G.E.: No Tax Special

If I hadn’t just read it, I’d never believe it. G.E.—you remember, the company Ronald Reagan used to shill for; the company that built many of the nuclear reactors now under suspicion; the company whose CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was recently appointed by President Obama to be his liaison to the business community, as well as to head up the President’s “Committee on Jobs and Competitiveness” (slated to discuss corporate tax policy, the Pres. says, so as to LOWER the corporate tax rate)—last year “reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion,” $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. And its American tax bill? ZERO. No tax paid. “In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion,” writes David Kocieniewski in the 3/25/11 New York Times.

How can this be? you might ask. The government is crying about its indebtedness. Republicans and even Democrats are calling for austerity—i.e. cutting spending, i.e. cutting the benefits to the neediest members of our society, with plans to cut even more. And one of the richest corporations in America is paying NO TAX? Could it be that America doesn’t have a spending problem, that it has an INCOME problem because the richest individuals and corporations are paying less and less each year??? Do you think? Listen to what Kocieniewski writes, after recounting how G.E. spends a fortune in lobbying ($200 million over the last decade), and on a G.E. tax department headed by former IRS employees and lawyers numbering no less than 975 individuals! who do nothing but work on how to take advantage of tax breaks so that G.E. pays NO taxes:

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Did you get that? Corporations—the alleged lifeblood of our economy, the ones who were just given permission, as PERSONS, to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—not long ago paid nearly a third of the U.S. tax burden, but now pay less than a tenth and may soon pay less than a twentieth.
Ah but, they keep saying, we need to be competitive. What’s good for us is good for America and American workers. Oh really? Here’s the truth:

Since 2003, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States, while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.

And what does earning all that money overseas do for G.E.? Well several things. This is because the other big change in G.E.’s business has been a shift from producing goods (like lightbulbs and all the “good things G.E. brings to life”) to providing financing for its products. “GE Capital” is the name of this finance division and more than half of G.E.’s profit recently has come from financing. Then the company managed to muscle changes in the tax laws that allow multinationals “to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income.” This is known as “active financing.” It means that “if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.” G.E. has been diligent in doing this, that is, booking a huge percentage of its profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Singapore and keeping them there, a practice that, according to one tax economist, has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” In the past year, in fact, to ZERO. No, less than zero, because it got a tax benefit of $3.2 billion!

So, in effect, G.E. has said to the United States and its people: “fuck you.” It manufactures more and more of its goods abroad, thus destroying American jobs, makes and keeps its profits abroad, and then gets tax benefits for all this that are applied to the little tax obligation (from goods still manufactured in the U.S.) it hasn’t found a loophole to worm its way out of. G.E. explains this by saying it has an obligation to its shareholders to “legally minimize its costs.” Some would call it more like “corporate welfare” (I would call it corporate thievery.) And what I’m wondering is, How is it that Americans who can barely buy food are pilloried as “welfare queens,” and made to work for their benefits, while these big time welfare queens get lionized, deferred to in every way, and even appointed to the President’s inner circle of advisers?

It’s called corruption, folks, and because of it the United States is looking more and more like one of those banana republics we used to laugh at in the old days. No more. If there’s a question left, it can only be: how long can such wanton pillaging of a nation go on? The answer is simple: as long as we the people let it.

Lawrence DiStasi

The Billionaires Behind the Hate

That would be the brothers Koch (pron. Kock?), Charles and David. The bros have come into prominence since the rise of the Tea Party, which they direct and supply most of the money for. Staunch Libertarians, which party they also pretty much underwrite, their aim has long been to tear the government “out at the root.” As Jane Mayer in her brilliant article about these dogs in a recent New Yorker article (“Covert Operations,” Aug. 30, 2010) notes, the Libertarian Party platform in 1980, with David Koch on the ticket, advocated abolishing the SEC and the Department of Energy, as well as Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control and all income taxes (especially corporate income taxes). What’s alarming is not only the scope of this “anarcho-totalitarianism” (William Buckley’s term), but the fact that so much of it is beginning to come true. And Koch brothers’ money is part of the reason. That’s because they have oodles of it (ca $35 billion), originally coming from the oil-refining business started by their father, Fred Koch (he joined the John Birch Society in the 50s as one of the loonies who called Pres. Eisenhower a communist). It’s laughable, really. These guys give off the aura of that quintessential American culture hero, the self-made man. But what Mayer points out is that they didn’t exactly start on the level playing field they’re so fond of advocating. No. David Koch was left, upon his father’s death, the neat little sum of $300 million dollars! His other brothers no doubt inherited similar sums. Then David and his brother Charles (the CEO of Koch Industries) bought out their younger brother, and now own the family business lock, stock and barrel. That means no nosy stockholders. They are now nearly as rich as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and a whole lot of that money goes to their political foundations. Between 1998 and 2008, according to Mayer, these are the donation figures—Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation: $48 million; Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (controlled by Charlie): $28 million; David H. Koch Charitable Foundation: $120 million; plus $50 million in lobbying, and $8 million to political campaigns through KochPAC (more than 80% to Republicans). In 2010, Koch Industries led all other energy companies (including Exxon) in contributions to political campaigns. And just in case that weren’t enough clout, it was Koch money that in 1977 launched the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank (they have been prominent in attacking Global warming), and a bit later gave millions to another think tank, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University—“ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”

The activities of these “think” tanks would be laughable if they weren’t so perversely effective. Mayer cites a court case in 1997 when the EPA tried to reduce surface ozone pollution, much of it coming from oil refineries (the original Koch business, which has been sued constantly for polluting everything from air to ground water). One Susan Dudley, of the Mercatus Center, argued that the EPA had neglected to consider that “smog-free skies would result in more cases of skin cancer.” The Circuit Court actually believed this crap about smog being good, and ruled that, indeed, the EPA had “explicitly disregarded” the “possible health benefits of ozone.” The fact that the judges in the majority had attended “legal junkets” arranged by another group of Koch foundations, allegedly did not affect the ruling.

