Obama’s Vision versus Economic Reality

By Shamus Cooke

The farce of the “choice” between Obama and Romney is confirmed by the Democrats continuing their push to implement policies that can only be described as Republican.

Barack Obama: Without a doubt, one of the greatest and most insidious demagogs America has produced.

It took less than 24 hours for Obama’s “inspiring” convention speech to be smothered by the reality of the job crisis. The August national jobs report showed that the U.S. economy failed to create enough new jobs to keep up with population growth. More importantly, in August 368,000 Americans completely dropped out of the labor force, meaning that they’ve given up looking for a job (this ironically “lowered” the unemployment numbers, since demoralized workers aren’t counted in the official rate).

Most of the jobs created in August were low paying, such as retail, hotel, and restaurant jobs. Higher paying manufacturing and government jobs were once again cut by the thousands. These statistics are in line with Obama’s tenure as president and will continue if he is re-elected. In fact, they are the result of a conscious policy that he is pursuing in the interests of the profits of big business, who are demanding lower wages from workers. As Obama has repeatedly said, the government is not in the job-creating business.

According to a study performed by the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of all new post-recession jobs come with hourly wages between $7.69 to $13.83. A worker would need two of these jobs just to afford rent, food, and other basics.

The New York Times commented on the “new normal” of low wage jobs:

The disappearance of midwage [living wage], midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs.

This “hollowing out” of the workforce is — along with high unemployment — the most striking feature of the “new normal” of the American workforce. A new generation of youth entering the labor market is not finding secure jobs and decent wages but unemployment and wage slavery. Republicans and Democrats are completely silent on this all important subject because they agree that it is necessary.

The Democrats attack on public employees confirms that this dynamic is being purposely done: over 600,000 public employees have lost their jobs since 2009. Most of these workers were paid a living wage and had health care and pension plans. Their private sector replacement jobs that Obama boasts about pay peanuts and more often than not have no additional health or retirement benefits. The Obama administration understands perfectly well that these public sector layoffs could have been prevented by government action, but undermining employment and the wages of public employees is one way to drive down wages for everyone else. Together these trends lower the need for taxes and raise corporate profits.

The attack on unions is yet more proof that the low wage syndrome is a self-induced illness: Democratic Party governors across the country have demanded major wage and benefit concessions from public employees. And while the Democrats blame the Republicans for being “anti-union,” the concessions demanded by the Democrats drastically weaken unions to the point that Republicans can finish them off. For example, the Democrats in Chicago are presently preparing to smash the Chicago Teachers Union, if they can, by demanding massive concessions. The teachers will have to fight, not only for their standard of living, but for the survival of their union.

One of Obama’s proudest achievements — “saving” General Motors — is yet more proof that the Democrats have a conscious plan to lower wages. The administration’s Auto Task Force helped in the layoffs of 35,000 autoworkers while slashing the wages of the new hires by half as well as deepening the cuts in health care and pension benefits. This action created a precedent that other corporations were eager to copy in order to remain “competitive.”

Another example of Obama’s push to lower wages is his purposeful lack of action to solve the unemployment crisis. Obama is perfectly aware that he could — like FDR before him — massively invest in a national jobs program rebuilding U.S. infrastructure, putting teachers back to work, and ideally transitioning to green energy sources. President Obama hasn’t done this, in part, because doing so would raise the wages of all workers, and it would need to be funded by the people who fund his campaign the most, the rich, since they are the only ones with money to spare.

The labor market works like every other market, according to the rules of supply and demand. When there is high unemployment the supply of workers outstrips the demand, and thus workers’ wages drop. The administration is using unemployment as a hammer against the wages of U.S. workers. Lowering the wages of public sector employees works the same way: if public employees have higher wages, the private sector must compete with the public sector by attracting workers with similar wages.

When unions are strong and demand higher wages, they are able to alter the national labor market so that it acts more favorably towards workers: non-union companies must compete for workers by raising wages. When the labor movement is weak — as it is now — the exact opposite dynamic takes hold.

Why is President Obama hell-bent on lowering wages for the U.S. workers? He was very clear about this in his acceptance speech, with his repeated reference to increasing U.S. exports for the world market. The rub, however, is that China, India, and other low wage countries also compete on this same world market, and the workers in those countries make horribly low wages. But in the last four years the U.S. corporations that aim to compete with these low wage nations have made spectacular “progress” in driving down the wages of their workers. Thus Obama can brag about his “achievement” of increasing U.S. exports.

