Suicide by Politics

On the one side, we have Democrats saying they're willing to compromise; on the other, we have Republicans insisting they will refuse to do so. We have Democrats, and President Obama, who still think that the most important thing is to govern effectively, and attempt to solve the huge problems the US faces (I'm not saying their "solutions" are brilliant, but at least they're trying). On the other side, we have Republican leader Mitch McConnell, proclaiming their number one goal: to insure Obama fails as President, that he does not win a second term. Does that sound like governing?

If the Republicans win control of the House and/or the Senate, we can look forward to political guerrilla war to be carried out in both chambers. The only support Obama will get from any Republican is for more war and war spending. Or for any policy they push, like extending tax cuts to the wealthy, that would weaken Obama's support among his base.

If Democrats pull out a narrow win, and maintain control of both chambers, they will still be facing a determined, intransigent, and hostile opposition in no mood for compromise, or for coming to terms with the constraints of governing. The Tea Party, and the corporations that back it, have already shown they can punish any compromiser. So, the US will join the ranks of ungovernable nations, in which the powers-that-be are paralyzed. No decisive action, maybe even no budget, may be possible.

Perhaps NATO should send an occupying force to stabilize the country--ah, the US controls NATO!

One chance for governance would be if there were a reduced Democratic majority--many of the "Blue Dogs" would be gone--that realized that compromise was not possible, only governing by strict majority rule would work. The blocking filibuster would have to be jettisoned in the Senate: it could be in its first session of the new Congress.

I confess to donating a little to progressive campaigns, and phone calling for our local Congressman, but I'm not sanguine, not with the 100's of millions spent on negative ads by anonymous corporations against almost all Democrats.

We are facing a Supreme Court-induced coup d'état by the extremely wealthy, a new gilded age in which the corporate wealthy will determine US policy, just as it did in the 1880's.

Unlike the 1880's, however, the US is not a surging new power, but an aging behemoth, with a dangerous military and a costly empire. Meanwhile, China, India, the EC and Brazil will feel free to take over economically, given US stalemate, or worse, control by global corporations wedded to a wasteful status quo.

This is a different scenario for the fall of American Empire! Elections 2010 could be decisive.

Foreign $s Promote Global Warming in US

Now, it's official: European corporations, including BP, are contributing funds to US Senate campaigns--for climate change deniers and candidates who vow to block the cap and trade bill. Total contributions: $240,000, more than Koch Industries pursuing the same agenda. So, BP, for example, having polluted our Gulf of Mexico and killed workers in a refinery fire, now wants to buy politicians--so they can do more of the same, with no government interference.

European corporations are meddling in US politics. That they can, has been made possible by the Supreme Court's decision opening the way for corporate money in campaigns, despite Justice Alito shaking his head when Obama asserted that it would: Obama stated that the Citizens United decision opened election campaigns to foreign funds. Clearly, it has.

The list of corporations revealed by Climate Action Network Europe (CANE), are: BP, Arcelor-Mittal (steel), Solvay (chemicals), LaFarge (cement), GDF-Suez (energy), BASF (chemicals), Bayer (pharmaceuticals) and EON (energy). They are concerned about pollution controls: all are large-scale polluters. Europe has been in the forefront combating climate change, and these corporations have been forced to comply with EC regulations to reduce emissions.

Their thinking: if they can help elect climate change deniers and anti-climate change legislators in the US, then the US will do nothing about climate change, and they can argue that Europe shouldn't handicap itself with "burdensome" and "anti-business" regulations, either.

The same process is going on in California, which has an initiative on its ballot to nullify Schwarzenegger's widely acclaimed climate law. Money pours in from everywhere to nullify the law, but from energy companies especially.

It's fascinating to identify the allies of the Tea Party's American "patriots."

It's also fascinating to see that, so far, participants like stridently "patriotic" Fox News, have made no issue of foreign participation in our elections. In fact, it has been widely reported, but not fully substantiated, that many of the millions spent by the Chamber of Commerce and various other Tea Party groups like Rove's American Crossroads, come from foreign corporations.

