…….I am writing to you (and to any other American who wishes to share in this) because I, like many Americans, want to help our country get back on track.  Call it a cry for help or a public plea of a distressed citizen, but I digress.

…….My personal situation is hardly the worst it could be: I’m a graduate student living with my parents and partially self-funding my education with my own personal savings (I’m taking out loans for the rest).  On the other hand, I graduated in May of 2010 and have worked a total of only five months since then at a variety of jobs, always for $12 an hour or less.  Compared to other people my age, I consider myself to be incredibly lucky.  Think about that – lucky to have a supportive, loving family that has the means to keep me afloat while I struggle to get out on my own, barely holding down a poverty-wage job.  It’s heartbreaking and discouraging to know that so many others my age aren’t so fortunate, and I wonder how their futures will unfold.

…….Mr. President, I donated to your campaign, voted for you, and have defended your actions to the people that I encounter who disagree with or disapprove of them.  I, and many others like me, were swept up by your lofty rhetoric and cool demeanor.  I genuinely believed that your election would spell slow but steady improvement in our lives.  You campaigned on hope, but since your election Americans have only grown more hopeless.  Our situations are worse off now than when you took office, and as of now, I will be neither voting for you nor donating to your campaign in the next election because honestly, I and many others in my position – the very same people who put you in the oval office – feel betrayed by you.

…….I am very much aware that you did not create the enormous problems that our country currently faces.  You didn’t enact the policies over the past 30 years that triggered an economic collapse that some Cassandras knew was coming.  You aren’t responsible for the way wages have stagnated for 30 years while corporate profits have skyrocketed.  And of course I cannot blame you for the disgusting gridlock in Congress.  But your failure to make any credible attempt to rectify any of our problems has now made you complicit in them.

…….You are now two and a half years into your term and have been nothing but a disappointment.  The way you refused to fight for a public option in the health care debate.  The way you refused to expend any political capital to punish the people whose recklessness and greed caused the collapse (and how your administration, bafflingly so, is resistant to any attempt at holding those people accountable)! The way you cave to John Boehner and the Tea Party every single time a confrontation arises, be it the debt ceiling or the date of your supposed major address on jobs.  The way you allow blatant falsehoods about the economy and policy to circulate like the bubonic plague while refusing to provide your own narrative of what has happened in America.  The way you try to negotiate with those who have made clear their only goal is to bring you down.

…….You do not lead, you preside.  By the same token, you do not compromise, you capitulate.

…….In fact, your governing style (or lack thereof) is mind-boggling.  Mr. President, you refuse to stand up for your supporters while you try to reason with the unreasonable.  The opposition party has made it clear that they have absolutely no interest in working with you.  Don’t you remember when Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that his primary political objective was to deny you a second term and to not solve our country’s problems?  I understand that good politics is about compromise, but when have any of your priorities not been sacrificed on the altar of bi-partisianship with nothing in return?  You just recently gave away the ability to regulate smog and got what in return?  That’s not a negotiated compromise, that is a giveaway – a sign not of strength, but of spinelessness.  You are actively abdicating your responsibility as President to be a leader.

…….Maybe I should have paid attention to the fact that you voted “present” more times than not in the Illinois legislature – a sign that you were afraid to do anything that might present an ounce of risk.  Maybe I should have thought twice when you tossed to the curb the man who married you and your wife, who was your “spiritual mentor” after a smear campaign comparable to John Kerry’s swift-boating.

…….Now, I have noticed how you stubbornly refuse to take positions beyond vague ovations of improving health care and appeals to a supposed American Exceptionalism.  At a time when the American people needed someone who would stand up for them, who would lead them and be unafraid to take a controversial position that he truly believes in, they mistakenly voted for someone who flees at the first sign of confrontation.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man who said of the Wall Street banks (your campaign contributors) “I welcome their hatred” is rolling over in his grave.  Not only have you been an ineffective President, but also a failed Democrat – a party I was forced to abandon after years of active support when I felt that they turned on me.

…….I say with complete, unshakable honestly that I take absolutely no pleasure in doing this.  But with my firsthand experience and things I know about the current state of our economy, the trend is dismal, and reasons to be optimistic are harder and harder to find.  Your inability to successfully govern the country coupled with the undeclared war against the average American people by her own elites are causing America to crumble right beneath your feet.  I don’t even know for sure who’s side you’re really on anymore, the side of the people or the enemies of the people? Please be the president that I voted for in 2008. Otherwise, get out of the way.

………………………………………………………Sincerely in Frustration,

………………………………………………………Dave Imbriaco

______________________________

Photo courtesy of projectcensored.org

(http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/22-obamas-trilateral-commission-team/)

I did not know what to expect when I decided to go to New York on Saturday to check out Occupy Wall Street. In fact, I had only opted to go after seeing the now famous footage of police brutality, courtesy of inspector Anthony Bologna aka “Tony Baloney”(video). I had originally planned to go with a couple of friends, but that did not pan out. For a moment I was hesitant to go by myself because I rarely travel to New York City, let alone get involved in a protest in which people have been beaten, pepper sprayed, and arrested. But I decided to go anyway. After walking out of the PATH Station at the World Trade Center I was immediately taken aback by the number of police officers stationed in the area. Apparently the police have occupied their own portions of Lower Manhattan where they are keeping vans, buses, equipment and personnel at the ready just in case the word comes in to start making mass arrests.

I wandered a bit until finally making it to Liberty Plaza Park (formerly known as Zucotti Park), where I continued to wander aimlessly, snapping a few pictures until I happened upon fellow Rutgers University students, Kristin Clark, Matt Cordeiro, and Joel Salvino, who were looking for a bathroom. Joel pointed out a ninety-five year old Marxist-Leninist who had been yelling at a few Ron Paul supporters. I wanted to know why this man was so insistent on being a Leninist as well as a Marxist, so I decided to have a chat with him while I waited for them to come back. Here I learned a valuable lesson: ninety-five year old men do not take shit from anyone. He formed his political beliefs in the 1930s and they seem to have not changed since.What made him a Marxist-Leninist was the idea that radical social change was only possible through a tightly structured organization with ideological cohesion,  a specific set of goals, a powerful leadership and the willingness to achieve their ends by any means necessary. Occupy Wall Street does not follow this model at all.

