Week of 07/09/2012

Wally Streeter and the Drought
– by David Matthews 2

Once upon a time in the hypothetic land of Republica, a group of businessmen led by Sir Wallace Streeter convinced the people of the small but growing community to erect a dam on the Cash River just north of them.

Their concerns, they said, were for the welfare of the community, and nothing more. They believed that by controlling the amount of water that flows from the Cash River into the community, they would prevent those devastating floods that they feared would destroy the area. Granted, such flooding was rare, but whenever it happened it would be of great concern to those in charge.

So the leaders allowed Sir Wallace and his friends in the Banks Family to build that dam, but only with the promise that they would ensure that the community would never be without water.

It wouldn’t take long before the water gathered north of the Capital Dam, turning Cash River into the Cash Lake, and making the surrounding landscape around the lake into the ideal place for Sir Wallace and the Banks Families to build their homes. And what lavish homes they were! Beautiful places where they could go boating and swimming, where they could have fishing tournaments, and even talked about putting in parks so that the rest of the community could enjoy the beauty that was made by their hands and by Mother Nature.

But then, not too long after the dam was built, the people just south of the community began to complain. While the lake was great for fishing and boating and swimming, the people south of the dam that relied on the fish for their food and for their business were quickly cut off. The Cash River was too shallow south of the Dam for people to go boating or swimming. But Sir Wallace and the Banks said not to worry, that they would ensure that there would be a place for people to do all those things in Cash Lake.

A few years later, some more people complained about the dam. The people whose well-waters came from the Cash River began to go dry. That means no fresh water for their homes for cooking or bathing.

By this time Sir Wallace and the Banks had turned things over to their children, and Walter and the new Banks Clan had a ready-made solution to this problem: just put those families on the community’s water and sewer system. This was all part of their long-standing promise to make sure that the community would never be without water. They would simply provide it to the public. And the water would be filtered and purified; safe to drink, cook, and bathe in. Water and sewage, and even some “grey water” for crops and sprinklers.

Of course all of this convenience wouldn’t be for free. There was always some kind of cost associated to this “charity”. But Walter and the Banks always said that it was the best deal that one could ever get for water that used to be free. Besides, you get guaranteed water, clean, fresh, and pure. And there’s always Cash Lake for swimming and fishing and the new water park for the kids to splash around in.

Time moves on, and eventually control of the Cash Dam and Cash Lake falls to the most recent generation of Streeters and Banks, namely Wally Streeter and Dollar “Too Big” Banks. And according to them, things could not be better! Sure, there are some people that are complaining about old pipes and the deteriorating quality of the water purification, but those complainers are dismissed as being attention-seeking troublemakers. The water is flowing, business is booming, and everything is just fine!

Then, one day, tragedy hits Republica.

The land is hit with a terrible drought; one that has not been felt since the Dam was built. Without rain and snow to replenish the lake, the water levels begin to drop.

Then the underground pipes providing water and sewage begin to collapse and rupture, causing thousands upon thousands of gallons of water to shoot out. Homes begin to collapse and streets are shut down when sinkholes begin to form from the collapsing pipes underneath. The complainers, it turns out, were right all along. (But nobody wanted to say that too loudly.)

If that wasn’t bad enough, it then comes out that the water filtration and purification plants that the Streeters and Banks had been using all this time to provide “clean” water for the community has been breaking down for the past few decades. The people have been drinking and bathing and cooking with gradually contaminated water!

To make matters worse, it is also discovered that Streeter and Banks had entered into agreements with nearby communities for that very water from Cash Lake, taking it before it reaches the Dam, never mind before it reaches the community. Crafted back when water was supposedly “plentiful”, these neighboring communities now expect Streeter and Banks to continue to honor their agreements at the expense of any other concern, including the community south of the Dam.

The leaders of Republica declare an emergency. The parks are closed. New water restrictions are imposed. All access to the Capital Dam and to Cash Lake are closed. Boating and fishing are temporarily outlawed. Priority is supposedly given to patching the leaks in the pipelines, stopping the sinkholes, fixing the water filtration, and slowing, if not reversing, the drop in lake levels.

