.

Looking at the legendary US Debt Clock website, which belongs on everyone’s list of favored sites, the brutal truth now being revealed to the population is laid bare in cold statistics. On Saturday, July 30 (three days before the deadline) one sees the national debt hovering just above $14.5 trillion. At that moment, our GDP was only $14.8 trillion (a debt-to-GDP ratio of 98%), and the amount of currency currently in circulation was less than $10 trillion. The interest on debt stands at $3.6 trillion for this year alone, which is only slightly less than the total national debt a decade ago, pre-war.

The debt debacle unfolding on Capitol Hill offers the nation’s youth an ideal object lesson in the dangers of a debt-based economy. Not only has theUnited Statesruined its own economy, and helped undermine the financial stability of its allies, but our dependence on foreign countries to sustain our lifestyles has forced us out of the position of global leadership that we’d held since World War II. Just as our addiction to OPEC oil left us unable to check those nations’ continued support of Islamic terrorism (which is essentially funded by the money we send to OPEC, as well as military aid to Pakistan), our slavish dependence on China leaves us impotent to check its expansion into the Western Hemisphere. Centuries of evolved political wisdom faded, like old cotton candy, under the heat of economic expediency.

Let’s make this country-simple: The bailout was a mistake. President Obama laid down like a prostitute for Wall Street, because the underwrote his campaign. He stacked his economic team with people who were directly complicit in the illegal and unethical behaviors that led to the recession, and their time has been spent throwing good money after bad, while working hard to ensure the guilty never face the consequences of their actions, either fiscal or physical. Having demonstrated that you can cheat the system and destroy human lives in the process, while being rewarded for it, Obama eliminated any possibility that Wall Street’s excesses can be reined-in.

Federal finances are in shambles, but under that is a whole matrix of personal and institutional debt that could also collapse if triggered by federal default. Like the abusive spouse who gets a second chance, Wall Street now feels empowered to do anything—and that makes it almost a certainly that our recession is going to get much, much worse. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, and millions more labor at jobs that pay poorly, offer no benefits or room for advancement. A majority of citizens are stuck in this cycle of revolving debt, but no one has suggested any relief for them.

No one suggests putting a moratorium on the fraudulent foreclosures that have ruined millions of families, or forgiving student-loan debt, or exempting certain key public workers (like nurses, teachers, cops and firemen) from the federal income tax, or cutting through the labyrinth of paperwork that impedes so many from starting businesses in this country, or containing the artificially-high medical costs that are the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. The only wisdom we’re receiving from our political “leaders” consists of calls for enhanced austerity on one hand, tax hikes on the other—approaches that will only cause economic growth to stall even further. Which means this whole debate will not end with any deal struck this week or next, this year or next. Our nation is in big trouble, but the only people who don’t know are us.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 1, 2011

 

Money Jungle: Generational Warfare

Generational Warfare

Duval County students have no allies in the political system.

One thing the whole world has learned about Florida in recent years is that you can pretty much do anything you want to children and get away with it. Now, I’m not just talking about our pathological coddling of social predators, but a political structure that makes our young people easy subjects for negative influences and anti-social behavior. At its root is the state’s criminally negligent approach to public education.

The latest round of budget cuts include approximately 256 positions across the county, cuts not limited just to teachers. Student-athletes, whose precious summertime should have been spent in study, at practice or just hanging out with their friends, have been reduced to begging on the streets for money that the private sector should have ponied up instantly. The fact that they haven’t speaks to the genuine contempt adults have for the children of this community.

We have underfunded education for longer than many readers have been alive. We have stuck them with a worthless curriculum and rearranged teaching practices to prepare them for standardized testing that is not only inapplicable to the real world, but whose very existence is mostly the result of blatant political corruption on local, state and national levels. We’ve cut arts, music and sports, which are essential to the shaping of young minds and the building of interpersonal bonds that last a lifetime, while also deemphasizing trade and technical education at a time when America’s physical economy is dissipating faster than blunt smoke in a wind tunnel.

We’ve done all these things, knowing full well what the result would be, because we were warned, exhaustively, at every step along the way. For years, children who saw the raw deal they had been given, and reacted appropriately, were labeled as “disruptive” or tagged with the various fake DSM-IV disorders—ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc.—dictated by Big Pharma, and then what? They were drugged, in the millions, creating an entire generation of addicts, prostitutes and potential mass-murderers. The kids were pilled-up to conceal the comprehensive failure of their parents, their teachers and their political leaders. And now that it’s too big to conceal anymore, the decision has been made to just eliminate them altogether, by torpedoing the public school system.

Obviously, much of the blame goes to Tallahassee and our pathetic joke of a Governor, but this was happening for years, long before anyone had heard of Rick Scott. For me, this goes on everyone: teachers’ unions, PTAs and the private sector, the school board and administrators, all elected officials including this governor and his predecessor. We also fault a Democratic Party that laid down for Scott, offering no resistance while he blatantly bought the governorship. He makes a convenient scapegoat, and rightfully so, but it’s not like anyone, anywhere, has an alternate vision. He was elected by a majority of voters who all knew exactly what he stood for. Now the children get to see what their parents are really good for—specifically, nothing. That is a form of education.

The entire Board should resign, and maybe the Superintendant, too. I’m not talking about the rank-and-file DCPS employees, who are already suffering and will suffer even more in the future. The seven elected School Board members are all nice folks, but they all violated their oaths and their campaign promises to help improve education. Even though funding was cut, their allocation of funds was terrible, wasteful and contributed to the political environment that allowed such cuts to be forced onto an unwilling citizenry.

Hell, if they’d resigned sooner, it might have been possible to offset the budget cuts for a few more months. But instead, they sat back on their taxpayer-padded asses and pled powerlessness, as they voted to deliberately induce hard times on parents, teachers and students countywide. Not one even had the decency to resign in either protest or shame, because nobody has any shame in Florida.

Whether they like it or not, they are now part of the problem. And now, having forfeited all credibility, they can never be part of the solution, because Tallahassee knows they’ll lay down on-command; their ability to legislate effectively has been broken. The good news is that four of the seven seats are up for grabs in 2012, right after they sign off on the next wave of budget cuts. Districts 1 (Martha Barrett), 3 (WC Gentry), 5 (Betty Burney), and 7 (Tommy Hazouri) constitute a majority stake; Burney and Hazouri are term-limited, so their seats are open.

Students should also consider the idea of organizing and starting the new school year with a mass walk-out in the first week. When the adults prove incapable of protecting their children’s interests, then the kids need to go into business for themselves. That is the Free Market at work!

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 25, 2011

 

Money Jungle Classic: “Infinite Justiss” (2001)

Alan Justiss: the name brings forth a multitude of divergent opinion from as many different people as you ask, most of whom are probably right. He is a near-deity to some, a near-devil to others; an extreme man for extreme times whose personal habits and proclivities challenge the dainty drudgery of daily life. He is a major figure in the burgeoning local spoken-word scene, and could’ve been a national or international Celebrity Poet had he the stomach to shill his own work. I interviewed him behind the Czigan-Rummel gallery, downtown, during an ad hoc press junket for his reading at the Karpeles on October 6. Church bells and sirens outside. Looking into those small black pupils set into blue irises was like viewing a solar eclipse–much easier to find than people like Justiss, and more so everyday.

Alan Justiss is the product of an age of fresh post-war liberation, a time when the young and idealistic were more empowered to follow their muse, for better or worse, by the sudden realization that, with the introduction of nuclear weapons, “humanity” was a much more impermanent concept than in the days of single-shot muskets, bayonets and trench warfare. “I was born in Dayton, Ohio, 1943. At the age of four days old I moved to FL, grew up in Yukon . . . by the time I was six or seven I had read everything that Mark Twain had ever written, and from that point on I was always fascinated by stories and imagination, and the importance it could have on people’s solitude.” And what is the value of solitude? “Self-discovery. Because when you get around people, they don’t let you know anything about yourself but their own preconceived ideas.” His solitary nature is captured brilliantly in a recent painting by Mr. Jonathan Lux: coffee, cigarettes, a radio that seems to never stop and his manual typewriter.

He has four children–Christopher, Damon, Suzanne and Monet–produced during five marriages ended by his lust for that next poem. Each woman proposed to him–”if they think I’m worthwhile, I better tell them yes.” He attributes his uniform failure within the “family man” motif to his work, which long ago ceased being simply an obsession and became perhaps the raison d’etre we all need to get ourselves out of bed and into the sunlight each day. As for the ladies, well . . . maybe number six is out there, but Alan hasn’t been with a woman in 12 years, and “I Am Waiting,” he says. “I know what love is. I have a lot saved up.”

Alan did journalism for the Mayport Mirror and, later, the Jacksonville Journal in the mid-1960s. “Six weekends I spent at the Astor Hotel and the various fleabag places, talking with winos and people on social security–I had my typewriter and I was looking down on Bay street, Laura street, Forsyth street, Duval–that was where I found true life was, in these small enclaves of humanity.” He expressed no real desire to write prose anymore, unfortunately. The question of influences (a word that, in the context of journalism, comes off so blatantly fanboy I try not to use it while working) brings a flood of names spanning a glorious century of and for American literature: “From Mark Twain and O. Henry, it was Carl Sandburg, Jack London, and then Hemingway, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, the poets–Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire–and then onward through H.L. Mencken, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Alan Justiss–a major influence on me. . . .” And why not? He knows his demographic.

Of them all, Bukowski (1920-1994; author of 50 books, my favorite being Shakespeare Never Did This) is probably his favorite, maybe because they met in 1973. The details depend on what source one goes to, but this is AJ’s story: “I had originally gone over to see his girlfriend, Linda King, and I’d just come back from San Francisco . . . Bukowski hid in the bathroom for about the first 30 minutes after I arrived. I’d come over to praise her work, and then I started talking about her boyfriend. Hank came lumbering out of the bathroom and realized that I was interested in his work also. We got thrown in the drunk tank; he wrote that he’d busted out all these panes, but what actually happened was I was razzing him. ‘Come on, old man, you didn’t duke it out with Hemingway.’