It is usually difficult to categorize or try to make sense of mass movements and protests that emerge seemingly out of nowhere. Occupy Wall Street is marked partially by a strange alliance of both Ron Paul supporters on the far right (Anarcho-Capitalists) and socialists, Marxists, and Anarcho-Syndicalists on the far left. Barring their consensus on the full expansion of civil liberties, the only agreement among the two sides is that greed and, to borrow a quip from the historian Thomas Bailey, the “international gangsterism” of the global finance industry and powerful states has crippled the global economy and propped up the power of a handful of elites at the expense of the majority.

Liberty Park is not only Occupy Wall Street’s staging ground, but has also become a temporary, indefinite home for the movement’s core group of organizers, including Zu, a former Rutgers student and resident of New Brunswick, who after getting laid off decided to sublet her apartment and move into the park. Most of the youth living in the park seem to be in a similar situation.  In order to accommodate themselves they have set up sleeping spaces, a kitchen of sorts, a medical station, and even a library.

As we began preparing for the 3:00pm march, there were whispers that we would be marching over the Brooklyn Bridge. At the time—and even now—I did not know whether this meant that we would be marching over the walkway or one of the traffic lanes. In any case, the march got underway without incident. We were positioned in the back because Zu had taken up the task of setting the pace from the back of the march. The senior citizens were to take up the vanguard. Ironically enough, there is a much higher chance of getting arrested in the rear of any given protest march, because from there it is much easier for the police to use the “kettling technique” to trap demonstrators. However, being positioned there actually prevented us from joining those on the traffic lanes and subsequent arrest.

The group of marchers was increasing in size as we moved north along Broadway towards the Brooklyn Bridge. This was easy to notice because in order to continue setting the pace from the back we had to keep moving behind all of the new people joining the march. People were getting really excited. There was a very energetic young woman (one of the organizers), who was running around starting up chants and trying to get everyone to close off the gaps between marchers. She accidentally stepped on the back of my shoe, causing my foot to fall out. She quickly said “Sorry, baby!” with real sincerity, and ran ahead to energize the rest of the group.

As we were approaching the bridge, I was still not sure if we were going to cross into the traffic lanes. The police had blocked traffic from travelling eastbound into Brooklyn, but had also formed a line to prevent protesters from entering. We were still at the very back of the march. The police were patrolling up and down the lane parallel to the walkway. It was not until we had travelled a few hundred yards up the bridge that we realized protesters had somehow made it down into the street. I had assumed that the police formed that line blocking protesters from entering the entire time; apparently that was not the case. A large number of protesters had stopped on the walkway to look, take pictures, and express solidarity with those who were fenced in on the street below. The police had already started making arrests, singling out specific individuals and grabbing them as the opportunity presented itself. After making our way a bit further up the bridge, past the penned in group, I heard a familiar shout. I squeezed over to the side to get a look and saw that energetic young woman, struggling and yelling as two police officers were dragging her away.

Those who were not trapped on the street or standing on the walkway to provide moral support made their way across the bridge into Brooklyn, where we rallied at Cadman Plaza Park, surrounding the William Jay Gaynor monument. Here the organizers passed along information regarding our fellow protesters on the bridge as well as advice on what to do next: who to call if a friend has been arrested, etc. Because Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are not permitted to use loudspeakers or megaphones, communication is done through a massive game of telephone. One person shouts the original message, and the surrounding crowd shouts it along to those standing out of earshot of the speaker.  I noticed that the same person never spoke twice. A different person conveyed each message.

While all this was happening, the police were slowly surrounding the park and making their way inside. According to them, we would not be arrested so long as we “did not break park regulations.” They conveniently failed to enumerate these regulations.

I would have loved to stay at Cadman Park, but I had a few obligations that night in New Brunswick. Joel and I decided to walk back across the bridge to get to the PATH station. As we started up the walkway, two police officers warned us that “protesters were blocking the path up ahead and not letting people through.” We snickered to ourselves, musing at how we could assume different identities by not walking with a large group of people.

The police were stationed throughout walkway, telling people that they had to keep moving to the other side of the bridge. Now there were buses (some of which were from MTA) lined up in the street below, outside of which arrested protesters were waiting to be loaded up and taken down to the station. Joel and I shouted down to one of the protesters asking, “how did you get down there!?” The response was “I don’t know, I was just following the group!” We then came upon the group of alledgedly obstructive protesters who, roughly twenty strong, were standing on one side of walkway in solidarity with those below. A few police officers were standing around them, telling them that they had to get off of the bridge. One man questioned the legality of forcing people off of a public walkway, to which an officer in a white shirt responded by grabbing the protester and threatening arrest. They said that we were allowed to be on the bridge, but that we “had to keep moving.” One of the officers began approaching me as I was trying to take a picture, so I quickly put down my camera and walked away.

As Joel and I walked to the train station, I could not help but mull over the greater significance of what happened and what my role was within these events. It was a shared role, of course. I am grateful to have had support from Matt, Kristen, Zu, and Joel. I feel like we are a part of what could become the largest social movement of our generation, but I do not yet know how to classify it.

Part II

History certainly verifies the power of protest, but despite this common technique, Occupy Wall Street is decidedly different from its predecessors in its organization and goals.

Solidarity, which with roughly ten million members would become the largest trade union in history, emerged  from a strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, in 1980.  Solidarity used civil disobedience and nationwide strikes to demand workers’ rights and social change from a government whose legitimacy was founded upon notions of workers’ rights and social change. Though this movement was violently suppressed by the Communist government in 1981, they would remain underground throughout 1980s until finally reemerging in 1988-89 to successfully negotiate for democratic elections. This set into motion a chain of events leading to the Revolutions of 1989 in the Eastern Bloc and arguably the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Similarly, the Civil Rights movement demonstrates the efficacy of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in an American context. This movement exposed the inherent contradictions in a supposedly liberal, democratic state, which emphasized human equality in theory while in practice systematically marginalized the political power of a select group. In this case, the legal basis of the state itself had provided the means for its own criticism. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution could be used as effective tools to compel the U.S. government to concretely meet its theoretical obligation to guarantee political freedom for all citizens of the United States.