You get the picture. Big money buys big results, and the Koch brothers have big money they are quite willing and eager to spend. Another of their spin-off groups (this one designed to inspire and direct the grass roots activism the Tea Party is famous for) is named Americans for Prosperity (all of these names are a lesson in Orwellian language.) Minutely managed by the Kochs, Americans for Prosperity has been a key player in attacking the Obama presidency. That great conservative strategist, Grover Norquist, admitted to Mayer that the rowdy rallies by activists in the summer of 2010 were key to “undermining Obama’s agenda.” The people in the streets gave Republican lawmakers the cover they needed to refuse any cooperation with Obama, and changed the thinking of corporate donors. Prior to the demonstrations, even the Chamber of Commerce had been willing to work with the president; after the loonies took to the streets and “terrorized” Congress, this attitude changed.

There is much more to find out about these latter-day bagmen (their bought-out brother recently called their operation an “organized crime” operation because of their history of stealing oil from under Native American reservations—see Reader Supported News, March 20, 2011: “Koch and Native-American Reservation Oil Theft”), and I would recommend Mayer’s article as indispensable. It’s not just that David Koch is the guy who financed Governor Scott Walker’s election, and no doubt had a say in his recent anti-union legislation in Wisconsin; the Kochs also have bought numerous companies to supplement and diversify their oil-refining business, so the stink of their corruption is everywhere. Here’s a partial list of mostly paper products that they now control, sent to me by Eleanor Walden:

Paper products from Georgia-Pacific, including: Angel Soft toilet paper; Brawny paper towels; Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups; Mardi Gras napkins and towels; Quilted Northern toilet paper; Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper; Sparkle napkins; Vanity fair napkins; and Zee napkins. There’s a national campaign to boycott all of these products. I would urge everyone to do so, because if there’s one place these guys can be hurt, it’s in their deep, dirty pockets.
(Related addendum: a March 14 article in Yahoo news noted that U.S. millionaires in a survey complained that even $7 million was not quite enough to feel rich. The poor guys compare themselves to their fellow princelings, and also worry a lot about outliving their meager assets. Doesn’t your heart just bleed for them?)

Lawrence DiStasi

Nuclear Reactors--Full Speed Ahead

Amid all the horrors engulfing Japan (and the rest of the world as it watches in fear and trembling) not only via the earthquake and tsunami, but also via the possibility, increasing hourly, of one or more nuclear meltdowns, it is “encouraging” to note that some intrepid Americans are undaunted. Today, for example, that great representative from Texas, Joe Barton, was badgering Energy Secretary Stephen Chu in a hearing before his Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton—who some may remember as the “bright light” who apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward: “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to a ‘shakedown’ so I apologize” (seriously, those are the words he used) and who, it was later revealed, has received some $1,330,160 in “oil money” during his career—kept asking Chu if the Obama administration’s earlier promise to push for the building of more nuclear plants in the U.S. by providing loan guarantees of $56 billion still held. Chu answered in a complex way, and Barton persisted: “Is that a “yes?” Chu danced a bit more, but then answered, “Yes.” Barton then asked a further question amounting to the same thing, and this time got a prompt “Yes” from Chu. “Ah, you’re learning,” chortled the chairman; for he had the answer he wanted. The United States was not going to be deterred by a little meltdown in Japan, or by the rising panic among the world’s peoples about all the nuclear power plants that could spew radiation in unforeseeable directions due to unforeseeable accidents, or the minor problem of what to do with all that spent fuel lasting millennia. Hell no! Energy is needed, plutonium is needed, and real men like Barton aren’t afraid of what a little radiation does to the human body (nor, it seems, is the Obama administration), so it’s full speed ahead.

So here we are. The Japanese are running out of options to cool down these out-of-control nuclear reactors. They’ve been pumping sea water, probably using fire trucks in tandem to get enough pressure to pump the water onto the fuel rods, or replace the evaporating water from the pools storing spent rods still generating radioactive materials and heat, but they’re running out of fuel to keep the fire engines running. Worse, they’ve just this morning had to allow the skeleton crew (no pun intended) of 50 workers or so to take a break because the radiation levels were getting too high even for these sacrificial lambs. Meantime, the temperature in these reactors keeps rising inexorably. 2500 degrees. 3000 degrees. It’s hell on earth.

Herein lies the crux of the matter. Nuclear fission creates heat. So does just the normal process of radioactive decay of the materials that are used in the fuel rods (i.e. even after the reactor is shut down). The geniuses who designed this technology figured that all they’d have to do was keep the process cool with water. Keep circulating water to cool the fuel rods and all would be fine. But all isn’t fine. Electricity to pump the water fails. Generators to replace the electricity are stored in the basement and a tsunami floods the basement and disables the generators. Then sea water gets pumped in, but that also has its limits. Helicopters are called in to dump sea water into the blown-apart reactors (the explosion caused by the steam created by water on hot rods, and the release of hydrogen which blows up), but the radiation gets too high for the helicopter pilots to fly over the reactors. In short, the breakdown and remedial measures amount to a chain reaction that mimics the chain reaction that creates nuclear energy (and bombs) in the first place.

