Zombie Walks

zombie walks (Jan. 28, 2010) | Robert Wicke

There is a fun and informative new publication that comes out of the City of Flint. It's called Broadside. One of the articles that caught my eye is "The Zombie Walks at Noon!" It seems that a smallish group of Flint residents, affiliated with the Flint City Theatre had an idea of how to promote both a local food bank and the theatre. They would hold a "Zombie Walk." They readily admit that it's not exactly a new idea; that, in fact, zombie walks have been held before, in Detroit and other places. It works something like the pledges in an AIDS walk, only kind of in the reverse, since the participants donate the money, rather than the friends and relatives people can hook into making a pledge. Then, the food bank, which happened to be The Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, receives the money, and the FCT gets the promotional vibes for setting up the event.

The Food Bank of Eastern Michigan serves 22 counties and has been around for something like 30 years. It also is a hard-pressed institution subject to monstrous demand, but limited resources. (True of food banks, pretty much since the last recession, with little time for recovery between that one and this one.) It also is in a position to leverage its purchases at a rate of about one to 14, probably the only aspect of the situation that contributes to keeping them going. The participants were supposed to kick in $10/each, which totaled out to just shy of $600., with which The Food Bank of Eastern Michigan was able to purchase over $8000 worth of food. (Frankly, I hope this idea inspires some imitation!).

I hope so, especially, since coincidentally I read this yesterday on the day of the Great speech, the beginnings of the Spring ritual of speeches about the state of this and that other political district. As El Presidente, Obama of course goes first.

First, among the things Obama promised to do is freeze all the discretionary spending that is not military. That 14% of the budget will be left to be gobbled up by inflation, while the expenditures of the Department of Defense and the other agencies where military expenses are kept, the whole military industrial complex is free to expand, no doubt at a faster pace than the rate of inflation. Let me make sure we get this right: what the President's plans do is shrink the very expenditures that we particularly need in an economic downturn, in order to feed the monster that has been steadily bankrupting the country. (Which monster currently receives 56% of discretionary spending.)

That surely will not make any zombie walks unnecessary. He vaguely committed to some sort of tax break for small businesses willing to hire the unemployed. Of course, they would willingly take the government up on it, if they had any sales. Sales are hard to come by in the midst of a deflationary spiral, whether what we call it starts with an "r" or a "d."

Then, too, I'm willing to bet good greenback bills against stale donuts that he will never come up with a revival of the depression era Civilian Conservation Corps. In that program, the government would hire people directly to do things that need doing. In the original program, workers planted trees, built roads, fought fires, etc. Much of the modern version would likely come under the heading of green jobs, things that would save energy or make the things necessary for renewable energy. It also would put money in the pockets of the unemployed to immediately ramp up demand and make recovery in the commercial sectors of the economy that much faster.

Under the rubric of supporting the private sector, Obama has steadfastly avoided that option, and will likely continue to do so for the rest of the downturn. Instead of the CCC and the WPA, we basically will get something like a bribery program, in which the corporations will be rewarded by a tax break or other incentive for hiring more of the unemployed. Essentially, that is the same sieve that the entire stimulus has been passed through. The stimulus projects have been passed along via the government contractor route, an open route to corruption at the local level, delays if the contracts are fixed priced contracts, and cost overruns if they are cost-plus. Then, if there is the usual extreme shortage of oversight, a further invitation to shoddy workmanship, to boot.

One of the few fascinating moments in this speech came when Obama denounced the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign finance, and the Justices of the Court sat in stony silence while everybody else was engaged in a standing ovation. But, what was really going on? Here is this President, whose domestic program has been, for the most part, hijacked by the lobbyists, acting as if pouring all that campaign money into elections had just started by virtue of that particular decision. This is the same man, who negotiated away that right to negotiated drug prices in favor of voluntary price reductions from the pharmaceutical companies for $80 billion over ten years, or the comparatively inconsequential amount of $8 billion/yr. (Inconsequential because it would amount to precious little when spread over the towering number of prescriptions written every year.)

Then, when you include the gratuitous promotion of nuclear power, "clean coal," and off shore drilling, in the speech, somehow under the heading of "clean energy," the picture gets even bleaker. From the viewpoint of oratory, it was a good speech, as far as any offerings to anyone not in the corporate structure, it was pretty much a disappointment.

The entire progressive end of the political spectrum has been pre-occupied for months with the disappointments of this administration and with defenses thereof. The Nation ran a special edition, called "Obama at One." Occasionally, some one will say that the whole discussion is reminiscent of the "great man theory of history," that history is made solely by the small sliver of people at the top. And, will add that actually history is made by a much wider swath of people. Obama himself said something like that in his speech, when he said he can't do change all by himself.

Actually, what has happened is that the progressives have not come out to protest the direction that this administration has been taking, and that has left a vacuum for the teabagger phenomenon and left Obama without sufficient support. Of course, we could always try protesting the direction this administration is taking. We could put away our petty differences, pass up some of our entertainments, and get down to work …or, alternately, we could just resign ourselves to being zombies (real ones!).