It can be argued that this is only fair, since the US, and American corporations have spent money in foreign election campaigns for decades. But it is against US election laws, and it should be an issue in this campaign. Do Americans really want foreign corporations to help decide who governs us, and what policies we pursue?

Further, the funding revealed by CANE is "climate sabotage:" it is aimed at stopping any action to combat, or ameliorate climate change. And it is motivated by one thing only: corporate profits.

America is beginning to look, not so much like a declining empire as a Third World country, where all the (foreign and domestic) corporate heavies make the rules and select the players, for their own global profits.

American Checkers, Persian Chess

Americans play checkers, the Persians play chess. In Middle East intrigue, Americans are outclassed. The Persians have been around for at least 5,000 years. Americans are johnnys-come-lately.

Americans in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq, contend with Iranian influence in the governments they support. Nuri al Maliki, Iraq's PM, has long-established ties with Iran, and has recently worked out a coalition agreement with the Sadrist party, supported by Iran. What is the US to do? Maliki was supposed to be our man, nurtured and financed by the US.

Now, we find out that Hamid Karzai, Afghan President, our client in Kabul, has a chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, who is not only pro-Iranian, but Iran's conduit for illicit cash in the millions of Euros a month. His mission, it seems, is to poison Afghan-American relations.

The plot thickens: Daudzai and his friends were members of Hezb-i-Islami, a brutal, militant Islamist group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who now lives in Iran, but has ties to the Taliban. Iran in the west, like Pakistan in the east, maintains ties and provides aid to the Taliban, as well as the government. The intelligence communities of both neighboring countries vie for influence among the Taliban, the President, and with his opponents in Afghan politics.

While Pakistan is our reluctant, or resistant ally, Iran is our rival for power in the region. Yet, both have interests in furthering Afghan stability as well as their own influence; chaos on their borders might provide opportunities to extend their power, but it also endangers their own governments.

Just as the US blundered into an age-old civil war in Iraq--between Shiite and Sunni--a game in which the Persians were deeply engaged, it has done something similar in Afghanistan. Except, the Afghan game is much more complicated. The civil war between the government we installed, and the Taliban, has been ongoing for generations, between Pathans and the peoples of the northern alliance: largely Tajik and Uzbek. Meanwhile, the nations to Afghanistan's east and west have been vying for power in Afghanistan for hundreds of years.

The British Empire marched into Afghanistan from India, and was routed. The Soviets occupied Afghanistan, but were driven out. Will the US leave more gracefully?

Afghanistan's neighbors use more subtle methods: cash bribes, safe refuges, training, and control through their intelligence services. They will outlast the crude Westerners, who think that power comes from more and better weapons. Effective weapons, as the Vietnamese and Iraqis demonstrated, can be stolen, or cobbled together from the wasteful and over-generous supplies of the invader.

Rome in its decline, abandoned its push east into Parthia: the East was too complicated. The US, also a declining empire, is baffled by the complex intricacies of the region. Which will come first: bankruptcy or defeat? Or will the US withdraw in time?

Cut Social Security!

The conclusion always is: cut benefits and raise the retirement age. That's how Economists think, apparently. A self-described Economist, said, the way Economists do, that public employees were overpaid (i.e. paid "above the average" for private sector workers) and paid more "generous," hear 'over-generous', pensions. Those "golden years lifestyles" are going to have to change.

And yet, private pensions have become scarcer and scarcer, and remember what happened to retirees' IRA's and 501K's with the stock market crash? This is not progress. The retirement plans of public employees ought to be seen as a model to head for not to dismantle. Are we a humane society, or not? We should find ways to pay for those pensions, and for private pensions as well.

Furthermore, to say public employees earn more is to compare apples to oranges, and the economist knows it: government workers do not work in factories, or in the fields; very few are manual laborers, or work with heavy machinery; and most are more educated than the average.

