Discussion continues on Kathleeen Ford's HNIC comment

With the St. Petersburg mayoral election just a week away, our two most discussed stories in the last seven days relate to candidate Kathleen Ford's "HNIC comment."

Ford's comment was made during an appearance on Bubba the Love Sponge Clem's radio show. The shock jock described St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis III, who also was the city's first black police chief, as the "quasi-leader of the African-Americans."

"To me it's like talking down to them, that they have somebody to quell them and keep them in line," Clem said.

Ford responded: "Actually, Cornel West has a whole explanation about the HNIC theory, and I agree with that. We don't need one spokesman for a group."

The comment prompted several St. Petersburg Times stories, columns and hundreds of comments from tampabay.com readers.

Here's a look at what some readers were saying:

Ford's comment divides prompted 165 comments from readers.

Lauren Berns wrote: "Given that she actually made reference to West when she was invoking the term, I think it's hard to conclude "she's a racist" based on this one comment. I don't know enough about Ms. Ford to say, based on other words or actions, but this doesn't convince me."

JAK had a short message for everyone: "Let's all get out and vote!"

"Some people will look for reasons to protest any chance that they get," wrote Longtime resident.

St. Petersburg Times correspondent Bill Maxwell's Sunday column, Kathleen Ford's insensitivity and ignorance, generated nearly 150 comments.

Je wrote: "A slur is a slur. It can't be softened by subbing a word; rather, it is more pronounced than ever."

"Ford's biggest mistake was going on the radio with a shock jock," wrote Derya.

"'Can't we all just get along?' - Rodney King hehe," asked Piratehead.

Moshekatan wrote to Maxwell: "I think you are helping Ford. Thanks."

*****

Register to comment, and have your say. Here are links to our recent coverage:

Bill Maxwell: Kathleen Ford's insensitivity and ignorance (Oct. 25)

Sandra Gadsden: Bill Foster, Kathleen Ford show clumsiness on race issues

Ford's comment divides St. Petersburg (Oct. 20)

St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Kathleen Ford used acronym as racial slur, some say (Oct. 17)

Comments

[Allan]

1. Another person on this site more or less said they thought my analysis "brilliant," and then ended their own analysis by suggesting, "You should have voted for Ron Paul." I don't agree with that.

2. The reason I don't agree with that is, Ron Paul and the sorts of libertarian notions he espouses were precisely the sorts of idiot notions expounded and espoused over approximately a 40-year period by the leading spokesmen of capitalism here inside this country, and, more than expounded, practiced.

3. Alan Greenspan, for instance, despite the efforts of Ron Paul supporters to cover it up, was a leading Ayn Randist -- as is Ron Paul. Back in 1963-1964, when I was still a tender-aged high school student reading everything, I was then reading, among other things, Ayn Rand's "Objectivist Newsletter" (I was also reading material billing itself socialist, some social-democratic, and some liberal, materials).

3. In those "Objectivist Newsletters" published by Ayn Rand and her supporters of what was then called the Nathaniel Branden Institute (before, some years later, that is, her romantic relationship with Nathaniel Branden broke up, also causing her and her supporters to stop calling their organization the Nathaniel Branden Institute), there appeared articles by Alan Greenspan.

4. Alan Greenspan, interviewed on one interview program (I offhand believe it was either a "Sixty Minutes" program, or possibly a PBS program, but do not recollect precisely), stipulated he had adhered to the views of Ayn Rand for about 30 years, and considered her "brilliant."

5. I distinctly remember Ron Paul in one of his own statements saying he, too, had read the books of Ayn Rand and espoused her views, or had, at least, been very influenced by her views.

6. But more than that, the actual practices within the capitalistic political and economic system of the leading policymakers of both capitalist political parties, Democratic and Republican Parties, and their varied and respective presidential administrations from the end of the 1960s up through just last year, were policies of what could be called a more or less "laissez-faire" and economically "non-interventionist" sort toward the capitalistic private economy in the U.S.

