Inequality and more

Writing in the Boston Globe, Derrick Z. Jackson finds it rather odd that the mainstream press is all of a sudden discovering class in America. Where the hell have they been?

Meanwhile, in a related piece, Paul Street revisits those "triple evils that are interrelated" -- militarism, poverty, and racism. His conclusion:

With the help of a terrorist and imperialist "war on terror" and a spineless Democratic non-opposition, the Radically Regressive (and Repressive) Republicans are stripping the government of its positive social and democratic aspects. American public policy toward the poor and disadvantaged is increasingly reduced to policing and repressive "functions," which are expanding in ways that are more than merely coincidental to the assault on social supports and programs. State and society are criminalizing and thereby deepening social inequality and related social problems through self-fulfilling policies of racially disparate (racist) mass surveillance, arrest, and incarceration - a perfect homeland counterpart to America's racially disparate (racist) militarization of global US empire and its attendant social, political, and economic problems.

Market discipline and fiscal retrenchment are meant for the poor and the powerless; it's only the left hand of the state that must be "starved." The rich and powerful few are mainly exempt from market strictures and the sharpening of the public-fiscal knife. They are free to gorge themselves at the public trough, profiting from the amply fed and murderously flexing right hand of the racist, imperial, and mass-incarceratory state.

On that cheery but unfortunately spot-on note, it turns out that the Pentagon cannot account for more than $1 trillion. Thank god we have all those welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs. If we didn't, then, gosh, people might actually pay attention to the actions of the "right hand" of the state.