Of course the leadership doesn’t address who would be paying for the repairs. Streeter and Banks say that they’ve talked about bringing in a new water filtration system, but it would cost a lot, and they won’t mention who would pay for it. They give the same response to replacing all the old pipes that handled water and sewage all across Republica. Nothing is said about the homes and streets that are torn up and condemned by sinkholes caused by the ruptured and collapsed pipes. Nothing is also said of the thousands of gallons of water that still gets sucked out of Cash Lake to go to neighboring lands. They also don’t mention that the water and sewer rates are slowly and steadily going up.

Years go by and the restrictions remain in Republica. Water is still rationed, and violators are punished. The costs for those “conveniences” are still going up with no relief in sight, even for those that are on fixed incomes. Access to Capital Dam and Cash Lake are still cut off, so there’s no way to check if the water levels are still low. The people are expected to simply make do with what little they have, and then be willing to give up even more at the proverbial drop of a hat.

Of course, Wally Streeter and “Too Big” Banks and their friends aren’t complaining about being inconvenienced. They’re having pool parties and talk about drinking expensive bottled water. As far as they are concerned, the “crisis” was over and done with a while ago.

The water quality in the community is still poor; the water pipes are still crumbling, and the deteriorating sewer lines are still causing sinkholes. But nothing is done to fix those problems other than to just talk about it. Streeter and “Too Big” Banks both say that it costs money to fix these things that they don’t have “in the budget”. They would rather focus on the “water levels” first. Besides, they’re not too happy with the people in charge over in Republica, so they would much rather wait for “better management” before doing any of that.

Besides, they say, they’re still living up to their agreement. They’re still providing the people of Republica with water. Granted, it’s rationed, polluted, not available to certain groups, and far more expensive than in days gone by, but Wally Streeter and “Two Big” Banks will both proclaim that they are still upholding that promise made by their predecessors all those years ago.

Now let’s get brutally honest here… how long do you think the people of that hypothetic land of Republica would be willing to endure those conditions? Do you really think that they would be willing to endure that for years on in with seemingly no end in sight? Especially if there are rumors of either the lake levels no longer being “low” or if the owners of the dam were treating the whole matter with reckless disregard for the community.

Imagine what things would be like if we treated our economy like we treat our water. Our real-life Streeter and Banks, specifically Wall Street and the “Too Big To Fail” banking institutions, certainly carry on as though they hold the very fate of the land in their greedy hands.

History has shown that such prolonged misery can only fester for so long. When promised relief doesn’t come, when a “temporary crisis” becomes more permanent, when those with very little appear to be the only ones making any significant sacrifices, there eventually comes a breaking point. And believe me when I say that those that feel they’re getting screwed over will take that frustration out on something and on someone. The French aristocracy certainly found out first-hand how inventive the great unwashed can be back in the 18^th Century when they reached their breaking point. There is a reason why that time was referred to as “la Terreur”.

Much like the hypothetical situation, our current economic drought depends entirely on who is holding all of the resources, whose promises take priority, and who is being asked to make the sacrifices. Believe me when I say that those at the bottom of the “Capital Dam” will have no qualms bringing the whole thing down on everyone if they feel they have nothing left to sacrifice.

Week of 07/02/2012

Hate The Healthcare Mandate? Blame The Sin Taxes!
– by David Matthews 2

I suppose I should stop being surprised at the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the seemingly infinite ways they have of justifying and sustaining the cult of the status quo.

After years of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing and the hysteria and the fear-mongering and the hypocrisy and the out-and-out lies being uttered over the Healthcare Reform Act, it finally fell to a 5-4 decision that couldn’t split a legal hair any finer if they used an electron microscope.

Can the government force you to buy healthcare insurance? According to the justices, no, it can’t. That’s supposedly a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

But those same justices then said that the government can still tax you as a penalty if you don’t buy it.

It’s a stroke of brilliance (sarcastically speaking) if you think about it! Philosophically, they couldn’t allow the individual mandate to stand as a business requirement. But to get rid of it on that basis would then upend the new status quo as dictated by President Barack Obama and especially by the big insurance companies that secretly demanded it. They also refused to “punt” the decision until 2014, because that still meant that they would have to decide on it then.

So the status quo champions found a way to toss the requirement out but still keep it in place. It’s not “forced purchasing” anymore; now it’s a “tax” for those that don’t choose to purchase it. Genius!

