Bacon's Rebellion

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Note:

AZA held his annual holiday party at his SoHo loft Friday evening. Most of the team was there, MSM had to regret due to his leadership on the Marcellus Shale Hydrofracking. The host asked guests to bring suggestions for refining Observer’s 7 Dec humorous comment posted on “Lies About Federal Workers” concerning “The Truman Show.” After much discussion, the team voted 7 to 6 (some wanted to toss rocks and whack moles) to request that EMR post the revised version. Observer participated and hearty endorses the refinements.

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As intelligent as many of Dr. Bacon’s insights are, he may have who is shielding what from whom bass-ackwards:

Bacon claims that ‘The Political Class’ in the National Capital SubRegion is ‘insulated’ from the issues facing citizens and Organizations in the rest of the nation-state.

That seems to be incorrect:

“The rest of the nation” has been intentionally insulated from reality, not the other way around.

Many believe that what Bacon calls “The Political Class” is really “The Business-As-Usual Class” (aka ,The BAU Class).

The BAU Class is a vast Agency / Enterprise / Institution Complex (aka, conspiracy) that includes:

1. Governance practitioners in the Agencies at the federal, state and municipal scales – especially pandering politicians and those who work for them

2. Entrepreneurs in Enterprises that depend on Mass OverConsumption to raise THEIR boats, THEIR stock, THEIR McMansions…

3. Leaders of Institutions (political parties, PACs, think tanks, etc.) that depend on the flow of money from Agencies, Enterprises and from those citizens and Households at the top of food chain. Many Institution-supporting entities feed money to Institutions to preserve the status quo because they see no reason to derail their gravy train.

So the real story is that the BAU Class has INSULATED the citizens and Organizations across the nation – and across the Planet – from reality. The reality of finite limits and the pitfalls of jingoism, partisan bickering, xenophobia, the Wealth Gap and YES, deficits are unrecognized. In fact ignorance is glorified in the name of patriotism and freedom.

Citizens collectively have no idea how to address the objectives and strategies they should be concerned with – especially the overarching goal:

Achieving an economic, social and physical trajectory that is sustainable.

Instead there is The Anger of Ignorance protests, Whack a Mole politics with all sides Tossing Rocks at Empty Pigeonholes (TRAPE).

The BAU Class is standing in the way of the information that citizens need to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace. PROPERTY DYNAMICS is one path to follow but even information on this core interest of the vast majority of Households is being distorted and swept under the rug. Thus the need for Citizen Media.

Without their consent, most citizens are now cast members in a continent-wide, real-time, tragedy “The Reagan Show.” What exists for most is an updated “The Truman Story” that has portrays the life of Reagan Everyman in place of Truman Burbank.

It was the great communicator himself that convinced citizens that they could have it all because it was Morning in America. Everyone could thrive in Seaside or Celebration – technicolor versions of “Pleasantville.” They could all live where they wanted, drive what they wanted, spend what they wanted. The ever-growing economy, driven by the gracious and altruistic spending of the rich. would raise all boats.

It was Reagan who tossed a wet blanket on the flickering candle of intelligence that was ignited by understanding of what the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo REALLY meant.

For AZA

(Note: a number of other ideas surfaced at AZA’s fete – The existence of The Spacial Bipolar Disorder, and others – that will be included in the survey of Citizen Media, forthcoming.)

A certain Bacon’s Rebellion blogger whose initials are “JAB” has just written a book called “Boomergeddon” in which he takes a strong libertarian/conservative /Cato viewpoint to try and scare us into believing that the end is near because of government spending.

• Fed workers make at least 24 percent less than private sector ones.
• “Conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute” (from which much of “Boomergeddon’s” data is drawn) claim otherwise, but they comparing apples an oranges, i.e. the pay of a small practice doc in Iowa as compared to a federal cancer researcher leading 50 people at NIH.
• The federal workforce is not bigger than ever. Less the postal service, it is about 2.1 million or slightly smaller than it was in 1967 even while the nation’s population has grown much more.
• You can fire federal workers.
• Not all feds are paper pushers who die to vote for Obama. Some do real work and have won Nobel Prizes.
• Barack Obama’s unfortunate federal pay freeze won’t do much to cure budget ills. The savings just ain’t there. Just don’t believe the JABs.