“He said ‘Yes, I did,’ and he rammed his fist through a small pane of glass in a French door. We were really fucked up, and I ran my left fist through eight panes of glass, which severed all kinds of things in my wrist [and caused a near-fatal case of gangrene]. Ah, what a fiasco it all became.” The end result is that Alan has the ironic distinction of being called a “drunken swine” by Charles Bukowski in the poems “We All Knew Him” and “With the Other Woman,” from 1981′s Dancing in the Tournefortia.

A unifying trait in the writing he loves is insistence, a confidence born of repetition. Young writers are invariably frustrated, and his advice to them hinges on the idea of detaching from one’s personal stake in their work. “Don’t try to write–write. Don’t be self-critical of yourself because you haven’t reached some perfection. Give yourself credit for the fact that you are vulnerable and that you do things in creation that perhaps have no value, but it is a constant rehearsal for the time that you’ll be able to dance across the page and people will be able to feel the wind in the words. So, discipline . . . discipline . . . discipline.”

The work available from Alan Justiss is hardly commensurate with what he’s done. Most of his work prior to 1990 is unavailable at present. He was in the Peeling Potatoes anthology, also Solidarity; he’s published chapbooks like Freedom At its Worst Angle bootlegs from readings and radio exist; but the thick volume I think is needed to really get a real sense of his art–which should include older stuff and analyses by colleagues like Nestor Gil, Jr. and Robert Eskew–remains uncompiled. That will change at some point, surely. He recorded You’ll Laugh in the Coming Years with Jay Cole and G. Jerome Jones in 2001, performed at the New School last year. (These and other items can be had in some form via Mr. Justiss.)

“I spent most of my life, from the age of seven, running away from home, and when I was finally able to con my way into the military at the age of 16, my parents gladly signed the papers for me to go in. I have since spent most of my life outside of Jacksonville, because there was always such a cultural devastation constantly occurring. Anytime something raised its head, it was put back down into the swamp. But when I turned 50, after my fifth divorce, I came to a conclusion: I knew that I was a writer, but I also came to a conclusion: this is my home town, and this is where I feel I should die. And that’s why I haven’t left this place in ten years. That’s the bottom line. This is where I’m going to die. This is where I will die . . . maybe. [laughs] Hell, I don’t know about that. I ain’t no prophet.” But by voicing it, he makes it so . . . maybe.

There is a saying: “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” and it’s a saying embodied–and emboldened–by the life of Alan Justiss. Justiss lives like a man who knows that compromise, like so much of what passes for “normal” in this abnormal world, is a scam, a short ticket to slow death that much be avoided whenever possible. A lesson worth learning, I think. The ride he’s taken has been interesting, if not always fun. The road he leaves behind him is cracked, mottled, laced with intermittent fires and congested with debris, screaming women, men stumbling through the smoke in dazed delirium, like the Autobahn if they never cleared the wreckage. Of course, his road is great fun to look at from the sky, if you can deal with it. Speed kills, indeed–but everything kills, eventually.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; September 21, 2001

 [Note: Alan Justiss died February 14, 2011]

“Brown Equals Green: The Conservative Case for Alvin Brown”

This column runs on Election Day, so most readers have already made their final choices for the handful of spots that remain in play, including Mayor and a few seats on the City Council. These are big decisions, with bigger consequences for our city, our state and perhaps even our country. When it comes to the top spot, I’ve decided to vote for Alvin Brown, and the next few paragraphs will hopefully help explain why.

I wrote in these pages a decade ago that our nation’s future depended to no small degree on what happened in Northeast Florida in that time. Unfortunately, I was proven right, as our strategic slack and political instability cost us the ability to continue being the “Bold New City of the South”—so the slogan was changed to reflect our projected status as the city people drive through en route to places that actually want the revenue generated by tourists and the relocation of new businesses and young families.

It was a revolutionary idea, the notion that anything that happens here matters. Many dollars have been invested cultivating the prevailing stereotypes of this region: racism, ignorance, illiteracy, a stern resistance to change of any kind on any level. The unstated subtext is that our citizens’ faith in God amounts to a form of mental disability that retards progress and stymies fresh thinking. Of course, the core of the church’s actual power is simply the perception of its power, ably assisted by liberal media.

Nevermind that Brown’s election would immediately counter the stereotypes and allow for the immediate rebranding that is so necessary. It would also send the message that Jacksonville is open for business. The case for him can be made in strictly capitalistic terms. His is ultimately a candidacy rooted in free-market conservatism, as reflected by the support he has drawn from the business community. People like Preston Haskell and Peter Rummel don’t fall in with losers. Tommy Hazouri, Matt Carlucci and Delores Weaver are no chumps. Even Ed Austin got “down with Brown” after he gambled and lost on Audrey Moran, writing a fat check in the last days of his storied life.

No mayor can upset the apple-cart. Transformative change is not on the table right now. Our nation’s municipalities are fighting an existential battle against 40 years of bad economic policy and a world war entering its second decade, reaching deeper into the homeland every day. The assorted cliques and cartels of this world are not laying people off like our governments and corporations are. Even al-Qaeda is recruiting a new CEO; the perks are great, but don’t even bother asking about the health insurance. There are challenges, but there’s no need to adopt a defensive posture.Jacksonvillemust take up a stronger leadership role in the economic, cultural and political life ofFlorida; if not, then you can easily imagine what the next few years will be like.

Mike Hogan is a good man, and a public servant of quality. While many outside observers, myself included, questioned the wisdom of putting his wife and grandchildren on-camera as de facto surrogates, the fact that they came off so well in those commercials is a testament to his abilities as a husband, father and grandfather, so good for him. It’s entirely possible that, once elected, Hogan could prove to be far more moderate than one might expect. He could even be the kind of loose cannon Florida’s gotten very good at producing—the kind of man for whom microphones turn themselves on.

For local progressives, this is probably the most important electoral stand they will ever make. For conservatives, this is a crucial test of what that ideology means in the new reality. The question revolves around growth and prosperity within a fair free-market system, versus slowing the speed of progress to service social objectives. Expectations were low for John Peyton, but he became one of our best mayors ever, and a plausible primary challenger to Rick Scott, who needs to be beaten in 2014, preferably by someone fromNE Florida—maybe even John Peyton. Alvin Brown is not the guy to do it, but he can help create the political conditions that make it possible.

I’ve long believed that the concept of “objective journalism” is ridiculous. Human beings have opinions about damn near everything, and those who don’t are either dumb or just lying, for one reason or another. “Objective” and “impartial” are different things; the debauched FoxNews slogan “Fair and Balanced” more closely approximates the point. The reporter should gather the facts, give all sides’ views a fair hearing, and give the audience an honest appraisal of the situation, whether it’s a war, a football game or a kitten stuck in a tree. Or, for that matter, a political contest.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 9, 2011

Austin 3:16: A Chapter Closes

Austin 3:16: A Chapter Closes

“Old geezers like me can give you some history. Even if we didn’t do much, we can tell you what happened.”—Ed Austin, April 2006

Ed Austin (1926-2011) died on Saturday morning, April 23. For him, the Good Friday was the last of many. His exit from the stage automatically changes the city he helped put on the map forever, and throws into stark relief the differences between two generations of political leadership. As they say of so many institutions, “They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” Oh, if only we could!

Austin effectively controlled the State Attorney’s office for a quarter-century before unseating Tommy Hazouri in 1991. He was the last Democrat to win that spot, and the first Republican; his post-election party-switch almost single-handedly shifted the polarity of regional politics forever. A former varsity footballer for the Duke Blue Devils and Army Airborne veteran,Austin’s short-but-sweet reign was a key step forward for the city, with major investments in public infrastructure and the arts, plus the arrival of the Jaguars. His “River City Renaissance” led directly to the Delaney/Peyton “Better Jacksonville Plan”, both of which were widely criticized but needed doing. It would be hard to find anyone (outside the Tea Party) who would undo the last 20 years.

Despite all of Austin’s vast accomplishments throughout a long career in public service, he deserves to also be remembered for what he achieved in retirement. Barely a year[?] after leaving City Hall, a brutal car wreck killed his wife of 34 years, Patricia and left him fighting for his life; he survived only because he was Ed Austin. It was a blow that would leave most people crippled, both physically and spiritually, but the zeal with which he seized the subsequent days inspired many people who may have never even met him. His robust physique and go-getter mentality was the subject of countless stories that bordered on the mythic. The classic photo from an old Daily Record showingAustin in his late-‘70s, holding a massive marlin out at shoulder-height, shirtless, was itself a symbol for the city’s toughness and resiliency. Seniors, in particular, saw in him a future beyond what the convention wisdom implied for them.

For most of the citizens he served so well for so long, Ed Austin’s last stand in political life was taken alongside another legendary former mayor, Jake Godbold, when they appeared together in a TV spot for Audrey Moran, who somehow failed to make the runoff to succeed John Peyton this year. Coupled with an overall sub-30 percent turnout in the primaries, Moran’s defeat—and by extension the rejection of those good ol’ boys’ sage advice—was a stunning rebuke to that generation that gave all to make this the Bold New City of the South; now we’re stuck arguing about how much of that legacy will be dismantled, as those elders who remain watch it come around them.

Unlike many local powerbrokers, who long ago decamped to those plasticine outposts of urban sprawl, Austin walked among the common man. Sightings were long a regular feature for residents of Riverside/Avondale, where he lived most of the last half-century. You’d see him at The Fox, having breakfast, and other restaurants for lunches and dinners. You’d see him ducking out of Riverside Liquors, double-fisting handles of high-end bourbon; “I figured I’d get two; they say there might be a storm this weekend.”

The last time I saw him was just a few weeks ago; he was at Publix, buying a Times-Union. He could have gotten a subscription, gratis no doubt, and had it dropped right at his front door as most 84 year-olds would likely do. But I sensed he enjoyed the activity, the interaction, the multigenerational props he received. He was slightly hunched, but so tall it was hard to tell, and his handshake was like a vise-grip.

