alluded to--and it was infuriating. I learned virtually nothing about Frank's book from it, because the interviewer was apparently so terrified of seeming to promote its criticisms (that liberal NPR!) that he spent almost the entire interview trying to get Frank to admit that often privatization of gov't services has been a good thing and increased efficiency (though no examples were mentioned or discussed), and suggesting that Frank was coming off as an extremist (blogger!) kook by strongly criticizing the tragically flawed hero Duke Cunningham. I am really sick of this sort of thing.

Frank should go to Fox. They have been showing good interviews with Naomi Klein. NPR sux.

Of course Frank isn't respectable like, say, Abramoff! Just because Frank's written all those books doesn't mean he isn't really just a hotheaded blogger. {?????}

I thought *One Market Under God* was as good as *What's the Matter with Kansas* and am looking forward to this latest book. The Harper's excerpt was outstanding.

Frank's the only writer I know who can report on awful things and make me laugh, too.

I, too, heard the interview on NPR, and agree that interviewer was craven. Sadly, this seems too often to be true of NPR (and PBS, too, save for Bill Moyers) these days. Instead of shining a bright light of inquiry upon the louses and leeches that infest our body politic, such so-called journalists expose themselves as the toadies they really are. A pox on them!

Kudos to Thomas Frank on articulating the truth of American conservatism, i.e., that it is a parasite bent on the destruction of its host organism by drowning it in Grover's bathtub. Unfortunately, what passes for American liberalism these days seems also to have sold out to the corporate state.

Where's the reset button on this contraption we call America?

I work for the Veterans Benefits Administration, Education Division, and about a week ago, my office was informed that James B. Peake, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, had sent a letter to Ms. Alma Lee, President, National VA Council that “…the decision has been made to seek private-sector support to implement [the new GI Bill] new program.” It goes on to say: “We will work to minimize any adverse impact on Veterans Benefit Administration employees, and we will invite you to work with us to assist employees in any transition that may be necessary.”

So basically if the Secretary gets his way, I – being a new employee – will likely be out of a job. I’m guessing I’ll be offered something in DC or Texas or Montana or someplace, so they can claim they offered everyone a job, but I’m not interested in leaving the area.

And call me cynical, but I bet Secretary Peake (who’ll need a new job once a new administration takes over) will wind up with a cushy job at whichever private company gets the contract. Or the lobbying firm he goes to work at gets a big contract from that company. And maybe the company that gets the contract will be QTC – a company on which he served on the board of directors – or maybe it will be some other company that has (or will have) a relationship with Secretary Peake.

I’ve got a pretty good resume (although I realllllly don't feel like updating it and looking for a job) and haven’t been here long enough to be all that invested in the job, so I’m more concerned for my co-worker (50% of them veterans) who aren’t as marketable as I am. [Although I will admit I’ll miss getting home every day at 5pm – I’ve yet to find a private sector job that lets me out on time.] And I’m pissed about the bullshit that this unnamed private company will do a better job processing these claims than a group of individuals already trained to process them. These bastards are so full of shit.

I mean, the first and most basic reason the VBA is the better choice to process claims is that our office’s mission – it’s only mission – is to serve veterans. In contrast, a private companies main objective is to make money for their shareholders. And while I admit mainly in it for a paycheck (which is not to say I don’t do a good job), my veteran co-workers really care about serving their fellow veterans.

And it’s not like private contractors have a great track record these days –their use during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, as well as after Hurricane Katrina , demonstrates how costly and ineffective they can be. The fact is Federal Agencies are able to attract and retain high quality employees because Federal workers are fairly paid, receive good benefits, and have perceived (at least until now) job security. In contrast, a private contractor is likely to pay its workers less and provide lesser benefits, which will likely result in a less educated workforce and a higher turnover rate.

It's late. I'm rambling. So I’m calling shenanigans on Secretary Peake. Everybody grab a broom.

Yes, that was Steve Inskeep. I have never heard him sound anything other than arrogant, hostile, and petulant. Oh, I guess he also does preening. That's about it for him. He has no other tone.

Employed almost 380,000 people. All of them salaried or hourly employees of the City of New York. If that isn't emblematic of how public sector, civil service, public service unions can become unaccountable, I don't know what is.

...was convincing the world he doesn't exist."

So says Verbal Kint in the supernatural crime classic "The Usual Suspects." And in this quote (and in the movie itself) we find the fatal flaw in trying to wrap one's brain around the relationship between conservatives, business and, yes, even fear of express liberal bias. Conservatives (and particulary neocons over the past 40 years) have tried to prove to us that Big Government is the problem and in the process have shifted the responsibility for government (and, thereby, control government in this country cannot legally own), to Big Business. When the Devil is dead and we are "free" of his governance, when government has been essentially dismantled and what remains is indistinguishable from big business, then the legal and moral constraints of government by the people has been effectively eliminated and Big Business, acting through a handful of nominal heads of government, drags us all the way back into feudalism.

We're almost there now.

There can be no doubt conservatism has been tainted by this school of thought since the advent of the industrial age, but the liberal contingent, by its very sensitivity to criticism and its belief in false civility, has pulled away from its post, abandoned its responsibility to counterbalance the conservative obsession with convincing the world the devil doesn't exist, and so has been complicit, through a sort of pathetic Milquetoast cowardice, in allowing the politics of the past hundred years to evolve into the facist regime we are now preparing to throw over, but throw over without any Plan B other than the "change" Barack Obama promises (and would deliver had he the backing of true liberal force in what is left of the real government, the part which hasn't been sold to China, India, or WalMart). Whether or not Obama can deliver will depend in great part upon the people's having recognized that his call for change is not the empty rhetoric of a politician but is likely the last chance to call the devil out and perhaps bind him for a thousand years.

All the analysis in the world will only bring us back to the office of the detective who sits and listens to Verbal Kint's raving about the devil and Kaiser Soze. Without dropping a plot spoiler, I think it is safe (and essential) to say that The Idiot in our national passion play is, in fact, the devil, and he has succeeded in convincing the world he does not exist.

Big Business has been waiting for a hundred years to assume the role of Commander-in-chief, and things were going just fine until this Obama feller showed up and began to recognize the crazy-quilt assemblage of "facts" so glibly thrown at us by our devils. Whether or not he can get the attention of the people in time to rush out to the corner and grab our Kaiser Soze before he disappears into the mists will lie with the people.

As a genuine and ernest conservative who holds the tainted movement and my own party in contempt for having engineered this vast right-wing conspiracy to sell our government off to business interests (while also holding liberalism responsible for having played along out of desire to appear above the fray), I submit there is another way out of this seemingly near-impossible situation: communitarian socialism/ aggrarianism. When we truly begin to think globally but act locally, when we truly begin to abandon our obsession with material acquisition and turn to communal self-reliance, then the change Obama has tried to sell us will be delivered. Until and unless that happens we will continue to slip ever further under the board room door, choking on the cigar smoke of deal-making government selling its feckless ass to the boards and CEOs of the world.

It's either that or Everything Must Go. Including this greatest of experiments.

Thomas Frank has only kicked the door open a bit. It is we who will have to put our shoulders to it and overthrow government by business, and we just may not be able to pull ourselves up to our full height and strength, because, in the end, it means a huge and relatively rapid change. Change never sits well with anyone. Inertia is nine points of the law.

Still, there is this moment. Seize it or shut up.