Joe Bageant grew up redneck in Winchester Virginia, escaped to the city, became a “godless commie,” moved back thirty years later, and wrote this book about it.
It’s subtitled “Dispatches from America’s Class War.” He looks at the people that he grew up with, and most are in debt way beyond their means, have serious health problems, and have been grinding away for 30-40 years at a no-future job that pays next to nothing. The redneck class helped put George Bush in the White House, but have gotten screwed to the walls by the Republicans and elites all their lives. So how, Bageant asks, did this happen?
Because the Democratic Party stopped caring about them, that’s why. That left a void the Republican Party promptly filled. Yes Virginia, there was a time the Democratic Party stood for the working class, for minorities and the poor, for unions, but those days are long gone. Bageant thinks the Democrats cluelessly and stupidly stopped trying to appeal to poor whites. Me, I think it was quite deliberate. But the result was the same.
If progressives want to organize among rednecks and hillbillies, first off and most important Bageant says, get a clue about guns. Try to understand that guns have been part of that culture for, oh, 250 years, that accidents are rare because they respect and are careful with guns, and that gun ownership is Constitutionally guaranteed.
Besides -
- With Micheal Savage and Ann Coulter openly calling for liberals to be put in concentration camps, with the CIA now licensed to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, and with the current administration effectively legalizing torture, the proper question to ask an NRA member may be, “What kind of assault rifle do you think I can get for three hundred bucks, and how many rounds of ammo does it take to stop a two-hundred-pound born-again Homeland Security zombie from putting me in a camp?” Which would you prefer, 40 million gun-owning Americans on your side or theirs?
Think about it, progressives.
Much of the book is character sketches of real people. He describes their often grueling lives, endless low-paid work, simmering anger, and uses that to show how badly they are exploited. Mortgage rackets leave them indebted beyond their means with a doublewide that loses half its value the day after the papers are signed. Lack of adequate health insurance means medical bills are often ruinous. Substandard education insures that most are illiterate or close to it. They are the serfs who do crap jobs for the rest of us.
They are also Joe Bageant’s people. His politics are way different, but he understands them, and they are his friends, his cousins, his brother, the people he grew up with. He can explain them to those of us on the outside.
- Whatever you think of the leash girl of Abu Ghraib, Lynndie England never had a chance. Abu Ghraib, or maybe something even worse (an RPG up the shorts for instance) was always her destiny.
- Money is always the best whip to use on the laboring classes. Thirteen hundred a month, a signing bonus, and free room and board sure beats the hell out of yanking guts through a chicken’s ass.
To get real change in this country will require a mass movement. It’s happened in other countries, it can happen here. The Left would gain many supporters and some serious clues by doing outreach to poor whites, and by listening to what they have to say.
Hello? Democrats, are you listening?
"Homebuilder CEO says subprime regulation needed" by Bob Morris, Politics in the Zeros
- “I think there ought to be regulation of subprime. I think there ought to be regulation of prime. I don’t think that the economy is best left to its own devices almost ever. The excesses that are permitted in the mortgage industry can and perhaps have led us into a dark hole.”
- Robert Toll, Chief Executive of Toll Brothers
He sounds downright socialist, doesn’t he, saying capitalism shouldn’t be left to its own devices, eh?
Those two Bear Stearns hedge funds that invested in subprime are now virtually worthless. Golly, wasn’t it just a few weeks ago the talking heads of the financial world were assuring us everything was fine? Maybe they were trying to buy time to find a way to sell the toxic mortgage bundles they own.
Financial cancer spreading through the credit markets: subprime not contained, says SeekingAlpha, one of the best financial sites around. All mortgages, and their associated bonds, are feeling the pain now, not just subprime. This also negatively impacts credit markets too.
One big problem the hedge funds face is redemptions. When nervous investors decide to pull out their funds, the funds have to sell their quality stuff to raise the money. They literally can’t sell the mortgage bonds because a) many are worthless and b) there’s no way to determine what to price them at. Thus they are forced to sell the good stuff and end up with a portfolio of garbage. We are talking hundreds of billions of dollars here, maybe trillions.
Well, finally, someone in big-business that realizes government regulation is not really anti-business. It's just protection from greedy practices that hurt EVERYON. Subprime was just a gimmick of the get-rich-quick, greed driven, people.
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