Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Is Forcing Privately Held Oil Corps into a USPS Model in the Public Interest?

roachboy · 05-09-2008, 12:32 PM

2 questions and i'll get back to you:

1. how emblematic do you take this bakersfield situation to be and why?
2. you have a more or less textbook case of the discrepancy between corporate performance viewed on a global scale versus local dependence on systems of distribution that from the global scale are expendable and/or outmoded. at the ideological level, you have an american system that has not even started to deal with the consequences of the shift in power away from nation-states to trans-national registers and which compounds this problem by also being differentially committed (depending on whether a particular politician is of the democrat or republican wing of the overall consensus-driven formation) to not using regulation to assert interests at the nation-state level.

2 is relevant in this case both in general (add it up, if my writing is clear enough--and i'm not sure it is--and you'll find that it results in a quick outline of total incoherence at the policy/regulatory level across the board--how does the american nation-state assert it's own interests--which are those of maintaining itself as a nation-state--when they are at cross purposes with the interests or requirements of trans-national capital? can it, even in a context as fundamental as energy? so far, "markets" structured around de facto neo-colonial arrangements have enabled the state to avoid dealing with this matter on energy--if it were possible to do anything coherent, particularly while this asshat administration remains in power, political expediency would have already had then doing it, i'd imagine, as it is politically damaging for gas prices to be this high and there to be NO sign that the american state can or will do anything about it...)

given this, the first question comes into play: how emblematic is this situation? why is it emblematic? why do you take this particular case as a jump-off point for a nationalization argument?

all this to the side of the simple reality that there is no way that this administration would ever do such a thing.
and the corporate media seems to have neither the internal interest nor external directives to sell such an idea--you know, in anything like the way it worked to sell the crock of shit that is the iraq war for example...

this for starters.

05-09-2008, 12:32 PM	#2 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	2 questions and i'll get back to you: 1. how emblematic do you take this bakersfield situation to be and why? 2. you have a more or less textbook case of the discrepancy between corporate performance viewed on a global scale versus local dependence on systems of distribution that from the global scale are expendable and/or outmoded. at the ideological level, you have an american system that has not even started to deal with the consequences of the shift in power away from nation-states to trans-national registers and which compounds this problem by also being differentially committed (depending on whether a particular politician is of the democrat or republican wing of the overall consensus-driven formation) to not using regulation to assert interests at the nation-state level. 2 is relevant in this case both in general (add it up, if my writing is clear enough--and i'm not sure it is--and you'll find that it results in a quick outline of total incoherence at the policy/regulatory level across the board--how does the american nation-state assert it's own interests--which are those of maintaining itself as a nation-state--when they are at cross purposes with the interests or requirements of trans-national capital? can it, even in a context as fundamental as energy? so far, "markets" structured around de facto neo-colonial arrangements have enabled the state to avoid dealing with this matter on energy--if it were possible to do anything coherent, particularly while this asshat administration remains in power, political expediency would have already had then doing it, i'd imagine, as it is politically damaging for gas prices to be this high and there to be NO sign that the american state can or will do anything about it...) given this, the first question comes into play: how emblematic is this situation? why is it emblematic? why do you take this particular case as a jump-off point for a nationalization argument? all this to the side of the simple reality that there is no way that this administration would ever do such a thing. and the corporate media seems to have neither the internal interest nor external directives to sell such an idea--you know, in anything like the way it worked to sell the crock of shit that is the iraq war for example... this for starters. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-09-2008 at 12:34 PM..