The Death of a Dream

The recent announcement by Microsoft that it is cutting 18,000 jobs is the Death of the Silicon Valley Dream. The Silicon Valley dream is really just a memory of the 80's when the computer boom was getting underway. As the rest of the economy was struggling, Silicon Valley became the vision of new technology and a new industry, where you could earn a six figure salary while wearing Birkenstocks to work and taking breaks to play hackey sack. The dream started to fade after the tech crash of 2000. Now workers in computers and info tech are facing the same uncertainty as everybody else. Remember when the BlackBerry was the must have techie gizmo? Now the company that makes BlackBerry is also struggling. We seem to have reached the ultimate absurdity of planned obsolescence, buying techie gadgets that are obsolete by the time they hit the market.

The Plot to Destroy the Middle Class

There's a growing body of evidence that the American middle class has been declining for decades. It used to be true that Americans had the best standard of living and that American blue collar workers lived better than the white collar workers in the rest of the world. Now that's no longer true, with persistent unemployment and rising costs of just about everything from housing to healthcare. The prevailing economic theory which is just to let the rich get richer at everybody's expense will only make matters worse.

In other advanced countries it is the middle class that has always supported the welfare state. In those countries people realize that government has a role in maintaining social equality. In the US on the other hand, the "Age of Affluence" during the fifties and sixties convinced most middle class americans that they didn't need a welfare state. The made it possible for right wing propagandists to spread lies and distortions about the welfare state and even to turn the word "welfare" into a pejorative term.

In reality the age of affluence came to an end during the recession of 1974-75. It's been downhill ever since for most Americans with economic and social stagnation making it harder for people to get ahead or even maintain their standards of living. Yet people continue to hold to a mentality of "affluence" even though fewer and fewer people enjoy it. We no longer have a system of class but of caste; social mobility is only possible for a few members of the upper middle class who manage to move into the upper class (like Mark Zuckerberg).

Why the American middle class allowed this to happen to them? Partly because it's difficult for people to change their way of thinking.

The Final Nail in the Coffin

The final proof that the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq was a pack of lies appears in an article by Knut Royce in the Huffington Post titled "Remembering the Hoax That Helped Launch the U.S. Invasion, and Later Disintegration, of Iraq". As Royce puts it

The forged reports alleged that Saddam Hussein had been secretly buying the raw material to build an atomic bomb, uranium ore, and became George W. Bush's most compelling selling point for the invasion some eleven years ago. Many intelligence officials and members of his administration at the time suspected that, at the very least, the intelligence was questionable.

And as we all remember Condi Rice was running around scaring everybody with visions of mushroom clouds. The thing is that the documents, known as the "Italian letter," were bogus. As Royce puts it

The documents were crafted by rogue Italian intelligence officers who wanted to peddle them to unsuspecting countries, including Britain and the U.S. -- or anyone else with cash. The centerpiece, or The Italian Letter, was a July 27, 2000, letter purportedly written to Saddam by the president of Niger, an impoverished African country. It allegedly formalized an agreement reached by representatives of both countries three weeks earlier for the supply of 500 tons of uranium ore, also known as yellow cake. The Italian intelligence service, SISMI, first alerted the CIA to the alleged transaction on Oct. 15, 2001, when America was still reeling from al Qaeda's attacks. But it gave no details, such as the tonnage being purchased, and provided no documentation.

Ultimately, the Bush admin. wasn't relying on facts but on fear and hysteria. And the rest is history.

Another FUBAR Courtesy of the GOP

What is so grotesque about our political culture is how the GOP causes problems and then gets to escape the blame by a lot of macho wipe posturing. The recent "surge" of Central American immigrants is a case in point. GOPer politicians are demagoguing the issue which they themselves caused by (1 blocking immigration reform (2 underfunding
the immigration service (3 pushing "free trade" agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA. Anybody who talks about "sealing the borders" is pandering the boneheads who comprise the political "base" of the GOP. Who do they get away with it? It helps that the right wing corporate media acts as nothing more than a GOPER propaganda machine.

Democrat Ineptitude Syndrome

The general concensus is that the GOP is going to win big in this year's elections. How's that possible given their dysfunctional and negligent conduct? Because the Dems are even worse. They're like the Iraqi army that doesn't put up a fight. Case in point the Highway Trust Fund is about to go insolvent. The Gopers act like there's no problem, the Dems are proposing an increase in the sales tax on gasoline. This while gas prices are soaring to the highest levels in years. The Obama admin. blew its chance years ago when it should have made repeal of the Bush tax cuts in the rich its top priority. Now they Dems are proposing a tax which will fall hardest on ordinary people. Which will allow the Gopers to paint the Dems as "tax and spenders." No wonder the Dems lose even when they should win.