7. The real start of the wholesale looting by capitalist owners themselves of big capitalist industrial companies they themselves owned was probably around 1973-1975. These owners decided they would uproot whole industrial-manufacturing-factory complexes from the Midwestern United States, for instance, and move their operations to whereever they could get labor at cheaper wages (labor costs) than where labor had some sorts of unions and labor collective bargaining agreements with the owners.

8. The financing of moving these complexes was done in a big way on the basis of debt financing, which only exacerbated and intensified the development of what has become the financialization of American capitalism. This moving of industrial complexes out of places where wages for the industrial workers were higher to where wages were lower -- to the Southern portion of the U.S. (and the Southern states of this country have always been a union-hating and union-unfriendly area of the U.S. stemming back to the post-Reconstruction and post-Civil War period of U.S. history when Ku Klux Klan terrorists lynched not only black people, but any union organizers trying to organize black and white laborers in Southern states to prevent union organization here) and into other countries with lower wages of workers -- from about 1973 to the recent past was financed by nonmoney. Rather, it was financed by debt financing.

9. The dubious financial instruments of derivatives, credit default swaps, leveraging, and similar dubious debt-financing instruments, however, go back even further, and are inherent in private capitalism's speculative nature. Karl Marx, the revolutionary socialist, and critic of capitalist political economy, in chapter 25, volume 3, of his major 19th Century work criticizing capitalism, "Capital," has a whole chapter on what Marx called, "fictitious capital," which is simply another phrase for "speculative capital." As long as you have market-based private capitalism, you're going to have massive speculative binges. What some capitalist spokesmen interviewed by people like Bill Moyers -- for instance, Warren Buffet -- have called the "financialization of American capitalism," and, in Buffet's own case, his comment about derivatives and credit default swaps made in 2005 in which he referred to them as "financial weapons of mass destruction," emerged logically precisely out of the laissez-faire, Ayn Randist practices of U.S. capitalism, which is far and away the most laissez-faire capitalist system on earth. And Ron Paul was a major exponent of this sort of economics, and remains one. So has Alan Greenspan been one. So was Larry Summers, President Barack Obama's current economic minister. So was Robert Rubin, who was President Clinton's treasury secretary. So was Henry Paulsen, who was George Bush's treasury secretary. All of these people were essentially Alan Greenspan defenders. This list could be extended. For instance, there was Texas U.S. Senator Phil Gramm.

10. The entire crappy "free market" mantra of people like Ron Paul is only the extreme edge of the kind of economics and politics that have been followed more or less rigorously over the past century and a half by this country, which is, as I said before, the most laissez-faire capitalist country on earth, and Ron Paul is as much an exponent of that sort of policy, as has been the federal reserve bank, as have other people and institutions.

11. The problem with the money-crazy and federal reserve-crazy sorts who seem to think the federal reserve is the end-all and be-all of all problems which, if eliminated, would immediately open up some kind of happy free market utopia is, they think money itself is the root of all evil or, if money is not the root of all evil, they at least seem to see money as historically coming before production, rather than production coming before money.

12. But anybody with one half of a functioning brain cell who actually studies the history of economy knows money came after, not before, production in the history of human societies. Money was always invented after the fact, mainly as a way of facilitating barter and trade and commerce of items produced in the production process.

13. Furthermore, these people who think Ron Paul and Libertarianism and Ayn Rand and policies of the sort followed or favored by people who defend the sorts of economics of Ron Paul or Ayn Rand or libertarianism seem to think capitalism existed all times in human history, and they have not the slightest clue that capitalism is a pretty recent system in world history, only about 400 years old, and properly dated symbolically by the Dutch Revolution of 1583-1584.

14. Furthermore, these libertarian-Ron Paul-Ayn Randist-laissez-faire types seem to think the capitalism is identical with commodity production, or that capitalism is identical with the trade in commodities themselves. But that is false. Capitalism is not identical with the trade in commodities and is not identical with commodity production itself, which is thousands and thousands of years older than capitalism itself.