Democrats and Republicans agree that no national jobs program should be implemented, that unions should be weakened or destroyed, that the public sector should be slashed and its workers’ wages cut. Both parties want U.S. corporations to compete better on the world market, requiring that U.S. workers make lower and lower wages. This is the fundamental economic issue being ignored in the mainstream media.

Workers must fight back in massive demonstrations to demand a federal jobs program and a consequent strengthening of the public sector, lest their issues be completely ignored in a national election that is promising them nothing. They should insist that taxes on the rich be raised, given that the rich are continually becoming richer while the rest of us are losing ground. They should demand no cuts to Social Security and Medicare and that the attack on public workers and their unions stop immediately. Workers can accomplish all this and more if they stop waiting and hoping for help from the Democrats and begin to build their own independent movement to fight for the interests of the majority.

http://www.nelp.org/index.php/content/content_about_us/tracking_the_recovery_after_the_great_recession

http://workerscompass.org/obamas-vision-versus-economic-reality/

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Hypocrisy Not Democracy in America

•••
“America’s choice in November is none. Bad as things are now expect worse. Bipartisan complicity assures it.”

It ought to be called American hypocrasy—The Eds

By Stephen Lendman

Marco Rubio: the GOP’s Latin “dark horse” being groomed for future contests.

Fact check

True to form, The Times offered a litany of lies. Bankers, other corporate favorites, and war profiteers fared handsomely. They still do. America’s 99% got stiff-armed. Most US households were thrown under the bus. Virtually no jobs were created. Full-time/good pay and benefit ones are disappearing. Real unemployment approaches 23%. In the Great Depression, it reached 25%. Serious efforts were made then to reduce it. Virtually nothing is done now.

US Census figures confirm half or more of US households living in poverty or bordering on it. Record numbers need food stamps to survive. Congress plans cuts when they’re more than ever needed.

Feeding America says over 50 million Americans face hunger. One in six people are affected, including over one in five children. Political Washington ignores food insecurity. Serving corporate interests and imperial warmongers alone matter.

Duplicitous political convention rhetoric was enough to make a brash brigand blush. Banality took center stage. Demagogic deception hid reactionary extremism.

Convention delegates and ordinary people inhabit worlds apart. Pre-scripted yammering was predictable. Republicans showed contempt for human needs. Phony populism hid a similar Democrat agenda.

Privilege alone matters. Ordinary folks increasingly are on their own sink or swim. Obama’s first term reflected it. Betrayal and failure defined it. Another four years assures more of the same and then some.

The man promising hope and change broke every major pledge made. Four demagogic years did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough to matter. He’s beholden to big money. He never cared about ordinary people and doesn’t now.

“Yes we can” conceals his dark side. No pun intended. He’s a consummate con man. It’s easy to know when he’s lying, just watch his lips move.

Throughout his political career, he’s been pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Israel, anti-populist, anti-civil and human rights, and anti all values real democrats support.

He put Wall Street crooks in charge of looting the nation’s wealth. He furthered the greatest wealth transfer in history. Rules, regulations, legal restraints with teeth, and taxes were slashed to help them. Plans are on track to make America resemble Guatemala.

Full-time/high pay/good benefit jobs are disappearing. So are social services. They’re on the chopping block for elimination. The nation’s middle class is targeted for destruction. A huge underclass is replacing it. America’s more than ever militarized to control it.

Police state laws threaten freedom. Big Brother spying is policy. Privacy is a figure of speech. First Amendment rights and dissent are endangered. Tyranny, torture, corporate empowerment, and permanent wars define Obama’s agenda.

He exceeded the worst of George Bush’s harshness, lawlessness, and belligerency. Imagine what he plans if reelected. He waged war on Islam, Latino immigrants, animal and environmental rights activists, whistleblowers, people of color, the poor, anyone challenging state power, and civil rights lawyers who defend them too vigorously.

In Obama’s America, only the privileged matter. Growing numbers of others are on their own hungry, homeless, and jobless.

He looted the nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, ravaged one nation after another, and continues waging war on humanity.

He executed two Latin American coups. Honduras’ democratically elected president was ousted. So was Paraguay’s. He militarized Haiti, opened the country for business, occupied it for plunder, rigged its election, installed a pro-Western stooge, and increased the growing burden of impoverished Haitians who deserve better.