Even to the end of his life, running the most mundane errands, Austinconveyed credibility and a sense of command presence that no local politician of the present or future can ever hope to convey themselves. His loss should be taken as an opportunity to reevaluate the state of our city and reassess our commitment to the mission, vision and values that he and his peers, now mostly gone, projected onto the virtual blank slate that was Consolidation-era Jacksonville. There’s another saying: “Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it”, but that is not true in this case. We have ignored our past, to our great and enduring detriment, but our doom is that it will not be repeated. Men like Ed Austin will never walk this Earth again, unfortunately. RIP

 sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 24, 2011

Money Jungle: Alan Justiss (1943-2011)

[It took the death of my friend, colleague and long-time mentor Charles Alan Justiss to occasion the return of the "Money Jungle", the creative cultivation of which he helped oversee way back in  the fall of 1999. This is just one of the many tributes offered to the old man, who had a lot of love to give, since his death on Valentines Day; there will be more stuff coming out in Folio Weekly, Ink19 and the web, in general. Certainly, amid the crush of activity that has commenced this year, I will find time to expand further on the thoughts collected below, but this is a preview of next week's column.]

Space-Age, Near Dust

The light is out on the 17^th floor on Lomax Street, at the retirement community Alan Justiss called home at the end of his life. That light has burned out, and it will shine no more. The light, like the man, was a beacon for people seeking the kind of real talk that is getting harder and harder to find anymore. No more late-night phone-calls with the smell of beer and cigarettes and wet typewriter ink digitized and dispersed by satellites into time and space, where scholars in distant galaxies transcribe them now.

The greatest writer our city ever produced will spend eternity nestled in a pine box in the pauper’s field, maybe with a marker or a mention and some care to his last intention. His overworked Underhill went underground, laid across a chest clothed cheaper than the baby Jesus, his hands clasped across corroding keys in propriety and prayer. His entire body gave out slowly, over the course of 20 years, but you see those hands and you know that serious work was done.

Ten fingers, carpals coiled like copper wires, fused to arms that did old-school labor, did the work of a thousand Angels, to pull thousands of men and women closed to the light, whether we wanted to or not. Ten fingers, ten pages done daily, every day, at minimum, since JFK was POTUS—and what did you do for your country today? What did any of us do? What will we do now that he is not there to point out our mistakes before they have been made? We will make those mistakes.

He would have been a great judge or politician, but he just could not stop telling people the truth. It’s a sad fact of life that we all ask questions whose truthful answers could not be handled. The smart money lies in spin and subterfuge, obfuscations oscillating like sub-atomic particles around a nucleus of truth—or, as AJ would say, “the exegesis”. He was always mindful of the need not to waste time on feathery language. You have a certain amount of space, so maximize it—provide the relevant data and make the reading smooth and enjoyable for the customer. Every word, every space, every punctuation, even the white space around the words matters.

He was found dead in his bed, one more Riverside sunrise burnt out into day, on my birthday, Valentine’s Day. It was the best- and worst-ever at once. The man was built of some material that does not exist anymore. He was literally about to die just a month ago—he held court at St. Vincent’s, making plans, then suddenly the Angel of Death got a contract gig in Egypt, and he was fine again, briefly.

Even after years of hoarding a wildly disproportionate share of every conceivable earthly delight, it took old age, bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema, cancer, malnutrition, congestive heart disease, the aftereffects of having a lung removed and the immobility of a broken hip suffered in a vicious mugging years ago combined to kill him—and even then, it took damn near a decade. It is unthinkable that anyone would be surprised, yet the better you knew him, the more surprising it was. Even God tweeted “WTF?”

The only thing harder than overstating Alan Justiss’ role in the cultural evolution of Northeast Florida over the last 40 years would be stating it precisely. It would take an entire issue of Folio just to hold the names of the people he’s impacted and influenced. I can only speak for myself. I read about him in Folio when I was in high-school, 17 years ago. I called him, and kept calling. I can hardly conceive of how vastly different my life would be had I not met him. Many of my closest friends and colleagues I met directly or indirectly through him. Many others I’d not heard from in years, until just a few days ago. It is very much the end of an era.

We hope the power of his work persists, and that future generations can reap an approximation of the benefits we enjoyed from his life. The task of fully acquiring and arranging all those manuscripts is a likely logistical nightmare, neverminding the need to digitize it all so it’s available for further printings. But such matters are best-reserved for a later time. Right now, the flags of our city should be flying at half-staff, if not also upside-down. What we have lost cannot be regained, only recapitulated. RIP

 sheltonhull@gmail.com; February 17, 2011

CD review: Max Roach, “Candid Roach”

The first CD I ever got was the self-titled debut by a band called Rage Against the Machine. That was Christmas 1992 (also the occasion on which I got my first CD player), and for the subsequent 18 years at least one CD has found its way into my pile of  holiday swag. Some years CDs (or money to buy them) were basically the only things I got, or actively wanted, but other years were like this one. I didn’t ask anyone for anything this year–couldn’t really think of anything–and as a result only got the obvious gifts, like practical items of clothing, or gift cards for business I’m known to frequent. There was only one CD bestowed upon me: Candid Roach, by the great Max Roach.

This was pure serendipity, the internal logic of which makes perfect sense. The CD was a gift from my uncle. He is a huge jazz fan himself; in fact, he helped wean me onto the music many years ago. He and my aunt have also bought me a number of jazz CDs over the years, of which several were Max Roach products. So, using Amazon to do their buying, of course the computer probably recommended Candid Roach, and since this compilation was only released last year, its selection was certainly the right one. But, from there, it gets slightly weird.

The last time they bought me a jazz CD, it was last Christmas, and my take (which instantly became the stuff of personal legend) included two CDs by Baby Dodds, the first Warne Marsh/Pete Christilieb tenor summit, a trio of albums from the Candid label: Cecil Taylor’s Jazz Advance (which I mostly dropped, other than the exceptional “Rick Kick Shaw” and a cool version of “Bemsha Swing”), The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy (which is strictly epic, start-to-finish) and an album that I’d been seeking out for years, without ever actually buying: Max Roach’s seminal We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. That album marked the high-point of his collaboration with then-wife Abbey Lincoln, who died just a few months ago; it also included legends like trombonist and long-time collaborator Julian Priester, the ill-fated Booker Little and Coleman Hawkins. Hawkins, of course, was one of the first established jazzmen to lend his stamp of approval to the new music, then called “bop”, in 1943.

So, the sessions that birthed that masterpiece, as well as the sessions collected on Candid Roach, were all produced by the label’s A&R guy, Mr. Nat Hentoff, who is a legend in his own right–not only a jazz world whose aural and literary legacy he helped shape, but also in the journalism industry. He was the first alt-weekly columnist, joining the Village Voice in 1955; after being fired a couple years ago, his Voice column still runs monthly, and is the only one in the country that is, without question, better than mine. The man is a legit hero of mine for two completely different reasons, linked only by our common interests.

Like the old-school pro that he is, Hentoff has kept his office number listed for years, appended at the end of his column on the backpage of JazzTimes magazine. Of course, I’ve called him several times over the years, whether trying and failing to land an internship in his office, or seeking his help (which he provided) tracking down primary sources for a book on Max Roach that I could never get a contract to actually write. Imagine my shock, surprise and sublime satisfaction a couple months ago, when he called me for the first time! I was sitting at a local bar, Birdie’s, when he called to thank me for a review of his latest book, At the Jazz Band Ball, which was published at Ink19Online. We spoke for a few minutes, but the thrill will last forever. And then, not too long after, I happened to get one of the albums he produced as an unsolicited Christmas present. Again, serendipity.

That said, the story of how it came into my life is better than the album itself. Candid Roach is a collection of tracks from five sessions that Max Roach led for Candid between August 1960 and April 1961–mostly mid-tempo vehicles for blowing, sharper versions of the work that came out of the late-Mercury Records period just preceding them. “Freedom Day” is a key track on We Insist! “Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah” offers up a trumpet battle between Dorham and the underutilized Benny Bailey; “When Malindy Sings” is a tour de force for Mrs. Roach, whose work during this period merits an upward critical appraisal. For me, the highlight is Booker Little’s “Cliff Walk”, which offers the only known recording of Max Roach and idol Jo Jones (from the great Count Basie band) playing together.

This was a period of peak productivity for the truly fearless leader. The deaths of Clifford Brown and Richie Powell in 1956 shattered what had been one of the pioneering hard-bop groups; he quickly emerged with a harder, faster, even more complex sound than before, aided and abetted by young lions like Kenny Dorham and the “Saxophone Colossus” himself, Sonny Rollins. The recordings he made between 1956 and 1959 are landmarks in the music, conveniently amassed on a stellar box set from Mosaic Records.

By 1961 he’d begun to flesh out his harmonic vision, adding the unsual sounds of Priester’s trombone and Ray Draper’s tuba; he even brought back the piano role he’d abandoned for years. The result was music of unusual complexity, to match a renewed focus (which some might call a fixation) of socio-cultural matters. We Insist! was a landmark, the end of five years of delirious activity; while he remained active, making excellent music, it was not until the 1970s until he was generating the kind of serious buzz he’d had a decade earlier. By the 1980s, as jazz was mainstreaming itself with electric instruments and smooth jazz, while people like the Marsalis Brothers were initiating a New Traditionalism, Roach was forging his own centrist path, collaborating with b-boys, free-jazz titans, chamber groups and classical ensembles of all stripes.

He was an elder statesman with enough energy to outpace men one-third his age, and he remained a marvel of strength, finesse and timing right up until the very end. At no point in his career did Max Roach ever give any sign of losing a step. When illness finally forced his retirement, he stopped while still vital; his last recording, Friendship (a collaboration with the perdurable nonagenarian Clark Terry), could have been the work of any rising young lion, but the leaders totaled 160 years of age. Thanks to all those whose efforts coalesce in allowing me the opportunity to write about Max Roach yet again!

Courtesy University of Californa Press

SDH2011 Update: “Money Jungle” on hiatus, City Council campaign in full effect!

Courtesy Tom Pennington

Just wanted to make some quick notes here on the blog, explaining the exceptional length (even by my standards) between postings. I don’t blog nearly as much as I probably should–never have, never will unless ordered to by an employer, which apparently happens now.  There’s been a lot going on the last six months, events that have gone generally untouched here. Let’s touch briefly on them:

1) Writing, or lack thereof: I’ve not written a “Money Jungle” column for Folio since July, following the columns done about the “Gusher In the Gulf”. Some folks in the distribution area have asked, so I feel obliged to clarify all this. After a year in which the column appeared intermittently, every other week at best, resulting from the larger financial rut that’s hit the industry, I chose simply to stop writing it for now rather than see a diminishing of the brand-name I worked many years to cultivate. While I could probably write a book detailing my differences with various aspects of how that paper was run in recent years (in particular its self-negating approach to the challenges raised by digital meda, the cost of which is impossible to overstate), I have no problems with Folio and look forward to doing more writing for them (and other outlets) as the years proceed. It remains essential reading for Florida affairs.