My advice? Be careful of people who go over the top in using A-bomb bursts as book cover art to make their point. They are selling a tissue of lies.

Peter Galuszka

From Peirce’s column on Citiwire.net:

Cities’ revenues will plunge sharply as property taxes, in their first year of recession-impacted reassessments, get set to decline deeply in 2011. Local government fiscal shortfalls may total $83 billion, which the League of Cities estimates may force up to 500,000 staff reductions. Basic city services will shrink. Infrastructure projects will get cancelled or postponed.

These are hard times for America’s local governments. Economists may declare the Great Recession is “over,” but localities see a different picture. The federal stimulus monies that helped so many of them balance their budgets runs out December 31. So does Washington’s two-year old “Build America” bond program, which has made local infrastructure borrowing more affordable.

State and municpal governments face nothing but hardship in the years ahead. It’s time for fundamental change, not the usual short-term 3%-budget-cuts-across-the-board belt tightening. If we fail to rise to the occasion, we face a future of entropy and decay.

We have read posts filed periodically on this blog by a co-blogger (I won’t mention any names but his initials are PG) about the “xenophobic” motives behind the “wicked brew of discriminatory laws” enacted by the “Know Nothings” of Prince William County. Chief among the ordinances passed back in 2007 and 2008 was a provision that required county police to inquire into the immigration status of people detained for a violation of state or local law.

The question of how to deal with undocumented workers in Prince William County flared into a heated controversy that not only outraged PG but attracted national attention. With the passage of three years, emotions have settled down. It is now appropriate to ask, how did things work out?

As it happens, the Center for Survey Research, a unit of the Weldon Cooper Center for the University of Virginia, has just published an exhaustive analysis at the request of the Prince William County Police Department, which funded the study. The report, “Evaluation Study of Prince William County Police Illegal Immigration Enforcement Policy,” provides a nuanced picture that will provide ammunition for both sides of the debate. But proponents of the policy are most likely to feel vindicated. (See the PowerPoint summary here.)

The seven authors concluded that the policy was “smoothly implemented” and the county experienced few of the dire consequences — overzealous enforcement by police, a flood of litigation — of which opponents warned. Hispanics were not subjected to a wave of invidious racial profiling. Of the roughly 3,000 suspected illegals checked by police between March 2008 and June 2010, 99% were confirmed to be illegal.

Moreover, the policy had a modestly beneficial effect on the crime rate. In 2009 illegals accounted for for 8% of the arrests for rape, 3% for robbery, 9% for aggravated assault, and 6% for larceny. The biggest impact was on arrests for public drunkenness, 22.4% of which involved illegals. Overall, crime rates trended down slightly in 2008 as compared to 2007. A modest decline in violent crimes departed from the experience of other municipalities in the Washington, D.C. region.

The numbers do not bear out the prejudices of those who painted illegals as especially inclined toward criminality. But neither do they support claims that undocumented workers are more likely to be law-abiding than native-born citizens.

The study could document no financial savings to Prince William taxpayers, undermining one of the claims that agitated the send-the-illegals-home movement. The number of English-as-Second-Language students leveled off but did not decline. Most other services are federally regulated or funded, and most are denied to illegal immigrants by federal law or county ordinance.

As for public nuisances, the experience was a mixed bag. Prince William experienced a dramatic decline in the number of complaints about parking in overcrowded properties — down 38% — and less loitering at day labor sites. Yet weed/tall grass violations doubled between 2006 and 2008.

To me, the most interesting finding came from polling data that tracked Hispanics’ attitudes toward the county police and the county generally. The percentage of Hispanic respondants who had a favorable view of Prince William’s quality of life and expressed trust in county government took a nose dive between 2007 and 2008, clearly reflecting the fears engendered by the controversy and the wave of accusations that the new policies were motivated by xenophobia, dislike of “brown people,” hostility to Hispanics and so on.