He supports the world’s worst despots. He sucks up shamelessly to Israel. He spurns long denied Palestinian rights. He plans war on Syria and Iran. Neither nation threatens anyone. America and Israel menace humanity.

He presides over a bogus democracy under a repressive police state apparatus. Habeas rights, due process, judicial fairness, and other civil liberty protections are quaint artifacts increasingly discarded.

Torture is official policy. So is Murder, Inc. Death squads operate in over 120 countries. Special forces and CIA operatives are licensed to kill. US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe.

Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It’s official Obama policy. Diktat authority affords justice to no one ordered killed.

It also lets Obama order US citizens arrested and indefinitely held without charge or trial. No proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Constitutional protections no longer apply.

US military personnel may arrest and indefinitely detain anyone globally. No one anywhere is safe. Tyranny is policy. Obama seized virtual dictatorial powers. Anyone designated a potential enemy of the state, true or false, is targeted.

Political prisoners fill America’s gulag. It’s the world’s largest by far and one of the worst. Muslims and people of color are most at risk. America’s super-rich and corporate crooks are free to do what they please. Bad as things are now, expect worse.

War rages against labor. Budget-strapped states get little help. Welfare is being cut. So are Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the needy, and other New Deal/Great Society programs.

Public education is being commodified. Plans call for making it another business profit center and ending government’s responsibility. Health care is being rationed. Only those who can afford it will get help when they need it.

Food and drug safety don’t matter. Nor do clean clean air or water. Small farms and businesses are being destroyed. Large ones are bigger and more dominant than ever.

Wall Street ones are up to one-fourth larger today than four years ago. They’re double their size a decade ago relative to the economy. Ordinary Americans are much poorer and more deprived.

Financial reform was fraudulent. Institutionalized grand theft is policy. Business as usual lets Wall Street run the country. Consumer protections don’t exist.

The worst of bad practices continue. Rules either don’t exist or are made to be broken. Bankers get what they want. Ordinary people get scammed.

Obama promised “change you can believe in.” He delivered betrayal instead. He’s anti-progressive, hard-right, reactionary, belligerent, pro-corporate, and anti-populist. He’s heartless, merciless, morally corrupt, and soulless.

Austerity is policy when help is needed. Draconian cuts were enacted. Many more are planned. Eliminating trillions of dollars in social service spending is policy. Democrats are in lock step with Republicans.

Corporate handouts, tax cuts for the rich, and Pentagon spending remain virtually untouched. Bad as things are now, imagine America in four years under either party.

Obama plans more of the same and then some. Romney is a religious extremist/corporate crook/socially destructive/imperial rogue.

He and Ryan plan exceeding the worst of Obama. Both are unapologetic. They’re indifferent to human need and welfare. They represent everything wrong with a broken system. It’s too corrupted, dysfunctional, and rotten to fix.

They’re frontmen for financialized America, super-rich privilege, and imperial lawlessness. They guarantee worse wide awake nightmares than Obama.

America’s choice in November is none. Bad as things are now expect worse. Bipartisan complicity assures it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

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Vietnam in the rocky desert: Aghanistan is winning

•••

A Taliban Gain in Afghanistan
September 20, 2012

After 11 years, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan – like the ill-fated war in Iraq – is grinding toward a strategic defeat for Washington. The latest setback is the suspension of joint operations with Afghan troops after a rash of killing of NATO trainers by Afghan soldiers, write Shah Noori and Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.

By Shah Noori and Gareth Porter, Consortium News

Sharply increased attacks on U.S. and other NATO personnel by Afghan security forces, reflecting both infiltration of and Taliban influence on those forces, appear to have outflanked the U.S.-NATO command’s strategy for maintaining control of the insurgency.

The Taliban-instigated “insider attacks,” which have already killed 51 NATO troops in 2012 (already 45 percent more than in all of 2011), have created such distrust of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and national police that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command has suspended joint operations by NATO forces with Afghan security units smaller than the 800-strong battalion of Kandak and vowed to limit them in the future.