However, writing is a career, and if the money’s not right, a professional just can’t function at the level that is needed to succeed in this highly competitive industry. I’ve made countless contacts over 15 years in this business and sent out hundreds of resumes, while making thousands of pitches to newspapers, magazines and websites all over America and the world. For years, the issue was that my political views were too controversial, and my profile too obscure, for commercial media to take a risk on, so the private conversations we’ve all been having over the past decade were mostly embargoed from mainstream audiences. We’re all paying a catastrophic price for the failures of a few–in the industry and around the world.

Now that much of what the column was designed to warn people about has come to pass, and now that I’m starting to become slightly better-known, the issue is a simple lack of funds to hire new people. Commercial media is mostly in a defensive posture right now–it has been for a while, and will remain so for years to come. Every day is spent struggling to maintain dwindling circulation figures as the audience flocks toward newer, fresher media, unhindered by the stale orthodox thinking of a bygone time. The gatekeepers of tradition are clinging for dead life to an outmoded business model; but the architects of that model, who are now mostly long-gone, would have easily adapted to the new ways had that challenge been thrust upon them.

In recent years, culminating with the economic collapse that formally began in September 2008, the focus has shifted from preventing crises from developing in our country, to managing the crises that are now here. On this point we’ll skip the details, because they are all around you. Step one is addressing the lingering (and in some cases growing) anger, fear and uncertainty so many people are feeling now. It has already begun to manifest in more violence on our streets, more shocking outbursts of insanity that have left hundreds dead all over America, just this year alone. It’s hard to tell what’s more unstable: our economy, our politics or our planet itself. When you consider that they’re all pieces of the same puzzle, everyone’s fears are fully justified.

2) So, this brings me to the other point, the main line that brings the rest of this together: A few months ago I decided, after much consideration, to make my best effort to take my vision for this city/state/country out of the purely (or, mostly) theoretical realm and into the realm of practical application. To that end, I’ve entered the race for City Council District 14 in my hometown of Jacksonville, FL. As one of the city’s most well-known and influential residents, I feel driven to give back to the city that’s given me so much–so many friends, great memories, and base of experience that leaves me eminently qualified to do the job I’m now seeking.

I am just one of six people currently running for this office; they are all nice, talented people who (like thousands of others) can easily do the job if elected. However, I feel that I bring a base of unique talents to bear that will make me not only a great councilman, but also the best salesman the city could have at this time. While I have much more name recognition than any of my opponents, that doesn’t mean it will be easy; nor should it be.

The first step is to qualify for the ballot, which means tendering a check for $1,800 before high noon on Friday, January 14. We are at the beginning of a 0-to-60 mph push, a blistering, bruising three-week fundraising blitz that will decide whether this project will go any further.

At this writing, two months in, I’ve only raised a couple hundred dollars, while others have raised upwards of $30,000. The campaign finance rules are by far the shadiest part of this whole process. Campaign funding is basically money-laundering for the industries backing your campaign; they donate on the presumption that the candidate will perform according to their interests. But since I’m running a campaign rooted in the need to mitigate the destructive role of money in the process, it’s not surprising that our totals are falling short of expectations. But we’re working on fundraising ventures, and we’ve set up a PayPal account to make donating easier; we’ll install PayPal buttons here and on the Facebook pages soon.

If I win this election, I plan to restrict my journalistic activity to cultural matters–art, music, dance, film, food and such. I’ll do my best not to weigh in professionally on politics, though in that new capacity as a politician I’m sure there will be cause for comment here and there. As this campaign proceeds, I’ll continue to update this blog in the usual sporadic fashion. There will never be any shortage of material for any conscientious professional hack. Of course, given the nature of political discourse nowadays, this entry probably marks the semi-retirement of the writing style I’ve developed over the years. I’ll be just as curious as the rest of you to see what the new style looks like when it emerges, at some point in 2011.

As you know, I’ve got my usual personal Facebook page (maybe the best Facebook page ever, but who can say for sure?), but for legal and organizational reasons we’ve set up a “fan page” specifically for any and all matters related to ”SDH 2011″. Whether you live in the district or not, I’d appreciate it if you clicked “like” on the page, told your friends, relatives and co-workers, and made yourself a part of this ongoing discussion about how Jacksonville can reclaim its status as “the Bold New City of the South”. You can find all my other contact info around this site, but here it is anyway: (904)309-1208; sheltonhull@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @SheltonHull.

Thank you very much, and have a Happy New Year!

SDH

PS: Let me point out, again, that the campaign does have a PayPal account. If you’d prefer to send a check, call or email me directly for the mailing address. We can accept donations from all US Citizens.

Money Jungle: Demolition Men

Election 2010: Is this Where Florida Ends?

Folio is published every Tuesday, but it’s unclear how many of you actually read it that day. If the office has ever done any research into the subject, I have no idea; it’s possible, since they’re pretty good at understanding their audience (other than the whole “Steven Humphrey is worth more than Money Jungle” calculation, which really does nothing to dispel the stereotype of Floridians as being terrible at math). Certainly, many readers are not able to pick one up on Tuesday; some hold off until the weekend.

I only mention this because this Tuesday, August 24, is the day for primaries in the statewide elections that will ultimately be settled on November 2. No need to preview the race, since most of you will have already voted by now. Obviously, this is the most important cycle for local elections in many, many years, and the results are all but guaranteed to be catastrophic for Northeast Florida, and the state in general. We are about to take major steps backwards in terms of the competence of our elected officials, and in the overall desirability of life in Florida.

While the election of Barack Obama was awesome for the country, it seems now clear that his administration kinda sucks, and that our hopes of dramatic positive changes were naïve pipe-dreams, invested in someone who basically represents the interests of the most corrupt and dangerous elements of Wall Street and Washington. Chicago Flash and his loyal team of Clinton-betrayers have been such a disaster that an unspeakable outside possibility has now been raised: that the likely loss of his congressional majority may be followed by the loss of his job in two years.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many Americans, who sometimes coalesce under the Tea Party banner, still believe that it’s possible to kill our way out of this. If we can just start another war, the theory goes, or cut even deeper into services for children, old people and the poor, the old America will come right back, like the shining silver that emerges after a good polishing. By this analogy, the polish is spewing from the mouth of Glenn Beck, and being rubbed in by Sarah Palin on the campaign trail.

The right loves their “free market”—the idea that, if corporations are given godlike authority its workers and consumers, altruism and civic responsibility will trump the profit motive. Well, ask a Gulf fisherman about that, if you can find one. Having had the central theme of their ideology repudiated by those very markets, the right has found itself a new baby: Austerity. The Republicans of 2010 are running on one promise: to lower taxes for the rich, which is fair enough, but also to put the screws to the underclass like nothing this country has ever seen. Deregulated banks have pissed away the life’s savings of millions, and the only thing that appears to have been manifested by health care “reform” is the Manchurian Candidacy of Rick Scott.

It’s really depressing to think about—a truly hopeless situation. If Jeff Greene beats Kendrick Meek, thereby making Charlie Crist the hold-your-nose choice for US Senate, and Rick Scott beats Bill McCollum for the right to stomp Alex Sink for Governor, you can basically close the door on Florida for the next decade. Being a political junkie myself, I’ve been looking at the 2010 elections across the board, and unfortunately I can report that Florida is leading the nation in collective myopia, willful self-destruction and craven capitulation to the wave of Trojan Horse candidates that is flooding this country like a busted sewer line. But at least you can grow plants with sewage; the only things these guys can grow are gravestones.

Here in Jacksonville, which has already paid a terrible price for not taking this state over when we had the chance, the elections that follow in 2011 will basically mark the end of 30 years of our leaders making good faith efforts (however blatantly shady) to build up this city. It saddens me to think of all those dead (and dying) political giants that once walked among us, putting personal interest aside to do what’s right—or, at least, what they thought was right—for the people, and to know that in 20 years all of their names will have been effectively erased from history, as history itself is eclipsed by the exigencies of present-time or, as Obama puts it, “the fierce urgency of now”.

Today’s Florida kids will have to endure the kind of hardships that most of us have only read about on the “Internets” (Ted Stevens, RIP), and they will probably never know that none of it had to happen. But, like any generation facing existential crises, they will need scapegoats, and that dishonor belongs to those of us casting ballots in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Our terrible decision-making will have “forced” them into whatever fake choices they decide are necessary. I’d hate to be their parents!

sdh666@hotmail.com; August 16, 2010

Money Jungle: Downsizing Heroes

Cuts to law-enforcement will open deeper gashes in society.

The next few weeks will offer some tangible clues as to the direction our country is going in, for better or for worse. Cities nationwide are now immersed in what will be, for many, the third straight year of tense, tumultuous budget negotiations sure to satisfy no one. Of course, it’s year four in Florida, thanks to future US Senator Charlie Crist, who may end up the only sitting governor in America to ever get elected to anything else. The White House has reportedly thrown backchannel weight behind Crist, perhaps in gratitude for his helping to start the recession that swept Obama into office, while Kendrick Meek may be out before football season starts.

While “Charlie the Triangle” pursues his promotion—or, at least, a remarkable lateral shift—hundreds of police officers are losing their jobs nationwide (including here in Florida) while almost all the rest will have to get by on pay cuts, hiring freezes, and less of the stuff they need to do their impossible job the best they can. Some officers are being demoted as departments get scaled-back; one New Jersey cop had the equivalent of $10,000 shaved from his salary. No wonder that cities like Newark and Trenton are lurching toward civil emergency status.

Even as the pols prepare to (pardon the pun) pull the trigger on the broadest program of national austerity in our lifetimes, stark and sobering statistics arrive to remind us what is really at stake here: During the first six months of 2010, 87 police officers were killed on the job in the United States—up 47% from last year, which was itself up from the year before. Some were killed in car crashes, but more died by human hands. The past couple of years have also seen an alarming surge in incidents in which more than one officer is killed by a single suspect; the tragic shooting of two Orlando cops by a fella fleeing Duval warrants is just a recent example.

