US Dysfunction: Who Profits?

We have a nearly dysfunctional political system and conservatives like it that way.

Dick Durban, the Senate Assistant Majority Leader, recently described how he and his colleagues--virtually all Senators and Congress-people--have to go across the street from the Capitol to a bare-bones call center, and spend hours calling for campaign contributions at least several times a week. He described it as his "other job," fundraising.

Now, we have "Super-pacs" and non-profit affiliates collecting many millions of dollars from less than a few hundred multi-millionaires, billionaires and corporations. They are hoping to buy the election of the President, the Senate, the House, and the states. This year billions of dollars may be in play.

There was another period in the US, when the very wealthy virtually owned our government: until the 1901 accession of Teddy Roosevelt to the Presidency. TR's Presidency was a mistake. New York's Republican leadership saw Governor Roosevelt as a troublemaker: they thought they were banishing him to ineffectuality as Vice President. Then, President McKinley, was assassinated and TR became President. He began trust-busting, the beginning of the end of the first Gilded Age, in which "robber barons" boasted of spending money to elect Government to pass laws so that they could make even more money.

The Gilded Age looked much like the late Roman Empire, when the Roman Senatorial class monopolized virtually all the wealth, and used it to protect their own interests: not those of the empire, nor of the other people in it. The latter were reduced to slaves and serfs, and a mercenary military was supposed to protect the Empire and maintain order.

The Fifth Century, the 1890's, it's happening again. But it's not just corruption and class exploitation, this time: it's a complete failure to respond to the most urgent crisis of our era. The inability of Congress to act--brought to you by the corrupt campaign finance and lobbying system--is not only preventing action to alleviate the problem, it's actually promoting policies that will make the problem worse.

Congress has brushed aside any attempt to ameliorate or reverse damaging global climate change. This has happened, even though weather events and scientific data, from ice-cores to global temperatures, to violent storms, to melting polar ice, corroborate not only the global scientific consensus that climate change is happening, but that it's accelerating faster than any but the most radical predictions foresaw. And now, there's an "oil and gas boom" in the US!

Our "robber barons" have bought off Pennsylvania and Ohio, are attempting to buy off New York--allowing fracking anywhere--and along with big corporations that TR would recognize, they are pooling their billions to buy up Congress and the Presidency, so they can amass even more billions, the climate be damned.

We all will be, if they succeed.

Trayvon Martin Does Not RIP

"I'll shoot any White Man who looks like a Republican," said Tim Dillinger, a white male member of what Elizabeth suggested be called our "neighborhood watch" group.

Black families tell about the moments when they have to have "the talk" with their sons, not about sex, but about how a young black man is in danger, because white people see him as dangerous, regardless of how nice or smart or gentle he really is.

Whites see young black men, especially one wearing a hoodie (masking his features, hiding his face), as hoodlums out to do no good: like Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida, who had just gone to get a snack at the convenience store.

I know what Sanford used to be like. I lived in a swamp to the west of town, near Oviedo. It's all subdivisions now, but then, we lived down a sand road from a 70-acre celery field. A crew of local (black) farmworkers picked during the celery season, and it was an assembly line going down the field: picking, processing, packaging and loading celery on a truck for northern markets. The farmworkers told me they worked for about six months, and then went on welfare for the rest of the year.

In effect, the state and local governments' welfare payments subsidized lower celery prices in northern, winter markets. But, of course, local whites saw welfare recipients as shiftless and worthless, a separate caste apart.

So now, in one of those spiffy new developments, with curving streets, cul-de-sacs and guarded entrances, a neighborhood watch "commander" follows an African American youth--against police cellphone advice--may have some confrontation with him, and then shoots him dead.

It's not entirely surprising that in the new Sanford, the police do nothing, even when Zimmerman, the shooter, confesses--no, he reports, claiming Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law and self defense. No one mentions the word 'crime.' A crime was committed here: a young man was killed in cold blood.

Yet, both Rush Limbaugh and President Obama call it "a tragedy."

Why isn't it a murder? How would you feel if the normal was the quote that begins this piece: if white men who looked like Republicans were the ones most in danger of being shot by a neighborhood watch group? In other words, this is all about race; about how black people are always suspicious, and white people are not.

Romans had slaves and free, but of all races, and divided free subjects into honored and humble classes: the US has always had at least two castes: black and white. Now, there are more, differentiated by color and ethnicity. Zimmerman was enforcing caste separation in the way most upper castes do: with violence.

Maybe, with Colorofchange and other groups, Sanford, Florida's police may now know: killing people, even of another race, is no longer acceptable, because we are all people and our other labels don't count.