This hellish, impossible-to-control technology is the reason that governments, like the Obama administration, have to guarantee the loans needed to build these reactors. Investors on Wall Street want no part of this stuff. Banks won’t take the risk on their own. And why? Because the whole process is too hazardous, too fraught with potential disasters: Three Mile Island; Chernobyl; and now Fukushima. So whose money is going to fill the gap? Why, yours and mine, courtesy of the United States government, which pledges that if anything goes wrong (and how could it not go wrong eventually?), the federal government will pay off whatever loans or costs have accrued. And they are huge. Because though it seems “free,” this is expensive technology. And the only entity willing to take the risk by subsidizing it is the government. Reminds us of that other huge risk the government provides welfare checks for: war, the insanely expensive machines of war.

But will the world backtrack from its insane nuclear gamble? Hell no. We need war; we need energy. And so we get Joe Barton, that dimwit who considers global warming natural,

I believe that Earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural reasons. And I think mankind has been adopting, or adapting, to climate as long as man has walked the Earth…Adaptation is the practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to nature when the planet is heating or cooling, as it always is.

Global warming? Just adapt, says Joe. Nuclear meltdowns? Just adapt. And the Obama administration, in the face of pressure from the likes of Barton, has to demonstrate its courage even in the face of planetary disaster. It’s what we elect these big boys for, after all: Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead.

Lawrence DiStasi

Addendum, Mar. 24: Listening to an interview this morning on KPFA with Dr. Jeanette Sherman, consulting editor for the recent book, Chernobyl: Consequences for People and the Environment, I heard something I hadn't heard before (there are apparently lots of these little nuggets being kept under wraps). When asked what was the most important little-known aspect of the Chernobyl accident, Dr. Sherman said: "Its adverse effects on all life." She then pointed out that scientists have now studied not just the meltdown's effects on people, but on "domestic and wild animals, birds, fish, trees, mushrooms, bacteria and viruses." They found damage to them all. They found birth defects, damage to heart and brain, in short, "adverse findings in all systems tested."

This, of course, makes sense. Radiation affects life at its most basic, genetic level, and at that level, all life shares a common inheritance and structure. So the technology we have unleashed, and which its cheerleaders keep assuring us is perfectly safe, if and when it gets hit by the unforeseen accident, attacks not just humans and their cells, but the cells of all living things. Like global warming, the deleterious effects spread out to damage the entire planet. It's something to keep in mind, and, if you're writing your representative, something to point out.

Forget Shame

As I watched Michael Moore deliver a white hot speech in Wisconsin a few days ago, and heard the voices of his audience—state workers protesting the concerted Republican assault on public sector unions by yelling “Shame! Shame! Shame!”—it occurred to me. This time, folks, shaming those in power isn’t going to be enough. Though it was enough to bring down two presidents—Johnson and Nixon—in the 60s and 70s, and to eventually stop the Vietnam War, it won’t make even a dent in the armor worn by today’s ruling class. I mean, just think of it: two short years ago, the country seemed so disgusted by the overt criminality of Bush and his gang in the White House that his name was too toxic to even mention. The entire Republican Party was said to be near extinction, while a Prince of the Left had been elected to the White House. And yet, today that same prince is in retreat on every front, groveling to the right, while the worst yahoos ever seen in public office are screaming for the blood of gliberals and their devastated constituency. So we can forget tears, forget revulsion about war, murder, the evisceration of the social net so laboriously put in place over several generations, the enslavement of the newly impoverished, and all the rest. The power mongers and their lackeys in office are simply not susceptible to these common human emotions. Like their forebears in the Germany of the 1930s, they seem to rather enjoy the suffering of those beneath their boot heels. And they’ll do anything, from dirty tricks to the crippling and/or poisoning of workers, to the poisoning of the entire planet, to protect what they view as “theirs.” Hence, we have this so-called Representative from New York, Peter King, our era’s Joe McCarthy, opening hearings on the “radicalization of the Muslim-American community by Al-Qaeda,” impervious to the tears of Congressman Ellison testifying about the sacrifice of one of these “terrorists” who died trying to save his fellow Americans on 9/11, and begging for the hearings to focus on a wider population than this already terrorized minority. And we have this punk governor of Wisconsin along with his newly-empowered Republican majority, ramming through in secret, when he couldn’t persuade by reason, the bill to strip unionized state employees of their collective bargaining rights. Shame? This crude piece of plastic doesn’t even register the stuff in whatever constitutes his innards. All he registers is the coin he gets from the likes of David Koch, the energy baron who’s the largest funder of anti-global-warming science in the world (even larger than Exxon) and the main bankroller of the Tea Party. I haven’t been able to find out if Koch is involved in ‘hydrofracking,’ the latest darling of energy bandits—see the NY Times, Feb. 27, for information on what ‘horizontal hydraulic fracturing’ does to the huge volume of water needed to “frack” the natural gas out of rock, and the corrosive salts, carcinogens, and yes radioactive elements like radium polluting that water when it drains into nearby rivers and aquifers used for drinking—but I wouldn’t be surprised.

So here’s what we’re up against now. These billionaires who brought the country to its knees and emerged richer than ever have now been given even greater power to control politicians and laws than they had during the Gilded Age. The gap between them and the rest of us has grown in the last thirty years—since that corporate shill Ronald Reagan began his assault on graduated income taxes and regulations keeping the corporate rape of the rest of us within some bounds—to a level of inequality in the distribution of wealth and power that rivals Arab sheikdoms. A few of these mandarins control more wealth than whole counties, whole states, whole regions of us. And they will do anything, corrupt any politician, commit any crime, decimate whole countries, whole planets, to keep it.