2010 has also seen more disturbing episodes of police brutality, either alleged or caught on-camera for posterity. The city of Oakland, which like much of California is facing a severe economic shortfall, was already discussing whether the budget would force them to fire cops when that debacle occurred on its Metro System. Precious man-hours were later wasted on riot-duty, and it could have easily been worse.

Note that most high-profile police shootings (justified or not) have involved younger cops; vets are much less likely to get into these situations. My theory is that police numbers were expanded so rapidly under DHS mandates, and later in response to the upward spike in crime from 2005-on, that training suffered. Like any business built on preparation and instinct, the value of veteran leadership cannot be overstated. Much of what a young cop needs to know can’t be found in a manual, but in the memories of an older colleague. With veteran officers peeling off by the dozen all over America, expect a lot more shooting, omni-directional.

This column has documented the collapse of civil authority in this country over the last five years, and stood nearly alone in US media in stating clearly what’s causing all this: the systematic misappropriation of law-enforcement resources toward cracking down on the civil liberties of American citizens. That includes the Drug War, primarily, but also stuff like file-sharing, low-power broadcasting and peaceful political protest, not to mention the trillion-dollar prison-industrial complex. This is not the kind of stuff you talk about for shits and giggles, or to be well-liked or well-compensated; if that happens, great, but don’t bet on it. There is a heavy price to be paid for such work, but if you keep the receipt you may be reimbursed later.

When I predicted such an abrupt jolt upward in these trends in these pages in March 2009, I did so hoping to be wrong. Unfortunately, projections were not only borne out, but even faster than expected. One now suspects that the coming cuts to police and other key public services, such as teachers, will lead to even more rapid deterioration of civil authority in this country. And the recession, remember, has only just begun, so all this could prove very difficult to get a handle on, for years to come. (Also note that there’s still a war going on.)

Had the American People had the courage and common-sense to follow up on the warnings being given them here and elsewhere, and actually rejected the evil being done in their name, they wouldn’t now be forced to spend the rest of their lives on their knees, living in vitriolic fear of everything from pedophiles to tinhorn dictators and crackpot cave-dwelling heathens, jumping from one piss-poor president to another. Government works for the people, yet the people beg like whipped dogs; they hoist up preposterous placards and cry out for a world that is gone. My Tea Party friends should carry some signs that read: “It’s All My Fault!” It’s a start.           

sdh666@hotmail.com; July 26, 2010

[Addendum: Given the impossibility of finding a one-stop repository for information related to firings or proposed firings of officers, I figured I'd just use this space as a place to store stats as they emerge fresh. When possible, I've tried to list only known cuts of actual officers, as opposed to support staff. However, cuts to support staff are effectively cuts to the officers, all of whom must do more paperwork, etc., to make up work that would normally be done by others.

I may later prepare another list of firefighter cuts, as fire departments are taking a disproportionate share of first-responder cuts because police cuts still remain somwhat controversial. But the fire cuts are just as dangrous. Some of the stuff already announced may constitute a direct threat to public safety. Response times have already doubled in some cities.]

AZ: Phoenix, 400 (possible; $70 million shortfall in January)

CA: Belmont, 2; Eureka, 10; Long Beach, 49 proposed; Oakdale, 4; Oakland, 80; Redwood City, 6; Stockton, 53;

CO: San Luis, 5 (100% of their force, including the police chief);

FL: Broward County, 14 proposed; Clearwater, 7; Gainesville, 2 proposed; West Palm Beach, 12

IL: 460 state troopers; Elk Grove, 10 proposed;

LA: Lafayette, 4;

NB: Grand Island, 7;

MA: Lawrence, 25; Malden, 13-16 proposed;

MI: Bay City, 5; Romulus, 3; Saginaw, 32;

MN: Minneapolis, 10;

NJ: Fairlawn, 4; Garfield, 7; Hoboken, 18; Newark, 181-263 proposed; Passaic, 18; Stafford, 5; Trenton, 142 proposed; Vneland, 20; (40% of the force); some 700 projected statewide by the state’s PBA.

OH: Ashtabula County, 63; Toledo, 130; East St. Louis, 19;

TX: Dallas, 87 (175 vacant positions, but only 88 will be filled)

WA: Lynwood, 23 proposed

Gusher In the Gulf, Part 3

[Pardon the general lack of links, pictures etc. in Gusher posts. Will add those later!]

Ten weeks in, and still more questions than answers. The situation in the Gulf remains a jurisdictional nightmare, and the many overlapping, intersecting, contradicting layers of authority in place have had the collective effect of impairing the entire relief effort. No one seems willing to take control over what may already be the most spectacular screw-up in all of human history. Oil washes up onto beaches at this very moment, while thousands of people all over the region are still trying to find ways to actually contribute to the effort. They should consider joining the FBI!

 A cynic would argue that what we’re seeing now in the Gulf is a preview of what we’ll be facing as civil society deteriorates even further. With first-responders being fired or taking pay cuts nationally, a political leadership that is strategically incompetent at best, and actively malicious at worst, and a citizenry that lost faith in our leaders’ ability to handle crises five years ago, we are sitting ducks for what-have-you. It’s just a matter of time before the people who protected us from criminals (other than BP) are having to protect themselves from each other—and that’s when it’s really on.

Last week, Americans all over celebrated Independence Day, the day our founders formally threw off the yoke of British imperialism and began to pursue their own new vision of a free (and, gradually, freer) society. But now, 234 years after those men and women risked death, and in many cases embraced it, a disturbing new reality is dawning on all us nominal patriots: the British are still very much in charge. To see our President, our Congress, our governors and every single local law-enforcement agency in the Gulf region actively carrying water for BP as it continues to lie, cheat and steal, while concealing evidence of their own mass-murder of American citizens forces the growing recognition that we have, collectively, failed our founders.

Not only are today’s Americans a disgrace to our ancestors, but also to our kids; in fact, the laziness, stupidity and outright corruption that defines the society that we’ve become now constitutes a direct threat to the long-term survival of the human race itself. More and more observers from around the world are asking the same question posed in this column a month ago: Given that the American People are clearly unable or unwilling to defend their own interests, vis a vis the oil spill, how long will the dozen other nations that also have coastline touching the Gulf just sit back and allow their own interests to be jeopardized by us? A line has been drawn in the sand, and it’s made of oil.

Literally: More than one activist group has uncovered evidence that BP’s cleanup crews have been dumping fresh sand onto oil slicks; trenches dug into these beaches look like a cross-section of a Pop Tart, with oil instead of fruity goodness. Other groups have accused BP of reckless disregard (remember that term) for the wildlife being killed by their greed. Some people are seriously suggesting we allow oil-soaked birds to just die, because it’s cheaper, and we’ve all heard the stories of sea turtles caught up offshore in plumes of oil, being burned to death; at least one whale has been dispatched in similar fashion. One brave, righteous fella even went up in his helicopter, risking arrest, to shoot heart-breaking footage of some three dozen dolphins suffocating slowly in the oil. We’re unlikely to hear much more of this stuff.

Like the men aboard the Deepwater Horizon, who warned BP about their cost-cutting measures and died because of them, whistleblowers in the cleanup process are being blocked from getting and telling the critical stories. Under guise of “protection”, unauthorized personnel are banned from areas near the oil slick. By “unauthorized”, I mean reporters, environmental groups and anyone else who didn’t sign off on BP’s gag order. Even as more reports come in of cleanup workers getting sick from all the toxic, unvetted chemicals being forced into their system, the truth remains elusive because BP controls their access to medical care, and rule #1 for anyone who takes a dime from them, as payment for work or via settlement, is “Shut Your Mouth”. And every single agency of government seems compelled to enforce these ridiculous rules.

From the initial explosion on, the priority of relevant authorities has not been capping the leak, blocking oil from the shoreline or saving the affected wildlife—it has been minimizing BP’s financial and legal liability, by any means necessary. This may be the first case in history of killers running their own investigation, and we can see clearly why that is such a terrible idea!

sdh666@hotmail.com; July 5, 2010

Gusher In the Gulf, pt. 2

Gusher In the Gulf, pt. 2: A national emergency, complicated by conflicts-of-interest.

Voters of Gulf states are maybe now regretting the poor decisions they’ve made in the booth in recent years. If we’d had better leadership, it’s possible that BP, etc. would not have gambled and lost on the Macondo Prospect, which has drained over $100 billion from public and private coiffers, bringing America’s fake recovery to a dead stop. The spill has become a magnet for all the preexisting theories of what comes next.

It will surely be months or years before the American People know the full truth about how this catastrophe came to pass, if indeed we ever really know. But there is a lot that we do know already:

*BP has actively lied at every stage of the process associated with the project. When applying for permission to drill the well, they knowingly overstated their ability to handle any leaks, spills or other problems that might occur. Given the unprecedented nature of the project itself (drilling so deep, though such a dense section of ocean floor), a layman might expect a number of contingencies to be put in place, but nothing of the sort ever happened. Instead, they cut corners repeatedly.

*BP estimated the project to take 51 days, but budgeted for 78, allowing for the possibility of construction time being extended up to 53%. This can be interpreted as further proof that BP officials were fully aware of the potential complications. Each day beyond day 78 cost BP approximately $1 million. The rig blew up and sank on day 80.

*Embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward (who made around $6 million last year) sold a third of his own stock just four weeks before the explosion. He was already aware of problems related to the Macondo Prospect.

*Goldman Sachs sold off 43.7% of its shares of BP stock, according to filings dated three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Omitting (for legal reasons) any reference to the many overlapping insider connections between the two companies, they may have just interpreted Hayward’s move as a sign of trouble. The thing about the stock trades is that summer usually brings big profits for Big Oil; heck, even I drive a little bit this time of year!

*Goldman Sachs also owns Nalco, which makes the controversial oil dispersant Corexit. BP has dumped 3 million gallons into the Gulf so far, with mixed results. Some critics allege that BP used the stuff to push the greater amount of oil below the surface, thereby removing much of their potential liability.