When compared to Solidarity and the Civil Rights movement, Occupy Wall Street lacks the means to make very specific demands because the enemy is not so clearly defined. For those living in the Eastern Bloc, information came from the Politburo and one could either accept it as fact or, as most did, reject it entirely. The goals of the Civil Rights movement were legitimized by the state itself.

Today’s issue is far more nuanced: the enemy is amorphous, and mainstream sources of information provide no basis from which this systematic oppression can be criticized.

Wall Street has become an institution fundamentally embedded within the political and economic structure in not only the US, but the entire world. So much so that its sudden failure carries with it the threat of global collapse through a process that practically nobody–let alone Wall Street bankers– truly understands. By creating specific demands that fit into the typical logic of American politics, the Occupy Wall Street movement would compromise its essence and surrender its claim to representing “the 99%.”

For example, demanding a specific tax increase on large corporations or a clearly defined fiscal policy on Wall Street–within the framework of mainstream economics–would do little curb their power over society.Wall Street and other corporate interests have gained such influence over the political and economic sphere that any such maneuver would require the support of these institutions to succeed. Having the power to convert and move its capital anywhere in the world in an instant, Wall Street could easily adapt to new economic circumstances. Large corporations, using the money they have already accumulated, could likewise send their productive potential outside of the country. In short, operating within the mainstream political, economic, and social paradigm would be self-defeating.

The failure of this paradigm  is apparent in its inability to predict the economic crisis of 2008, while Libertarians like Ron Paul and Marxists such as David Harvey had a sense that the system was untenable.

More importantly, creating narrow demands would undoubtedly alienate individuals who, although they support the revolutionary spirit of Occupy Wall Street, may see certain demands as being counterproductive to the overall intent of this movement. If the group’s demands do not receive something like unanimous consent, leaders would have to take the charge and set the agenda. Such an organization has certainly worked for movements in the past, but conditions in the present seem to belie this kind of structure.

Solidarity was lead by the personality of Lech Walesa and individuals such as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were specific figures of inspiration within the Civil Rights Movement. These were all charismatic figures around whom personality cults formed and served as a source of inspiration and ideological cohesion.

Despite their effectiveness, Solidarity and the Civil Rights movement often did not represent “the 99%.” They represented certain classes of people who were clearly being oppressed within the legal framework of society. So they applied pragmatic political means, within the structure of their society, to achieve their ends. After taking power, Solidarity itself, as a political organization, succumbed to infighting among the leadership, causing its decline (Paradox of Change). Even Dr. King had to refrain from openly opposing the Vietnam War until after 1965, as doing so would have undermined support for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Occupy Wall Street has no definitive leaders, just familiar faces.

This movement is not about playing politics with actors in a broken system. It has emerged as a result of the inability of so-called “leaders” to deliver on their promises and fix these errors. The masses of unemployed, underpaid, or indebted are sick of these political games and are seeking to build a new system in which they are free to use their vast creative potential and are not subject to all of the crap being shoveled by our political institutions. The only option is to try to create a movement that stands outside of this paradigm.

Occupy Wall Street should be seen as continuation of the Arab Spring, like the protests in Wisconsin, the demonstrations against austerity measures in London, and the protests in Greece and Spain in May. This is a global protest against the current organization of power: one that is suppressing the power of most individuals through exceedingly complicated mechanisms which are run by only a few. But this movement may be even more than just a reaction to thirty years of lying by global elites that is to be considered only within the context of recent history. Perhaps it is the enduring idea that those in power, whether they are political, bureaucratic, financial, or industrial elites, must be held accountable for their actions. An expansion of democracy beyond polls and voting booths, following through with principles established during the Enlightenment. In this regard, it may be more appropriate to consider this movement as a part of a tradition that dates back to the revolutions of 1688, 1776 and 1789.

_____________________________

Photos by Mr. Matthew D’Elia. All rights reserved by the artist.

I avoided the enigma that is #OccupyWallStreet for nearly two weeks, despite it essentially taking place in my backyard. However, this past Friday I made my way down to Zuccotti Park around 2pm, to experience it for myself. Well, that is not completely true. I originally left work early on Friday, with a Canon 5D Mark II (with a 70-200mm 2.8 L lens) and Nikon D3s (with a 35mm f/1.4 lens) in hand (how’s that for democracy?!), at my boss’ suggestion, due to circulating  rumors that Radiohead would be performing in the park around 4pm. I was to shoot the show, if it happened, for Sound and Vision Magazine. Those rumors proved false—and that is probably for the best.

I ended up spending about 6 hours with “the movement,” on Friday, mingling about, talking to protesters, police officers, local shop owners, and bystanders alike. The day went a little something like this:

At 2pm I arrived in Zuccotti Park and found between 300-500 individuals present—most stood around one of two drum circles either dancing, playing instruments, or simply observing, while others were mulling around the makeshift sleeping areas, library, and media center.  Admittedly, the music coming from the circles was intoxicating.

By 4pm, the number of individuals in the park grew to somewhere around 3000, as a “General Assembly,” began to take place. The second and third image in this series are from that general assembly, which is a free-form open forum, in which anyone can address the crowd by shouting “Mic Check,” to which everyone in the park repeats back “Mic Check.” Messages are passed around the enormous crowd in a “telephone” like way—those standing nearest to you repeat the message back to you even louder, those who hear it then repeat it even louder to those even further away. It is by no means an ideal way to get information around, but worked surprisingly well.

By 5:00pm, the number of individuals in the park was probably somewhere between 4000 and 5000, excluding police officers. It was at this point I learned that the group was set to march down Broadway, 15 blocks, to One Police Plaza, in solidarity for those individuals who were allegedly beaten by police during a march the previous week.

By around 6pm, all 4000 to 5000 protestors had peacefully made it to One Police Plaza without any incident—their cheers upon entering the plaza were deafening. I stuck around there for another hour and a half before going back to my office.

You will notice several things in the images and audio slideshow that follow. First and foremost you will notice the immense diversity of those participating in this movement. That was by far what most impressed me. This is not a movement to support any cause in particular, in fact, I am not even sure you can call this a movement (however I will continue to as I don’t know any other name to call it).