What is remarkable is how strongly the opinions of Hispanics have bounced back. In 2010, Hispanics were more likely than blacks and others (presumably whites and Asians) to “want to live in PWC 5 years from now.” Admittedly, Hispanics don’t feel as favorably about the county as they did before the controversy erupted, when their views were more positive than those of whites or blacks by an ever higher margin.

The UVa researchers concluded that “it IS possible for a local government to have an impact on its illegal immigration experience.” Hispanics, for the most part, have gotten over the controversy. Maybe the rest of us should, too.

Virginia will pay an estimated $594 million in 2012 to service its $9 billion in tax-supported debt. That will make interest payments the sixth largest category of expenditure in the General Fund budget, behind public education, Medicaid, higher education, corrrections and the car tax rebate.

And those numbers do not include debt on transportation projects, or the money “borrowed” from the Virginia Retirement System.

The analysis comes from a 30-page reported prepared by the Senate Finance Committee staff for presentation to the committee during a November 18 retreat in Staunton. Reports Jim Nolan with the Times-Dispatch:

John W. Forbes II, state secretary of finance under former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal wire fraud charges. It is by far the biggest scandal involving a state cabinet-level official in years.

The case also raises questions about a state entity that is supposed to use money obtained in a massive 1998 lawsuit settlement against four major tobacco companies for the public good.

That entity with the long-winded title of the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission has so far distributed $728.7 million for do-good projects in the tobacco belt stretching from the economically hard-hit counties in Southside and Southwest Virginia. It also has paid out $288.3 million to state tobacco growers on the theory that they need help to weather the decrease in tobacco sales following a slew of health-related lawsuits and the end of a 1938 federal program that artificially propped up tobacco prices.

Forbes, who was the state’s top financial official from May 2001 until January 2002, also served on the tobacco commission’s board. In June 2001, he won a $5 million grant from the commission to set up the Literary Foundation of Virginia. Designed to promote adult literacy, the program apparently did little other than provide $1 million in salaries for Forbes and his spouse and help them buy a million-dollar house.

“You not only betrayed the citizens of the commonwealth, but also the governor that appointed you,” U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson told Forbes as he passed down the 10-year sentence in Richmond on Nov. 23.

But one has to ask what the real purpose of the tobacco commission is. It has done some useful work in helping small businesses grow and narrowing the digital divide in poor counties dealing with declines in the tobacco, textile and furniture sectors.

But why do tobacco farmers need nearly $300 million in aid? They had been living off federal largess for decades, namely, from a Depression-era program that kept tobacco prices artificially high by having the federal government restrict tobacco growing and sales.

After years of protection by a Congress controlled in part by Southern Democrats, the program created “allotments” allowing tobacco growing in areas of only about four acres. These units could be bequeathed to survivors and kept tobacco prices at levels perhaps several times higher than that of far more useful crops such as corn and soybeans.

I reported on the program for BusinessWeek back in the 1990s in my home area of Beaufort County, N.C. where I started reporting on tobacco in the early 1970s. One farmer had ammassed allotments of 30 acres and he paid more than a milllion dollars on the crop, thanks to the system. It was far more than what he got from other crops. The support program has since come to an end.

Virginia officials thought that tobacco farmers, who grow a deadly product, deserved more. So, one of the tobacco commission’s first activities was sending allotment holders checks for simply having an allotment. Some got up to $12,000.

A check of the allotment holders’ addresses that we did some years back at Virginia Business magazine showed that in some counties many holders didn’t even live in Virginia. In Brunswick County, about 28 percent didn’t live in Virginia, but in cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Las Vegas. On Halifax County’s list, one holder lived on the Gold Coast of downtown Chicago.

All got checks from the commission’s $2.1 billion war chest. Another $1.7 billion went to the state’s general fund to be spent as the state saw fit. Although the tobacco settlement — Virginia’s share was $4.2 billion — was intended to be used to convince people not to smoke, only a tiny portion of Virginia’s payout has been used for this purpose.

This shows, once again, how much tobacco reigns as King of Virginia, despite the corruption it seems to generate.

Peter Galuszka

It has been some time since EMR visited the issue of MainStream Media (Enterprise Media) and THE ESTATES MATRIX. Among the four major projects on-going at SYNERGY one focuses on Citizen Media – the media serving the interests of the New Fourth Estate – citizens / Households.