*Halliburton, a company subcontracted by BP to help build the well, announced its purchase of Boots and Coots on April 9, 11 days before the rig blew up and 18 days past schedule on completion of the job. By that point BP, Transocean and Halliburton were already engaged in acrimonious debate as the project faltered. (Several of the key whistle-blowers on the Deepwater Horizon conveniently died in the explosion.) Maybe they deserve some credit; having seen BP’s reckless disregard for safety, and knowing what kind of forces they were trifling with, maybe Halliburton decided on a strategy of preemption? Dick Cheney would appreciate that!         

*BP has given more money (over $77,000) to Barack Obama than any other politician of the last 20 years, even though Obama’s only been a national political figure for six years now. He reversed his position against offshore drilling after taking office, approving BP’s fraudulent bid for the project in question. But we can’t blame him for doing what everyone has always done.

*The Vanguard Group, an investment company that administers the two mutual funds through which President Obama maintains his personal wealth, is the biggest single holder of BP stock. Like Goldman Sachs, Vanguard also dumped a chunk of their stock at about the same time—over a million shares, but that amounts to only a fraction of the company’s total BP holdings.

At the very least, we can presume that industry insiders already knew what a problem the Macondo Prospect had become, and hedged their positions on BP with the expectation of major losses. The circumstantial cases to be made for insider trading, fraud, collusion, obstruction of justice and worse seem fairly obvious. The construction, explosion, burning and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to properly investigate the actual rig, whether there was any evidence of sabotage or widespread safety violations and regulatory shortcomings. But the paper trail speaks for itself, even if the victims cannot.

 sdh666@hotmail.com; June 21, 2010

Gusher In the Gulf, Pt. 1

[Been a bit behind on the blogging. Catching up this weekend, starting with the first three installments of the "Gusher In the Gulf" series of Money Jungle columns written in recent weeks.]

Like all of you, this writer has watched events unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico for the past eight weeks with trepidation, to put it lightly. It is no accident that I have avoided public comment on the situation, across multiple media platforms, but serious talk has been going on across Internets—all of the Internets. It is yet another case where people would be generally alienated from the relevant facts, if they were entirely dependent on “traditional” media. I use quotes there because journalistic “tradition” once entailed doing your damn job and not deferring to personal interest.

But that was a long time ago, in glory days unlikely to return. It’s a new world, and despite our nation’s desperate clinging to the rudiments of 20^th century political concepts, the world bypassed America years ago. Are we still Indispensable? Depends who you ask, and there are a lot of fishermen, and their families, who feel anything but indispensable lately. In fact, more and more people are starting to feel like they’ve been singled out for a special kind of suffering that the population at large has only lightly tasted. But more is coming, and we all need to know that.

This debacle functions on multiple levels, listed in no particular order: 1) As an ongoing environmental catastrophe, the full scope of which remains unknown; 2) It will destroy many careers associated with business in the region, cascading into realms not even considered relevant to the subject; 3) As the straw that breaks the backs of many Americans, busting up families and sending unknown numbers of our fellow citizens into early graves, while adding to the present climate of political instability; 4) As an overall humiliation for our entire US political system—neither a first, not a last.

Last, in this case, is certainly not least. Amidst all the other crises and crackups the current situation gets compared to—Katrina, 9/11, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez—the most immediate is really the collapse of the US economy, formalized on Sept. 29, 2008. The antecedents of both went back many years, building to cataclysm in election years, and neither had to happen. The only reason that either of those tragedies happened is because the American people are gullible and corrupt. Blame the politicians all we want, blame the policies—we voted for them, and we endorse these policies every day with our own consumer dollars. We paid BP to destroy the Gulf.

I should point out that, despite the strong suggestions from President Obama and various officials of the affected states (led by Bobby Jindal and Bill McCollum), there is nothing compelling BP so far to take on more liability than they have, and no means to make them short of dropping the proverbial hammer. Our “leaders” appear almost scared of these guys, and maybe they should be. After all, they are complicit in all this. The true costs of our oil dependence, and its alternatives, have been concealed as blatantly as BP has lied about everything related to the Deepwater Horizon.

At its core, this Gusher In the Gulf is the most explicit representation yet of the lethal bargain humanity has made with itself. Our dependence on fossil fuels to power most of our civilization means death for this world, on a level beyond anything most of us have ever imagined. The blood of 20 people could fit in just one of those barrels now spilling out of a severed artery on the ocean floor. The ancients of South America called it “the blood of the Earth”, and for such insights their ancestors were exterminated. Their calendars, primitive yet futuristic at once, predicted catastrophe, and so it’s been. “Blood For Oil” means more now than ever before.

2012 isn’t far off now, and this year we finish electing the leaders who will be in office whenever whatever happens. Such as? Well, there’s the possibility that the leak is never plugged, and the oil destroys the Gulf and leeches out into the Atlantic, eventually doing the same to the east coast. Eventually it will contaminate freshwater supplies and exterminate the region’s multibillion-dollar seafood business. Subsequent failed attempts to plug the leak could make it worse, acclerating the process. And hurricane season brings a whole new set of challenges, but that’s another story.

The spill poses an imminent or potential threat to Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and, oh yeah, Haiti. Three of those countries were already in full-on crisis beforehand, and at least four were already hostile toward the US, and for good reason. Many of them offered help and were refused. And now, our corrupt, incompetent government may ruin their primary protein source, paralyzing core industries over a wide swath potentially reaching as far down as Brazil. This will centralize their hatred of America, and poison hemispheric relations for years to come—literally.

sdh666@hotmail.com; June 1, 2010

Money Jungle extra: “Battle of the Mediocrities”

[Melissa Ross, host of the stellar "First Coast Connect" show on WJCT-89.9 FM, issued a standing invite to deliver some pithy guest commentaries on the issues of the day. I've not taken her up on that offer yet, being perhaps too-careful to find just the right topics. I'd like to be entertaining, but without courting any extra controversy, as I have concluded that the status-quo (for better or mostly for worse) is basically acceptable to the majority of the population in my city, and it's simply self-defeating to attempt any further challenges to that dynamic. Below is a revised-and-extended version of the commentary I'd planned to deliver about the Ahmed/Yarborough dust-up; it would have aired today. However, it doesn't make much sense to criticize city government, so close to budget-time; after all, we all know that such budgets are used primarily as political tools. So, instead, I post it here, where only that narrow fraction of fresh thinkers would ever think to look. Self-censorship, done right!]

On Tuesday, the City Council votes whether to accept the nomination of Parvez Ahmed for a spot on the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, a nomination being challenged by councilman Clay Yarborough. Like many of you, my first thought was “Who Cares?” Here in Florida, we’ve developed a special gift for meaningless political scandal, and this is a case in point.

Instead of talking about how Jaguar management stomped on the hearts of their fans by not only throwing away Tim Tebow, but leaving him to be drafted by a conference rival, we’re stuck watching a schoolyard spat between cultural stereotypes. And it’s not like our council isn’t bush enough, between threatening to fire loyal civil servants and ducking corruption charges related to widespread misappropriations of public funds. This JHRC gig is the kind of no-work job mobsters get.

Is Ahmad qualified for the position? Absolutely. After all, he holds a degree from Harvard; Bush and Obama have shown us how useful they can be. A cynic might use the bin Laden scholarship fund endowed at Harvard Law to make a blanket condemnation of its entire student body, and do real damage to many people’s careers. That is how these politics work; guilt-by-association works like a double-edged sword, yielded by a lunatic.

The savage violence—the cold-blooded, indiscriminate brutality—associated with Radical Islam represents a threat to all of humanity. Hundreds of Jews, thousands of Christians and millions of Muslims are dead now, and those numbers are growing by the minute. Extremists have been empowered, as moderates are cowed into silence. The only winners are demons and demagogues, many of whom live right here in America.

Organized religion has earned the widespread skepticism and overt hostility that seems its destiny in this century. The Vatican has only recently begun to face the real, dollars-and-cents consequences of their ritualized system of child-rape, which goes back farther than the living memory of any priest. Of course, many saints and martyrs of the faith were killed by the church itself—an irony lost on our current Pope, who couldn’t even be bothered to burn the pictures of himself in a Nazi uniform. (Maybe he should have married Sandra Bullock!)

Anytime one finds oneself ceding the moral high ground to Madonna, a serious inventory is in order, but the Catholics have had this process forced on them by their enemies. The Baptists are moving in the same direction, but faster. The so-called “evangelical right” has shown remarkable clumsiness in its many failed attempts to engage Islam on its own terms. It’s not just that their arguments were ill-conceived and poorly argued; in many cases Christians have worked aggressively against their own interests.

The most notorious example may be in 2002, when Dr. Jerry Vines, the then-leader of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville (which has been a leading force in the city for most of its century-plus in business), disastrously dissed the Prophet Muhammad as a “demon-possessed pedophile with nine wives, the last of whom was 12 years old”. Coming just months after the most brutal terror attack to ever occur in the western world, Vines knew exactly what dark forces he was invoking with such loose talk. Ultimately, the entire city was endangered by Vines’ loose lips, much as the “South Park” crew deliberately risked their lives, and the lives of their families and colleagues, just to pop a rating for their nasty little show. Why the reckless provocations?

A few months earlier, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, members of the editorial board of the once-great National Review magazine openly floated the idea of bombing Mecca, as part of a larger-scale nuclear assault on the major cities of the Islamic world. NR has since scrubbed the references from its website, and would have you believe their own  idea was first proffered by Tom Tancredo, years later. Good job, losers!

Unfortunately, when the finally time came for a serious reckoning of the issues lingering between Islam and Christianity, all the best talent from both sides was already dead. We should be so lucky to boil these conflicts down to debates between Billy Graham and Ayatollah Khomeini, or even Fulton Sheen and Freddie Mercury. If the dais included Christ, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha, there might be no disputes at all. We might be having these discussions on the moon, or Mars, or maybe at the center of the Earth. Instead, we’ve got Parvez Ahmed and Clay Yarborough at City Hall. Kitty Kelley was right: The blood really does get thinner as you go down the line!

Yarborough is holding down Council District 1, for now, but he has done himself no favors. No one’s filed to challenge him yet, but that will change. No Muslim is going to seek elected office in Northeast Florida, but Yarborough’s done a great job reminding liberal voters that Barack Obama’s election has little or no effect on their own political fortunes. That the White House is clearly unsure whether to back Kendrick Meek, who helped Obama win Florida, or Charlie Crist, whose tax cuts helped tank Florida’s economy, making Obama’s victory possible, speaks against the best hopes of local progressives. But Clay Yarborough is no Charlie Crist.