The second thing you will notice is how dismayed, embarrassed and simply exhausted the NYPD looks in all of these images. All in all, I think the NYPD drew the short straw in all of this. Sure, a handful of police officers a week and a half ago may have abused their power and perhaps acted criminally, but in comparison to the number of times a day these protesters are marching, and the insane amount of man power it takes to keep everyone safe and traffic moving, the NYPD has beyond earned my respect. Every officer I encountered Friday was polite and courteous. In fact, I heard a protester use some pretty nasty language to a police officer who asked him to please stay off the street. The officer’s response? “Hey man, we are human too; we are just trying to keep you safe.”

I know 700 protestors were arrested Saturday for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. There are conflicting reports from several individuals, that police tricked the protestors, saying at first it was OK for them to march on the bridge, and then arrested them all. I find this very hard to believe. Every officer I encountered Friday made it very, very clear that IF you were to block traffic in anyway, you WOULD be arrested, no questions asked. To those protestors who now have to deal with NYC municipal court, many of which I probably spoke with the day before, you have my condolences, however you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Speaking of the NYPD, other things you will notice from the audio slideshow are that a large number of police officers were equipped with video cameras and documenting the protest. I can only assume that this is the NYPD’s response to backlash from the protestors’ and journalists’ videos showing uncalled-for and illegal brutality some day’s prior. Either way, it is very interesting.

All in all, a lot has been said about #OccupyWallStreet in the past two weeks, some of it true, some if it not. If you are curious what this movement is all about, I would highly recommend taking an afternoon and experiencing it for yourself. Overall, I must say, I am impressed with the courage and passion of those core individuals who are so dedicated to this. What they aim to change, when it will happen, how it will happen, they don’t even know. But they aren’t going away anytime soon, and I think that is a very good thing.

Watch Dan’s Audio Slideshow here:

#OccupyWallStreet Day 13 from Dan Bracaglia on Vimeo.

Original Photography by Dan Bracaglia:

Dan Bracaglia is a NYC-based photographer and a former Rutgers student. His favorite instrument is the tuba. You can see some of his other images at TheLondonBroil.com. All rights reserved by the artist.

Time was before planning for the automobile. With the automobile-based development, or sprawl, came the demise of the mom-and-pop stores upon which the entire structure of capitalism was based. Hardly anybody walks from their house to the store anymore and, if you tried to sell anything from your house today, you would be cited for a zoning violation. Your neighbors deserted the local stores when the national stores started opening up branches “convenient” to the highway. Some of the national chains moved into the vacated storefronts, got the town to knock down some other houses with storefronts, and to seize the backyards by eminent domain so they could put up a parking lot to “serve” Main Street. The local manufacturing companies got fewer orders, none from the national retail chains, of course. As those companies failed, the remaining local stores started stocking fewer local items, until you couldn’t tell the difference between the mom-and-pops and the chains. The only real difference was the mom-and-pops were less convenient to the automobile driver. The mom-and-pops become denigrated even as they try to conform to sprawl. People actually talk about a new chain store opening up as if that was something to be proud of. At that point, capitalism is dead in their town. To be certain, there are, here and there, some vestiges of capitalism left, though they may strike us as unremarkable. It was always misleading to characterize capitalism as a road to unfathomable riches. People confuse it with debt and global mercantilism, with the creditor sultans oppressing their people, which is very much in evidence.

The Localsville Canned Beans company was bought up by investors from out-of-town using borrowed money — it was purchased in a leveraged buyout by General Foods — and General Foods now grows and cans the Localsville Canned Beans in South America. The plant is closed and the people in Localsville, those who are left, now work and shop in the Walmart down Highway 666. They had to cancel the parade this year. They didn’t choose a Localsville Canned Beans Queen, either.

Copyright © 2011 by C. P. Klapper

Labor Gains in Tuesday’s Election

TRENTON – Charles Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO representing one million union members, today pointed to Linda Greenstein’s capture of a 14^th District State Senate seat held by Republicans for two decades as a referendum on Governor Christie’s policies and as evidence of organized labor’s electoral strength.

“Governor Christie himself said on Sunday that ‘the most important race in New Jersey was  Tom Goodwin in the 14^th District’,” Wowkanech noted. “We agree. And yesterday, voters in the 14^th District agreed and said no to Chris Christie and his policies. We delivered a message on Election Night that solidarity in the labor movement is as strong as ever in New Jersey.”

In addition to Greenstein’s election as the first woman senator from the 14^th District, Wowkanech cited solid wins by Democratic Congressmen Frank Pallone and Rush Holt, the overwhelming passage of a labor-spearheaded constitutional amendment to protect employee benefit funds from improper raids, and the victories of state Senator Donald Norcross and 60 percent of union members running for state and local office as evidence of labor strength on Tuesday.

“Union members knocked on 160,000 doors across the state before Election Day, and we focused our Get-Out-the-Vote efforts on Election Day where they would be most-needed in the Greenstein, Pallone and Holt races in central New Jersey and Congressman John Adler’s race in South Jersey. We were disappointed by Adler’s narrow loss, but overall it was a good day for labor.”

Wowkanech noted that the state AFL-CIO endorsed candidates from both parties. “We had over a thousand union members going door-to-door in the 14^th District handing out flyers urging the reelection of Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who has been a real friend of labor for years, and Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, who has a 100 percent pro-labor voting record, for the state Senate.”

Greenstein defeated incumbent Republican Senator Tom Goodwin in a race that both candidates made a referendum on Christie’s policies. Ironically, Goodwin was appointed to fill the seat previously held by Bill Baroni. “Bill Baroni was one of the strongest Republican allies of labor in the Legislature, and our state AFL-CIO endorsed him when he ran,” Wowkanech noted. “Hopefully, Linda Greenstein’s election sends a message to Christie that voters care about jobs and the economy.”

Wowkanech noted that the state AFL-CIO pushed hard for the Legislature to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot that will ban future raids on employee benefit funds like Unemployment Insurance and Temporary Disability Insurance funds.

He also said he was especially proud of the victories of 31 union members who attended the AFL-CIO Labor Candidates School in their races for State Senate, mayor, council and township committee.