15. Commodities are simply items embodying two kinds of value: use value (which means, basically, value in use, or what makes any item interesting to a prospective buyer), and exchange value (which means, basically, what is common to all commodities conferring on them the ability to get in return something in cost terms of an equivalent or roughly of an equivalent). If something's produced simply by me for my own use, it has use value, but it's no commodity. It only becomes a commodity once I put it into the market and seek to sell it and get back for it something roughly equivalent to it in value.

16. Exchange value is not use-value, in other words. But to be a commodity, an item has to have both.

17. The issue of what the basis of exchange value is is the key issue here.

18. The primary modern theorists of capitalism -- Adam Smith and, later, David Ricardo -- and the primary modern critic of capitalism, the socialist, Karl Marx -- all held that the source of exchange value was, the labor expended to make commodities. Adam Smith said in "Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" that the value of the accumulated "necessaries" comprising the wealth of nations had its source in previously expended labor. He says this right at the start of his book. Ricardo said the same thing. Marx in the first chapter of volume one of "Capital," the chapter in which Marx takes great time to subtly analyze the nature of commodities, also says the same thing.

19. Marx was an historically based sort of critic of capitalist political economy, however, and he viewed economy in historical terms. Part of his effort involves a quite meticulous and interesting effort to look at how authorities going back to ancient times looked at the source of the value of commodities. Marx's use of some of the writings of Aristotle, for instance, and Marx's investigation of Aristotle's view on this, is interesting.

20. Aristotle lived in a time in which the primary form of production was, slavery. That is, ancient Greek city-state politics, while formally direct democracies of the free citizenry, were in economic production, slavery-based economies. Free citizens were not slaves, and the slaves were not deemed to have rights or even be human.

21. This presented a problem for ancient intellectuals like Aristotle who, while they were certainly all-sided in their perspective, were also people who had more or less bought into the prevailing ideology of slavery being "natural" of the class-divided society of their time.

22. The prevailing ideology about slavery in their time was, nothing of value could come from slaves.

23. Therefore, the notion of a commodity -- something embodying value in exchange, as well as value in use -- could not be produced by slave labor.

24. But, of course, the factual problem was, that is precisely what produced commodities in the time of Aristotle. So the result was, he intellectually found himself in a conundrum on that issue. And Marx investigates Aristotle's view on economy and concludes that the problem was, Aristotle was very much "of" his time on that issue of the origination of value. Aristotle, that is, had not "solved" the problem.

25. Nor, so long as societies in which the prevailing ideology was that the working class of the given society were really not human or fully human, could the problem be solved.

26. Medievalism and feudalism could also not fully "solve" this problem. The primary working class of feudalism or medievalism were, the peasant tiller of the land. But again, in the medieval or feudal worldview or prevailing ideology of the prevailing ruling class of medieval society, they were not fully "as" human as were the ruling classes themselves.

27. The emergence of capitalism came about simultaneously with the emergence of revolutionary democratic-republican ideas, including the revolutionary democratic-republican idea that all men were created equal -- the natural rights idea. Christianity likes to claim it invented natural rights, but that is false. Christianity held to the view that there were some who were more "human" than others, and this was innate in the medieval and feudal form of Christianity (Roman Catholicism). In the pre-medieval form of Christianity, slavery-based Christianity, Christianity held to the view that slaves must obey masters. In the medieval form, Christianity held peasants must obey landlords. The law of obedience of so-called "subordinates" or "subservients" to rulers was a god-ordained law. This implied the intrinsic inequality of humans, and this, in turn, implied that all were not, in fact, created equal. So Christianity's claim to invention of natural rights or equal rights is nonsense.

28. The emergence of the revolutionary democratic-republican idea that all men were equal and had equal rights saw important spin-offs from this, including the view that women were equal to men, and that nonwhites were equal to whites, and that all nations were equal. And in fact, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence was a classical document of the capitalist revolutionary democratic-republican era, as was the French Universal Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen.

29. Once the concept of all humans having equal rights and, by implication, equal natures, emerged, the emergence of the source of exchange value lying in previously expended labor of working class people could, as an idea, happen, and did. It is in this sense no mistake that Adam Smith's "Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776, the same year as the American Declaration of Independence.