ISAF had intended to carry out intensive partnering and advising of ANA and police units below battalion level through 2012 to get them ready to take responsibility for Afghan security. Now, however, that strategy appears to have been disrupted by the insider attacks, and Afghan military and civilian officials are seriously concerned.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta sought to minimize the crisis in U.S. war strategy Tuesday by calling the inside attacks on NATO troops the “last gasp” of a Taliban insurgency that has been “unable to regain any of the territory that they have lost.” The “last gasp” phrase recalls then Vice-President Dick Cheney’s infamous 2005 claim that the Iraqi insurgency was “in its last throes.”

But Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the attacks “a very serious threat to the campaign” in an interview on Saturday. “You can’t whitewash it,” said Dempsey. “We can’t convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change.”

The ISAF command also tried to downplay the significance of the decision, portraying it as “temporary” and not unlike previous adjustments to high threat conditions. The ISAF press release vowed that it would “return to normal operations as soon as conditions warrant.”

But the Taliban have power over whether conditions return to a level that would allow resumption of the joint operations between NATO and Afghan forces, which have been touted as the key to preparing the ANA and the police to cope with the Taliban on their own. The Taliban have achieved a strategic coup by creating a high degree of U.S.-NATO fear and mistrust of the Afghan forces.

Even if some joint operations are resumed, moreover, they will be limited to those approved by regional commanders, according to the new policy. And White House spokesman Jay Carney appeared to contradict the ISAF “return to normal operations” language, telling reporters, “Most partnering and advising will now be at the battalion level and above.”

ISAF Commander Gen. John Allen has tried in the past to minimize the role of the Taliban in the insider killings, suggesting that as little as 10 percent of the Afghan soldiers and police who killed NATO troops were Taliban infiltrators. Most of the killers acted out of personal anger at their Western advisers, Allen argued.

But Allen also conceded that, in addition to Taliban infiltrators, some Afghan troops may have acted out of “radicalization or having become susceptible to extremist ideology.”

New evidence suggests that the Taliban had influenced a number of ANA and police who killed NATO personnel. Last month, the Taliban’s media arm released a video showing a Taliban commander in eastern Kunar province welcoming two ANA soldiers who they said had killed U.S. and Afghan troops earlier in the year. Based on the video, the Long War Journal judged that neither of the soldiers had been a Taliban infiltrator but had made the decision in response to Taliban urging.

Douglas Ollivant, who was senior counterinsurgency adviser to the U.S. commander of the regional command for eastern Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, told IPS the evidence indicates that most Afghan personnel who killed NATO troops and were not already Taliban when they joined the security forces had later become “de facto infiltrators.”

In the Afghan rural social context, the local Taliban and the Afghan troops and soldiers “all know each other,” Ollivant said. “It’s not like they are from two different planets.”

Lt. Col. Danny Davis, who traveled extensively across Afghanistan during his 2010-2011 tour of duty there, found evidence that the Taliban had indeed achieved influence over the Afghan security forces who were supposed to be helping U.S.-NATO forces root out the insurgents.

In a draft report he wrote earlier this year, which had circulated within the U.S. government and was leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, Davis wrote, “In almost every combat outpost I visited this year, the troopers reported to me they had intercepted radio or other traffic between the ANSF and the local Taliban making essentially mini-nonaggression deals with each other.”

In Zharay district of Kandahar province, Davis wrote, he found the Afghan security forces were “in league with the Taliban.”

Taliban spiritual and political leader Mullah Omar issued a statement on Aug. 16 saying the Taliban had “cleverly infiltrated the ranks of the enemy according to the plan given them last year.” Omar also called on Afghan security personnel to “defect and join the Taliban as matter of religious duty.”

For many months the U.S. has been putting intense pressure on the Afghan government to prevent such killings by “revetting” the personnel files of ANA and police personnel. Just last week, the government announced that it had removed “hundreds” of security forces from its ranks.

But there is very little the Afghan government can do to ensure against Afghan troops turning against NATO. “Vetting is virtually impossible in a place like Afghanistan,” former British commander Col. Richard Kemp told the Guardian.

There are no detailed files on the young recruits into the army and police. The only information on the vast majority of new recruits is a statement from village elders vouching for them.

Retired Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, senior fellow and director of communications at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, told IPS that U.S. officers in Afghanistan don’t believe the Afghan government’s efforts to identify potential Taliban infiltrators or sympathizers will slow the pace of insider killings. “They are all saying it isn’t going to have any effect,” said Shaffer.

