Now that the much feared debt ceiling crisis is about to blow up on the American landscape, the chief conciliator in town, namely, President Obama, seems to have tied himself up in knots and reached his wit’s end. After missing numerous opportunities to call off the Republican's bluff, whose only mantra and solution to the debt crisis is to shovel boat loads of tax breaks for the corporations. During these negotiations at every crucial juncture the Republicans bargained with a gun, whereas Obama turned up for the fight with a puny stick brandishing the white flag of concession  at every Republican broadside. During negotiations, Obama ceded enormous grounds to the cabal of corporatists virtually extracting little by way of new revenues to plug the gaping budget hole. It is really sad and highly disappointing to see the President who promised ‘hope and change’  and rode on the crest of a progressive electoral wave buckle under the rabid onslaught driven by a clutch of plutocrats. Never during this budget battle, did we see a smidgen of a fight nor any push backs or a knockout punch delivered to the opposition. Instead, we witnessed a game of chicken, scaremongering and the usual prevarications. Real leadership went missing. The Republican zealots egged on by their Tea Party base held firm to the urgings of their ‘no tax-no spend’ lunatic ideology, which essentially means dismantle and gut all the entitlement programmes for the unemployed and the elderly and spare the budget knife for the extortionists, defense contractors and corporate tax-cheats who for decades have drained the coffers by showering tax dollars on fancy weaponry based on phony threats and ill-advised boondoggles, all in an attempt to prop up  the military industrial 'job machine' and relegate the rest of the population to subsistence living.

Now that the empire is running out of steam and money, the backs of the unemployed and the senior citizens have proved to be an ideal ground to wage the budget battle. Most of the balancing of the budget is slated to be done on the frail backs of senior citizens, minorities, unemployed and a host of other citizens whose voices have been muffled by the ceaseless clamor of the right wing reactionaries. The two party system which is akin to a tyranny is essentially serving the best interests of the corporations and smattering of religious fundamentalists. Drowned amidst the din is the multiplicity of unheard and dissenting voices emanating from a broad swath of country’s socio- economic spectrum. The current system has failed miserably to give voice to a diverse group of citizens who has suffered long enough under the stifling conditions denying them the social mobility and economic security. The present administration has yet to break loose from the menacing clutches of the Wall Street. Most of the departments are run by corporate minions and their Wall Street acolytes whose sole mission is to frustrate and preempt any radical economic shift in thinking. The master financiers let loose from the Wall Street and the investment banks populate the corridors of power. Their allegiances lie elsewhere, not within the country as one can see-but on some off shore destinations under a fake mail box where profits can be sheltered tax free. Most of them do get a tax break to ship jobs to cheap foreign locations, incentivizing them to cease manufacturing in their home land and repatriate tax free profits back into shell companies. Thus chugs along the corporate gravy train sans impediments. All the talk and the dooms day scenario trotted out by the financial experts and their corporate media brethren in the event of a default is pablum- a carefully crafted ploy to mask the real truth which is deeply structural in its origin- a bald faced fact the budget zealots in the two parties cynically elide. In their soaring perorations, the threat of class warfare, socialism and a plethora of reactionary labels are hurled at any dissenting voices championing any alternate vision based on collective humanistic welfare. The only path to right this imbalance is a third alternative comprised of visionaries willing to upset the conventional wisdom propagated by the vested interests who have grown fat and disproportionately powerful mooching on corporate welfare and tax loopholes. This alternative must be untouched by the market fundamentalists and evangelical God squads, the latter which is steadily posing to be a greater menace due to their swelling ranks have clearly become a dangerous force to be reckoned with. This new paradigm should operate on the distributive principles of allocating resources equally to all the productive sectors of the economy,not to a select few who  by lobbying relentlessly divert scarce resources to favored constituencies. The chance of this happening in the current climate seems remote at best, but never has there been a crying need for a bold beginning.

Post Script - Mumbai Blasts-Random Musings

The Mumbai blasts barely registered in the US electronic media; the Nation’s eyes were glued to the unfolding television trial of an alleged baby killer, Casey Anthony, who was pronounced not guilty by a jury, in Orlando, Florida. As a former resident of the town, I couldn't help notice a clear miscarriage of justice being dispensed by a motley jury solely based on lack of hard evidence despite a mountain of overwhelming circumstantial evidence linking the suspect to the crime, sounded like the O.J.Simpson verdict all over again, screwy and perverse indeed.