Shame them? It doesn’t even merit discussion. The only thing that impresses these robots is force. The force of millions of people screaming for their heads. The force of organized and constant pressure outing them and their crimes. The public employees in Wisconsin have begun this movement. So have a few thousands in states like Michigan and Indiana, where similar bills have been passed or are pending. But it is quite clear from the Wisconsin experience that more, far more, is going to be needed. There’s going to have to be not just a few victories over crumbs; a few compromises like “carbon trading” and extended unemployment; there’s going to have to be systemic change. And as far as I can see, that’s not going to happen unless these bastards are made to fear not only for their fortunes, but for their very existence. How is this to happen? I have no specific solutions; besides, it’s a project for the young. But as Michael Moore pointed out in Wisconsin, and as the people always seem to forget: there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. That’s what terrifies them in the night. They know that if the people ever wake up, if the people ever become conscious of their power and use it, the game, the game whereby the corporate pooh-bahs have not only seized obscene amounts of wealth and power, but used it to exploit and blight everything that makes life itself possible, is over.

I’m putting my money on an awakening. But it had better happen soon, because the damage is accelerating so fast that before long there won’t be much left to save.

Lawrence DiStasi

The Illusion of Control

Yesterday I was observing someone playing with a new iPad, waxing enthusiastic about how great it was. And in fact, the graphics are gorgeous, the screen luminous, the applications almost endless and endlessly powerful. You can have your favorite music on the thing, your favorite photos, your favorite books on its super reader, your favorite blogs constantly updated, and all of it available at the literal touch of your finger as it scrolls effortlessly through your increasingly digitized world. Fully loaded, it knows all kinds of things about you, including when you need to enter data, whereupon it automatically displays a keyboard on your screen.

And as I mulled about this later, and about the marvelous control offered by iPhones and iPods and all the other gadgets beguiling each of us with constantly-updated information geared specifically to ME, this notion of ‘the world at your fingertips’ started to appear in a slightly different light. My music, my websites, my blogs, my photos, my world—it’s all about some postmodern illusion that if I can just buy enough gadgets, I can inhabit a world that is tailor-made for me alone. I don’t have to wait for a radio to play my favorite song: I can have it and all my other favorites on my iPod/Phone/Pad. I needn’t listen to other crap—other songs, traffic, bird calls, jabbering other people, construction noise--ever again. Plugged in, I can control my sound environment, and then my visual environment, and my information environment, and everything else in my world.

And yes, it’s an illusion. And the question always is, who—and I can be sure it’s not only me—benefits from this illusion of control. Who gains from my thinking that I can actually, and for an increasingly affordable price, control my world? Well, how about the mandarins who actually do control the world? How about the corporate masters who have, in the last 30 or 40 years, increased by geometric leaps and bounds their share of the wealth of not just this country but the entire world? It’s a bit like bread and circuses in ancient Rome: If the plebes can be given entertainments that are gripping enough (and the slaughter of a few Christians, or gladiators, or lions is quite tolerable for this), then they’re less likely to demand a real life. In our world, it’s bread and circuses as well—the Super Bowl and all sporting events, the Academy Awards and all contests, stupid sitcoms and countless murder-and-mayhem cop shows keep everyone at home and off the streets—but increasingly now, it’s our gadgets. If the plebes can be sold the illusion of control, they won’t notice that they have no control at all. Democracy? A joke. No matter who’s in power, money talks. Not votes. Money. Those with it get more powerful, those without it get the illusion of power via more and more gigabytes, greater capacity to find a new restaurant via GPS, and even the occasional ‘opportunity’ to cast a meaningless vote or two.

Lest one think that this illusion of control is peculiar to our age, it’s important to see that the illusion goes deeper than iPads. Or rather, the human urge to get control does. If one thinks about it, all of civilization constitutes an attempt to assert control over the constantly changing vicissitudes of life. Humans invent fire to control it, to warm themselves with it, to frighten threatening animals with it, to cook with it. Levi Strauss made a great deal of this, of cooking, drawing an elementary distinction between the raw and the cooked. Those who eat things raw are animals; primitive life forms. Those who cook are the civilized ones. Cooking not only makes food more digestible, it sets up the basic distinction upon which civilization is built: raw vs. cooked. And it leads to other distinctions: tame vs. wild, agriculture vs. hunting/gathering; protection from the elements vs. exposure to them. And it is all a question of control, of controlling the environment, making it habitable no matter the weather or the availability of wild food, no matter the gods who control such things. And of course, this level of control can be extended almost infinitely: control of weather, control of travel, control of life itself in its most fundamental code, the gene.

More deeply still, the very symbol of humanity, conscious thought, if introspected, can be viewed in this light as well. Those who meditate find this out very quickly. The mind is an inexhaustible thought machine. Consciousness, or what we think of as consciousness, is almost totally consumed with a continuous train of thoughts: thoughts about what we shall do later, thoughts about what we have done earlier, thoughts about how we can prevent this event from going bad or get even with the one who made that event go bad, thoughts about how to best control the situations that are coming and/or edit the past dramas we’d like to change. Very little time is spent, under normal circumstances, attending to what is happening now. The actual conditions of this moment. And the illusion is that as long as I—what I consider to be my basic self, which is this conscious self thinking and apparently controlling my story—am engaged in this sort of thinking and controlling what I see and feel and am, then “I” am in control. And of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The conscious “I” controls very little in life. Most of what we perceive, and most of what we make decisions about, is perceived and decided upon long before the conscious self appears to resolve it. Milliseconds before I choose to go get a snack from the frig, the impulse has already been set in motion in stomach and brain. Well before I think to go chat up that lady, interior impulses have already impelled me to do so. So where Descartes famously concluded that “I think, therefore I am,” a galaxy of information indicates that human being is controlled at a considerable remove from conscious thought. This is not to say that the illusion of control afforded by such ‘thinking’ can’t be useful and even necessary. Imagining that we are in control has undeniably beneficial effects, especially for those who have grown up in chaotic environments where the feeling of chaos and lack of control can be deeply debilitating. But as an exclusive diet, as a controlling illusion, it leads us to all the ills to which humans are subject. As Stephen Asma notes in a recent book (Why I Am a Buddhist), the desire to be a self in control is the fundamental problem: “Once we give up on this exaggerated delusion of control, we attain some degree of liberation—we stop trying to own everything; this is my experience, this is mine, this is I, this is myself.”