“We know it’s important that labor has a voice not only in the federal and state government, but at the local level as well,” Wowkanech said. “We were excited to see Helen Dela Cruz of SEIU Local 1199 and Sean Sharkey of UFCW Local 152 win seat on the Lacey Township Committee in the heart of Republican Ocean County. Jason Allen of CWA Local 1036 won a big upset in Pemberton, and Bert Steinmann of IBEW 269 scored a big victory in the mayoral race in Ewing.”

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO’s initiative to groom union members to run for office at the grass roots level, which was profiled in The New York Times last week, is the only Labor Candidates School in the nation, but other state AFL-CIO chapters have been considering implementing it in their states.

“The Florida AFLC-CIO sent Stacy Stepanovich up to our Labor Candidates School in August, and she was so excited by it that she went back and managed the campaign for Dan Hunt of IBEW Local 756 for City Council in DeBary, Florida,” Wowkanech said. “Stacy called to say he won. We’re glad to see our program bearing fruit in other states.”

“Unfortunately, snow records are not lengthy or complete at most locations around the state, but I am confident in stating that most locations established new monthly snowfall records for any winter month in at least the past 130 years.” [2]

Then there was the rain. The Raritan River rose several feet, burying several acres of riverside park, and several tens of thousands of trees.  “Except for central and northern New Jersey, rivers across the Mid-Atlantic are back within their banks, ending the flooding.”[3] An interesting video of a flooded Raritan-side Exxon can be found posted to Moxietoday.com, here; draw your own conclusions. Power was cut to several businesses and buildings from George Street in New Brunswick to Route 27 in Edison and beyond.  My own place of employment, Legal Grounds, didn’t open for lack of electricity. It was a hell of a job to remove the perishables to a safe location. Even as I write, some businesses and houses still wait to regain power.

All of this poor weather comes out of nowhere. Certainly, this is an exceptionally difficult way to start the year. The implications of the loss in revenue workers and businesses have sustained as a result of inclement weather have yet to fully appear. I know I missed several days of work when I could have used the hours.

And it’s not over yet. As a result of the massive February snowfall, a huge amount of precipitation still lingers in the area. As we approach spring, that moister will continue to bounce around between the upper hemisphere and the ground. If you haven’t already, go out and buy a raincoat and an umbrella, before you wish you had.

New Jersey, facing a massive budget deficit and an equally massive impending government spending cut, was perhaps the state hit hardest by the bad weather, cutting deeper into Jersey’s infrastructure maintenance budget.  As President Obama completes his first term, rarely seen weather conditions have everyone’s minds on climate change. As people struggle with an unprecedented recession, an unusual number of shifts are lost. Peoples’ nerves are stretched to the breaking point…It is certainly an interesting time to be alive…

Below, you will find a  94 picture slide show, just some photos I snapped while walking around New Brunswick these past weeks and days. They are by no means professional. The first set deals with the snow. Notice how everyone was walking in the streets that day for lack of a sidewalk. The second set deals with the rain and flooding, while the third depicts some of its aftermath. Make sure you note the difference in the water levels of the Raritan. To enlarge the slide show to full screen, click the bottom left hand corner. You can also pause, play or scroll through the show. Enjoy.

[1] New Jersey State Climatologist of the Rutgers University Center for Environmental Prediction, and School of Environmental and Biological Sciences/NJAES

[2] http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/?section=menu&%20target=feb10

[3] http://www.weather.com/newscenter/stormwatch/

There are two forms of government economic policy: monetary and fiscal. Monetary policy is conducted by a central bank, or the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States, while fiscal policy is conducted by the Department of the Treasury and the Legislative Branch.  This article will examine both forms and evaluate their relative effectiveness in promoting economic activity and growth in times of recession.

Monetary policy is conducted in a single fashion: the raising and lowering of interest rates.  Specifically, the Federal Reserve targets a single interest rate known as the Federal Funds Rate.  This is the interest rate that commercial banks charge each other on overnight loans.  This in turn will partially determine the values of most other interest rates in the economy.  The Federal Reserve affects the Fed Funds Rate by means of supply and demand.  The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (one of the twelve banks that comprise the Federal Reserve system) holds what are known as open market operations wherein they buy or sell large quantities of securities.  Through these operations, the Federal Reserve is able to modify the portfolio composition of commercial banks to achieve the desired levels of liquidity.  When they purchase large quantities of securities, they are replacing less liquid securities with fully liquid cash.  This has the effect of pumping additional cash into the commercial banking system, and by increasing the supply of loanable funds, they are able to lower the price of those funds (the interest rate).  The counterpart of this is to sell large volumes of securities; this sale removes liquid cash from the commercial banking system and replaces it with less-liquid assets.  This reduces the amount of loanable funds in the system, thereby raising the price (the interest rate).

The general level of interest rates has an effect on economic activity.  When interest rates are low, the cost of borrowing money goes down and more people are induced to borrow in order to spend or invest.  This leads to economic growth and spurs inflationary pressure.  Conversely, when interest rates are high the cost of borrowing increases which tends to reduce investment and spending, leading to decreased economic output and deflationary pressure.  Alternatively, when interest rates are low there is a small premium to saving, which should induce individuals to consume more and save less.  Similarly, when interest rates are high, there is a large premium to saving, which should induce individuals to shift their earnings from consumption into savings.

The fiscal policy can take one of two forms.  These forms are tax cuts and government spending.  Each tends to have a similar effect, but one is clearly superior to the other from an economic standpoint.  Tax cuts and spending both aim to increase output by stimulating demand.  The increased demand will cause firms to increase production and thereby hire additional employees and rent additional capital.

The key characteristic of fiscal policy is something known as the “Fiscal Multiplier”.  This is the multiplicative effect of fiscal policy on overall economic output.  The key concept behind understanding this is an individual trait known as the marginal propensity to consume.  The marginal propensity to consume is the fraction of an additional dollar of income that an individual will choose to spend on consumption.  The marginal propensity to save is the remaining fraction, which the individual chooses to save.