Now, for the first few minutes when this legal mind-screw came out, I kept on wanting to curse out Obama and the justices for this duplicitous weaseling of the legal system. How can you say that something it’s “wrong” but still find a way to weasel it in?

But then I came to the realization that it’s neither Obama’s fault nor the fault of the Supreme Court for coming up with this backdoor method. They didn’t create the rationalization that they just used to screw over the citizens that can’t afford healthcare coverage. They just found a way to exploit an already-existing screwjob.

You want someone to blame for this decision? Don’t blame the executive or judicial branches of our government. They really didn’t create the screwjob result. Blame the ones who did.

Blame the legislature!

Let’s get brutally honest here… it is the legislative branch of government that came up with the asinine idea that they can tax anyone and anything for any amount and for any reason!

You don’t think the government hasn’t tried to tax behavior before? Think that this is somehow a “new form of tax”? Stop lying to yourself and think about the various “sin taxes” that out there today.

When politicians want you to stop smoking, what do they do? Do they outlaw cigarettes? No, of course not! What they do is they jack up the cigarette tax. And they don’t quibble about the justification behind it either! They don’t claim that it’s an “essential means to generate revenue”. They want to price cigarettes just high enough that smokers are forced to quit on their own, but in the meantime they’ll eagerly take all the money they can get from those smokers.

Several cities including Houston are imposing a so-called “Pole Tax” on strip clubs and other forms of legal and legitimate adult entertainment. Again, it’s not considered an “essential tax needed to generate revenue”. They intentionally are imposing a sadistic tax to gradually shut down those legal places of adult entertainment without looking like they’re “the bad guys”.

Look at the legal brothels in Nevada. They’ve been legal for generations, but the state and county governments certainly want to make them suffer for existing, so they slap them with huge tax bills in the hope that they will eventually drive those businesses into insolvency.

In fact I’m surprised that New York City’s Thug-Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn’t tried this course yet in his ongoing crusade to turn the Big Apple into New Singapore. Instead of outlawing the Gallon-Gulp soda or so-called “trans-fats”, just hit the consumers with a $7-per serving “health tax”. The same could be said of some of the other asinine bans. Don’t ban the fois gras; just impose a $20-per plate “animal abuse tax” on the people that order it.

Ever hear of a windfall profits tax? You did if you ever won a big jackpot in the lottery or if you got a huge civil court award. Depending on the state and the amount, you could be forced to pay as high as a 100% tax on that award. Why? Because you’re not supposed to win in these things!

Sorry to hear that Acme Inc’s brakes were intentionally defective and you lost your whole family and two of your limbs, but, gosh darn it, the government thinks that you were never supposed to get that ten-million in compensation! And even if the attorneys drag out the case until the kinetic end of the universe, the government feels that you should pay that tax bill now. And the same applies if you won that Big-Mega-Power-Money jackpot you see all those ads for. You know, the ones designed to help out “education”. The cardboard check that you’re holding means absolutely nothing once Uncle Sam and his fifty spoiled brats gets wind of it. Enjoy the win, just don’t get used to the winnings.

And the justices have already said that this kind of tax is perfectly legal!

Even our income tax system was designed to “curb behavior” of sorts. By its very nature, the government penalizes you for making too much money! Find a way to supposedly beat it? The government then hits you with the “Alternative Minimum Tax”.

So, really, why should anyone be shocked when the highest court in the country uses the same justification to sustain Obama’s prized reform program? They’ve allowed all sorts of taxes be created in the name of “curbing behavior” or “penalizing conduct” in the past, so what’s one more tax to them?

And isn’t it funny that the people that scream and shout and proclaim “Unfair” at the top of their lungs over this kind of “tax” are not only silent about some of these other “controlling” taxes, but may even actually support them? Where is their “Tea Party” resistance when it comes to getting rid of the “sin taxes”? It’s one thing to complain when the taxes affect your personal bottom line, but what about when they affect someone else’s bottom line?

I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: the same legislature that feels they can tax the business you hate into oblivion has no qualms going after your personal business next if they feel so inclined.

It’s clear that the people who want Obama’s healthcare program repealed need to do more than just get one law passed. There needs to be not just tax reform, but also tax limitations. The very idea that government at any level should be allowed to tax anyone and anything for any reason at any time is just as much of an abusive power as the idea that it can outlaw anything it wants. If the so-called “Tea Party” crowd is not willing to do this much, then not only will they have to deal with this problem again at some point in the future, but they are insulting the very spirit of rebellion that they claim they are trying to emulate.

