Where To From Here?

As the reality of economic disaster sets in, many are pointing fingers and looking for blame. Economist Joseph Stiglitz gets to the meat of it in his article Reversal of Fortune pointing to "special interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence."

The bottom line is that the false ideology of the "free market" has failed miserably. It is corruption in practice and We the People are now beginning to pay the price for the unmitigated plunder of the country and the planet by the corporate ruling class. This has become so obvious that, as noted in an excellent article in Political Affairs Magazine, capitalism itself is being examined and it's future called into question in the mainstream press as Marx inevitably appears increasingly more relevant to our times than the delusional raving of the usual Wall Street sycophants.

While I continue to remain cautiously optimistic about the incoming Obama Administration, his choices of economic counsel are in fact some of the same folks who espoused the "free market" policies that are at the root of the present crisis. I continue to believe that Obama's intentions and agenda are good and that he feels he is tapping the most qualified expertise there is but he would do well to include some progressive minds from outside the inner sanctums of Capital. One of the good things about the Obama transition, though it may be more image that meat, is his interactive website in which he attempts to keep us informed as well as having the mechanism by which we can respond with our ideas and comments. It is important that we do that. We need to demand public works jobs to rebuild a non-fossil fuel national power grid and a national electric rail system because as George Monibot points out, if we don't radically alter our energy use nothing else will matter as the environment spins out of control. We need to push for a National Single-Payer Health system. We also need to demand a dismantling of the so-called "Homeland Security" apparatus and the return to a constitutional republic.