The decision by ISAF to pull back from joint operations with smaller Afghan units is regarded by Afghan officials and observers as a major boost to the Taliban and a potentially serious blow to the already shaky ANA and police.

Retired ANA Gen Atiqullah Amarkhail acknowledged in an interview with IPS that insider attacks “have destroyed the NATO trust in the Afghan security forces.” The halt in joint operations with Afghan security forces will “really embolden and raise the morale of the Taliban,” he said. “The Taliban consider that they have achieved the goal they have been working for and are proud that they made coalition forces stop helping Afghan security forces.”

Amarkhail said he doesn’t believe the ANA will be able to conduct operations without the help of NATO forces, because of poor coordination among Afghan security forces and its lack of modern weapons.

“If the foreign forces do not support and leave the Afghan Army in the present condition, things will get worse,” said Amarkhail. He expressed the fear that the result could be that different elements within the ANA will “turn their guns on each other.”

Dawoud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand Province Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal, also expressed the fear that the ANA in the province will not be able to operate effectively against the Taliban if ISAF halts joint operations with the ANA at lower unit levels.

The spokesman told IPS, “We have problems in Helmand province, especially in the North. If NATO doesn’t help in conducting operations at lower level, the Afghan security forces will face problems, because they are not yet ready to launch operations on their own in that part of the province.”

Shah Noori reported from Kabul. Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. [This article originally appeared at Inter Press Service.]

____________

RT Dispatch, with original comments

Afghan ‘culture guide’ pamphlet seeks to curb insider attacks

If a NATO soldier uses bad language, pats you on the back and asks about your wife, don’t be offended, he’s just being friendly, says an Afghan culture guide. The pamphlet aims to combat insider attacks on NATO forces in the 11th year of the war.

“Coalition troops may ask about the women in your family. Do not take offense, they just want friendly relations with you. In return, teach them that Afghans do not discuss their families’ women with others,” says the leaflet. It adds that actions such as raising one’s middle finger, taking photos and blowing one’s nose should not be misconstrued as offensive.

The document, which will be issued to the 190,000-strong Afghan national army, aims to reduce cultural tensions amid growing concern over the rise in so-called “green-on-blue” attacks on NATO forces. Since the beginning of this year at least 45 coalition soldiers have fallen prey to the insider attacks by Afghan security personnel.

Last week NATO announced that it was freezing the training of Afghan recruits whilst it screened all of the current Afghan soldiers to wheedle out insurgency.

NATO maintains that only a small percentage of the attacks are the work of the Taliban, claiming that the rest are provoked by cultural friction and personal grievances.

“Even minor cultural differences can create misunderstandings and rows… If you or your coalition partner gets angry, stay away from each other until the situation becomes normal,” reads the document.

US-led coalition troops will also receive cultural awareness training to reduce friction between foreign soldiers and the highly conservative Afghan society.

“We are aware it is a high stress environment with a culture of honor and shame,” said Lt. General Adrian Bradshaw. He went on to say that most of the Afghan insurgents who committed the attacks were killed afterwards, making questioning impossible.

The latest spate of green-on-blue killings happened last Thursday, leaving three Australian soldiers dead, shot by an Afghan National Army sergeant on a military base in the southern region of the country.

The insider killings have become an increasing concern for US forces, which have scheduled the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan hands for 2014.

The war in Afghanistan has become increasingly unpopular and expensive for the US, with Washington promising to finance the training of Afghan security officers for years to come.

Robert Naiman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy told RT that according to opinion polls in the US, people have long since given up on the war. The downwardly-spiraling popularity of the conflict has had a drastic effect on troop morale, making it more likely that soldiers will act in a provocative way towards their Afghan hosts.

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Bageant’s Lost Chronicles: In the footsteps of Neal Cassady’s ghost

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The Colorado Daily, March 9, 1976
In the footsteps of Neal Cassady’s ghost

By Joe Bageant

By the time of his death in Mexico in 1968 at the age of 43, Neal Cassady’s turbulent passage across the American landscape had already left its mark upon literature. This was mostly through his effect on writers of the Beat Generation, the key figures of which were his closest friends. His attitude, mores than the small body of writing he left behind, was a source of inspiration to such people as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs, and Kesey. This attitude might best be described as that of an American Zen Buddhist Drugstore Cowboy Poolshooting Mystic, with a terrible fascination for the relationship between velocity and life.