FIFTH ESTATE OR FIFTH WHEEL

A recent discussion on Citizen Media turned up reference to ‘the fifth estate.’ It turns out that there are many voices in the ‘fifth estate’ dialogue. A quick survey revels that the ‘discussion’ of a ‘fifth estate’ appears to be among those who have not yet come to grips with the reality that the Old Fourth Estate, knighted by Edmond Burke in 1837, is dead and gone.

True believers in ‘Journalism’ cling to the delusion that the Old Fourth Estate lives on. In this context, they need a pigeon hole for the non-Enterprise ‘news and entertainment’ activity found in the electromagnetic environment – thus ‘the fifth estate’ handle.

As documented in THE ESTATES MATRIX, most of the Old Fourth Estate was SOLD OFF decades ago. That is not a bad thing unless those involved do not understand what happened.

This segment of the Old Fourth Estate is now part of the New Second Estate (Enterprises) and is known as Enterprise Media (aka, MainStream Media).

Some of the Old Fourth Estate – largely supported by First-Family-of-Journalism-Philanthropy – is now part of the New Third Estate (Institutions). It is a major component of what is known as ‘The Alternative Media.’ The Alternative Media shares the Institution Media sphere with, among others, the spinners and flacks of the Think Tank Media and the Partisan Politics Media. It is hard to tell them apart because they ALL drape themselves in the white robes of ‘Journalism’ and they frequently put on a crown labeled ‘freedom’ or ‘truth’ – but almost never ‘science.’

There is also New First Estate (Agencies) Media. Staff and consultants produce mountains of reports, data, studies, legislation and opinions for all three branches at the three current levels of Agency activity.

Finally, there is the New Fourth Estate (citizen / Household) media. This is a vast seething vat of fact, fantasy, emotion, ego and confusion facilitated by computing equipment and distributed by electronic communications and cheap paper.

The idea that the ‘journalism-based’ media is still a legitimate ‘fourth estate’ that is trying to provide citizens / Households with the information they need to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace is preposterous. See THE ESTATES MATRIX

The idea that, beyond this ghost of estates past, there is a ‘fifth estate’ with the leverage, power, influence, impact or stature akin to Agencies, Enterprises or Institutions is preposterous squared.
If one is looking for a ‘new fifth estate’ that has economic, social and physical clout in the real world comparable to the Estates of the Realm (1304 to 1775) from which the current Four Estates emerged, the most logical candidates would be PACs and lobbyists. Or perhaps terrorists? How about the Communist Capitalist?

The yapping crowd of Bloggers and Tweeters having an Estate of their own? Please!!

ED BURKE WAS WRONG

The delusions concerning a media fourth estate and now a fifth estate is rooted in the mistake that Edmond Burke made in 1837 declaring News Media to be the Fourth Estate in the first place.

The early 1800s WAS a time when a new Estate was emerging in Europe – it came along after the Civil War in the US. But this new Estate was ‘citizens,’ not ‘media.’ The rise of citizens as an Estate reflected the tectonic plate shift that disassembled the Old First Estate and the Old Second Estate in 1775. See End Note One.

The Media of the 18th, 19th and 20th century DID represent citizens and Households – for a while. That was because citizens bought the media product – literally – to get news – the information they needed to make the transition from an agrarian society to an Urban society.

As citizens became more educated and more prosperous – the ‘rise of the Middle Class (which is also gone, see THE ESTATES MATRIX) – more and more of them voted and more and more of them could afford to buy stuff. The influence of citizens / Households grew and thus so did the influence of the media.

But as media outlets gained influence they also made money and that attracted the New Second Estate. When the founders of the First Families of Journalism got tired, and the next generation got lazy, almost all the old line media outlets sold out to Enterprises. Those that did not sell out, morphed to become stockholder / balance sheet accountable Enterprises. This allowed First Family of Journalism members could get their money out of the media activity without an outright sale.

Most of the NEW media outlets have been started and / or agglomerated by Enterprises because it required capital to get into and stay in a field dominated by Enterprises. (Electronic media allowed some entities that did not generate much cash flow to exist but that is another story for another time.)

