This blog is opened first and foremost in the desire to help get the Ninety-Percent on message.  It comes from a deep concern over the fading fortunes of the American Experiment. Government “of, by, and for the people” has been nearly obliterated by the ambitions of the so-called multinationals, whose manipulations of global trade and finance have put them increasingly beyond the reach of nations and the rule of law.

The author of the blog is Frank Mensel of Plano, TX.   A writer throughout a career that has spanned key posts in a Congressional office, a major federal agency, five national associations of higher education, two universities, and two historic coalitions.

The message needed to strengthen and focus the Ninety-Nine is a lesson that the One Percent badly need. The One Percent have forgotten the truth about capitalism.  The Ninety-Nine Percent must instruct them!

That truth is that capitalism has first responsibility for keeping itself working.  To coexist successfully with democracy, it must spread wealth faster than concentrate it.  In this way, capitalism replenishes the consumer economics on which it feeds. Consumer economics is only as strong as the middle class on which it rides.

For three decades, the United States has been living the other way around, and the results have been devastating:  staggering public and private debt. The presidency of Ronald Reagan, led by his entourage of neocons, pushed the idea that prosperity would grow from “trickle down”:  heap more wealth on the wealthy, and their accelerated spending would lift all ships.  The neocons promised smaller government, but then played a different game. They put a larger share of the federal payroll into the Pentagon, to muscle up the cold war, rushing out new weapon systems on lucrative cost overruns, and turning up corporate welfare that became the free lunch for the booming multinationals.  The national debt nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency.  Through the first Bush and then the Clinton administrations the reckless budget deficits were finally tamed.   (Little wonder that the two presidents have become friends.) But then President George W. Bush not only revived “trickle down,” he revved it up with vengeance.  He nearly tripled the national debt again, boasting “mission accomplished” for two wars that he couldn’t finish. He left us a badly wounded America that, thankfully, the Ninety-Nine Percent are now bent upon healing.

It can be done if the Ninety-Nine are relentless in making the One Percent (and their corporate-friendly Supreme Court) understand that capitalism must spread wealth more than concentrate it for it to prosper. If it doesn’t, capitalism becomes the snake that swallows itself.

Beyond this emphasis, the blog will pull no punches in digging at the elite, sacred cows, traditions or conventions in its run of themes. Its pursuit will continue for a year, with one or two entries a week, leaving the future then to reappraisal.