But still, there is the assumption that benefits must be cut, not that taxes on the rich should be raised.

Why the rich? They have more money than they can spend, and tend to spend more of it abroad, or to speculate with it, thereby fueling asset bubbles. No, their money is not creating jobs. In fact, at the moment, capital is in the business of shedding jobs: when jobs are cut, corporate profits go up. Higher tax rates for the wealthy would create jobs, because they could fund government programs.

Many progressive economists point out something most Americans don't want to hear: Americans pay lower taxes than other developed nations, and the wealthy pay much lower taxes than they do in almost any developed country. Tax havens (i.e. places with even lower taxes) happen to be in poor countries, i.e. in countries with even fewer public services, but with private services westerners buy at low cost--for them, but not for most natives.

It is astounding how little play a mildly progressive politics has in the US. In "liberal" NY State, the highly popular Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, concedes economic policy to conservative positions: cut public sector pay; cut pensions and establish a property tax cap, similar to the one in California. California's tax cap defunded their world-class education system built up even under Reagan. California's experience with the tax cap has been not just an education disaster, but a financial one, too, as their huge deficit demonstrates.

But few dare to propose a "millionaire tax," though the wealthy pay lower tax rates than everyone else; few propose rebating the stock transaction fee: both could yield enough for NY to pay its budget.

We have entered an era, when only the wealthy are allowed to win--the interests of ordinary people are dismissed as "special interests." That kind of society led to Rome's impoverishment and its eventual "fall" in 476. It's happening here.

Anarchism 2010-style

They don't wear black masks, and they don't trash police cars. They go to rallies and hold up signs against Obamacare, or Guvmint, or claim Obama is a Muslim. Yes, the Tea Party.

It's not as if the Tea Party doesn't have sponsors. Again, it's not like those masked vandals, who eschew money, itself. The Tea Party anarchists, are for dissolving all government, eventually. Just follow their logic--and their sponsors.

Government isn't supposed to be doing all the things it does now, because, well, maybe they can point to mis-interpretations of our 18th Century Constitution, but really they just insist (against a good deal of evidence to the contrary) that government can do nothing right.

Logically, that will eventually extend to the police and the military. In both cases, private corporations are taking over increasing shares of these functions: private prison corporations and Blackwater/Xie come to mind.

So, the new anarchism hands over all power to huge corporations. Governments wither away. If we could do without government, I'd be happy too, but given the size of our population, and the complexity of our society, government functions would be taken over by corporations: not an improvement.

We cannot do without government functions, collective goods, and a whole host of services we just take for granted, like insuring clean, healthy food, reliable weights and measures, information about the economy, about the people in it. Everyone gains when more people are healthy, so public health is necessary: plagues and epidemics are really bad for business.

The Tea Party opposition to "Obamacare," is generated by vast amounts of money from healthcare corporations that want to keep the best parts--like guaranteed new markets (required by the individual mandate)--while jettisoning costly regulations like no pre-existing conditions. It's also opposed by wealthy ideologues like the Koch brothers.

There is a logical path from one to the other, however: it is empowering corporations and disempowering everyone else. In other words, the new anarchism could eventually usher in a world in which Google provides the economic data--it's attempting to, right now, with the price index--and Xie fights unending, profitable wars.

Do you remember Newt Gingrich proposing that Visa could collect taxes much more efficiently than the IRS?

And who would make the decisions? Why, the Senators and Congressmen and Presidents, who are elected by corporate campaign funds, of course. And they'll do the bidding of the corporations, perhaps meeting informally when disagreements do crop up.

People would only be necessary to pay the bills and provide the underpaid muscle and intellect needed for the corporations to make even greater profits. Corporate owners, i.e. the fewer and fewer people who really own them, would have unlimited wealth. And power.

