A Tortured Specter of Franken Flu & Other Mercury Tales

© Terry Lamb

May 8, 2009

Mercury is retrograde now, and there is a complex series of interwoven planetary events that is taking place. Without going into the details (these are in my May forecast), there are many interactions that may feel unpleasant or disconcerting but are good for us collectively and individually in the long run. (Connections are always good, because they help us figure things out. It’s better to have bad breath than no breath at all.)

Here’s a partial litany of the issues that are “up” right now for us collectively:

Swine Flu (Update)
Can we save ourselves? If this H1N1 outbreak follows the pattern of the one in 1918, the spring version of the influenza is mild. However, the following fall-winter, the outbreak was acute and deadly, and it killed the most healthy among the population. This was caused by a cytokine storm, where the immune system goes into hyper-drive and overwhelms the body so that it essentially drowns in its own immune response. There is evidence of heightened cytokinic activity with the current flu outbreak.

The wisdom gained from the 1918 Spanish Influenza allows us to anticipate that the virus could become pandemic in the fall and winter — and this gives biologists time to come up with a vaccine. The vaccine could become available no sooner than October, and a question remains as to how effective the vaccine will be because of the trial-and-error nature of the process.

In the fall, temporarily Saturn cuts its ties Uranus when it goes into Libra, connecting with Pluto at the end of the year. It then returns to Virgo to make two more connections to Uranus before leaving it behind. This is fodder for a more serious outbreak — and for humanity to get its public health act together.

I have no speculations on what will occur, but we have an open window now and many public health officials and biologists are aggressively pursuing avenues for our safety. There is a stepwise developmental process that will lead us to our experiences this fall, as well as many opportunities to ameliorate the situation.

Torture Memos
As Mercury first reached the heart of the pattern it triggers (the third week of April), torture memos and reports began peeling off like layers on an onion. As Mercury stations, the hits just keep on coming! I will watch this process with fascination and hope for justice.

A Specter of Vacillation
It takes some getting used to, but Arlen Specter is the latest ghost to haunt the Democratic Party. If he could only get used to it! He has responded to the Mercury retrograde in typical fashion — by misspeaking in stating that the Minnesota Supremes should do the right thing and declare Norm Coleman the winner of the never-ending senate race with Al Franken. “Now, what party was I in?”

Franken Sense
Mercury stations on Franken’s Sun-Mars conjunction — oh, my! But the only misstep has been Specter’s. The sole news item on Franken as this planetary moment passes is the heckler that got politely dissed by Franken at a Washington restaurant Tuesday night. So far, he’s clean!

The Return of Bush, Salazar-Style
Yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management released reports that Quaterra Alaska Inc. has been authorized to engage in uranium exploration near the Grand Canyon, in direct defiance of a congressional resolution prohibiting such mining for three years. Environmental groups, canyon-country lovers, and people that like to drink water in California are evaluating what to do about this. There is already a lawsuit in the courts against previous interior secretary Kempthorne. To take action on this situation, contact your senators and congressional representative, urging them to enforce the emergency resolution of the House Natural Resources Committee, and to pass the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act of 2009. This bill has not yet been numbered by the House or Senate. Stay in touch with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust for how you can take political action.

Here's to Your Health (and Good Luck With That)!
The chair of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus held his first hearing on health care reform yesterday, and he specifically and pointedly excluded anyone who was interested in or advocating a single-payer plan. Fully represented among the 15 participants were health insurers and big pharma. Eight people representing groups advocating for a single-payer system attended, but when they each, one by one, stood to comment on the exclusion, they were led from the room. At least 59% (AMA) and by some estimations more than 80% of physicians favor a single payer system. At least 60% of Americans do. Senator Baucus receives more campaign funding from insurers and big pharma than any other senator. We need Mercury retrograde (and Ed Schultz on MSNBC's Big Ed Show) to raise awareness and give us time to get it right.

Wounding, Healing, and Dreaming
The unifying theme of the coming six weeks (an over-arching theme of the year) is wounding, healing, and dreaming. We in America are busy healing the American Dream, removing the materialism that has tainted it in the last 30 or so years, and the anti-populism that has existed longer than that. We citizens are the key. We have to become involved in our government, or we will lose even more of what the founding fathers established for us.

Healing the dream means taking the lead in some areas of human evolution simply because we can, so we must step into that responsibility with wisdom and conscientiousness. Whether it is in public health policy, land management, restoring civil liberties, or letting the people’s will be done, we are discovering the wounds (painful) and have the opportunity to heal them (joyful) as Mercury makes its way backward for the next three weeks.

We’re All Secretaries Now: AIG and the Growing Challenge to Corporatism

March 17, 2009

Back in my 20s, I found myself from time to time in a job as a “secretary” (now dressed up as “administrative assistant”). I quickly learned how challenging such a position could be, then later as the concept of job stress emerged, I learned how secretarial positions rank pretty far up the stress scale, because they trap the hapless employee in a position of responsibility without authority. I suspect this is true of nearly all customer service positions as well.

So when AIG announced that it was issuing $165m in “retention awards” to the Financial Products Unit (the ones that brought the whole economy down through their approval of high-risk credit default swaps), I got that old familiar feeling of being a secretary again. This on top of the $440K party, the $86K executive fox-hunting trip to the UK (outrageous in itself), and who-knows-how-much to hire four PR firms to spin us into liking them.

Money Without Strings — Time to Par-tay!!!
Last September, the Federal Reserve Bank acted within its authority to loan $85bn to AIG. Without us propping them up, AIG would not exist. We should note that this is not a part of TARP nor of any bailout funds approved by Congress, but a 24-month loan arranged by the Fed.

When our naive Fed made the loan, they assumed that AIG would act responsibly and in the interests of the American people (HA!), a laughable extension of the “free-market fundamentalism” that has been nearly thoroughly discredited. The loan was granted with few strings attached, and certainly none regarding employee compensation. However, the purpose of the loan is stated in the letter announcing the loan as,

. . . to assist AIG in meeting its obligations as they come due. This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, with the least possible disruption to the overall economy.

However AIG got plenty of those too, though with more restrictions, to a total of $170bn. The result: Now the government owns 80% of AIG. That’s you and me — we own 80% of this donkey.

But still, the government (Treasury, Congress) has asked for no control and little oversight over the corporation. Evidently, the dreaded ghost of nationalization looms too large for us to consider it. This brings us to that old, bad feeling of responsibility without authority: We have to pay for it, but we have no control over how the money is used or what the outcome will be. We are all secretaries to AIG.

We May Not Be Secretaries for Long.
The money is clearly NOT meant to be used for employee bonuses. However, can anything be done to stop it? Tim Geithner (who incidentally was head of the NY Fed when it doled out the cash) has said that nothing can be done through legal channels. AIG says its hands are tied — it has to honor the contracts. What’s more, AIG refuses to produce a list of names of those receiving bonuses. The message from AIG to the government (that means us): “Get stuffed.”

However, other sources are not so sure. Senator Arlen Specter thinks the awards violate public policy and would not stand up in court. Congress isn’t waiting, however. There are two bills afoot to tax the bonuses at a high rate, one with a tax rate of 100%! We may not be beholding to AIG for long.

This is a classic David-vs.-Goliath struggle of the behemoth corporation against the people it has victimized. As Pluto, in the second year of its Capricorn transit, slows to a near stop before its retrograde (apparent backward motion) begins on April 4, let’s call this the opening salvo in the battle to take the government of the US people to be by and for the people once again, instead of bought and paid for by big business.


© Terry Lamb