brian carroll on 26 Feb 2001 07:55:43 -0000


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

[Nettime-bold] US commentary



 with the energy crises in the US, especially
 in California, costs have doubled and tripled
 for gas and electric services...

 part of the logic of the new administration's
 $1.3 Trillion tax cut, from President Bush's
 paraphrased tongue, is 'to give the people back
 their hard-earned money so that they can pay for
 things such as their increased energy bills, and
 keep the economy on track', or something close to
 that statement, with the actual words energy and
 bills and tax break in the quote.

 from a partisan viewpoint, but purely from a public/
 private perspective, this could be considered one of
 the biggest private bailouts in the United States.

 the taxpayer's money is being given back by the
 government to pay for a failed energy system, and
 in effect is subsidizing this failure by giving
 citizens some of their tax money back to pay the
 private companies whom are benefiting from the
 failures of the privatized (public) utilities
 and their privatized (public) services.

 $1.3 Trillion Tax Cut = Energy Bailout.

 the taxpayer gets nothing, they actually lose
 all their extra money to the power and energy
 companies. the 'tax cut' is the cut of the
 money that the energy companies are getting
 from the public tax base, fueled by an energy
 policy promoted by energy companies whom are
 behind the new administration, most notably
 Enron Corporation, and Halliburton Oil.

 to optimize the free market and trickle-down
 economics of this public-private transaction,
 the government could just take out 'we the
 (middle) people' from the equation, and just
 cut a government check for 1.3 Trillion dollars
 for the subsidizing the energy/power brokers,
 while at the same time minimizing all of the
 unnecessary processing of information, and
 the additional waste of monetary resources
 it requires, such as writing checks never
 meant for the majority of citizens bank
 accounts.

 what will the effects be when the US Federal
 Surplus, given back to consumers, does not
 go back into the mainstream economy, but into
 the coffers of the energy companies?

 this is but one perspective of a very complex
 situation, and while these events may just be
 coincidental, in terms of conscious intention
 by the parties involved, the end-game remains
 the same, as the money ends up in the hands
 of those whom control the sources of power,
 economic, social, and political.

 the best and only strategy in a game like this
 is to change the rules. it is the only way to
 play fair, and it is the only way to win back
 what has been lost. one can play by the pre-
 established rules and have faith in incremental
 change, but that only refines the bureaucracy
 of thought and (in)action that are in place.

 it is time to work together, under no-one and
 every-one, as common people. the new dialectic,
 if there is one, is paradox. it is realized in
 something that is both true and false at the same
 time, such as the commentary above. the synthesis
 is not some-thing new in-itself, it-is its-self.
 possibility, potential, until truth is decided
 upon. but what level, truth? how detailed need
 it be? expert level, or could it be at the most
 general level too, where 'we', common people,
 can find some-thing shared that we believe is
 common, and factual, and true, however vague.

 as the recent net.art and SI talks demonstrate,
 at least from one vantage, there can be some
 very interesting discussion/discourse, but is
 there every any more general synthesis beyond
 the breaking down of ideas? is there ever a
 building-up of ideas? a super-structure to go
 along with the sub-structure? the trap of both
 language and logic, and the looping of ideas.
 what program can crash the thought-feeling
 processors and reboot our brains with a new
 OS, a paradigmatic new Operating Situation based
 upon new software and new logic chipsets for
 processing sensory and language data/thought?

 the power of language is the source of change.
 
 what is the architecture of this new language?

 paradoxical logic: things are both true and false

 language as code: open-source programming of ideas

 public identity:  humanity as a group of individuals



_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold