Reply #16: I agree with you about what we need: but the people who would do that kind of fighting are

[Nikki Stone1]

leaving. The exodus of the middle class out of California (especially Southern California) is leaving fewer people who are adequately informed enough and of adequate means enough to fight this stuff. What is left are the poor and undocumented (who won't make waves out of fear), a working class that is making less and less and is unwilling to sacrifice the little they are making, and a very wealthy predator class. This, I think, is the goal of the transnationals: Most people poor, afraid and surveilled; a small but controlling and powerful predator class; and a small class of educated information workers, like professor/researchers and the like, to continue the scientific work that will allow the transnationals to continue controlling things. This last, by the way, is why education needs to be controlled and taken out of public hands.

I think in California, we are seeing the blueprint of the new America, the one the robber barons would have created in the 19th century if Marx's ideas and the Russian revolution hadn't gotten in the way, forcing them to "act nice" and create a more livable society for most Americans over a 40 year period so that they wouldn't rebel here. Now that the competition has been clobbered, there is no reason to be "nice" any more. Russia's gutting in the 1990s, along with the piratization of Eastern Europe, allowed the gloves to come off during the Bush era. Dubya just did openly what had been going on behind the scenes for a long time, behind a stage set of "helpful government." The American people couldn't take open, so now it's being done a little less blatantly.

But we in California can't hide from this. It's going to affect every aspect of our lives directly.