Early childhood found him growing up in the wino dive hotels of lower Denver, while his last years saw him careening through the acid antics of Key Kesey’s now famous Merry Pranksters. In between he left nothing untouched. Poetry, jazz, cafeterias, fast cars, women, and drugs, all were part of his experientially based philosophy.

As in the 60s, a new wave of interest turns toward the Beat Scene, Cassady’s role looms ever larger for its inclusiveness. The search for the visions of a man now gone is best begun by experiencing the sounds and moods from which his inspiration was drawn. Much of Neal Cassady’s were drawn from his brooding Larimer Street beginnings.

———-

Cassady and Leary (forefront)

There are no last names on skid row, except on police blotters. Hence, the ragged tramps at the Western Palace Hotel all have vague names like Slim, Red, Shorty, and Boe. These bums are rich as winos go, with the most of them living on small pensions; and the Western is what is called in these circles a solid flop (meaning that most of its residents live here permanently).

Housing about 60 wined-out old men who manage to come up with the $16.20 a week required to call it home. A verifiable address like this is as extravagant as life gets for those drowned in a well of muscatel. Scaley and bruised white ankles of their less fortunate brothers can be seen protruding from under dumpsters or jutting from phone booths up and down Champa street. February’s nasty and biting winds have no favorites but prey upon the derelicts of the Larimer district with special viciousness.

Torpid life in flop America has remained unchanged since the turn of the century and the smiling women with a cause still glom oatmeal onto tin plates as policemen pick up comatose bodies clad in long overcoats, taking care to avoid the areas of the rancid armpit or the slimy sock. But the company at the Western Palace is select and though no one here will ever win any hygiene awards, encounters with the police are rare. They take much pride in the fact of always having a roof over their heads but the truth lies more in luck than accomplishment and they will turn up dead somewhere in the same rat-like fashion as the rest of them. And each knows it.

“You say you were around here in the 30s? That was a while back. You must be getting up there in years.”

“Well, I’s 64 las’ April. Sheeit, I was jus’ a young fart, mebbe 20 somethin’. But I wasn’t drinkin’ none then. Naw, I was workin’ for the city on the streets, but I always did live round this neighborhood.”

“Did you ever know a fella name of Cassady that lived down here back then? Had a little boy with him for a while. He used to do barbering.”

“Was he a bum?”

“Yeah.”

“There wasn’t many bums with kids. I knowed all the bums for years an’ there wasn’t but a couple what had kids.”

“This guy’s boy was named Neal.”

“I think I might’a knowed him. Them kids was always watchin’ but never said much. Ain’t much you could say about ’em. They were just there.”

“Now and again, when with child energy, I burst into the room, I would catch Shorty playing with himself. (I thought it was fried eggs littering the floor.) Even though he was past 40, any preoccupation with this form of diversion was justified . . . since judging from his appearance, he must not have had a woman since his youth, if then”

About nine o’clock the cry “lights out” sends the card players to the sheetless, waxy mattresses coated with the dried-up orgasms of secretive indulgers of the hand. Since the beds have no springs to squeak betrayal, total privacy swallows the solitary fantasies of unwashed manhood and darkness. Tiny pathetic flames of desire flicker once, then die in the night.

Neal Cassady growing up in this grizzled stench of sallow expiration. The clear-eyed dreamer in mission relief knickers, glancing into the oil rail-road puddles of March, catching that distinct angle at which they reflect back broken blue fragments of sky. Him laughing amid the traffic noise or sinking the four-ball into the side pocket. Breathing in deep the Denver night.

The light of morning and evening are virtually indistinguishable through the blind, greasy windows of the Western Palace, giving them the appearance of yellow rectangles that merely brighten or dim. the yellow light’s waxing brings a spattering hoof water in grimy sinks and a flourish of clogged razors as those men who are still capable of desiring food leaving for the Guardian Angel.

Breakfast at the Guardian Angel Mission is as uninspiring as breakfast can possibly be. Food in the skids has always been regarded chiefly as fuel by both the cooks and the ulcerated stomachs that consume it. Not even an hour wait in the block-long line increases the anticipation for that dab of lukewarm oatmeal and paper cup of weak coffee that appears on your steel tray.

“The line moved slowly at any time . . . If alone, I could whiz through the entire operation in less than half an hour, for then some kindly line crawlers would push me past them. I would edge around a couple dozen of these indulgent men who, while committing the cheat for me, gave a sly wink and a shortly of self-satisfaction.”

