The election is barely past us and corporate America is already knocking on our door for the rent.
Speaking of timing, former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the president’s commission on deficit reduction, have agreed we should gut Social Security, Medicare. Well, there’s a surprise – both have an execrable history of animosity towards these quite successful social programs. (Simpson’s contempt for elderly people is palpable and disgusting, and he never misses an opportunity to toss a rhetorical brick at them.) Of course, their proposal also calls for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. Again, no surprises there.
This is just the latest chapter in the attack against the poor, working class, elderly, and infirm that has been underway for decades in this country. Time and time again they have sought to undermine Social Security, to loot its trust fund, and to convert it into something it was never intended to be – an instrument for the creation of private wealth. Social Security is a supplemental guaranteed retirement program and, as such, an extremely successful one. It has kept elderly people (at least the ones who did not retire on a mountain of money, like Simpson) out of poverty for seven decades. Likewise, Medicare has not only made the elderly more financially secure, but it has also improved their quality of life in demonstrable ways. Not for nothing that these are the most popular social programs in America.
It may mean little to Simpson, Bowles, and many who share their views that people they don’t know will have to work until 68 or 70 and do without adequate cost of living adjustments in their old age. It sure as hell matters to me, and I imagine to many others as well. Social Security is not on the brink of bankruptcy – far from it. They just want to use its revenues to cover our government’s bad decisions with regard to financial regulation and foreign policy – decisions that have cost trillions of dollars over the last decade alone. Now we are being asked to pay for those criminal actions. There can be only one answer to that.
Don’t know, but we may have to take a page out of France’s book. If it takes standing in the street to protect the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people, it’s goddamned worth it.
luv u,
jp
Well, space travel has just gotten a lot more confusing, people. Much, much more complicated than even a few weeks ago when we left planet Earth to embark on this ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour. It seems that normal (i.e. not mad) scientists back on Earth have discovered the existence of literally millions…. perhaps BILLIONS of Earth-sized planets circling stars throughout our galaxy. As we’re bobbing around out here, trying to find our next destination (Kaztropharius 137b), we’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out where all of these freaking planets came from. None of them are on the charts. Lots of them look alike. This is bloody ridiculous.
As you can tell, we weren’t getting a lot of help from him. A little later on, he sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into my quarters (an empty storage bin, actually) with a recorded message. “Use the laser cannon,” Mitch said on the recording. “If a planet splits straight down the middle, it can’t be Kaztopharius 137b. That thing is made of solid quintilium. The best you can get is a clean hole, no split. Just keep shooting til you find it.”
Of course, that spending package worked by all measures… but only so well, as tax cuts have always been a pretty poor method for stimulating the economy. The G.O.P. then tag the dems with the “failed stimulus”, even though its lack of broader effectiveness was largely due to their stonewalling. Now the voters, in their understandable anger at this failure, have put the Dems out and, by extension, House Republicans back in charge, so any correction of this is extremely unlikely. So… it looks like we’re headed for Japan in the 1990s – a zombie economy, staggering along for the next decade, suffering from our unwillingness to take bold action. The deficit hawks have gained the upper hand for the nonce, and that is not good news for the rest of us.
Okay, well… that’s great. Only the third leg of ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE – our current interstellar tour – and we’re freaking lost like a bunch of rubes in blindfolds feeling their way around Manhattan. When? When will I stop listening to people when they tell me shit that isn’t true? Mitch Macaphee, a man who can build robots, invent planet-busting snake oil, and repair an ion-drive engine with egg cartons and bailing wire, told me that he was an expert with star charts. Well, guess what. He exaggerated. Slightly. Just slightly. Like… not at all.
This is taking a bit longer than we thought, and we may be losing our performance “edge”, if you will (or won’t). As you might expect, it’s a little challenging to rehearse in a zero-gravity environment. Sure, the guitars, keys, and drums float away from time to time. But what’s worse is when you play up tempo stuff – we actually start floating in circles around each other, rotating on multiple axes as if we were mounted on gyroscopes. It’s a little unnerving… except for 
G.O.P. “tsunami” myth from materializing.