Voila, Anarchism 2010! Just like Rome circa 477, after its "fall," before wandering marauders finish off most of the Romans. By 500, Rome had shrunk to 20-30,000 people (from over 1 million).

Imperial Water

Water was falling steadily on September 30th, water carried by the prevailing winds all the way from the Gulf of Mexico. It's falling now, too. September's rain reminded me of the tortured history of water between this country and Mexico.

Here, in the Northeast, we usually have an abundance of water, although the "monsoon" we've had broke a six-week drought. But the whole western third of the US has always been deficient in water. The West used to be tagged, on old maps, as 'The Great Western Desert.' This included large parts of California.

Most of the West was also a possession of Mexico, until the Mexican war of 1846-48. The US annexed Texas before the war; after, it took over all the Rocky Mountain and Pacific territories (California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada) when it won the war, which the US fought for blatant territorial aggrandizement. Americans called it "manifest destiny."

Some of the prized possessions of those territories are the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers. The Colorado flows from Wyoming into Mexico, all the way to Mexico's Gulf of California, or it did. Now, there are times when its flow is negligible by the time it gets to Mexico. It's the main source of water for California's Imperial Valley, one of the richest irrigated agricultural regions in the world.

There was a Mexican-American Water Treaty negotiated in 1944. It allocates more water to the US, from the Colorado and the Rio Grande, so Mexico does not receive the water enjoyed by American farmers and city dwellers in places like LA, the Imperial Valley (aptly named), and Arizona. I've seen lush fields of hay (!) in Arizona's deserts, for example.

So, first, the US took a large part of Mexico, and then it took a good deal of its water. That water is used to grow crops Mexico cannot. Then, to add insult to injury, the US negotiated NAFTA so that US subsidized corn could flood Mexico (where corn/maize first appeared more than two thousand years ago). Mexican peons couldn't compete; subsidized imports drove them from their smallholdings.

American corporations not only wanted to export surplus corn, but to establish maquiladoras over the border. So, the flood of cheap workers created by destroying Mexico's small farms was serendipitous.

However, China's lower labor costs made the maquiladoras less competitive. So, Mexico has a large unemployed, rootless labor force. Is it surprising that Mexicans stream across the Rio Grande, or the Arizona desert? Or that drug trafficking has become one of Mexico's principal industries?

Border States have become "hard-assed" about illegal immigration, but imperial bullying brings consequences. The flood of Chicanos into the US is one.

Lack of water is one of its principal causes.

Robbers (Almost) in Charge

You really do have to wonder, with a Democratic House and Senate--stalemated by a Republican minority--how a bill to retroactively legalize faulty foreclosures could slip through just before Congress went home. It legalized wholesale larceny! It didn't become law, because there was one honest man who could stop it: President Obama refused to sign it, a pocket veto.

And then there's the prospect of quantitative easing (QE2=printing money) by the Fed. Responsible economists agree: the economy needs more stimulus. The stimulus we've had was only enough to keep us from falling off the cliff. To get out of the high unemployment doldrums, a massive amount of money must be spent. There are two ways to do so. One is to invest in the nation, to increase everyone's wealth--green jobs and industry and updated infrastructure: a second fiscal stimulus. However, with political stalemate, it would be DOA in Congress the minute Obama mentioned it.

So, the other option is for the Fed to print money. This will probably stimulate some people in the economy--the bankers, already rolling in dough! QE 2 would create more money to buy up mortgage-backed securities, so that banks would then have money to--loan more money to the hoi polloi to stimulate the economy? Hah! How about gambling on Wall Street and the commodity exchanges, or investing in booming countries elsewhere? The Fed doesn't require the bankers to spend their new money domestically; they can spend it wherever.

That's one reason why a Fed stimulus is much less effective than a government stimulus; it has what economists call significant "leakage," like heating a house that's full of holes. Further, a Fed stimulus would exacerbate inequality, already at its highest level since 1929. The Fed would be giving banks trillions of dollars and saying: get even richer!