Once seated at the long tables, the bland trance of a Larimer Street morning begins to give way to small schemes of wine procurement. Scoring wine is often a joint venture of two or more parties, a venture that struggles well into an afternoon of the shakes before the goal is accomplished. Amputees and those with obvious physical infirmities have a distinct advantage in this game. They need only park in front of a likely place of business with their hats before them, while for the rest it is a day afflicted with minor squabbles as one plan after another falls apart with pitiful anguish.

Pawn, panhandle, or scrounge is the action, with the term junkie here meaning a salvage dealer. Junkies are are an absolutely merciless breed being generally bitchy and cheap, bargaining with the flops in terms of police threats or savage dogs. It is a strange moody sensation indeed to watch the bent-over tramps with their shopping bags of junk at dusk, entering the salvage dealer’s dim interior which is guarded by a pair of fierce green flashing eyes.

“From these modest Larimer beginnings I was to become so bewitched by going junking that in following years I developed my scavangering into regular weekend tours conducted through all Denver’s alleys. Laboring under what bulge of rescued discards my gunnysack contained, I would turn my snow-chilled feet homeward, and while pausing to rest, enjoyed watching the spectacle, as to the west, white peeks rose slowly curtaining the perfect orb of a descending winter sun.”

These days, getting to where the scavangering is good entails a walk of 15 or 20 blocks and even then there are droves of little Mexican kids to compete with. Coming back in the chilling evening air, the oatmeal energy gives out about the time the more intrepid of the waif packs creep from behind buildings to place stealthy feet lightly into your shadow. Year in, year out, expeditions of tottering men move like a silent net across Denver, gathering the humblest of treasures before the sharp glances of housewives shaking mops and dark-eyed children of grassless back yards.

By the time the street lights come on the day has yielded whatever it is about to, leaving some the flushed smile of a wine glow; others shivering. Like everywhere else on this planet, the haves tend to hang out with the haves, and the have-nots are cast to their own devices. Bombay or Denver, it’s all the same.

“Yeah, I know all about Neal Cassady. Grew up to be some kind of writer, didn’t he? Haven’t heard anything about him for years though.”

“He died about eight years ago in Mexico.”

“You don’t say! Well I heard he was on some kind of dope or something back years and years ago. Is that what killed him?”

“You might say it was a combination of things.”

“That’s too bad.”

Evening meal at the mission is somewhat more complex than breakfast because dinner is a religious proposition. Since the missions are supported for the most part by churches, a conversion to Christ is expected nightly from the ranks of drooling bums. From a lot that has elected the wretchedest of life’s paths, this is expecting quite a bit. Wino attitude toward this evangelism is best expressed in the term they use for these conversions. They call it “taking a dive.” Sooner or later the hungriest one in the crowd goes down in a fit of religious ecstasy and after a thorough cross-examination, dinner is served.

With the problems of sustaining the flesh taken care of for another day, activity turns to such things as trading life-stories or articles of clothing (or maybe eyeballing those you intend to steal off your sleeping buddies). Shoes seem to be the big item in demand and about the only way to keep a pair is to sleep with them tied around your neck. As for the stories, they are always delivered in the same even monotone and have a strange dirge-like quality.

Though each is a different tale of demise, they all weave together to make a fabric, while the bleak lights of the hotel wash the men of Larimer in a certain cast of loneliness unknown to most. More often than not, they were once tradesmen practicing a skill that enabled them to raise families, make house payments, spout political opinions, and do all those things working men spend their three score and ten doing. But the weft and warp of this fabric is guilt and its escape through booze. Booze that brings new guilt feelings and a worthless self-persecuting sense of humility.

And often as the pages of this tome are turned in the hotel night, a policeman walks through the dismal lobby, and as he leafs through the registry book it is noticed that one of the boys is not with us tonight. One hand of cards will not be dealt and one empty bed by the window is frozen in the streetlight’s glare. It was Neal Cassady who said “To have seen a specter isn’t everything,” and it was he too who said “There are death masks piled one atop another clear to heaven.” The truth of it tumbles from February’s aching skies, to run down the spine like ice, and as sure as ice melts, February is forgotten by June, the doors of the pool rooms are propped open and the young girls go by in their magnificent way.

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