Week of 06/25/2012

FCC Spanked But Still Dangerous
– by David Matthews 2

Longtime readers of my column know that from day one, I am first and foremost a supporter of the First Amendment. The very first article posted back in 1996 was about the degenerative effects of censorship in a medium like the Internet. I was part of the lawsuit that overturned the anti-American Communications Decency Act in that same year. I continued to speak out afterward against its equally anti-American successors, and I speak out against such efforts today.

But this wasn’t something that I magically came up with just because it involved the Internet. My support of free speech goes back to the 1980’s, when religious groups and so-called “pro-family organizations” launched their anti-American holy war against anything they deemed to be “offensive”. Magazines, videos, nightclubs, songs (yes, Al Gore, that included your wife’s crusade), even TV commercials were not safe.

Unfortunately, the freedom-hating religious groups have long had the upper hand when it comes to government, and this is especially true with the hold they have over the Federal Communications Commission.

From its inception back in the 1930’s, religious groups made sure that the FCC was given the power to regulate not only broadcasting bandwidth, but also its content. They wanted to make sure that nothing “offensive” was ever uttered, shown, or otherwise expressed. And that wasn’t just limited to sex or violence. It also included a blanket prohibition against messages that encouraged fascism, Nazism, or communism. Oh, and they justified their control over the airwaves by claiming that these were really “the people’s airwaves”; which “doesn’t sound the least bit communistic”, does it? Just like the dictatorial control over the airwaves wasn’t “the least bit fascistic”.

Ever since then, it has been an uphill struggle to deal with a dictatorial federal agency being manipulated by religious extremists. And that is not an exaggeration! It has been proven that one certain religious organization accounted for over ninety-nine percent of all complaints to the FCC in the 2000’s. And all it takes to get the FCC to issue millions of dollars in fines against a broadcaster is a group as small as just twenty-three people. Twenty-three people!

Every so often, though, our legal system steps in and does the right thing. It has to, because the officials in the FCC have clearly proven they lack any shred of integrity or consistency.

And that is apparently what the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court did the other week when they ruled against the FCC in two cases.

The first involved the so-called “fleeting explicative”. For instance, if you have a live TV broadcast and someone utters a curse word out-of-the-blue, then that is considered a “fleeting explicative”. The broadcasters cannot control it, they cannot warn against it, but the freedom-hating religious groups still wanted the broadcasters to suffer for it.

The second concerned the FCC’s off-and-on fine against the now-defunct ABC series “NYPD Blue”, which involved showing a naked woman’s rear for all of seven seconds at a time when such displays were supposed to be allowed under already-established FCC rules. The broadcasters were supposed to be free-and-clear to show so-called “indecent” material during the hours of 10pm and 6am, and the FCC had already said that male nudity on that same show was perfectly fine, and they initially said this was okay as well. But then the religious groups began complaining and the FCC then changed their minds on the subject.

Fifth Amendment? What Fifth Amendment?

In both instances, the FCC first said such incidents didn’t warrant crippling fines, and then changed their minds when religious groups demanded otherwise. For this reason, the justices said the FCC went too far.

Unfortunately, in doing so, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court did not go far enough in doing what really needs to be done.

Let’s get brutally honest here… the Federal Communications Commission is a regulatory body in desperate need of being either neutered or otherwise shut down entirely. It has long abused its power, it refuses to be consistent about its policies, and its only apparent reason for its existence is to serve as the enforcement arm of religious and social extremists whose very goals would violate the original regulations of the FCC if they were so broadcast.

Key to the FCC’s power over broadcasters is its arbitrary decision to declare something “indecent” – a term that the FCC refuses to this day to define for broadcasters – and to make this decision not only on a case-by-case basis, but to make it regardless of any previous cases. Not only that, but they change their minds about taking action based entirely on the manipulations of those religious and social groups. That part was aptly demonstrated with the “NYPD Blue” case that went before the justices.

Picture, if you will, a police officer pulling you over for speeding on the highway and letting you go with a warning. Then, six months later, that same cop decides to change his mind and issue you a ticket for it. Then a month later that cop decides to drop the ticket. Then five or even six years later that same cop decides to charge you with felony driving for that same incident.