Nor do we have to buy into the Buddhist idea of liberation to see that the illusion of control, the desire for control over all life has led humans into a serious dilemma. One aspect of it has already been noted: being deluded about our control, being diverted into meaningless forms of control, makes it easier for those who have ruthlessly grabbed power to maintain their power over us. A population busy with iPads or iPods is less likely to make trouble over the growing income gap. But even more serious consequences of this mania for control can be seen just as easily. Civilization and the “control” it provides humans has driven us to the edge of a cliff. In this ultimate sense, we have gained “control” over our environment—we use fossil fuel to power our lives; we use corporate agriculture to reduce the work necessary to feed more and more of us; we use scientific ingenuity to control our susceptibility to disease and even death--only to find that we are controlling ourselves into overpopulation, global warming from overuse of fossil fuels, and the feverish destruction of the critical varieties of plant and animal life we have evolved with and will, at some point, be unable to do without.

In this sense, control is a paradox: The more we control our planet, the more we lose what it provides us to survive. And we are all, without exception, susceptible to this; all of us, to one degree or another, ‘control freaks.’

So what to do? How control the mania to control?

If I knew, I wouldn’t have to write about it. But quite possibly it’s as simple as recognizing it in ourselves and others, and gradually letting go of the illusion. The fundamental truth is that life cannot be controlled. Life is defined by its uncontrollability (Interesting how word usage intuits this: the term “out of control” is now used as a superlative akin to “awesome”). The more we try, the unhappier we get. The more we try, the unhappier all other life gets as well. I’m reminded of George Carlin’s wonderful riff on “stuff.” We spend our lives trying to accumulate as much “stuff” as we can, as much stuff as our neighbors seem to have. And then as our apartments and houses and garages fill up with “stuff,” we have to find or buy new stuff to store all the useless stuff we’ve accumulated, and so have to keep accumulating ad infinitum, our lives reduced to the idiocy of getting and keeping and finding ways to store more and more until we are more controlled by our stuff than it is by us. Carlin made this funny. But the humor came from the fact that we all know how truly, sadly insane it is.

Lawrence DiStasi

In Case You Had Any Doubts

In case you had any doubts about what the recent elections (a landslide for Republicans) and the continuing effects of the economic meltdown portend, a few episodes should dispel them. I think my favorite this week is what’s going on in Wisconsin. There, once the cradle of radical politics not to mention the birth in the 50s of the public employee union movement, a yahoo by the name of Scott Walker was elected governor, and both houses of the legislature fell to the Republicans as well (not to mention the defeat of one of the last ethical Senators, Russ Feingold.) I’m not sure what happened to the drinking water in Wisconsin, but the results are beginning to play out big time. Governor Walker has initiated a bill, just passed by the budget committee, that would strip Wisconsin’s public employee unions of their right to collective bargaining. So where most of us thought that the right to collective bargaining was an issue long-since settled (after millions marched, endured beatings from hired thugs, and were murdered by those same thugs in the battles for union rights), it now turns out that this wannabe dictator in Wisconsin is coming close to turning back the clock on teachers, prison guards and other public employees. This so his plan to force these employees to pay more of the cost of their pensions and health care costs could not be reversed by collective bargaining. Isn’t that nice? Not only that, the unions would be hamstrung so that pay increases would be tied to the Consumer Price Index only. And to enforce his decrees, Walker has threatened to call out the National Guard to run the prisons (just in case the prison guards try to strike). So there you have it: no collective bargaining, no effective striking, no power to unions at all (does it need to be said that public unions are about the only large groups left contributing to the Democratic Party?).

If this bill goes through—and the Gov claims he has the votes to do it—another nail in the coffin of unions and collective bargaining would be hammered in. The movement started shortly after WWII by big corporations, and sent into high gear by Ronald Reagan when he fired Air Traffic Controllers to cripple their union (and all others), will have come to fruition. Does it need to be pointed out that this comes at just the time when American corporations are at the very height of their power, having been given, in the Citizens United case in the Supreme Court, carte blanche to pay politicians for the favors they already controlled before? Now, with this complete judicial sanction to corporations to buy whatever government they please (is it any wonder that Obama has kowtowed almost completely to the moneyed interests, and hired the head of General Electric, for god’s sake, which outsources to foreign countries more than half of its work, to be his top economic advisor in charge of “putting Americans back to work?”), the fiction that America is a “government of the people” has become laughable, a cruel, sick joke.

One could add more. In Florida, the Governor there has just axed the planned high-speed rail project, saying the state could not afford it. But the federal government was providing millions in seed money, and the state had already spent more millions in planning for the rail system that was projected to add millions to the tourist economy on which Florida depends (not to mention reducing automobile pollution). And hundreds of thousands of workers would have been hired to complete and then run the project. Nevermind. Those were just “workers” after all, and in the Republican version of economics, workers, like the environment, are simply expendable.