The story behind the fiscal multiplier goes like this: suppose an individual receives an additional $100.  Let us assume that this individual’s marginal propensity to consume is 0.9.  That is, he will spend $90 of that original $100.  For the sake of numerical simplicity, let us assume that all agents in the economy have an identical marginal propensity to consume.  The first individual, let us call him A, will spend that $90 at a store owned by B.  B then sees an additional income of $90, and will decide to spend $81.  This $81 is now income to individual C, who will spend 90 percent of it and so forth and so forth.  From this simple example, we can see that the overall effect of that $100 on economic output is much more than $100.  In this example, the multiplier takes the form of a geometric series and would take a value of 10.  In fact, the greater the marginal propensity to consume, the greater the value of the fiscal multiplier will be.

This understanding allows us to compare the relative effects of tax cuts or government spending.  Let us again compare a tax cut of $100 and government spending of $100, where agents are assumed to have a marginal propensity to consume of 0.9.  The tax cut will be returned to an individual, who will then spend $90 of it, and the multiplicative effect will begin from the initial outlay of $90.  With government spending, however, that initial $100 is completely spent beginning the multiplicative spiral from there.  Thus it is easy to see that government spending will have a larger overall multiplier than tax cuts due to the fact that the public will save a fraction of the initial tax cut which will then not experience the expansionary effect of the multiplier.  Another caveat about tax cuts is that they tend to accrue to the wealthy, who are much less likely to spend this additional income than working or lower-class individuals.  When an individual’s basic needs are met, he or she will be more willing to save additional income, thereby lowering their marginal propensity to consume.

An extension of this investigation into the fiscal multiplier suggests that the optimal way to conduct fiscal policy is to spend on infrastructure and education and to increase transfer payments to the poor and unemployed, rather than to simply cut taxes.  The poor and unemployed are least likely to have their basic needs met and thus will be more likely to spend any additional income they receive.  In other words, the poor and unemployed should have the greatest marginal propensity to consume and will have the greatest stimulatory effect on the economy.

There are some who claim that government spending cannot increase output because it is merely taking a dollar away from private consumption and allocating it to public consumption.  Therefore, the total amount of consumption has not changed, merely the composition of consumption.  This argument is technically correct, but only if certain conditions are satisfied and certain assumptions hold.  In reality, they almost never hold.  The argument rests on the assumption that the economy is in a perfectly competitive equilibrium with full-employment, that all resources are fully-utilized, and that unemployment is never involuntary.  It is easy to see that these conditions are almost never satisfied; in fact, it is possible to say that they are never satisfied when fiscal policy is being viewed as a potential option.  In fact, this line of logic would explain the Great Depression as occurring because a quarter of the U.S. workforce decided to take an extended vacation.

The argument that government spending “crowds out” private spending is an interesting one that deserves greater scrutiny.  The late British economist John Maynard Keynes expounded upon this argument in a manner that is worth repeating.  If we are to assume that government spending merely shifts capital from one use to another, and thereby cannot increase the total level of output, then let us extend that argument to private firms.  If a private firm wishes to increase its investment and build up capital, it must be that it can only do so by taking capital away from some other productive use, and therefore can neither increase employment nor output.  This is obviously incorrect, and I doubt that there are any economists who would craft such an argument.  But it shows that the only way the “crowding out” effect of government spending can be validated is if the economy is at full-employment or we treat the government as a fundamentally different economic creature than private firms.

There is no reason why we should think of firms as being different from the government.  Both seek to maximize the profits accrued to their shareholders.  In the case of the government, it is not monetary dividends that accrue to the shareholders (the public) but rather dividends in the form of security.  That security could come in the form of national security, financial security through a safety net, or even health security if we manage to enact meaningful healthcare reform such as a single-payer system.  The government also provides basic services to the populace in the form of roads, airports, parks, museums, public education, municipal police and fire departments, and more.

However, fiscal policy is generally a second choice of the government, which uses monetary policy as the first tool in the toolbox.  This is perhaps due to the fact that the Federal Reserve is an independent entity which can act without seemingly endless deliberation and posturing by Congress.  However, when monetary policy loses all traction, as is the case now when the target federal funds rate is 0.25%, then fiscal policy must step in to fill that void.  Thus is important to know how to compare the different forms of fiscal policy by means of their estimated multiplier.

According to congressional testimony by Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s, the highest estimated multiplier for any form of tax cuts was 1.29.  In contrast, research done by Christina Romer, the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated the multiplier on government spending to be approximately 1.5.  Additionally, the most effective form of government spending, an increase in food stamps to the needy, had an estimated multiplier of about 1.7.  Furthermore, recent research done by Gautti Eggerttson of the New York Federal Reserve Bank has estimated that when facing the zero interest rate lower bound (as we do today), the multiplier of fiscal policy increases to approximately 2.  He explains this as due to the fact that people find the Central Bank’s promises of price inflation targeting to be no longer credible as they cannot lower interest rates any further, and people do not expect them to raise rates given the economic climate.  If people feel that the government cannot respond to inflation (by raising interest rates), then they might decide to purchase consumption goods now before prices rise.

Thus it can be seen that economic policy by the government can be useful in periods of recession in order to help jump-start economic activity, as well as in expansionary periods to curtail inflationary pressure.  The appropriate mechanism is always case-dependent.  There is no economic policy panacea that is suitable for all environments.  Monetary policy should be the first line of policy in order to deliver quick stuns and jolts to the economy; but when monetary policy fails, fiscal policy must take its place in the form of massive stimulus spending in order to pull the economy out of a deep rut.

Thumbnail image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License,  from http://www.freefoto.com/download/04-28-36?ffid=04-28-36. Thanks guys!

With every daunting question she broke down my enthusiasm until after half an hour, it dissipated, leaving only a bitter taste of regret and tobacco.

I told her how many resumes I had sent out, how many emails I’d written, how many job sites I perused.  I told her my hopes of being employed at an advertising company.  I even told her my dreams of writing and directing movies.  She, with quick raps of her evil tongue, asked me some things:

She asked me; why do you only have one internship?  What extracurricular activities were you a part of at Syracuse?  What else did you do?  How well did you do in the English program?  What’s your GPA?  And out of major?  How are you creative?  Have you written a screenplay?  Have you been a part of a movie? Do you honestly think advertising is the correct stepping-stone industry for a career in movies?  What have you been doing since you graduated?  Are you part of any organizations in New Jersey?  Do you write with your right or left hand?  Is your mother half Japanese?  Was Dennis Quaid fucking serious when he made Enemy Mine (1985) or was that a fucking joke?