30. But the concept of value in exchange as having been produced implied that production was the basis of trade and commerce, not the other way around, and that, in turn, implied that production was the basis of money, and not the other way around.

31. Studies of the emergence of money make it absolutely clear that money came after previously established commerce and trade which, in turn, came after previously established production. Items could not be traded unless they were first produced. And money as a medium of exchange could not emerge till trade first happened.

32. The problem with the Ayn Randist-Ron Paulist-laissez-faire capitalist-libertarian perspective is, it reverses history, and sees the history of trade, commerce, and money, as somehow preceding production.

33. But this just on its face is ludicrous, because how are you to trade or do commerce without something to trade?

34. The federal reserve, too, did not arise as some kind of conspiracy. It arose at a given historical moment in the development of American capitalism into monopoly imperialistic capitalism, the period of the early 20th Century of American capitalism, when, to keep abreast of the centralization of private capital into fewer and fewer hands, and more rationally regulate the trade and commercial transactions among what were now titanic capitalist corporations and firms (instead of the much smaller firms that had been the primary kinds of firms up to the time of the Civil War), some kind of governmental oversight was deemed necessary. The fed arose roughly in or around the time frame in which other federal governmental sorts of regulatory agencies and oversight agencies arose. And here, it was a case of the government playing "catch up" to the simple enormity and titanic character of trade and commerce among huge private profit-based commercial entities.

35. The point of government agencies to watch this process was not, as the libertarians, Ayn Randists, Ron Paulists, and similar types, would have you believe, because the government was somehow conspiring to do in capitalism. Very much to the contrary. The purpose of said agencies was to insure capitalism would now operate without what was deemed destructive competition, competition which, it was feared, would lead to the demolition from within by the dog-eat-dog nature of the system, which is built into the system.

36. In a sense, the rise of agencies like the fed in the early part of the 20th Century was nothing but a recognition that the system had gotten to the point where it threatened itself, and needed some kind of governmental oversight to prevent its own self-destruction by its own agents.

37. The irony of the Ron Paulists, Ayn Randists, libertarians, trying to pin the entire recent economic and financial crisis of U.S. capitalism and world capitalism on the federal reserve is, it was precisely the sorts of policies long expounded by Ron Paulists, Ayn Randists, libertarians, and accolytes of theirs like Alan Greenspan, for instance, that left the private-for-profit financial owners of huge financial titans like Lehman Brothers, AIG, big banks like Citibank and Bank of America and Wachovia, huge credit card usurers like Capital One, free to do the destruction they did. And this sort of approach was defended loyally and in a bipartisan fashion by both Democratic and Republican politicians in both the Clinton, G. W. Bush, and now Obama administrations. Obama himself says he's trying to break with that, but how do you break with it when you've appointed Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, people who were intimately involved in carrying out such policies, in the period of the Clinton administration, for instance, when these types helped bring down, for instance, Brooksley Born, the woman from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission who warned about the impact of unregulated derivatives and credit default swaps and, for her prescient and prophetic warning, saw her agency defenestrated by a combination of both Democratic and Republican "leading lights" at the end of the 1990s, all of whom were accolytes of the "free market" mantra that there is really no chance for any capitalist operating in the "free market environment" to operate irrationally. That was the mantra of Greenspan, Summers, Rubin, Texas Senator Phil Gramm. They all adhered to that mantra.

38. And so does Ron Paul, so did Ayn Rand, so do the libertarians.

39. That has to be said. And I wanted to say it here, because I am NOT a Ron Paul enthusiast, NOT one of those who runs around and thinks the recent economic and financial crisis was some conspiracy orchestrated by the federal reserve, NOT a libertarian, NOT a supporter of unregulated and unfettered laissez-faire capitalism.

--Allan

[JR]

Allan, brilliant post. Too bad more people won't read it.

Although I agree with you, I must add one thing you left off.

Not only is Capatalism to blame, but the "heart" of American Capatalism, better known as the Federal Reserve and its fractional banking system have almost reached the mathmatical limits of its existence.