It’s one thing to make needless hay of Ahmad’s past and present associations, but it’s another to go too far in making inferences. Surely in the struggle waged by Muslim groups to control the PR damage wrought by 9/11, etc., a few bad apples may have gotten into the bunch. The question at hand is: Has Parvez Ahmad ever knowingly dealt with people he knew were either directly or indirectly engaged in terrorism?

Short of some smoking guns (literally), there’s no way to know for sure, but to job the guy out of such an cozy gig on what is currently hearsay and speculation creates a precedent that will undermine the political relevance of the Muslim community in this country. It’s would be like banning anyone who ever attended a Black Panther rally, or the inevitable crackdown on the inevitable shady right-wing domestic terror provocation. Or saying Klansmen can’t serve in the Senate. If you start running such people out of politics, we’ll have nothing left but Dennis Kucinich.

Here’s a bold idea: Dissolve the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, and then dissolve the City Council. If you took all the taxpayer dollars being wasted on these groups, piled it all up and set it on fire, you could at least make ‘smores!

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 22, 2010

Money Jungle: “Drawing The Line”

Sexual Assault Awareness Month is every April. It immediately follows Women’s History Month, which makes sense as the two concerns are so inextricably linked, especially in the modern history of our country. Only a fool would deny that racism remains a factor in American life, but it’s far outweighed by misogyny, a cancer on the country’s collective soul, and a driving force behind some of the grossest atrocities in all of history, continuing into the present day. Sexual violence is the leading form of domestic terrorism.

It goes back at least as far as the Witch Hunts that began before Christ and spread like fire, literally, across the world in His name. Vatican officials later wrote the Malleus Maleficarum specifying ways of torturing women to obtain confessions, and enforcing social pressures to keep them docile. Some estimates number 100,000 women killed under official sanction in at least 26 different countries, including the US. Things are comparatively stable nowadays. But that’s small consolation for the thousands living in fear and dealing with post-traumatic stress right now.

The FDLE’s Uniform Crime Report for 2009 notes 289 arrests each for forcible and non-forcible sex offenses in Duval County—collectively, a 7% drop from 2008. Statewide, there were 336 arrests for forcible sodomy, 899 for forcible fondling, 1,642 for forcible rape, and 3,300 non-forcible sex offenses. That’s 6,177 sex crimes in Florida, in one year—down 4% from 2008. That number doesn’t include the 5,296 arrests for prostitution, a matter separate but related, given the brutal histories hookers tend to have. Also, it’s hard to determine what percentage of assaults and murders targeted women specifically. Predators of all types prey on those considered weak.

By contrast, there were 146,056 drug arrests in Florida in 2009, reflecting the twisted priorities of our bloated, corrupt government. The large-scale misappropriation of funds associated with our failed Drug War has had disastrous consequences for the entire country, on all levels, but the women and children underserved by law-enforcement have suffered most. Only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail; a larger percentage of rape victims will likely do time for drugs, DUI, prostitution or other crimes induced by prior abuse.

 

Conventional wisdom holds that 1 in every 4 women will be victims of sexual violence in their lives, but a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests that figure is way short. Given that the majority (60%, according to RAINN) are not reported, only women themselves know how pervasive it really is. Many victims are silenced by real or imagined pressures, while some in the younger generation have come to view rape as something like a rite of passage—not unlike the beatings associated with gang initiations. The spike in violent crimes by women only reinforces that parallel. (See Bishop, Amy.)

Northeast Florida organized a number of relevant events throughout the month, and some of the best was saved for last. Theater Jacksonville hosts a production of “The Vagina Monologues” (already a fixture locally) on Tuesday the 27^th as a benefit for The Women’s Center of Jacksonville, which also sponsors a screening of “The Line” at Five Points Theatre on Thursday the 29^th. Nancy Schwartzman’s 24-minute directorial debut documents her experiences as a rape victim, peaking as she confronts her attacker, armed with a hidden camera. Schwartzman has developed an excellent website, elaborating on these issues with an able cast of young contributors. The film will be followed by a panel discussion of local experts.

This region has a credible bunch of local advocacy groups, networked with national organizations, public servants and private citizens. It is a rare truly nonpartisan, multiracial, gender-neutral movement; education is key, as is direct physical intervention, when necessary (and it often is). Unfortunately, law-enforcement and the legal system are lagging behind the times in bringing rapists, molesters and wife-beaters to justice, for a number of reasons neither easy nor popular to describe; the collapsing global economy has seriously affected funding for relevant organizations (public and private), adding to long-standing institutional biases against victims of sexual abuse.

For example, Autrelle Holland, a true diamond among the hard men, has helped lead a surge of women stepping up their personal defenses in many and sundry forms. An aikido black-belt possessing vast knowledge of multiple styles, he’s been schooling chicks of the urban core for several months, to effects felt quick. Florida’s capacity for hand-to-hand combat of almost every known type is mostly a weapon for good; the Gracie family’s deal training police forces (including JSO) has surely saved lives. Their passion is a rare bright spot in a state that has earned its reputation as arguably the most dangerous place in America for women and children.

There is a silent genocide being waged against the women of this country that has already killed thousands, while traumatizing millions in just the past decade—epidemics of rape, molestation and murder, accompanied by relentless social conditioning as nasty and pernicious as the worst abuses of Jim Crow or Willie Lynch. And America has been suspiciously mellow in its response. With women buying guns in the millions and getting hip to the bitter realities at hand, that is almost certain to change, one way or another.

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 19, 2010

Money Jungle: “Starship Pain”

President Obama’s visit to Cape Canaveral is conveniently set for Tax Day, April 15, and it occurs in a context of general discomfort for all involved. The ostensible purpose is to stop a slow trickle of support flowing away from Obama in a crucial battleground state, which is itself living a political nightmare. The White House won’t admit it, but Florida bears directly on the future of the Obama Agenda, whatever that is.

Obama’s doing damage control after unveiling a package of brutal cuts to NASA and affiliated contractors. Floridians have every reason for concern. With Discovery in orbit right now, there are only three flights remaining in the shuttle schedule. After that, it may be decades before Americans return to space under their own power. With foreign programs also vulnerable to economic or political shifts, and still years behind what we’re set to scrap, mankind has seemingly awakened from a dream that obsessed our ancestors from the days of DaVinci, Icarus and Elijah. And once again, the inspirational legacy of JFK gets pissed away.

Like so many of the catastrophic maneuvers to occur under Obama’s watch, the collapse of America’s space program is hardly his fault. The cuts being pushed right now were all but inevitable before he was even elected, a result of long-term budgetary trends and the slow-motion disintegration of the country’s overall mechanical capacity. Neither factor was controllable by 2009. The reality is that our commitment to space exploration, in the terms defined by JFK in 1961, effectively died alongside the heroes we lost aboard the Challenger when it blew up in the sky over Florida in 1986.

And let’s be clear, here: The Challenger crew died because of neglect and hubris on the bureaucratic level—defects enshrined, by default, as official policy for the quarter-century that followed. The tragedy that followed, 17 years later, was a logical, inevitable extension of that policy. No serious efforts were ever made to replenish the Shuttle Fleet or modernize the design to reflect changing strategic priorities. The next generation(s) of manned spaceflight will be organized around private industry, with foreign governments (Russia, China, India) performing functions typically associated with NASA. Good luck with that. Obama, at least, has positioned himself as unwilling to put more lives at risk on behalf of goals abandoned before he got there.

From agriculture and industrial production to engineering and information technology, our educational system has become incrementally worse, and production of the most vital goods for life has fallen apace. As in so many other cases, so exhaustively documented here and elsewhere, the recession is being used as an excuse to accelerate trends that began while the economy was still at or near its fake, fraudulent peak. Mass-firing as a profit-padding technique has been in effect since the ‘80s: the family farms, the mom-and-pop stores, factory towns all over the country.

I just happened to be polishing this column in the minutes just before the shuttle Discovery took off April 5, and a recurring theme in the coverage was that there won’t be much more of this stuff—not for Americans, anyway. And that’s a shame. This is another sign of Florida’s changing fortunes under Obama. He’s made no enthusiastic display for Kendrick Meek’s Senate bid, and the White House has done nothing to defend the House seats at risk in November. The timing of the NASA cuts implies ambivalence, at best, to the fates of many Obama loyalists; at worst, it suggests frightful ignorance of the reality on the ground. Where have we heard that before?

This is the worst year for incumbents in living memory, but the GOP has done a much better job of training candidates. Besides yielding the open seats and not defending their incumbents, Beltway Dems show no inclination to seriously challenge the other side. President Obama is increasingly defined by his enemies, and he does not control his message. Meek should be positioned to inherit all the scorched-earth of this ridiculously shady Crist-Rubio primary debacle, but instead he’s looking lucky to keep the margin in single digits against either of them. That means real disaster for Florida: a stuffed-shirt GOP sandbagger doing the bidding of whomever has the photos of them together.

All the plans were made years ago, and most of the science has been in place. But corporate greed, political incompetence and collective myopia leaves the US trading on glories from 40 years ago, as the world snickers. Spaceflight is just a recent example. Funding issues aside, the courage and intelligence of our astronauts far outpaces that of our elected leaders, to the point where it now presents an obvious danger to their lives. The biggest question, frankly, is will America even be able to safely cease manned spaceflight without a third major disaster? 

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 5, 2010

Money Jungle: “Worth A Murtha”

Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha (1932-2010), who died January 8, was the first combat veteran of the Vietnam War elected to national office; he was also among the last. Murtha began his first of 18 terms in the US House 35 years ago this month, and he was a virtual lock for reelection this November, despite becoming one of the most controversial public servants of this incredibly shady era in American politics. His words and actions during the Bush 43 administration bear directly on the country we live in today, and even his most bitter enemies must acknowledge the weight of his passing.

Murtha was a hard man who exerted soft power through the complex and deeply important business of manipulating the appropriations process to the benefit of his state. The people of Pennsylvania paid out millions in salary and benefits that will extend on for years to come for an inside track that could transcend the fluctuations of electoral activity. It is what legislators are hired to do, but details are generally left up to the individual. Murtha was just one of many, but he was considered one of the best—so much so that, when he turned on a war that our government and media establishment unanimously supported, his spot was only briefly jeopardized.