The irony, I suppose, is that all this is taking place at a time when in the Middle East, where democracy has only been a label to dress up dictatorships, the people really are in revolt. So as we watch thousands and millions in Egypt and Tunisia rise up, protest their powerlessness, and force their dictators to resign, and thousands more in Bahrain and Yemen take to the streets to try to do the same, here in the U.S.A. the “people” have so far been mute. Not in Wisconsin, thankfully, where thousands of teachers camped out in the state capitol to protest the proposed slashing of their rights. But in most other places, the “people” have been largely sidelined by the logic of what Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine.” That is, when those in power wish to cripple their opposition and remake society to their liking (i.e. privatize publicly-owned utilities/schools/industries, eliminate social programs that benefit the poor, reduce taxes on the rich), the best way to do so is to wait for or engineer a shock to the system—something like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or 9/11 throughout the nation. And so, what we are seeing now, after the “shock” of the financial collapse in 2007-08, and to combat which the federal government bailed out banks and wall street with borrowed money, is all this conservative blather about THE FEDERAL DEFICIT. ‘We have to bring spending under control. We have to manage our nation’s budget the same way families do. Control our spending. Trim our sails.’ And what has to be trimmed? Why all that spending on the poor, all that spending on health care for those who can’t afford it like Medicaid, all those handouts to those lazy ones who line up for food stamps and health care for their children and block grants to local clinics and, ultimately, that major “handout” conceived by the demon Roosevelt Administration, Social Security.

Ah yes. The shock has been administered, and now come the shocking proposals. Not the masters of war, not the crooks on Wall St, not the bankers and corporate CEOs, but public employees are the freeloaders. Why should they get pensions? Why should they get free health care? Why should their unions get to hold up taxpayers with their threats of strikes? Why should we get taxed to pay for their benefits? Privatize everything. Bring in the corporate mavens to run (or is it ruin?) everything.

Ah America. The day of awakening is coming, the day of accounting is coming, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Lawrence DiStasi

The Roman Republic of 1849 (4: Wherever We Go, There is Rome.)

After June 3, the long slog began. In essence, the Italian forces—mostly the same ones whose ranks had been decimated attacking the Corsini--dug in to hold the Janiculum against hopeless odds and superior siege forces under French General Vaillant. The General knew his business and proceeded methodically to take inch by inch, yard by yard the ground where his infantry could dig themselves in, edging always closer to Rome’s walls. From the Corsini, French batteries mostly aimed their fire at the defenders, but also bombarded parts of the city, particularly the nearby Trastevere. This only enraged the citizens more, leading them to hurl oaths at the man they held responsible, now rechristened as Rome’s “King Bomba:”

The citizens, as they grew accustomed to the bombardment, greeted each projectile with the cry : ‘Ecco un Pio Nono !’ — ‘There goes another Pio Nono !’ Women and children of the Trastevere were seen to pick up live shells and throw them into the Tiber…. (Trevelyan, 196)

The siege came in basically two parts: June 4 through June 21, and June 22 through June 30. In the first, night raids from both sides attempted to breach enemy defenses, but for the most part came to little. Against all odds, Garibaldi’s defenders were holding on to places like the Casa Giacometti and the Vascello, still outside the walls. But the walls themselves were under a fierce bombardment and would go at any moment. Still, even on the night of June 21, a few men from the Unione regiment heard a French troop advancing, and, first firing at them point-blank, drove them off in bayonet combat. Garibaldi, meanwhile, headquartered in the Villa Savorelli, wrote to his Anita, safe, he thought, in Nice (she never received this letter since she had already decided to join him once again, and was en route, pregnant, to Rome):

My dear Anita, I know that thou hast been and maybe still art ill. I wish to see thy handwriting and my mother’s, and then I shall feel easy.
Cardinal Oudinot’s Gallic-friars content themselves with cannonading us, and we are too much accustomed to it to care. Here the women and children run after the balls and
shells and struggle for their possession.
We are fighting on the Janiculum and this people is worthy of its past greatness. Here they live, die, suffer amputation to the cry, ‘Viva la Repubblica !’ One hour of our life in
Rome is worth a century of common existence. (quoted in Trevelyan, 205)

Even as he was writing this letter, however, the French had already begun to breach the central bastions holding the walls. Wearied troops guarding the Casa Barberini awoke to find French troops already in their midst, panicked, and fled. Within minutes, Casa Barberini and the Central Bastion were in French hands. Though many thought he should have tried to retake these crucial positions, Garibaldi chose instead to fortify a defense line along the inner Aurelian wall. Those who feared that the Janiculum could not but fall that night were surprised to find that it still held. This was not the end of the issue, however, because Mazzini and Roselli, seeing the enemy on the walls, ordered Garibaldi to attack and retake the outer positions. This led to another quarrel between Garibaldi and his commanders, though in this he was supported not only by his own officers (they knew another suicidal attack would fail, so weary and dispirited were their troops by now), but also by the war minister, General Avezzana.

Thus began the second part of the siege, the defense of the ancient Aurelian wall. It lasted nine days, much to the defenders’ surprise. For all knew that Rome was lost. Yet the defenders seemed to fight even harder at this point. To explain this apparent contradiction, Trevelyan observes:

But the Italian character has in it something beyond the reasonable, and, when all was lost, the idea of perishing with the murdered Republic seemed to fortify the morale and brace the nerves of the tired men, whose conduct became now more uniformly heroic than it had been during the fortnight past, when it was still possible to indulge a shadowy hope. An English army might have held the bastions from which the Italians fled on the night of June 21-22, but an English army might well have capitulated if those bastions had been lost, seeing that there was no force in the wide world to come to their relief...If the Englishman does not know when he is beaten, the Italian sometimes knows it and does not care. (209)

Thus the final battles went—the French bombarding the defenses and the city with a rain of cannon balls while sappers crept through trenches to breach the walls—the Italian defenders fighting with their last reserves of strength and valor to hold off the inevitable. With the Villa Savorelli perilous, Garibaldi had now moved his headquarters to the Villa Spada, just behind the infantry stationed along the inside of the Aurelian Wall, and in front of the last Roman batteries firing from the platform of San Pietro in Montorio and the nearby Pino Hill. Before long, the Villa Spada itself, fired upon from both inside and outside the walls, was riddled with holes torn by cannon fire. The roof of San Pietro in Montorio collapsed, while most of the gunners on Pino Hill were killed or wounded. Still the defenders kept rebuilding the defenses as they collapsed, while the wounded, as soon as they were bandaged up, returned to their posts undaunted. This was what Mazzini, when he ordered that the defense should continue, had intended: rather than a final episode of ignominious flight, the last chapter of Rome’s defense would be dominated by death-defying courage and heroism.