This is what the FCC did with shows like “NYPD Blue”. This is what the justices said was abusive and dismissed the fines on it.

But they needed to do more. Much, much more.

The justices consciously passed on the opportunity to strip the FCC of their abusive power, which is what has needed to be done the moment the mandatory rating system was imposed on all television broadcasts starting in the late 90’s. The very justification that the courts gave in the original Pacifica decision to allow the FCC to wield this arbitrary power was rendered null and void with the ratings system. The justices have already required that government actions be based on, and I quote, “the least intrusive means”. When the ratings system and the means to block out TV shows based on those ratings were mandated, that became the “least intrusive means”.

By all rights, the FCC should have divested itself of its capricious authority then, but failed to do so. Likewise, the justices of the Supreme Court should have used this opportunity to strip the FCC of that same authority for that same reason, and they have failed to do so. Instead, they avoided the larger issue and only decided on the individual cases.

In other words, the FCC is still allowed to operate as the dysfunctional enforcement arm of social and religious extremists, assessing millions of dollars in fines in direct violation to the spirit and the letter of the United States Constitution, using justifications that are neither objective or follow any manner of precedence. They will continue to stifle televised content and force viewers to turn to other means for the entertainment they crave, and all to appease the dictatorial anti-American demands of those religious and social extremists.

This is why the extremists are actually celebrating a decision that they clearly lost; because now they know that the Justices of the Supreme Court adhere to a much higher responsibility than that of supporting and upholding the Constitution. They know that the justices would rather throw the Constitution to the fire than to dare disrupt the ever-present cult of the status quo, and in doing so they do this country a phenomenal disservice.

Week of 06/18/2012

Stop Lying! Government Creates Plenty Of Jobs!
– by David Matthews 2

This is the story of a small town job-creator here in Georgia…

In 2002, a Winder City manager named Ernie Graham resigned from his public position. Thanks to some relatively recent modifications to the city’s pension program, Graham was allowed to get his full pension for a job that supposedly was “too stressful for him”.

But apparently the job was not “stressful” enough for him to stop working. Once he started getting a pension check from the City of Winder, he went back to work for the city, doing the same job that he previously did, only this time as a “consultant”. So not only was he getting a full pension from the taxpayers, but he was now able to bill the city as an outside contractor for far more money than he could get if he kept on working in his former job. And apparently he was so good at it that he formed his own consulting group and then offered his services to another city at an even higher rate.

In all, it is believed that he brought in over one million dollars in the past ten years between the two cities he was “contracted” with in addition to his full taxpayer-funded pension. And he would otherwise continue to bring in that money today if not for the fact that the City of Winder got a new mayor who started going through the books and wanted to know where Mr. Graham’s contracts were for the work that he claimed to perform.

Now you and I would say that this is a shining example of a “good ol’ boy system” running amok. A system that is burdened with corruption and nepotism and cronyism and needs to be “purged”… but only as long as it’s purged of members of “the other party”.

But to those inside government, Ernie Graham and those that helped him set this prosperous system up are far from villains in need of punishment. In fact, they would consider Graham to be something far more valuable.

They would call Graham a “job-creator”!

Think about it! Graham and his associates literally created an outsourced private-sector position out of nothing that made far more money than his “public sector” position. Not only that, but he created a brand new consulting business because of it. In the eyes of the conservatives and neo-conservatives, this is precisely what they claim needs to be done everywhere.

The cons and neo-cons have displayed a mad-on hatred of the public sector in recent years. Through their trained parrots in talk radio and cable news, they have equated public workers as being slugs, leaches, parasites, and good-for-nothing goldbrickers.

Of course, they’ve carefully cherry-picked which taxpayer-funded employees to hate, since police officers and firefighters and members of the armed forces are also public employees, and they don’t want to make it appear that they either don’t support the troops or that they advocate anarchy or that they would watch as our modern-day Rome burns to the ground. And it goes without saying that the category of “good-for-nothing goldbrickers” never manages to include either themselves or their own staff members or their friends, however they will eagerly suggest several members of “the other party” that “magically” fit the bill.

To indoctrinate their selective hatred of the public employees to the masses, the cons and neo-cons have come up with a mantra that they recite over and over again like a church hymnal. They want people to believe that “government doesn’t create jobs”.

