ARTS & FARCES internet

So, the US Republicans in both houses of Congress want to reduce the duration of unemployment benefits while imposing strict new qualifying requirements. Just as they adjourn without getting anything done this session.

US Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)—the senior Republican on the Finance Committee—tells Robert Pear, writing for the New York Times, “I don’t see why you have to go more than 59 weeks. In fact, we need some incentives for people to get back to work. A lot of these people don’t want to work unless they get really high-paying jobs, and they’re not going to get them ever. So they just stay home and watch television. I don’t mean to malign people, but far too many are doing that.”

Well yes, Senator, you clearly did mean to malign people.

We need a national referendum to reduce congressional salaries to 10 percent less than the nation’s median income. That would be about US$26,000, Senator Hatch. Think of the 10 percent as an incentive. Then we’ll see who’s sitting around watching television. Fact is, there are no jobs—high-paying or otherwise.

The problem, Senator, is that you can no longer get any work done or even budge because so many of the one percenters have crawled up your ass and nested. Right out of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

The producers of the television show Law and Order Special Victims Unit painstakingly recreated a simulacrum of the original Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Zuccotti Park encampment in Foley Square for an episode of the series. Within hours, the simulacrum was, well, occupied.

The simulacrum included the OWS kitchen, library, and a collection of tents and tarps. Josh Harkinson, writing for Mother Jones, breaks the story with a quote from Jake De Groot, one of the OWS organizers: “They’ve delivered us this perfectly wrapped Christmas present with a bow on top: They rebuilt our camp. How could we not go and take it?”

Here’s Harkinson’s video of the re-occupation:

Elizabeth Warren served as assistant to the president and special advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s also the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Now she’s a candidate for the US Senate from Massachusetts.

Warren did a far better job than I could do setting the record straight on class warfare and about how capitalism works in the US at an August event in Andover, MA:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

US Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is hands down one of my five favorite politicians. Always has been, although I’m puzzled about why he remains a Democrat. His home state of Ohio is losing two seats in the US House of Representatives and his district will likely be eliminated in the state’s redistricting.

After seven terms, Kucinich would almost certainly be out of a job.

Not to be deterred, Kucinich is considering running for the US Congress from Washington State next year. Washington is gaining a seat in the US House of Representatives and Dennis the Menace’s two presidential campaigns have done exceedingly well in Washington.

This kind of district hopping is somewhat common—on a local level—with the redistricting that comes after each census. But it’s rare for politicians to make this kind of a relocation to remain in office. Carl Hulse, writing for the New York Times, reports that more than 40 years ago Texas Republican Ed Foreman lost re-election and then won a single term in New Mexico.

While the Washington electorate seems to be welcoming Kucinich, the party regulars are not impressed. “Washingtonians are not going to be receptive to a sitting congressman from Ohio filing for office in our state,” Democratic party chair Dwight Pelz tells Hulse.

Should political candidates be homegrown? Seattle is much, much different than Cleveland with just as different political needs. Can a rust-belt politico adequately represent suburban ecotopia? Who knows. It’s going to be interesting to see how Kucinich’s fundraising changes should he make the move to Washington. His top five contributors since 1996 have been the Machinists/Aerospace Workers union, United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, United Food & Commercial Workers Union, and the Teamsters Union. Hulse reports that when a woman asked Kucinich just that during his Washington exploration, he replied, “Where people live is always interesting. Where they stand is quite instructive.”