Democrats, Republicans, Wars and History

Kennedy's main opponent in the primaries, until very late in 1960, was Stuart Symington, also a Senator (from Missouri, endorsed by retired President Truman). He was relatively liberal and later critical of the Vietnam War, though former first Secretary of the Air Force (1947-50); he'd been prominent in standing up against McCarthy's redbaiting. He refused to speak to segregated audiences in the South, while Kennedy did, so Symington lost the South to Kennedy and Johnson--as well as doing less well than Kennedy in the rest of the country.

Symington lost primarily because he was outclassed in charisma, and in organization, but Kennedy was to his right, politically. Johnson was even more conservative--until he became President--but no more warlike. Kennedy campaigned, in the general election, on "the missile gap." Supposedly, the USSR had more and better missiles. Multiple Independently targeted Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV's) were something everyone talked about: reportedly, the Soviets had missiles with 9-10 warheads; we only had 3 on most of ours. Later, we found out: the Soviets didn't have so many, and what they did have were vulnerable (on the ground), while ours were invulnerable (at sea), and way more accurate (that's one of the things my Army duty in Turkey was about finding out--retrieving Soviet missile data, through intercepting their telemetry in missile tests).

Point is, Kennedy was a liberal hawk, who may have deliberately miss-represented the issue to get votes. Symington--and Stevenson--were less hawkish, and didn't compete with Nixon on Defense; Kennedy did, and he succeeded. Probably, that's why we got into Vietnam. Early as President, Kennedy began to meddle in South Vietnam, continuing Eisenhower's policy even more aggressively. In retrospect, people say he would not have dived headfirst into the Vietnam War, as Johnson did in 1964, but that may be a romantic gloss appended after JFK's assassination.

After all, Democrats were more militaristic than Republicans in WWI and II, and also started the Korean intervention, as well as Vietnam. They only became less hawkish with McGovern in 1972 and since--less hawkish than Republicans, anyway.

Carter turned away from McGovern's anti-war policy when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. It's why I voted for a third party candidate in 1980--and regretted it since: Reagan won, of course, and Carter was dubbed "a failure." Reagan began the Republican assault on the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society. The assault has been going on ever since, and Democrats are still in retreat, resisting, being only a little less retrograde than the continually more warlike, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-worker and socially reactionary Republicans.

Reaction has taken the Republicans back to the 1920's, at least: "Taking America back," the Tea Partiers say. That's "back" before WWII created most of the American Empire; it's now in decline, like Rome in the fifth century.

Fragile Economy, Fragile Politics

Email overload, after falling in the lake--again! No, this time it wasn't frozen and I was only in up to my armpits. It wasn't even so cold that I didn't go in again to try to free the goddam raft that's still stuck near the beach. But it was cold; my hands were numb for more than an hour and my feet took hours to warm up, .

So, yeah, I'm tired. I watched TV news shows tonight: I'd have to be tired for that. I even saw a bit of O'Reilly: what a know-it-all, what a snide SOB he is! Both Schultz and Chris Matthews were shrill, the NPR people were understated, but not that interesting. And Piers Morgan, when I was watching, was covering the most inconsequential stuff I've seen on evening news shows. I was looking forward to Rachel Maddow, but some geek was subbing for her, talking about the "trigonometry" of news, and I switched the channel. And then, after Piers Morgan, I turned the boob tube off.

Now, to the substance of what I saw, After the Santorum sweep of Mississippi and Alabama, of course, there was a lot of gossip--on all the channels--about how Romney was having problems, but amassing more delegates than his rivals. More gossip was: how Santorum supporters wished Gingrich would bow out, and the reason he didn't was, as Matthews suggested, because of his outsize ego.

Afghanistan was yesterday's news, Sudan was visited because of George Clooney's interest, not for any other reason, although the situation there is dire. O'Reilly said snide things, still, about Sandra Fluke, and implied that Obama must want higher gas prices.

Which is absurd: it's one thing that could defeat Obama in the election. If oil skyrockets and not only does gasoline, but fuel oil, then the nation's economy, just getting into gear, will have to downshift once again. Yes, I do drive a shift.

The only thing that could win Obama the election then, would be the absolute idiocy of the Republican candidate--if it's Santorum--or the transparent hypocrisy and vacuity if it's Romney.

But it's a real danger. If the economy had to weather an oil shock, because of Israeli threats, or attack, against Iran, or if the hot peace in Sudan continues to disrupt the oil market, or if any number of other things might slow down our shaky recovery, then whichever clown the Republicans nominate might just win. He'd bring a mandate for: cutting the bejeezus out of social programs and "entitlements," bringing "religion" into government, while cutting taxes for the wealthy. He'd also pursue more wars, including the one on women and corporations would rule.

That looks like the 21st century version of the Roman Empire's Fifth Century, you know, the one that ended the western Roman Empire in 476.