They will repeat that mantra over and over and over again. “The government doesn’t create jobs.”

They will shove their faces in front of the FoxNews cameras and say over and over again “The government doesn’t create jobs.”

They will type up the talking points memos to give to the trained parrots in talk radio and cable news channels to reiterate that “The government doesn’t create jobs.”

They will cobble up newspaper columns and post online articles to recite the continual mantra that “The government doesn’t create jobs.”

And I’ll confess… I even bought into their mantra at one point.

There’s just one problem with their pronouncement, though: it is a bold-faced lie!

Not only is it a lie, but they know that they are lying about it!

Let’s get brutally honest here… governments at all levels create plenty of jobs. And the cons and neo-cons know that governments at all levels create jobs if those in charge feel inclined to.

The Cold War that was “waged” between the United States and the old Soviet Union is probably the best example of how the government can create jobs. Think of all of the companies that made their fortunes making warplanes and warships and tanks and firearms for a war that neither side ever wanted to have happen. Boy, those were the days, huh? And all they needed back then was an occasional “flare-up” to keep people on-edge and put some of those products to use. Korea? Vietnam? Grenada? Those were just field tests in the overall scheme of things. Just little “nudges” to remind the great unwashed that the “great war” was still going on.

Do names like Haliburton and Blackwater ring any bells? These are or were companies that prospered from our most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and anyplace else that the government decided needed “jobs”.

Oh, but I suppose those “don’t count”, because those are jobs “over there”, not jobs in America, where such work is needed for countless millions. It’s sort of like when companies claim to be “creating jobs” when in fact they’re outsourcing them overseas. It only counts “on paper”.

Let’s talk about so-called “Crime Bills”. Every call for a new social “war” is a call for more police officers and more government agencies to combat it. The so-called “Drug War” is one of the best examples of this. Bear in mind that police officers are still public employees.

President George W. Bush, the GOP’s lord and savior in the 2000’s, not only was a huge supporter of more money for education (including those “lazy public sector” folks), but also created a brand new government Cabinet-level department called “Homeland Security” that just begged for more public sector jobs.

“Government doesn’t create jobs”, you say? Tell that to the Transportation Security Administration! That’s a government agency that did not exist until 2001.

Or how about telling that to all of the tax preparation services that have been created over the generations due to the schizophrenic tax system we currently have? Or the auditing firms that got their jobs because of the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?

And then we have the jobs that are created by good-old-fashioned politics! Jobs like the “consulting” company that Mister Graham created for himself. Jobs that are created through political wrangling and manipulation of the “fine print”.

You know those “wasteful spending projects” that magically appear in spending bills? You know which ones I’m talking about! The cons and neo-cons seem to get a perverse sexual pleasure in showing them off to the trained parrots of talk radio and cable news. Every “pet project” that gets inserted is someone’s job being either created or supported.

Well how did those “wasteful spending projects” get there in the first place? They got there because a lobbyist called up someone with the power to slip something like that into the budget. And it doesn’t matter which political party is in charge; somehow they get slipped in and nobody bothers to ask how or why. They just complain about it after-the-fact. Ever wonder why they do that?

Well, did you ever wonder where many of those career politicians go when their time in office is done? They either work for “think tank” groups, or they end up as lobbyists, getting paid big money to twist the arms of their former fellow politicians. In other words, they roll over for the lobbyists and the lobbyists reserve a job opening for them afterward. Quid pro quo. Rather convenient, huh?

In other words, the politicians know that government creates plenty of jobs, because the most important job that gets created in their minds is waiting for them when they leave office.

And I haven’t even brought up the time when President Franklin Roosevelt created a federal jobs program that gave people that needed it work during the Great Depression. It was busy work, but it was still work and it was believed that this program did more for the morale of those that needed it than simply giving them money. It may have been digging a ditch to later fill in, but at least at the end of the day, that person could say that they were working and getting paid to work.

As you can see, the conservatives and neo-conservatives know full-well that government at all levels know how to create jobs, and they’re really very good at creating jobs when those in charge put their minds to it. The challenge for them is doing it. And that can only happen when the conservatives and neo-conservatives stop lying to themselves and stop lying to the American people about it. If they’re not willing to do that much then they need to be removed from the conversation and replaced with people who will be honest about the role and scope of government, especially given today’s current economic dilemma.