Would this 'stimulus' help ordinary folks? If it creates jobs, but fewer would result than you'd expect for the trillions of dollars created. If QE2 succeeded economically, homeowners might be able to stay in their homes; foreclosures might stop. Ultimately, that could create jobs, as the real estate market rebounded, but it would take awhile. How much of the stimulus would ordinary people see? Not much. QE2 could also unleash inflation, although deflation now is the greater danger.

What it really looks like: gangsters are in control. Not Mafia. No, these gangsters aren't so honorable. They're the bankers, investors, corporate leaders and politicians pillaging the nation, driving the American empire into poverty, while reaping windfalls. How else do you explain Congress passing the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, legalizing illegal foreclosures?

How much can one man (Obama) do to stand up to organized crime on such a scale?

The prescient have already abandoned ship for places like Taiwan, or Belize.

An Awful Anniversary

Ten years ago today the US invaded Afghanistan: it's the longest war in our history, and in some ways, the worst. I think, in terms of outcomes, Afghanistan will rank as the worst, for us, for the Afghans.

The US will not win this war; if the best-case scenario prevails, the US will withdraw in a negotiated settlement (now in the works); the Taliban will re-enter Afghan politics with some caveats, like abjuring violence. They would be a strong presence, but perhaps not dominant, because the Taliban can't win the war, either--unless it goes on for another ten years.

But think of the cost for this minimal settlement! Afghanistan has so far cost us $352.9 billion; over 1000 American combatants killed, over 2,000 foreign troops and perhaps 25,000 Afghan civilians. But war isn't just about people getting killed; it disrupts society, people's lives are ripped apart, their families stressed, or driven to starvation, their homes destroyed, their jobs gone, infrastructure annihilated. War is about some people losing a lot, even if they survive. In Afghanistan, American forces, setting up forward bases, appropriate peasant land and start building. Whether, there are internal politics involved (determining whose land is taken), those people have had their livelihoods, and their whole social identity, taken from them.

In Turkey, people like that did our dirty laundry (I was in the Army, there, in 1962).

But to the brass, ten years isn't so momentous. They have already leaked hints they expect to be in Afghanistan until 2020, or later. From Woodward's reporting--how the military boxed Obama in on Afghanistan--it looks as if, for the military, continuous war is what they aim for; and they'll work to get it. Either we fight in Afghanistan, or we'll have to find another war. It's not that hard, with media outlets like Fox News and WaPo.

For the military brass, war, war all the time, is a good thing. Promotions come faster, budgets keep growing, their power increases, and they have an easier time keeping the troops happy--as long as not too many are being killed. Easier in wartime? We have a professional military. During wars, all of them fare better than in peacetime in terms of pay and benefits. Of course, during war, those below the rank of colonel can get shot at, or blown up, or forced to endure inferior living conditions. But even privates now get balanced meals and hot showers most of the time.

It's why the poor enlist: a steady, if somewhat risky, job. Like Roman Legionnaires.

But civilians pay the bills: between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

Actually, we borrow it from the Chinese!

Risk a Catastrophe?

"Oh, it will never happen!"

They all say that, about the possibility of one as a consequence of what they do--they being all of us. Whether it's a cat hunting mice and braving the threat of coyotes--they eat cats--or JP Morgan buying derivatives of uncertain value, or BP drilling offshore, or MAL Zrt, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, stockpiling the sludge byproduct from producing aluminum from bauxite.

In each case, after many times when disaster did not strike, after many times when disaster was possible, but did not happen, after many times when "experts" said it couldn't happen, it struck and struck hard, in the last two cases with huge environmental damage.

When will we learn?

There is a difference between the chances for profit and the chances for disaster. Some call this asymmetrical risk. You can risk profit, and if you lose, you lose your money; if you win, you gain money. But there are other risks, like those environmental disasters. The costs are borne by a much larger number than capital investors. In the case of the Hungarian sludge disaster, which just happened, not only did people die--of alkaline burns--whole areas of Hungary will have to be dug up, the soil replaced, towns have been abandoned, and in rivers like the Raba, most of the life in them may have been killed. The sludge may reach the Danube, which flows through other countries.