Okay, well, here we are on a virtually invisible “supermass” planet orbiting the red giant Antares. Hate to tell you what the fine is for littering on this rock. Something to do with being staked out while drunken cops take pot shots at you with flame throwers. (I think I’ve got that right.) Thing is, the gravity here is outrageous. I admit we’ve all put on a few (and when I say “all” I mean “me”) since our salad days back in the ’80s, but on Antares 3 we’re all heavyweights. In fact, I weigh about seventeen tons here. (I’m talking metric tons, besides.) And when you drop something, it’s like the sucker is welded to the ground. (Of course, in places, the ground is molten, so it might just BE welded to the ground.)
Macaphee cobbled together some protective blisters for us so that we won’t be crushed to a pulp. Good thing too – there’s an ordinance here against hiring pulp, even if it’s musician pulp. Strict in these parts. Sticklers for the law. Hard as rock, these Antareans. In fact…. they’re made of rock. (And they say we rock.)
It would be no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I have voted for (and even volunteered for) Michael Arcuri (D-NY) in the past. That is not because of any deep or enduring loyalty towards the candidate; again, I vote strategically. His election means one less vote for Boehner and the crew. (Remember: When you stay home, you ride with Boehner). But I have to say, his ads are as childish as those of his opponent. In fact, some of them seem calculated to alienate the most hard-core of Democratic party constituencies – those traditional left anti-war folks who hold their noses every two years to vote for the lesser of two evils. Arcuri’s got an ad out accusing his opponent of supporting a group that will “cut defense spending in half”. Like that would be a bad thing.
Second leg of our interstellar tour is now underway, and we’ve already broken some records. I mean 45s and LPs – Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, insists on bringing his cache of vintage sides with him everywhere he goes. (He’s an analog kind of guy.) That’s where the dare comes in. You know how these deep space passages can be – lots of time on our hands, watching asteroids go by. A few hours pass in silence and you start looking for something to do. That’s when anti-Lincoln dared 
All those rare sides! Some of them broken to bits, others vaporized, some melted into caramel-like pretzels. A dismal end for Mitch’s record collection, to be sure. He didn’t take it very well. In fact, I think he’s building something special for Anti-Lincoln… something that may be the gift of a lifetime. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a sixth sense about these things, and he’s been avoiding Mitch’s cabin like it’s a fire hole. (For all I know, it may be a fire hole. Fire in the hole!) Crikey… if we make it to Antares in one piece, I will be astounded.
Point two: Corporate cash. It likely has not escaped your attention that corporate interests – spearheaded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – are pouring money into this election like never before. Newly empowered by the Supreme Court’s execrable Citizens United decision, non-party groups are performing as cutouts for the financial industry, the energy sector, manufacturing, you name it. Karl Rove’s groups alone have raised more than $50 million and are now shooting for $65 million; the Chamber something like $75 million. They see an opportunity to bag this election, and they’re willing to spend the coin to make it happen.
Just coming off of a ripping good string of performances on Neptune, mother of all Big Green fans in the outer rings of our solar system. (Good to know we’re still loved by someone… or some THING.) When I say “ripping good”, I mean it certainly seemed that way to us. As some of you may know, however, the atmosphere on Neptune contains many elements not prevalent in our own sweet Earth-bound air, so frankly, after a couple of sets breathing that stuff, I get a little punchy. You could tell me iron is chocolate and I’d believe you. You could tell me Carl Paladino is sane, and I’d buy it. It’s just that crazy. So… we may have played well, but possibly not. Or “splunge”, as Monty Python would put it.
many of the objects are molten or flaming. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, developed flame resistant suits for us to wear on stage, but they are less than comfortable. Suffice to say, we are good duckers. I’ve also programmed Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to emit a robotian cry every time some projectile is header our way. “INCOMING!” he shouts, and we know just what to do.