It would probably also help if we reminded the cons and neo-cons at every opportunity that the next war they want waged, the next “criminal epidemic” they want attacked, and the next wildfire that needs to be fought are all going to be handled by the very “public workers” that they otherwise call “slugs” and “goldbrickers”. And maybe the next time there’s a pothole in their neighborhood or a blown streetlight that they should spend some of their own money to get it fixed themselves. After all, they wouldn’t want those “good-for-nothing” public-sector employees to feel they have a reason to be working there, would they?

Week of 06/11/2012

DC Comics And The “Epic” Failure
– by David Matthews 2

As some of you may know, I am a longtime comic book fan. I used to read all about Superman and Batman and Green Lantern and the Justice League from the pages of DC Comics. I used to read some Marvel Comics too, but aside from Spider-Man, they never really interested me until I got older.

When I first started reading comics, I didn’t know that Superman and Spider-Man were published by two separate companies. So when “Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man” came out originally in the 1970’s, I didn’t realize just how epic that crossover meeting was for the two companies. It’s like the Warner Brothers Loony Toons characters working with their Walt Disney counterparts in the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”; up until then, nobody ever thought about doing something like that.

DC and Marvel have had a rivalry that has spanned the decades. They competed over who had the better talent, they competed over who had the more popular characters, they competed over who made the most money, they competed over who has the better merchandising for their characters, and they competed over who can pull off the better media crossover.

Both can say they’ve had their share of good and bad animation shows. Both can say they’ve had their share of good and bad live-action shows. Both can say they’ve had their share of good and bad motion pictures.

But with the recent release of Marvel’s “The Avengers” to the big screen, and the billion-dollar box office returns that went with it, there are many that wonder if Marvel Comics has finally come out ahead of DC. And then the big challenge is to see what DC can do to match it… if they can.

In all fairness, “Avengers” is not the “first team movie” as many have proclaimed it to be. That actually goes to the un-released 1994 “Fantastic Four” movie, followed by the 2000 release of “X-Men”, but even those are Marvel Comics creations, so they still have the bragging rights.

So it appears that the gauntlet is thrown down in front of DC to either match or top it. Comic forums and Facebook groups are full of questions about how DC executives could come up with a “Justice League” movie and who they would cast and how they would handle an ensemble movie.

I’m going to out on a limb right now and tell DC Comics executives and Time Warner executives to do… absolutely nothing!

I’m serious! Don’t call up Tim Burton or Ilya Salkind or Bryan Singer or Christopher Nolan and shove a spreadsheet in their faces and say “How can we top this?” Send the Hollywood reporters to voice mail. Tell the fans “No comment” when asked about it at the conventions. Or better yet, just say “wait and see”, which is what you’d tell the comic fans anyway. Whatever you do, do not rush into this like a corporate tool would otherwise do!

Let’s start with the fact that DC and Warner Brothers did manage to come up with an ensemble superhero team movie that pre-dates “The Avengers”. That move was “Watchmen”, based off the mini-series by the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. A little-known fact was that while Moore and Gibbons patterned their characters after established Charlton Comics characters, their original inspirations were DC’s Justice League. So it’s not that DC and Warner Brothers don’t know how to do an ensemble team movie. They’ve done it. Their problem is not making it epic.

But that’s not the only problem that DC Comics is suffering from right now.

Under the one-two sucker-punch leadership of Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee, DC Comics is currently engaged in a systematic rewrite of everything it has ever owned since the 1930’s. Their main characters, the “World’s Greatest Super-Heroes”, are all being re-written, re-drawn, and re-made in the images of DiDio and Lee. Even the forthcoming “Man of Steel” movie will feature the “remade” version of their first signature character, Superman. It’s a little hard to sell the movie version of the heroes when DC is still trying to sell the “remade” version in the comics to the same people who have been reading those comics for generations.

Now think for a minute about what Marvel did with “The Avengers” that made it so epic. They didn’t just make a movie and expect people to see it. That’s the Big Corporate/Hollywood approach to that kind of a project, and it explains why that approach has failed in the past.