As if to underline this message, on June 26, Anita Garibaldi, pregnant and disguised, appeared at the Villa Spada unannounced. Garibaldi, when he saw her, cried out and embraced her. Though he would have forbid her to come if he had known of her plan, he was overjoyed to see his companion in battle. She, and her death at the end of it, would become a major part of the legendary retreat from Rome that would follow in a few days.

Meantime, the French concentrated much of their fire on the Vascello, battering it day and night with cannon balls. Almost alone, its defenders under Giacomo Medici were holding off the final assault on the Porta San Pancrazio and full entry into the city. They continued to do so even after the main portion of the structure collapsed from the bombardment, and French infantry stormed the walls. At the same time, artillery shelled not only the main defenses of the Janiculum, but fired, as diversionary tactics from the main assault, on other sacred areas of the city. In addition to the destruction in Trastevere, considerable areas around the Piazza di Spagna were hit. Protests by foreign consuls about this attack on an international heritage fell on deaf ears. So did the dispatches of Margaret Fuller, who, already on May 27, had written about the bombardment that had started and the far worse she feared would come:

I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France. I cannot think in any case there would be found men willing to damn themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome. Other cities they may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocent and helpless, the babe and old grandsire who cannot war against them. But Rome, precious inheritance of mankind—will they run the risk of marring her shrined treasures? Would they dare do it?
Two of the balls that struck St. Peter’s have been sent to Pius IX by his children, who find themselves so much less “beloved” than were the Austrians…(Letter XXX)

When the siege was over, Fuller wrote more about that later, fiercer bombardment—“The house where I lived was filled as early as the 20th [of June] with persons obliged to fly from the Piazza di Gesu, where the fiery rain fell thickest” and the terror felt by civilians:

The night of the 28th the effect was truly fearful, as they whizzed and burst near me. As many as thirty fell upon or near the Hotel de Russie, where Mr. Cass has his temporary abode. The roof of the studio in the pavilion, tenanted by Mr. Stermer, well known to the visitors of Rome for his highly-finished cabinet pictures, was torn to pieces. I sat alone in my much exposed apartment, thinking, “If one strikes me, I only hope it will kill me at once, and that God will transport my soul to some sphere where virtue and love are not tyrannized over by egotism and brute force, as in this.” (Letter XXXIII. Rome, July 6.)

Fuller’s fear was increased by the fact that her husband, Marchese Ossoli, had been put in charge of northern defenses near the Porta Popolo, another scene of fierce bombardments meant to panic Roman citizens.

In the face of all this, and the growing certainty that only days were left before the French would successfully breach the Aurelian Wall, Garibaldi and Mazzini engaged in yet another quarrel around June 27. As he had done before, the general urged that the government, with the army, should leave the capital and carry on the war in the mountains of central Italy or in the south (Scirocco maintains that Garibaldi’s plan, rejected by Gen. Roselli, was to lead about 1,000 troops in an attack on the French from the rear.). But Mazzini and his advisers insisted that the defense of the walls should continue to the bitter end. At this point, Garibaldi gave in to a rare emotional outburst, abandoned his command, and led his Legion away from the walls and into the city. Only the pleading of officers like Luciano Manara finally persuaded him to return. The return of Garibaldi and his Legion was made all the more dramatic that day by the donning of red shirts by the entire group. It was just in time for the final French assault.

On the night of June 29-30, after the Feast of St. Peter and Paul had been celebrated in the city with candles and fireworks, the last assault began. The French, trained in this sort of combat, methodically took over each point of resistance: the Casa Merluzzo bastion, now almost decimated, the Porta San Pancrazio, the almost demolished Villa Spada, all defended by the Italians fighting in hand-to-hand combat in the pitch-black night. Among those to die in these fierce battles was the young Bersaglieri named Morosini, an almost angelic 18-year-old often compared to St. Francis by his companions. Even the French, who captured him, were impressed by his demeanor, prompting General Oudinot to write to his mother about the noble way in which her son had died. Garibaldi fought like a man possessed, leaping to action as soon as he heard that the “ultima prova” had begun. Seeing his Italians fleeing before the French onslaught, he gathered a few men and stopped the French advance, inspiring the rest to return to the fighting once more. Emilio Dandolo saw his chief “spring forward with his drawn sword, shouting a popular hymn.” Unsparing of himself, he employed his sword to devastating effect, leading what became a grisly battle of Frenchmen and Italians fighting to the death in hand-to-hand combat over ground littered with dead bodies.