When the Federal Reserve's ponzi scheme finally goes bust in 12-24 months, then we see a real sea change, and not a moment before.

This will make the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.

All we've done as a country is buy a little more time before the inevitable.

I'm not talking religious-based Armageddon themes here, I'm talking a complete world meltdown of the monetary system. Because, as we all know, most of the "money" in this world actually doesn't even exist except in computer programs.

The only thing left that will have ANY value is property (for food production), oil, skill and the labor to back it up. Gold, silver, cash, diamonds, all will be worthless. They never had any value to begin with, it was only "percieved".

Buckle your seatbelts, folks. You should have voted for Ron Paul.

[ctb]

Good gravy! Perhaps SPTimes needs to consider putting a limit on post length.....?

[Saint Petersblog]

A white guy's analysis of who is the HNIC of St. Pete?

http://bit.ly/3vbUnM

[Allan]

In my view, there are no winners here - no good guys here. It's sad, but I think that's the case.

1. First off, I don't think Ford's some kind of racist. But I do think the fact her first mental association which first came to her after the shockjock, Bubba, brought up the name of Goliath Davis, was to the comment of eminent African American college professor and author, Cornel West, addressing the issue of HNIC is disturbing. That doesn't make her racist. But it makes her less rational than I had earlier thought she might be. It makes me more inclined to see both her and Foster as irrational, Foster for his irrationalist belief system which has been used by the Republican Party in this country for 30 years to oppose issues intersecting with and intersected by First Amendment church-state separation (gay rights, women's abortion rights, scientifically confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt evolution and need to teach it in schools as the core organizing principle of biology, etc.), and now apparently Ford for the fact the first mental association which occurred to her after having the name of Goliath Davis brought up by the shockjock Bubba being that of Cornel West's comment on HNIC.

2. I also think it's disturbing and saddening that besides some of the rational defenders of Ford, the faked and manufactured "controversy" over her remark has brought out of the woodwork all kinds of whackjob white racist bigots whose basic motivation is to bring down any official, elected or otherwise, simply because they're black or nonwhite.

3. On the other hand, I don't think the part played in this whole situation by The St. Petersburg Times editorial board, ownership, management, has been anything other than disgraceful, sleazy, immoral, unethical, slimy, and, basically, deliberately designed to pour gasoline on the fire that reinforces the genuinely hardcore racist and fascist-minded bigots who really would like to turn this into an excuse to entirely innocent people, mainly black. The Times, a capitalist profit-making enterprise who are tanking economically, have their own sleazy reasons for doing this. First, I suspect the fact Ford is more an "unknown" quantity than Bill Foster is makes them apoplectic -- as "good ol' boys" tend to be. They rather like their comfort level with Foster, and the fact he seems to be a kind of lineal descendant of Rick Baker, representative of capitalist development interests in this town, and prone to trample on the Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, free speech rights, associational rights, when they conflict with private corporate profits (as, of course, the Bay Walk public property giveaway), makes the owners and management of The St. Pete Times use their bully pulpit for doing a disgraceful thing in pouring gasoline on a fire when it was not warranted.

4. Second, I don't think the African-American businessmen and politicians who got up some weeks ago and tried to play the racism card against Ford did so for sterling or pure motives. I think they did it to get Foster elected. I think basically the same is so of Maxwell's column in The St. Pete Times, although I think there were some legitimate issues of insensitivity raised by Maxwell in his column. But Foster's no "friend" of black people. He's an ally, as his buddy and predecessor (as the good ol' boys in this town view Baker), Baker, of Chuck Harmon's out-of-control SPPD, who gun down black unarmed civilians in cold blood all the time, and never in the 20 years I've lived in Pinellas County have done an hour's jail time for doing that sort of thing. This to me points to the hypocrisy of making Ford out to be some kind of racist when gunning down black unarmed kids in St. Pete on the part of cops in this town who then serve no time in jail for doing so under no matter who is mayor is part of the way this town operates. Racism is built into the entire politics of this city.