Murtha’s anti-war shift helped precipitate a chain of events that culminated with the election of Barack Obama. Granted, that has meant no tangible gains for the anti-war movement so far, but it certainly brought humanity a good ways back from the edge of total disaster for long enough to brainstorm solutions. Murtha’s turn legitimized views being voiced before the war even started, but which were effectively censored from the public debate through what is now understood to be a web of bribery, intimidation and willful deceit affixed to social connections between members of Congress, the Bush and Clinton administrations and reporters at several key media institutions. It was a deliberate process “assisted” (in the Scientology sense) by officials of at least four governments. Please look it up yourself right now—I’ll wait….

See? All of this is public record, through various proceedings and anecdotal data contributed by the principles themselves, including John Murtha, who, like all of us, was sold a set of falsehoods that ultimately reversed the greatest economic boom in history, induced an atmosphere of bitter division among civilians and led directly to the death or permanent physical or psychological injury (including lost jobs, broken families, homes foreclosed) of more American soldiers than can ever statistically quantify. Hell, we’ve all heard stories from friends, loved ones, colleagues, but Murtha (who earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam) surely heard a lot more than almost anyone, and one can easily imagine the effect it had on him.

Murtha wasn’t stupid, and he was no pacifist. He was a conservative Democrat who was for the war before he was against it. He knew the fix was in, and he said so, even at a cost that routinely proves too high for our so-called “leaders”. He was already under investigation, already widely associated with classic-style political corruption (the type eclipsed in the post-9/11 era), yet he chose to draw heat from an administration known for its vindictiveness because he felt it was his patriotic duty. He thus proved that peace was not a partisan issue. We now know that many of the men who waged the first war in Iraq, from frontline soldiers right up to the executive branch, were opposed to another one, for reasons that now seem obvious. Those soldiers should have never been in Haditha in the first place; they should have been home, protecting their own cities. It’s a price we’ll never stop paying.

The irony, of course, is that his stance against the war, which many at the time thought would be Murtha’s political undoing, instead helped elevate him from general obscurity to becoming a household name on par with Cindy Sheehan, who was the much-abused public face of the anti-war movement until Murtha arrived. It speaks to his legacy that his death (attributed to botched gall bladder surgery) was instantly declared in some outposts of the ‘Net to be an assassination. His death would have otherwise passed with barely a mention. Instead, Murtha’s name will live on as a sterling example of what real leadership—the dirty, dangerous kind—looks like. Well, kids, look closely, because you aren’t likely to see anything like it again, not anytime soon. RIP.

sdh666@hotmail.com; February 8, 2010

Money Jungle: “Blacker The Barry”

It makes perfect sense that, in a country that seems more and more about the symbolic value of things, as opposed to reality, the first major political scandal of the new year involves nothing concrete or physical, just words. The controversy surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not just funny, it’s stupid to boot, and it goes a pretty long way toward demonstrating why his party has failed on every front.

The Nevada Democrat caught volcanic heat for remarks quoted in a new book about the epochal 2008 campaign. We already knew that the Republicans were in total free-fall that year, with a pathetic nominee and a worse batch of strategists and advisers who took an American hero and made him look even weaker and more doddering than second-term Reagan. (Which is quite an accomplishment, given that Reagan cultivated that gimmick on purpose to insulate himself from complicity in the Iran-Contra mess.) The mere presence of Sarah Palin on that ticket is now regarded as evidence of a larger strategic collapse, an extreme version of John Kerry’s role in securing victory for Bush-Cheney in 2004 by picking the noxious John Edwards as his running-mate.

What we didn’t know, and are only now learning about, is that the Democrats were a whole hot mess of their own. By offering the most honest depiction of 2008 yet seen, Game Change, by John Heileman and Mark Halperin, promises to be the first “must-read” book of the year, in terms of general entertainment value, and specifically indispensable reading for political junkies. The publishers have done an amazing job of whetting the public’s appetite with tidbits so juicy, in some cases, that they could have potentially changed history had they come out contemporaneously. And that is the big revelation: that both parties deliberately kept quiet about their issues with Barack Obama because they viewed his victory as our country’s best chance to escape a whirling vortex of debt and death that their “bipartisan efforts” had driven us into.

Reid remarked in private that Obama could win because he was “light-skinned” and because he had “no Negro dialect, unless he wants to”. Well? The tragedy of Reid’s statements is not that he made them, but that he was right. Obama was able to draw support from segments of White America that would have never supported any other black candidate, precisely because of how his blackness was finessed by his handlers. Obama had the advantage of being thoroughly-versed on these issues, as evidenced by his painstaking efforts to teach himself the dialect of black clergy—Martin Luther King’s other gift to his people—and his ease at blunting the sharpest edges from the liberation theology he learned in those churches.

In Chicago they still talk about Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Marcus Garvey and Wallace Fard, George Collins and Harold Washington (who many believe were also murdered); they talk about COINTELPRO, which has been excised from the revisionist tales told about the civil rights movement. How many black men have seen the shattered face of Emmett Till? Not nearly enough!

They talk about these things, but not on TV, and not in mixed company. Baby Boomers have short memories, and for them the future is just an abstraction. Obama has never revealed how much was revealed to him, but we know that he learned how to do the impossible: get a black man elected president, with overwhelming white support. It is the alchemy of advancement; it is the dream of all those black parents out there who still bother to raise their children, even though the streets never lack for mindless “soldiers” willing to kill and/or die for the white man’s drugs, the white man’s money, the white man’s consumerist fantasies that have ruined the world.

Hell, there’s nothing more “authentically black” than having whites debate your blackness. It rings true for me. My mom sent me to Catholic school for my first three years, inculcating a way of speaking that has been fodder for thousands of racist jokes from all sides, not to mention countless beatings and a permanent spot on the bottom of the ‘hood hierarchy. To this day, barely a week goes by without my meeting a reader who exclaims “Wow! I had no idea you were black!”

Harry Reid knows the truth. His state was built by the very mobsters that black men have been trained to worship since Coppola made the first of his “Godfather” Mafia recruitment films. Without Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and especially Bugsy Siegel, there would be no Harry Reid, just as there’d be no Obama without Al Capone and the Ford Foundation. Like 9/11, Obama was allowed to happen, and the wave of scandals due to pound his agenda into the sand (Tiger Woods-style) is merely an expression of buyer’s remorse from the losers who bought into something—and someone—they didn’t really understand. Obama, like his very name, gets blacker by the day.

sdh666@hotmail.com

Money Jungle: “Mass. Casualties”

The week of Barack Obama’s first anniversary as President was marked by serious hits to his administration, encapsulated by their dramatic rise of Scott Brown to become the next Senator from Massachusetts. There has been no shortage of debate and analysis of that race and its implications for the White House; predictably, there is not much of real use to be found amid most existing reports. The restrictively dualistic nature of the “left vs. right” standard of political thinking, which is so rigorously enforced by the gatekeepers of establishment media and the major parties themselves, has again failed miserably to truly understand why it happened, and what it really means.

But we shouldn’t be too surprised, since those same trusted sources also failed to get a proper handle on the Obama himself, and as such have done an even worse job covering the backlash than they did mapping the trajectory of his ascent. This is too bad, since it appears the administration remains joined at the hip to those interests who helped him forge a fantastical façade that has now developed sizable cracks. Expectations were raised very high, but it now appears clear that neither Obama, now the Republicans, the media or the American People ourselves had any clue just how deeply the systemic rot ran into the heart of the globalized economy. Amazingly, many still don’t.

The GOP was too quick to claim credit for Brown’s defeating the hapless Martha Coakley; that’s like whoever bombed the levees in New Orleans angling for a piece of the Saints’ Super Bowl split. Those losers helped force through the policies that created such widespread anger among the population, then piggybacked existing activist groups to serve their typically nefarious needs.

If Obama’s supporters had been half as classy and gracious as the man himself, he might still be in a position to force through his agenda. In fact, Obama should personally shoot the person responsible for the proliferation of the disastrously counterproductive “teabagger” meme; that phrase has become this President’s “Axis of Evil”, as surely as Goldman Sachs became his PNAC. The Tea Party demonstrations that happened in 2009 began as disparate, disorganized malcontents from a GOP that had been in free-fall since Katrina. By blithely dismissing legitimate concerns in snarky, insulting tones, Obama’s acolytes set him up as the strawman for the same mock-populist demagogues who once advocates the very policies whose results get them so mad.

Ultimately, the “teabaggers” were just the first of those millions to lose their jobs in this recession. As those numbers grew, it provided a ready-made base for action. Like the Sarah Palin phenomenon, as just a different expression of the same sentiments that helped sweep Obama into office. There was a window in which Obama could have used them every bit as effectively as the Republicans did, but his submission to Wall Street (which is a key factor in assessing the failed stimulus and the debacle that was this round of health care “reform”) made it impossible to win them over.

To this day, these cadres have neither credible leadership nor even full comprehension of their own origins, and with some two dozen former Republican congressmen contemplating running for their old seats again, who knows what may happen? The situation in Florida, where Charlie Crist is presiding over a meltdown of his state GOP, illustrates how volatile things are. Until the party embraces the economic vision of Ron Paul, they cannot fully access those masses. But neither can Democrats, and that is the issue: the majority of voters hate them both now.

The Tea Party movement represents the intersection of political concepts being generated from across the spectrum. To reduce them to their most vocal extremes is a dangerous simplification. “Independents” and “moderates” of the two parties have been radicalized by what they have come to view as an increasingly hopeless situation, and they are coalescing around a wide variety of specific concepts. The conduits of such information (from Glenn Beck to Rachel Maddow) have reaped the benefits.

A year ago, it seemed entirely possible that the Democratic Party could control all three branches of government for eight years, while steadily uprooting Republican power bases in major states like Texas and Florida. Now, the party Bush left for dead is stirring, and Obama has one-term potential. To avoid this fate, Obama should reassert his policy footing while finding ways to subtly remind the people what they already know: There may be no one else who can do his job, especially after last year.

 sdh666@hotmail.com

January 26, 2010