At dawn, the Italians still held on to what was left of the Aurelian Wall and a nearby road, but the French had captured almost all the rest. From their close-in positions, they could now launch their most furious cannonade. On the other side, the Italian cannons were now a mere memory, most lying broken among numerous dead bodies. Aware now that the city would fall in moments, Garibaldi recalled Medici and his defenders still holding out in the Vascello, and ordered them into the city. Though a few positions remained, including the Villa Spada defended by the Lombard Bersaglieri, it was clear that the end was near. Emilio Dandolo was inside the Spada for this last defense, and describes the terror of being in the interior of a place pounded by cannon ricocheting from the walls, the floor slippery with blood. He also described the death of his leader, Luciano Manara:

…he was standing at an open window, looking through his telescope at some of the enemy who were in the act of planting a cannon, when a shot from a carabine passed through his body. “I am a dead man,” he said, falling; “I commend my children to you.” (223)

Shortly after, Luciano Manara, having taken the last sacrament, again pleaded for his children to be raised “in the love of religion, and of their country.” Then to a weeping Dandolo he said his final words: “Does it indeed pain you so much that I die?” then added, “It grieves me also.” And finally, giving Dandolo his prized ring: “I will embrace your brother for you.” (Trevelyan, 224-25 )

There would be one final charge, by Garibaldi and his Legionnaires, against the advancing French positions, but it was futile in the end. Just before a truce was agreed to around noon, Garibaldi was called to the Capitol to discuss surrender. He agreed to leave his post for one hour and entered the Assembly covered in dust and blood, grieving at the news he had just heard, that his comrade Aguiar was dead. The Assembly wanted his advice on three options: surrender; die fighting in the streets; or take their government and army into the mountains. Garibaldi opted for the plan he had long urged, to take the government and army into the mountains. “Wherever we go, there will be Rome,” he said. Having given his opinion, he rode quickly back to the Janiculum. The Assembly debated, with Mazzini arguing for Garibaldi’s proposal. But only a few opted for such a course; the rest of the Assembly resolved to “cease from a defense that has become impossible, and remain at its post.” Protesting, Mazzini refused to take part in a surrender, and resigned. The Assembly then gave Garibaldi and Roselli “plenary powers in the territories of the Roman Republic,” a grant Garibaldi considered in force even years later. The agreed-upon date for the French entry into Rome was July 3.

Meantime, Garibaldi prepared to organize his army for retreat. Some 4,000 men, many against the wishes of mothers and lovers, would take the wild march with him. Many would desert, many would be captured, many would die, but their chief, amazingly, would escape to fight again. Among those to join him were the Swiss Gustav Hoffstetter, again risking his life for a country not his own, and, of course, Anita Garibaldi, who insisted, despite her husband's entreaties to return to Nice, that she was coming on that fatal march, her last.

Margaret Fuller, hanging on in what she had recently called “Undaunted Rome,” was one of those who watched the July 2 departure of Garibaldi, Anita with hair cropped and dressed in male garb, and the ragtag army of patriots that followed him out of Rome, to be hunted by armies of French, Austrians, Spanish, Tuscans, and Neapolitans seeking, above all, to kill him and destroy the last vestiges of resistance in Italy. It is the most moving description of a departing army I know of:

Toward the evening of Monday, the 2d of July, it was known that the French were preparing to cross the river and take possession of all the city. I went into the Corso with some friends; it was filled with citizens and military. The carriage was stopped by the crowd near the Doria palace; the lancers of Garibaldi galloped along in full career. I longed for Sir Walter Scott to be on earth again, and see them; all are light, athletic, resolute figures, many of the forms of the finest manly beauty of the South, all sparkling with its genius and ennobled by the resolute spirit, ready to dare, to do, to die. We followed them to the piazza of St. John Lateran. Never have I seen a sight so beautiful, so romantic, so sad…The sun was setting, the crescent moon rising, the flower of the Italian youth were marshalling in that solemn place. They had been driven from every other spot where they had offered their hearts as bulwarks of Italian independence; in this last strong-hold they had sacrificed hecatombs of their best and bravest in that cause; they must now go or remain prisoners and slaves. Where go, they knew not; for except distant Hungary there is not now a spot which would receive them, or where they can act as honor commands. They had all put on the beautiful dress of the Garibaldi legion, the tunic of bright red cloth, the Greek cap, or else round hat with Puritan plume. Their long hair was blown back from resolute faces; all looked full of courage. They had counted the cost before they entered on this perilous struggle; they had weighed life and all its material advantages against liberty, and made their election; they turned not back, nor flinched, at this bitter crisis. I saw the wounded, all that could go, laden upon their baggage cars; some were already pale and fainting, still they wished to go. I saw many youths, born to rich inheritance, carrying in a handkerchief all their worldly goods. The women were ready; their eyes too were resolved, if sad. The wife of Garibaldi followed him on horseback. He himself was distinguished by the white tunic; his look was entirely that of a hero of the Middle Ages—his face still young, for the excitements of his life, though so many, have all been youthful, and there is no fatigue upon his brow or cheek. Fall or stand, one sees in him a man engaged in the career for which he is adapted by nature. He went upon the parapet, and looked upon the road with a spy-glass, and, no obstruction being in sight, he turned his face for a moment back upon Rome, then led the way through the gate. Hard was the heart, stony and seared the eye, that had no tear for that moment. (Letter XXXIII, July 6, 1849)

What ensued, besides the inglorious entry into Rome of the French and the return of Pio Nono, was the legendary retreat of Garibaldi and his band of 4,000, now commemorated, in dozens of towns and villages where they found shelter, with statues of the hero of two worlds. An entire adventure in itself, it could be read as a modern thriller, complete with hairsbreadth escapes, tragic betrayals, and the rare courage of those who aided Garibaldi, his dwindling band, and his dying wife, usually at the risk of their own lives. Suffice it to say here that by 1850, Garibaldi was in New York, Mazzini was back in England, and Italians would have to wait another decade before one of them would, at long last, light the fire to end foreign rule in Italy. As for the Roman Republic, which had glowed so brightly, if briefly, in that Roman Spring, it would not be seen again for nearly one hundred years.

Lawrence DiStasi