Questions that burned a hole through my head like an Amish girl.[1] I had no way of answering most of them, if you can I guess you already have a job.  I could not for the life of me tell her what I was good at AND back it up with fact.  I’d say things like “I am a creative person.”  She’d say “Why and how are you?”  “I… am creative… in everyday situations.  I rolled this massive cone out of newspaper and receipts, though I’m sure we all got obscure lung disease.”  I turned into a dumbass real fast.  I then had the balls to tell her that I could communicate well in oral and written fashions.  “Your dreams are fantasies and your life is in shambles.”  That’s how she said good-bye to me.

Do I continue?  Do I wrap the Ethernet cord ever so gently around my neck and pull ever so greatly?  It will pass, my mother says; like a winter’s night, a cold, long, desolate and lonely night.  Sunlight will grace the shores of my watery disposition (not because I pissed myself but because I’m crying, I guess) to once again proliferate the unified self that is Ali Riaz.

But for right now, I’m fuckin’ depressed and devoid of hope.  The destruction train rumbled passed egotism station, passed through the self-aggrandizing tunnel, and left me an introvert, sitting alone at the back, wondering which emotionally charged landmark would pass me next.

[1] Ok so some kid on Call of Duty Online tried to tell me that Amish girls have a hole or a dot [he didn’t specify] on their heads.  When I confronted him about the subject all he kept repeating (in usual online fashion) was “You’re fucking retarded, faggot, you don’t know that Amish girls have holes on their heads?  You say you went to college?  Your mom is gay, look it up.”  So I did.  I got something about “gay hole girl” and “human head inside woman ass pics of teens with pear breasts.”  Some would say this search is inconclusive; others would say he got Amish girls confused with Indian girls with pear breasts….

This week, I decided to explore a topic with which I am not very familiar, but which I hope to learn more about in the course of our discussions. My topic will be currency. The continued economic forecasting by leading libertarian thinkers including Lew Rockwell, economist Peter Schiff, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul are deeply concerned with currency, and warrant further investigation. Said predictions include impending super-inflation and a near-worthless US dollar in America, as well as a deeply worsening global financial situation. If correct, these predictions give way to a rapid divergence between the richest classes of the world and the rest of the population. Such a situation would not only drastically unhinge any embedded institutionalized egalitarianism, or what David Harvey has called “embedded liberalism”, in governments around the world, but could potentially produce a global environment unable to sustain increased, or even contemporary population levels. Such horrendous dooms day claims warrant some degree of investigation before we accept them lightly. Ultimately, I believe the validity of such predictions hinge upon how currency functions. Herein, I will pose to you my initial reflections on the issue. Please include your own at the bottom—mine are by no means exhaustive.

I’ll start from the beginning. Currency, or coined money, began as a tool for facilitating trade. As a replacement to the barter system, it constitutes an extraordinary mathematic, technological and economic achievement for humanity. For the first time, trade could take place to an extremely minute degree of accuracy: instead of two and a half goats for a cow, a goat could cost 4 gold coins, a cow 10. The result would be a massive technological and social expansion, the likes of which human kind had never before seen.

Of course, in the early days, the technology used was some kind of hard material, gold or silver coins, usually made and distributed by a ruling government. This provided a standard upon which the markets could operate functionally, allowing for wealth accumulation and economic growth. But there can only be so much gold in the world, and as accumulation continued, it soon became clear that something other than hard minerals themselves would have to be developed.

This led us to paper money. Bills of currency, literally representations of a hard asset (in the US, gold and silver) were distributed to further facilitate trade. However, these bills, while themselves literally worthless paper, were completely backed by the hard assets they claimed to represent (at least in theory). Issues arose in the early American colonies when each state devised its own standard of paper money, its own notes. This resulted in a huge hindrance to interstate trade. Eventually, a continental dollar was devised to standardize currency, and enable trade across state lines.

Up until the 1940’s in the US, you could literally trade in cash for gold at your local bank. That mechanism was withdrawn by F. D. R. for reasons related to the war. Then, in 1944, the Bretton-Woods conference was convened. Here, world leaders (read Western leaders) assembled to discuss a new economic model for world order. According to the plan, all world currency would be pegged to the US dollar, which in turn was to maintain a stable gold-exchange rate of $35 to the ounce. Economic order was to be propped up by US military strength. The Bretton-Woods plan had major implications for the global economy. For one, it immediately elevated the US to the pinnacle of global power, by making the US dollar the world’s reserve currency. For another, it provided America with enemies in any nation unwilling to comply with that order—most obviously the USSR. But, as a system, it was also essentially flawed. It would not allow for pressures on the dollar’s exchange rate, including the necessity of an expanding money supply, and some nations, prominently France, began trading US dollars in for gold, as a means of “hedging their bets” as it were. Finally, in 1971, President Nixon removed the US Dollar from the gold standard altogether, severing the last remaining link for the dollar to any hard currency. Today, every global currency is what we call fiat, Latin for let it be. That is, global currency is backed by nothing.

But it’s interesting to consider what could happen in a society where technology could potentially make coined and paper money completely obsolete. The inventions of the computer, the internet, the magnetic -swipe card, and the SmartChip allow for just such a potentiality. Since the rise of plastic credit and debit cards, paper money has, more and more become obsolete, to the point where, in theory at least, all monetary exchanges could take place in society without the use of paper money. Let’s consider this claim: as I see it, there are two major kinds of legitimate transactions people can undertake. The first major set already takes place today in this way, between consumers and established business. In almost any store in the US, credit and debit cards can be used to purchase an item. There is another set of legitimate transactions which, at least as far as infrastructure is concerned, the US is not yet set up to deal with: those between consenting private individuals. If the government didn’t print money, how could we be expected to play poker every Saturday, or pay our local “lawn technicians”? Clearly, without cash, such transactions seem impossible.