This is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is a fact.

‘Journalist’ and the schools of journalism and the journalism foundations supported by First-Family-of-Journalism-Philanthropy have not yet come to grips with the reality that Enterprise Media cannot not REALLY support the ethics and goals of ‘Journalism.’

Morally and legally, Enterprise Media answers first to the stockholders. If the owners of a media outlet have goals other than maximizing profit, they are by definition an Institution and the owners are not stockholders. See Robert Reich on the impossibility to serve two goals in Supercapitalism.

There is no question that journalism is a profession and there IS a great Journalism in the sky. Journalism (capital ‘J’) is guided by principles that benefit all four Estates. However, medicine is a profession, law is a profession, plumbing is a profession,… One does not see doctors, lawyers and plumbers calling themselves an Estate.

CITIZEN MEDIA

Because citizen / Households (The New Fourth Estate) are not getting the information they need to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace, there is a desperate need for Citizen Media – media serving the Fourth Estate.

If one doubts that, check out The Anger of Ignorance that can be found in Enterprise Media and especially in Institutional Media.

In the view of SYNERGY, the only way citizens will get the information they need is to have their own Estate-serving media. The challenges for Citizen Media are:

1. Generating a process to gather, analyze, vet and present data / information related to the scales and range of interest of citizens that effectively involves journalists and the principles of Journalism. Journalism IS important, just not AS important as journalists tell each other.

2. Successfully involving volunteers in the gathering, analysis, vetting and distribution of information and in facilitating the cross-platform, cross-generation and cross-socioeconomic self-identification to reach a clear majority of citizens in any Alpha Community.

Volunteers are essential because that is the only way any Organization (in this case an Institution serving citizen communication needs) can afford to operate, AND

Because it is the only way to generate a sufficient level of awareness, interest, understanding and action across multiple scales and multiple topics to achieve the goal of proving the information needed for citizen to make intelligent decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth. Survival of civilization depends on achieving those goals. (See PROPERTY DYNAMICS and the potential of understanding THE CURRENT TRAJ
ECTORY.) AND

Because advertising as a source of supporting the media is dying. Citizens do not believe advertising. Advertising driven Mass OverConsumption has led to debt, hardship and disintegration of a stable society.

Much of The Great Recession’s overhang is due to the failure of advertising to ‘stimulate.’ That is a good thing because there is a dwindling supply of resources to satisfy that stimulated consumption. See THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY for documentation that the Invisible Hand is far ahead of the ‘leaders.’

3. Establishing a clear understanding of the components of human settlement. That requires a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary to articulate that Framework.

These tools are necessary so that citizens can identify where they are and where they want and need to go – literally. Where IS my Dooryard, Cluster, Neighborhood, Village, Community, SubRegion, New Urban Region – or what ever one chooses to call them.

Citizens and the media that support them must have this understanding so they can sort out what is important information, what is interesting information and what is entertainment and hype. See PRIMER

Without a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary, citizens and their Households are adrift. Due to Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Ignorance they do not even know they are lost.

It will be a while before most journalists understand this but until they do, citizens will continue to flounder without the information they need to make decisions in their own economic, social and physical best interest.

CITIZEN MEDIA IN CONTEXT: THE BOTTOM LINE

Observer recently posted a comment on “A Serious Proposal for Restoring Fiscal Sanity” (14 Nov 2010) concerning a discussion of legislative process and the role of / need for super majorities. The observation can be found in End Note Two. Observer ended the comment with this observation:

“…even these changes will make little difference – in fact they will not happen – until citizens have better information upon which to make decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace that reflect citizen / Household best interests.”

In fact citizens cannot make well informed decisions on their own best interest on ANY topic until they have a reliable source of sound information.

That is true for Fundamental Transformation of human settlement patters,

That is true for Fundamental Transformation of governance structure (the topic Observer was addressing)

That is true for Fundamental Transformation of the economic system.