5. The only reason the businessmen and politicians got up and called Ford a racist is, the polls show most people may vote for Ford, so they were trying to pull Foster's chestnuts out of the fire. But it does not appear to be working for Foster.

6. As for who is more "divisive," that's a non-issue, too. First, it's dangerously anti-Bill of Rights to use that phrase, because it implicitly means, don't say anything that might actually bring to light serious underlying economic, social, political issues of class, race, bigotry, as doing that might rock the boat the good ol' boys don't want rocked. Secondly, both Foster and Ford have engaged in practices which could be said to have been "divisive." Foster's comment that black people make poor businessmen is not exactly a statement evincing rationality on the part of Foster. This has implicitly been recognized by some black community spokespersons, such as Darryl Rouson, the Tampa NAACP head, Wengay Newton of the city council, and some other folks, who have rightly noted the tempest-in-a-teapot nature of the so-called "controversy" which was not a real "controversy" at all till the sleazy and rather slimy characters on The St. Pete Times ed. board and, implicitly, their corporate part-ownership (probably more comfortable with a more, in their mind, business-friendly right-wing Republican Foster administration continuing Baker policies than an unknown Ford Democratic administration doing policies of which they are now ignorant, which makes capitalists uncomfortable), turned it into one.

7. But neither Ford nor Foster are addressing the fact that the central and underlying issue making politics nastier today is, the tanking of the Florida, national, and global economy, and that that can be squarely laid at the door of capitalism as an economic system, which is failing, and cannot provide jobs for all. That, more than anything else, provides the real "backdrop" for why there's increasing nastiness in local, as well as state and national, politics.

8. There is no politician running for office saying that capitalism is the source of the problems afflicting us. So, in the absence of such a truth-telling kind of politician, the diverse brands of irrationalist whackjobs -- some opposing evolution, some opposing gay rights, some opposing women's abortion rights, some supporting classical KKK and Nazi racist bigotry against black and other nonwhite people, some supporting racism against immigrants, down the line -- come out of the woodwork and take over the so-called "dialogue." That's what's been happening. Irrationalism and unreason in the form of its main diverse kinds of representatives and spokespeople come out and exploit the economic and financial crisis for all that it's worth, a crisis which is centrally about the complete and utter inability of this rotting, decaying, putrefying capitalistic economic and financial and social order to do genuinely squat about the unemployment of millions upon millions of human beings both here and nationally and globally.

9. In that kind of situation, it's easier to blame free speech, or minorities, or other false targets, for what's been going on in the guts of the American and world economy, and has caused 11.7 unemployment in Tampa Bay and 11.2 percent unemployment in Florida, and that's only the "official" stats (the "unofficial" unemployment is about double the "official" stats). So we get the spectacle of the St. Pete city council blaming First Amendment protesters' alleged rights or the associational rights of homeless people and panhandlers for the tanking of Bay Walk as the excuse to give away public property to Bay Walk management and ownership, or we get the spectacle of The St. Pete Times editors and ownership trying to tell us the sky will fall if Ford's elected and we get the spectacle of profit-taking businessmen and politicians trying to turn Ford into a racist for her having quoted a prominent black and liberal-minded Princeton intellectual so they can get a right-wing Republican, Foster, elected; but we also get right-wing racist whackjobs coming out of the woodwork and exploiting Ford's own myopia and apparent cluelessness and using that myopia and cluelessness on the issue of race to try to turn the economic and financial crisis into an attack on innocent nonwhite human beings.

10. It's ironic, by the way, that the right-wing white racists who've been coming out of the woodwork and pretending to line up with Ford and the Democrats are doing that. None of these people, or mostly none of these people, would touch the issue of gay rights or women's abortion rights or the objective scientific need to teach evolution in the public schools with a 100-foot pole, because they are irrationalist whackjobs themselves on these issues and the religious superstitions into which they buy which support their whackiness on these issues just as they are irrationalist whackjobs on the racist superstition of white racist bigots that black people and nonwhite people are allegedly "inferior" to whites, which is the real source of why they have been jumping on Ford's bandwagon. Maybe they hope to bring the Democratic Party by way of this manufactured non-controversy back to the time from about the middle 1790s when it was created through in the Southern states up through about 1970, when it was pro-white racist, pro-Ku Klux Klan, pro-segregationist, pro-enslavement of black people. I think that's their agenda. I don't necessarily think it's Ford's agenda, or that of her followers. But so far I haven't seen any kind of forthright public statement of Ford or her campaign management repudiating and renouncing "support" from such white racist bigoted whackjobs. It might be nice if that kind of public statement were forthcoming before the election for mayor. I'm waiting for it.

