Revolution?

My teenage years took place in a time and place in which the word "revolution" was as alluring to the young as it was forbidden by the elders. Decades later, I wonder what all that mouthing the r-word accomplished. Yet, as I watch a pauperizing worldwide crisis unroll before my eyes, I wonder ... isn't it time for revolution, a worldwide revolution?

Don't get me wrong. Millions of tortured, imprisoned, dead and "disappeared" people have convinced me that merely overthrowing a government accomplishes nothing. Indeed, most governments are not really the problem.

At the source of the economic crisis is a system of money power that serves the greediest few and corrupts the many. That's what needs overthrowing. Let's democratize economic decision-making and take it out of the hands of the tailor-suited financial elite. Profits generated by efficiencies and collective labor should be shared throughout the complex society that makes such profits even possible.

Could ordinary folks do any worse than these MBA geniuses have done? Let's try a few revolutionary steps:

• Turn for-profit corporations into sectorally organized publicly owned and controlled enterprises, run by specialists serving councils of elected workers and citizens;
• nationalize Chrysler and GM and turn them into producers of public, low-energy-consuming light and heavy rail and other systems of transportation, eventually making the car unnecessary, to be replaced by bicycles and light motorcycles.
  
• Re-establish progressivity of taxation and higher tax brackets;
• tax all inheritance 100% and put the proceeds into a fund for the education and support of all children and the support of those unable to work;
• expropriate all capital fleeing the country to avoid revolutionary rules;
• nationalize the banking system;
• close all stock exchanges and other markets of speculation, compensating account holders up to $5,000,000 per household;
  
• replace insurance companies with public trust funds;
• merge private and public education into a national free system incentivized through vouchers;
• abolish private medicine and private health institutions, creating a single health care system open to all.

What do you think?

The Loser Goes to the Press

Details now leaking out suggest that, at the heart of the Tim Geithner-AIG bonus story, lies a political stratagem explained to me years ago by a master news manipulator when I was a very green journalist: never go to the press, unless you lose behind closed doors.

AIG paid the bonuses on Friday. News leaked out during the weekend, with The Washington Post apparently breaking the story. Now we know that Geithner was on the horn to New York all week trying to stop the bonuses.

Why not announce an outrage that was about to happen rather than a fait accompli? Because if you're a wheeler dealer you're most powerful behind closed doors, when you and those in the room are the only ones with the knowledge to act. Information is, after all, power.

If Geithner had gone public and pointed his finger, and à la Èmile Zola cried out "j'accuse," his power of persuasion over AIG would have vanished instantly. Naturally, once that power had been lost behind closed doors, Geithner -- and President Obama -- were free rend their garments in public.

This is how the power game is played. Reporters know to look for the disgruntled for their leaks. Never ask why the news was leaked, merely ask who the leaker was in order to understand what happened in a power struggle waged behind closed doors.

It's our AIG, isn't it?

The real AIG bonus scandal is that a majority stockholder cannot prevent nonsense set in motion before the stocks were eagerly tossed like confetti at the federal government by management begging on its knees for cash.

We, the people, now own 80 percent (!!!) of AIG at a cost of about $170 billion of our money; about $165 million in bonuses was scheduled to be paid by March 15; some of the individual bonuses range between $1.5 to $3 million, but most are merely in the thousands; the government-appointed overseer was told by lawyers that the bonuses must be paid under pre-existing employee-retention contracts.

The single fact that stands out to me is that March 15 is the deadline for filing corporate taxes. Typically, corporate expenses booked as 2008 prior-year accruals (in English: owed, but not paid, in 2008) must be actually paid out before that date. So the overriding urgency to make the payments is a tax filing.

Well, hell, Tim Geithner, let's have our AIG accountant file for an extension of the deadline while we figure out why these bonuses are being paid at all. There's still time: extension applications can still be filed today.

But what about the alleged top talent AIG stands to lose? Let's challenge them to go get another job with "AIG" on their résumés.