But there is a solution. If cell phones were engineered to accept SmartChips, these sort of casual transactions could take place—perhaps even to a greater degree of security (imagine having to activate voice recognition and/or fingerprint analysis on your phone in order to make a transaction). Of course, the implementation of such a model would not happen overnight—it would take time, like the transition to EZ Pass on the highways. But it is a model of which we are capable today.

Why would we want to adopt such a model? Well for one, by digitizing money, the population dissolves the necessity of governmental monopoly of the money supply. Because everyone would possess the technological capability to make transaction, the requirement of a standardized currency would be lost. As a result, sellers could accept currencies of any form, simply at the swipe of a card. This would lead to the establishment of independent currency suppliers, who could back their currencies with…whatever they wanted, leaving the consumer to decide which to use. Further, competition between currencies could temper situations of financial chaos, by providing alternatives to the standard; consumers would have the option of a safe-haven in other currencies not necessarily backed by a government, but by private accumulation, and so avoid pervasive runaway inflation. A problem with one currency would not translate to the entire nation, and so efficiency would be improved. Today, the quality of a nation’s currency can be considered the make-or-break factor in the livelihood of its people. Citizens of a nation with a strong national currency will have higher quality lives, while a volatile national currency evokes a volatile living condition for its citizens. But competition between currencies could alleviate this stress on the nation. In addition, such systems could facilitate exchange between countries, which in so doing would facilitate the move to a global community heralded by increased globalization.

But there are reasons for not wanting to proceed in this fashion. For one, the changeover could produce situations of unprecedented chaos. Serious and thorough efforts would be needed to regulate currencies in such a system, in order to provide for the safety of the population. Perhaps such matters are better left in the hands of governments, which are (sometimes) accountable to the people—perhaps more so than corporations. In addition, paper money provides the consumer with a very valuable feature: privacy. All transactions which take place between individuals in cash are virtually untraceable, especially when compared to computerized transactions. This reason, more than any other, makes me take pause.

Much more can be said on this topic, and so I’m going to further explore it in future articles. But for now, I think it functions as a fine introduction to a topic we should all be talking about. I’d like to know what you all think about my points, and raise any others of concern to you. In this way, we will address the issue further, together.

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The Popular Capitalist View

With the recent announcement of the retirement of Justice Souter from the Supreme Court and the new and awkward position of Lieutenant Governor for the State of New Jersey, it seems a good time to consider issues of representation and balance of powers. These had taken shape in my own mind over two years ago as a proposed Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, but there are clear implications for New Jersey that will also, hopefully, materialize as a New Jersey Constitutional Amendment.

In both the State and Federal arenas, we have weak sub-executive positions and judicial arms which are or will become subservient to the party in power. The Federal position is, perhaps, slightly stronger than the State’s in design, by virtue of the Presidency of the Senate being held by the Vice-President, while there is no such provision for the Lieutenant Governor. This stronger Federal provision doubtless resulted from the Vice President’s original role as the “loyal opposition”–the runnerup in the Presidential election. It is that role which I seek to restore and to further with its use by introducing a greater countervailing power into the judicial branch of government. A similar approach in New Jersey would give a usefulness and purpose to the Lieutenant Governor post. In addition, both the federal and state judiciaries would gain a greater independence from the chief executive, increasing the longer the same person holds that office and their chief rival holds the sub-executive slot.

The interest to the populist, and hence the popular capitalist, in all of this is to both limit the power of government over individuals and to maximize the enfranchisement and representation of all people within that government. A strong sub-executive representing the chief political minority and an independent judiciary which protects minority interests from the incursions of the politically dominant groups, these both extend enfranchisement and representation far beyond the majority or plurality which would otherwise rule a democracy. The other provisions extend representation even further, to the residents of the District of Columbia and the youth, and limit the taxation of military service from being imposed on those who have not been represented in the policies that require their active service.

So, without further ado, here is my proposed Amendment to the United States Constitution on the subject of Representation:

1. The twelfth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

2. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect a number of Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, by an at-large election where the top vote-getters are chosen to serve as Representatives, and also one Senator elected at-large.

3. The General Election Day will be a holiday in the United States.

4. The election of President and Vice-President is amended as follows:

1. For purposes of nominating a field of candidates for President of the United States:

i. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, two Nominators;

ii. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect Nominators in the same number and manner as their election of Representatives and Senator; and

iii. The people of each House District in the States shall elect a Nominator for their district.

iv. No Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed or elected a Nominator.

v. The election of the Nominators shall be held on the second Tuesday of May in the year prior to the start of the next Presidential term. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.

vi. On the second Tuesday of July of that same year, the Nominators shall meet in general assembly in the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States to nominate and then select from those nominations a field of five candidates for President of the United States.

1. The Proceedings of the Nominator College are presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

2. At the start of this assembly, each nominator will nominate a distinct and eligible candidate for President.

3. Successive ballots will be taken, with each Nominator casting only one vote per Ballot, until the first ballot where the top five vote-getters have together received at least ninety percent of the votes of the Nominators.

4. Those top five vote-getters constitute the field of five candidates for President of the United States.

2. The people of the United States shall elect the President, from among the five candidates nominated by the Nominator College, in a popular election to be held on the second Tuesday in September of that same year. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.

3. The top two vote-getters of the September Presidential Election will become the candidates for a run-off Presidential Election to be held with the general election on the second Tuesday in November.

4. The candidate getting the most votes will become President-elect and the runnerup will become Vice-President-elect.

5. There shall be nine justices of the Supreme Court, each serving a term of nine years, with nine classes at one year intervals. They shall be appointed by the Vice-President serving at the time of vacancy created, either by completion of a term or by mid-term vacancies, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Justice serving the last year of his term will be the Chief Justice for that year.

1. Existing Justices as of passage of this amendment will be placed in the nine classes based on seniority, the Justice with the greatest seniority being in the class with the most recently expiring term and the Justice with the least seniority being in the class with the term set to expire last.

6. The right of citizens of the United States, who are thirteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State or District on account of age.

7. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for two Years an Inhabitant of that State or District in which he shall be chosen.

8. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been twelve Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for seven years an Inhabitant of that State or District for which he shall be chosen.

9. No Person shall be compelled or allowed to serve in the military of the United States or of any State who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.

10. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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