Marvel started with “Iron Man” and laid the groundwork to the “Avengers” project. They introduced SHIELD. They brought in Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury as a teaser to “Iron Man” and mentioned something called “The Avengers Initiative”. They continued the teasing with “The Incredible Hulk” by bringing in Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and linking in the two movies. They continued this teasing with SHIELD and Fury and introduced the Black Widow in “Iron Man 2”. They brought in Hawkeye as a member of SHIELD in “Thor”. Then they wrapped it up with the appearance of Tony Stark’s father, and having Nick Fury and SHIELD show up one more time for “Captain America: The First Avenger”. So by the time they got to “The Avengers”, people were pumped up for it.

Did you see what Marvel did? They had a plan, they laid down the foundation, and then they worked on through to completion, keeping the audience in the loop and ever-so-curious as to what would be next. “Thor” may have been weak as a movie, but they didn’t stop everything because of it. They moved on, they pressed forward, and they continued with the plan to completion. And not only did they keep the continuity intact, but they also used characters that people already recognize. The only exception to this was the re-casting of Bruce Banner, but otherwise everything else about the character and his story remained.

Nick Fury, for instance, was re-made in the “Ultimates” version of Marvel Comics in 2000. Ironically, he was patterned after the man who would later play him in the movies. But this wasn’t a completely “new” reboot for the viewers. This didn’t happen overnight. Eight years went by before he appeared in “Iron Man”. Eight years for readers to get to know this version and to like this version enough to prefer him to the grizzled World War II vet originally created by Stan Lee and the late Jack Kirby.

Now I’ll remind you all that DC just hit the reset button on all of their characters last year. They still can’t make up their minds whether or not Wonder Woman should be wearing pants or panties. They can’t even get their own history right, claiming that about thirty years of trials and tribulations all happened within the span of the past five years.

Does this sound like DC Comics has a plan right now?

Even their current animated series on Cartoon Network, “Young Justice”, is a hodgepodge of characters from various versions of DC Comics that existed before their “Grand Reboot” last year. All of these characters are no longer recognizable in the current “mainstream” universe of DC Comics.

So if I were to talk about Batman’s sidekick “Robin”, would that be Damian Wayne, the ten-year old son of Bruce Wayne and former trained assassin? Or would you think Dick Grayson, now known as “Nightwing”? Or would you think Tim Drake, the former Robin now known as “Red Robin”? Or would you think Jason Todd, the Robin that was once killed by the readers and then brought back and is now known as “Red Hood”? In DC’s “New Universe”, it could mean all four. But in “Young Justice,” it could only mean either Dick Grayson or Tim Drake. Confused? And we haven’t even gotten to the thought of coming up with a motion picture!

Then there’s the matter of DC characters in recent live-action TV shows. There was the half-season series “Birds of Prey”, the recently-completed ten seasons of “Smallville”, the never-released “Wonder Woman” pilot, and this fall there will be a new “Arrow” series. Would any of these be tied into a possible movie? Would they be connected in any way to the current Batman movie series that is wrapping up this summer with “The Dark Knight Rises”?

Let’s get brutally honest here… DC Comics is simply not ready to do an “Avengers”-style motion picture!

Yes, Warner Brothers has the production means to come up with such a movie. And unlike Marvel, they don’t have to worry about licensing rights to the characters because they’re all in-house. Where their problem lies is with the source material for the movie to work from.

We’ve seen what happens when directors and producers stray from the source material. You get colossal flops like “Superman III”, “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”, “Supergirl”, and “Batman and Robin”. If you need further proof, then all you have to do is Google-search the names “Cathy Lee Crosby” and “Wonder Woman” and you’ll find a made-for-television abomination of “Wonder Woman” that existed in name only. That should be more than enough of a reason why it’s important to stick with the source material.

In order for a comic book movie to be truly epic, you need more than just money and casting. You need characters that the audience can relate to. “The Avengers” succeeded because Marvel re-introduced the audience to those characters before bringing them together as a team. In order for Warner Brothers to do the same, they need to make sure that DC Publishers DiDio and Lee get their act together first. Only then will they be able to come up with a movie that would be truly worthy of “The World’s Greatest Superhero Team”.

(Editor’s note: David 2 is not only a longtime comic book reader, but he is also a member of the City of Comic Creators, an organization dedicated to helping fan-made comic creators hone and perfect their skills. He is also the writer/editor/creator of “The Guardian Powers” and “Tales from Paragon City”.)