Conservative Economic Morality

Conservatives speculate in oil and natural gas, even if they know that fossil fuels contribute to global warming/climate change, because they can make a lot of money. It's moral, they feel, to maximize your money, regardless of the consequences--as long as it's legal. They don't particularly believe there is such a thing as global warming, even if they see the evidence all around them: "natural variations," they say, or "sun-spots." But investing in something that may be a major contributor to even more global warming--like the Canadian tar sands--or fracking for oil and gas, is just what you do, when you know you'll make a killing.

I don't invest in oil. I've lost a few dollars on a natural gas ETF. I've made a few on gold--and lost a lot more on gold mines. As a putative progressive, I shouldn't invest even in the gold, since gold mines are highly polluting. But at least I'm only speculating on the "transition fuel," and losing money on it. No conservative would consider "ancillary" consequences--like an uninhabitable planet, or brutish ensuing generations as worth worrying about.

A conservative resists believing in climate change, because it will, unfortunately, require huge coordination by people---and especially, governments--all over the world. It's probably a conspiracy of the World Federalists (a progressive organization that hardly exists any longer), or of the UNA's (United Nations Associations). I was president of a local UNA chapter, once. Mostly, I did the work for an aging, no longer competent older generation, when I was in my 30's. I'm in my 70's now.

The conservative harks back to the golden age of the pioneer, when every man had to depend on his own skill for survival and winning his riches. World climate regulations are clearly antithetical.

But so is modern life. Attila the Hun was the true conservative. In my book, Attila as Told to His Scribes, (available on this website), he wanted to level cities and saw Roman society as a prison he had to destroy--while profiting from the loot: like Romney, like vulture capitalists.

The conservative movement, in Canada as well as the US, appears to have the same bent, but different methods: they'll kill us with global warming, while they prosper--and build climate controlled domes, perhaps, to escape the consequences. Apparently, Harper's Tories, try to suppress protests against their determination to export tar sands oil world wide--from the Pacific via British Columbia, which resists their pipeline plans, and from the Caribbean, via the Keystone XL pipeline. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans give corporate frackers carte blanche and eminent domain!

"I ain't gonna let no Liberal get between me and the best oil play in the bidness! We gonna make us some money!"

Even if Obama wins, this nation and the world, rush ever more rightward. It might not be progressive to have grandchildren!

Roman Ephesus, Keystone XL and Arctic Oil

Right-wing financial newsletters push investments in oil, and bitumen resources, like Canadian tar sands and even Venezuela's unconventional hydrocarbons, as well as fracking for natural gas. To them, it's a golden opportunity to make pots of money--and nothing else.

They act as if there never was any discussion of global warming, except by impractical people, who just don't want to make money. We've had the warmest years on record and Arctic ice is melting rapidly. There is the violent weather, forecast as a consequence of global warming. There are clear signs of climate change all around us, plus sufficient data, accepted globally except in the US, that it's caused largely by human activity--but these guys can't wait to get their money into the oil deposits newly accessible in the arctic seas!

In the first century, BC, Ephesus was the Asian capital and port for the Roman Empire. There's a page about it on this website. It was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world, with a population of 250,000. But it's port slowly silted up, because the surrounding hills were deforested for fuel, to fire the baths, and to build the cement forms needed for Rome's monumental buildings. There is graffiti from that period, memorializing public anxiety by the city's officials that their prime harbor would soon be unusable. Ephesus is now miles from the sea; it was largely abandoned when ships couldn't use the harbor. Afterwards, continued erosion covered the city with enough silt to preserve it; preserved for present day tourists (in Turkey, near Selcuk).

Now, consider: while the counselors cautioned against cutting down all the trees, there must have been businessmen who scoffed and said, we need fuel; people want the baths; you're being impractical. Besides, I can make thousands on this. (Numbers were smaller in those days).

Our "officials" appear much more timid than the Ephesians, because they're faced by the demands of rapacious capital, and the people who play with it to get rich regardless.

Obama's (temporary) blockage of the Keystone XL pipeline is a step in the right direction. A more significant (and painful) step is the movement by developing nations like Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria to nationalize their oil reserves, and limit production, which raises the price for oil. I don't like $4 gas, either. But we'll never get off fossil fuels, to slow global warming, unless higher oil costs drive us to solar, wind and bio-fuels.

It is the institutional power of fossil fuel industries worldwide, which drives our suicidal environmental policy, plus the logic of capitalism, which disregards environmental costs. There is also the military that makes all this possible. Now it's time to throw off their power, and with it, any need for empire.

Alternative energy might enable us not to have to abandon large swathes of this planet as uninhabitable--if we can learn from the Ephesians.