8/31/05 The Rise Of Communism

For the last week I�ve been laying out the pages for a book of lyrics and poetry I am going to self-publish.

Last night I went to the Angelica to see the film Junebug. A quiet movie with very interesting characters. It was set in the south when I son visits his home with his new wife from New York City.
There is a funny character who is an outsider artist who paints civil wars battles with the soldiers shooting bullets from their cocks. On one painting he doesn�t have room for General Lee�s gargantuan phallus so he wraps around unto the back of the canvas.

A few nights ago I read a Tibetan death prayer that gave me a nasty case of existential angst. Thinking of it gave me an anxiety attack in the middle of the movie. It�s odd how close an anxiety attack can be to a moment of satori. Charles Manson said that fear makes one wholly conscious.


Ever since the collapse of the Soviet empire the U.S. government has been telling third world countries that free market economies will bring them prosperity. Unfortunately hard economic times have caused many nations in South and Central America to question free markets economic.

The most glaring example is Venezuela which has embraced socialism and buddied-up with Cuba communist leader Fidel Castro. A few years ago it seemed that communism was dead and buried, but now one must wonder if a new wave of communism might sweep the third world as free market economies falter under rocketing energy costs and the usual mismanagement.

The threat of a new wave of communism look even more likely when we look at the dramatic rise of China as an economic and military power. Nations emulate those who are the most powerful and successful. It appears that as the United States suffers economic and political decline China will rise as the superpower of the future.

The rise of China is accelerated by the supply side economic policies of the current administration. For years the administration has been telling the public that is we run the budget deep into dept so that we can give the ultra-rich huge tax cuts and corporate welfare programs, that those rich folks will invest the money in new business ventures that will provide new jobs. What they didn�t tell us is that those jobs will be in China or in a most of other Asian third world countries.

If we take closer inspection of what is taking place in the U.S. economy we find that the tax cuts for the rich have made the economy grow, but only the super rich have experienced a growth in income that creates the statistical economic growth that the administration brags about. While the administration points to new jobs in the U.S, they fail to mention that most of these jobs are minimum wage jobs in the service sector. For the fourth straight year poverty rates have grown in the U.S, despite relatively low unemployment rates. For those that haven�t experienced it firsthand, I can testify that it�s hard to survive when the only job available is pumping gas or serving fast food.

Meanwhile all the new manufacturing jobs go to China where low labor costs ensure high profits to the wealthy investors. Many American companies are focused in China as an exciting new market to sell their products to. But if American companies manufacture their products I China, and sell them to China, how does the U.S. benefit. It doesn�t accept to the extent that the rich stockholders earn profits.

The working class Americans are being left out of the administration�s economic strategy and the benefits that result from that strategy. It was created by the rich for the rich.

Meanwhile China is using the money from their economic explosion of growth to expand their military to alarming proportions. One may ask why our president would put the Chinese people above the American people. The answer is that he�ll do what ever benefits his elite benefactors and billionaire patrons.