11. Anyway, the problem is really capitalism. And both the Democrats and Republicans are capitalist parties. And both Democrats and Republicans on the city council voted to sell public property of Bay Walk to the owners of Bay Walk and take away Constitutional and free speech and First Amendment rights nad associational rights of protesters, homeless people, panhandlers, and they all did it at the behest of the corporate owners of Bay Walk and the vicious editorials of The St. Pete Times blaming protesters and panhandlers and homeless people for the underlying collapse of world and American capitalism which is the real reason Bay Walk tanked economically and financially, combined with the probable fact the ownership and management of Bay Walk have no more capacity to manage it than they do to manage a hot dog stand.

12. The sad spectacle of politicians of a capitalist sort giving away free speech and public associational rights was combined with police violence and brutality against a medically and physically disabled armed forces veteran, free speech activist, and peace activist, on the floor of Council chambers on October 15, 2009, Ron Deaton, after Deaton was physically assaulted and had assault and battery done against him, as well as, prior to that, disorderly conduct in the form of a screaming against him, done by a yellow-shirted thug who represented the underlying inclinations of those who wanted to sell off Bay Walk public property to private capitalist interests so they could deny free speech and associational rights to protesters, homeless, panhandlers, etc. The cops were "evenhanded," which means, in plain English, corrupt. They played favorites because Chuck Harmon has a long history of aggressive incitements of aggressive cop action against peaceably vigiling and protesting anti-war protesters at Bay Walk, as well as against free speech activities of both St. Pete for Peace, Uhurus, homeless activists, in this town. Baker has deferred to the bonapartist police statist authoritarian Harmon, and to the bonapartist police statism of the police department, and the bonapartist police statist authoritarianism of the city attorney's office. Deaton was doing literally nothing -- nothing -- to anybody but, rather, was in the process of leaving council chambers on October 15, 2009. He was first screamed at by the yellow-shirted guy who favored selling off the Bay Walk public property, then physically attacked after he simply responded to the screaming attack against him, and instead of the cops doing the right thing, they did the corrupt thing. And I've not read so far any comment by any City Councilperson saying the charges should be dropped against Deaton, as they should be. I phoned Detective Cope, the arresting officer who busted Deaton, and left a message on his message machine that the charges should be dropped against Deaton. Not only did they bust him wrongly, but they used violence against him in trying to force his medically and physically disabled arms behind his back after he was on the floor of Council Chambers. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Deaton should sue, and if the local ACLU are too gutless and cowardly to get him a lawyer, he should get one from somewhere, sue the cops, sue the city, sue the council, sue the mayor, and I hope he gets a nice, fat, financial settlement out of it, a really big one. But more importantly, labor in this town should wake up, because if the cops can and will do that to Deaton, and if they continue shooting down unarmed black kids in this town and never doing any jail time for it, does organized labor in this town think it's far behind when the economic crunch finally leads to militant class struggle of labor in this town and in Tampa Bay and in Florida, as it will? Does organized labor think it's rights will be protected by relying on capitalist politicians like Ford or Foster? If you think that, you're living in a dreamworld. What's been happening points to the desperate and crying need for a fighting class struggle-based independent Workers Party that does not restrict itself to fighting every 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 year election cycle, but fights everyday of the year to organize the working class, black, brown, yellow, red, white, immigrant, native-born, gay, straight, male, female, all religions, no religions, for the power in this country of the working class and the kicking out of the capitalist bosses who have brought our city, our locality, our state, our country, our world, to ruin.

--Allan