A bank called
The Farmers Bank & Trust of Cheneyville in Cheneyville, Louisiana went under a few years ago. While only a Cheney-class slime bucket and emotional zero would be unmoved by the hardship the depositors must have experienced, it's also the perfect ironic metaphor for what's happened to this country under the Junta.
When one of the world's top five criminal enterprises tries to pass themselves off as politicians, can't get elected, but conspires with the supremes to steal the office anyway, you kind of know what you're in for. These swine have no idea how to govern; don't even want to bother. They just want a clear path to the uncountable piles of swag stored in vaults or computers in the world's major financial centers.
It's the great neocon depression, and it's only right that there's a failed bank in an economically failing town bearing the name of the most dangerous criminal sociopath of them all.
The massuhs have been pissed off for centuries that they could never manage to steal the 5 or 10 percent of the world's assets that stubbornly refuse to abandon the peasantry and move into any of the vaults owned by the top 1 or 2 percent, as gawd had always intended.
But it looks like that's finally taken care of. This enormously profitable money transfer scam is now codified in US federal law.
This latest attack on the lower 98 percent began with tax cuts that reward the rich just for being rich. Then privatization kicks in. So like all cases of parasitism, the tax cuts significantly weakened the host even before the Iraq insanity has nearly killed it.
Because it works, the Cheneyville model's being applied throughout the country. It's been spectacularly successful at rewarding the "haves and have mores" by embedding a system of corporate welfare passing as a laissez-faire capitalist free market globalized heaven on earth. Only predators need apply.
So how's everybody doing in Cheneyville? A few random stats on education and work for people 25 years and over:
* High school or higher: 53.2%
* Bachelor's degree or higher: 11.8%
* Graduate or professional degree: 5.3%
*
Unemployed: 43.9% * Mean travel time to work: 33.8 minutes
Any place named Cheneyville can probably forget about growing, prospering or even surviving long term.
Single-family new house construction building permits:
* 1996: 0 buildings
* 1997: 0 buildings
* 1998: 0 buildings
* 1999: 3 buildings, average cost: $112,300
* 2000: 3 buildings, average cost: $112,300
* 2001: 0 buildings
* 2002: 0 buildings
* 2003: 0 buildings
* 2004: 0 buildings
* 2005: 0 buildings
* 2006: 0 buildings
* 2007: 0 buildings
Cheneyville compared to the Louisiana state average:
* Median household income significantly below state average. ($19,044)
* Median house value significantly below state average. ($35,400)
* Unemployed percentage significantly above state average. (43.9%)
* Black race population percentage significantly above state average. (65.7%)
* Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average. (0.04%)
* Percentage of population with a bachelor's degree or higher below state average. (estimated at 17%)
And on the poverty scale:
Residents with income below the poverty level in 1999:
This town: 43.9%
Whole state: 19.6%
Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 1999:
This town: 17.0%
Whole state: 9.4%
But at least they're tracking the critical stuff:
Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households)
* Lesbian couples: 0.0% of all households
* Gay men: 0.7% of all households
Things may suck in Cheneyville, but they got their consolidated radio/TV media just like everybody else: MS Communications owns four radio stations and eight TV stations; Capstar TX owns four radio stations; the Bible Broadcasting Network is also represented. Strangely, there's no mention of NovaM or Jones or even AAR. Odd...
Cheneyville is home to a few members of the political donor class. Two residents were so overcome with gratitude to the GOP and the Bush economic miracle they decided to chip in to help the RNC pay the enormous costs they've accrued recruiting and compensating competent voting machine riggers: a good sum for their expertise and a huge sum for their silence.
One guy seems to have started slowly at the $250 entry level in 2003 but, by the end of August 2004, he had moved all the way to heavy petting, which starts at $1,000. But the other donor, an author, gave $300 to the RNC once in 2003. The guilt was apparently overwhelming and she never did it again.
A couple dozen farmers kicked in a few hundred apiece to the American Sugar Cane League PAC, and the same guy who got to third base in 2004 also spent another thousand on Friends of Bobby Jindal Inc.
Here's the whole list, and a bunch of pikers they are, too.
I think Larson actually got the whole republican enchilada with that gift. But these days, that means spending the night with Dr. Laura, from the first martini and some hors d'oeuvres around 5:00 in the afternoon to the fast, silent exit about 12 hours later. I expect he wants his money back.
Bobby Jindal, who I'd never heard of before, is the GOP governor of Louisiana and has been touted by "insiders" as a potential running mate for McPain. He seems to be weird and religiously insane enough.
He's a Punjabi-American, a Rhodes Scholar and a convert to extremist Catholicism at the Opus Dei/Scalia end of the scale. He's big on "intelligent design" and not really all that interested in facts or science or proof of concept if it contradicts literal biblical interpretation.
This is from part 59 in a series of articles called "The Catholic Right" by Frank Cocozzelli featured on a news/op-ed/discussion blog called
Talk to Action, which welcomes people who are "...concern(ed) about the "religious right", the Christian right, Christian nationalism, encroaching theocracy..."
Jindal is obviously a bright guy, which begs the question why he's a republican, a winger and an anti-science religious loon. He's also one of only a few people who would voluntarily get within a lightyear of McPain without being coerced. And he's a convert to extremist Catholicism, the kind that's associated with the Opus Dei/Scalia end of the scale.
But he's not quite untouchable (not meant in the caste sense). He participated in an exorcism while in college and wrote
this essay on the experience, thus leaving one of the things wingnuts hate most: a paper trail of their wingnuttery.
[br />At least the exorcism was a success. Jindal's team of ghost busters cast out the offending spirit and everybody, including the woman who was allegedly harboring this demon, survived the experience with no apparent damage. And he wrote that he believes the ritual may also have cured the possessed woman's cancer.
So he's got a national health plan, too.
wp
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