Without a reliable source of sound information democracy and market economies are not possible or as noted in “The Bottom Line in 500 Words”:

On a small planet with Global economic, social and physical interconnections, GROSS INEQUITY at the Community-, SubRegional-, Regional-, MegaRegional- and continental-scales OR between ethnic and religious groups is NOT sustainable.

All citizens must have the opportunity to prosper based on effort, ability and acceptance of responsibility for their actions – individual and collective. Success cannot be based on gambling, happenstance and inheritance or on inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity.

Avoiding Collapse of civilization as-it-has-evolved and the survival for Homo sapiens comes down to understanding that:

In a ‘flat’ world with:

1. wide-spread literacy,

2. Instant communications / information dissemination, and

3. Wide distribution of weapons of mass destruction / massive stockpiles of weapons of conventional destruction / ubiquitous access to weapons of inter-personal destruction:

There is no alternative but to make Fundamental Transformations of governance structure. These transformations can facilitate evolution of Fundamental Transformation of humans settlement patterns and of economic systems. These three Transformations are imperative if citizens are to achieve a sustainable trajectory for their civilization.

The question remains:

Will the genetic proclivities toward competition, acquisition, consumption and xenophobia that got Homo sapiens to this point in their evolution prevent the emergence of an Urban society with a sustainable trajectory?

EMR

END NOTES

1. A Note of clarification on THE ESTATES MATRIX – PART TWO of TRILO-G.

It is well documented that the evolution of the Estates of the Realm evolved in different ways in different empires, kingdoms and principalities up until 1775. Depending on who held the most cards at a particular time in a specific location the sphere labeled First Estate (Nobility OR Clergy) and Second Estate (Clergy OR Nobility) varied. In THE ESTATES MATRIX it is assumed that Nobility is the First Estate and Clergy the Second Estate. That makes the transitions after 1775 easier to explain. The Nobility is replaced by Agencies (Of the people, by the people) as the First Estate and the former nobility became a class within the Third Estate (Institution). The Clergy slipped from being the Second Estate to become a part of the Third Estates (Institution) and is replaced by Enterprises as the Second Estate reflecting the rise of Capitalism and Urbanization.

2. Observers comment on the legislative process and the requirement for super majorities to pass legislation in “A Serious Proposal for Restoring Fiscal Sanity” 14 Nov 2010:

“To several of us (perhaps a majority?) much in this string of comments is pointless.

“The comments are trapped under a number of dangerous assumptions:

“First they are trapped under the false assumption that it makes sense to have only three levels of governance (Agency) that correspond to the late 18th century agrarian society model – municipal, state and federal. New levels of Agency must evolve to reflect economic, social and physical reality.

“Second it is trapped in 14th century idea the highest level of governance has the final say on EVERYTHING. In this context, the only plurality threshold that counts is at the federal level.

“Third it is trapped in the assumption every decision needs to have the same plurality threshold – the same for setting speed limits and for doubling the debt limit.

“Fourth it is trapped in the assumption that once passed every law is good FOREVER. Scaled sunset provisions should apply to all legislation, to all regulation and TO most judicial decisions. “Is this STILL the right thing to be doing??”

“And even these changes will make little difference – in fact they will not happen – until citizens have better information upon which to make decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace about citizen / Household best interests.

“Professor Risse is working on a note re ‘the new fifth estate’ that may touch on this.

Observer

General Motors, long considered by some as a hopeless dinosaur, seems to be embarking on an historic comeback. It launched an Initial Public Offering of new stock for the first time in 18 months and on the first day of trading, shares were up nearly 7 percent.

Soon-to-be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor promises to bring a results-oriented approach to governing in Washington, reports Tyler Whitley with the Times-Dispatch.

“This will not be a spring of 100 days or 100 hours, but rather a long march, requiring top-to-bottom reform, focused on producing results in three key areas,” he said: cutting spending, shrinking the size of government, and removing the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the private sector.

He’s talking the talk. Let’s hope he walks the walk.

Virginians can rest assured that there are at least two serious budget cutters in Washington, D.C.: Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Their draft budget-balancing plan issued Wednesday gores so many oxen and butchers so many sacred cows that the Chicago Board of Trade would be well advised to suspend trading on cattle futures.