Who pays for all that? The offending corporation should, their investors impoverished if necessary, but you know that won't happen. BP has been assessed damages for its Gulf oil disaster, and for its earlier refinery disaster, as well--peanuts compared to its profits--but it isn't paying the cost of restoring the Gulf to its pre-blowout condition. It won't be. So, everybody else is: the fishermen whose livelihoods have been lost, for example, the hotel owners and workers, whose businesses have been destroyed, and so on.

In most capitalist enterprise, in fact, there are huge asymmetrical risks, some of which we are only beginning to be aware, like the possible links between earthquakes and mining or deep drilling--huge spaces are evacuated underground, in both cases: there could be consequences. Again: who pays?

Our market system is engaged in the most asymmetrical risk of all: profit in the short run for the risk in the long run of a climate so destabilized that most of the human population won't survive.

Who pays?

At least, when the Roman Empire fell in the west, the whole planet was not affected: only Western Europe and western North Africa. When our industrial system poisons itself, the whole planet will suffer; it already is.

But the climate change deniers, beloved of "conservatives" and the tea party, and funded by corporations, want us to take on that risk--so that Exxon, Peabody Energy and General Electric can earn even greater profits than they do right now.

Are humans rational?

Full Spectrum Dominance

…is what the Pentagon insists on maintaining--globally! Dominance: on Land, Air, Sea and Space. Among professional American military, the "long war" is an assumption, not just a consensus. Talk about Global Empire!

American Generals don't think much about economics. America is "the greatest nation on earth," so it can afford endless war everywhere. For the Generals, Admirals, Colonels, Majors, Captains etc., it's a great deal. Back home, we may have to scrimp, or worry about losing jobs, or homes, but the more wars there are, the better for the officers and NCO's. Defense industries depend on it and profit handsomely, too. So what, if the rest of America has to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it!

Defense spending is the largest "discretionary" item in the US budget, always, war or no war. And since WWII, it has always gone up. Why?

Have dangers escalated? No. With the end of the Cold War, the Soviets, the only power that could annihilate large parts of the US, collapsed; it re-emerged as resource-rich Russia, with only regional ambitions. The Chinese were briefly our enemies, during the Korean War, but they also have only regional ambitions, and never had the Soviet's capability of destroying the US.

Media commentators express alarm that a growing and prosperous China is building up its military, but its budget is about one-tenth of ours, even though it is the second richest nation, and the one with the most money to squander: we have huge trade deficits, they have huge surpluses.

So, why does DOD's budget go up every year? Why are we still in Iraq, although we're supposedly no longer fighting, and in Afghanistan, building huge bases, although we're supposed to be "starting" withdrawal next summer?

Excerpts from Woodward's Obama's War indicate that it really isn't his war. It's Petraeus's, and the other Generals'. Obama insisted on an exit date, and Petraeus, and company, have been chipping away at that ever since: if the military has anything to say (unfortunately, it has the loudest voice), we'll be fighting in Afghanistan until at least 2020. And we'll find other enemies, too, even if only a few hundred "extremists" here and there.

In the 1930's, Japan had the trappings of democracy, but it was controlled by the military, using the charisma of the Emperor to rally the nation. Tojo, a General, became Prime Minister during WWII. The victorious allies hanged him. He could be Petraeus's model.

Look for Petraeus to run for President in 2012. If he wins, he'll lead the nation like Tojo, who was probably responsible for the Pearl Harbor bombing--and Japan's subsequent defeat.

The military was also dominant in the late Roman Empire. That didn't do Romans much good against their enemies, the "Barbarians," however--even when they hired Barbarians to protect Rome against other Barbarians: See page: The Fall of Rome.