Did you know that 14 of the Federal cases against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were dismissed as posing no constitutionally valid question, four of the cases upheld the Constitutionality of the law, while only 3 ruled against it in whole or in part? And the courts upholding the law included the DC Court of Appeals, probably the closest court to the Supremes.
Furthermore, did you know that the individual mandate vilified by Republicans was originally a Republican idea, and was floated by Republicans as an alternative to Hillary's attempt at healthcare reform back in the early 1990's? Until 2010, no law professor thought there would be even a question of constitutionality for the mandate. After all, insurance for cars are mandated and so much more.
I bring up these points, because that's not the impression you would have gotten from any of the mass media, including the New York Times. The decisions asserting unconstitutionality received 58% of the coverage by newspapers, those upholding ACA's constitutionality 29% and the dismissals 13%. Even worse, TV and cable spent 97% of their time on the decisions finding the law unconstitutional.
This demonstrates how skewed our news has become. What are the effects on American opinion? Seventy-two percent in a Gallup poll thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional, only 22% thought it constitutional. According to another poll (Kaiser), 51% thought the Supremes should rule the mandate unconstitutional, while only 27% thought the Supremes should uphold it.
So, what was considered not even worthy of worrying about before 2010, now becomes almost a super-majority against. The media, in other words, is driving American politics in such a conservative direction that Republican positions of the 1990's are not only dismissed, but considered radical socialism.
The same kind of analysis would probably show that support for budget austerity versus more stimulus, has undergone a similar media-driven change. So, despite the warnings from many economists that we shouldn't repeat what happened in 1937, mass and elite opinion insists that we must--both here and in Europe. 1937 was when FDR and the Democratic Congress cut spending, before the Depression was over, creating a massive economic double dip, only corrected once the government began to spend with abandon, first on the Lend-Lease program to support Britain against Nazi attacks and then on our own participation in WWII.
The end of the USSR began when Russians believed the opposite of what the official media told them. In the Roman Empire, what official information there was became increasingly sycophantic the more dysfunctional the Empire became. By the Fifth Century, there were only paeans to the Emperors.
Why this skewed information? To support the elite, what Occupy labeled the 1%, which wants only lowered taxes and less government for itself, so that it can more fully dominate society, as did the Roman Senators in the Fifth Century, those I've labeled 'The Selfish Class.'
Monday, June 25, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
It's the Aliens!
"The aliens, "joked my daughter, "have hidden Pleasant Valley so they can make it arid and dead. Then humans won't live there." The sign to Pleasant Valley directed to two other cities, but it went unmentioned.
"Are they behind global warming," I asked?
It's as good an explanation as any for why the corporate owners and billionaires fund disinformation campaigns against the existence of climate change and its human causes.
Yes, disinformation campaigns. Fox News and on-the-one-side, on-the-other-side remainder of the brain-dead media, are spreading false information, knowingly, about global climate change and its causes. By acting as if as many knowledgeable people deny its existence as those who warn against it, the US media is, in effect, providing false information. That's why nearly a majority of Americans believe climate change is an elitist conspiracy by corrupt liberal scientists, and that its existence and causes haven't been sufficiently proven. So, no action is necessary.
But since most of the real elite, the billionaires, etc., are well-educated and well-informed, they probably know that climate change is not only happening but accelerating. So, why do they spend so much money to persuade others that it's not? Maybe they really are aliens. After all, unless they are aliens, why would they think they, or their children and grandchildren would be immune to the huge environmental damage their profits promote?
"Aliens," my daughter offered, "will be better off when climate change drives off the humans."
"Is Mitt Romney an alien?"
"Only half," she told me. "The other half is a robot."
"I always thought Romney was a 'bot."
Perhaps all the aliens are billionaires and most billionaires and multimillionaires are aliens. That would explain why they appear to have so little empathy for people poorer than they. While raising their taxes would hurt them far less than current taxes or program cuts affect those with significantly less income, still, the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Adelsons are actively campaigning, through millions of dollars, to get their taxes reduced, and to cut programs benefiting poor people.
Seriously, there appears to be a disconnect between these people who are willing to spend hundreds of millions to make millions miserable and any rational thought about what good that will do--for them, or anyone else.
Ideology, and provably false ideas, make these people into aliens, even if they didn't come from outer space.
Some facts: climate change is accelerating, and human causes are to blame, and could be correctable. Lower taxes for the wealthy, and the greater inequality resulting, makes everyone poorer: societies that are more egalitarian grow more rapidly, as in the 1950's US. Extreme class differences a la fifth century Rome lead to spreading poverty and economic stagnation. Finally: austerity creates greater deficits and greater poverty, when an economy is in a recession. Austerity politics drove the Roman imperium into bankruptcy in 476, after centuries of depression.
"Are they behind global warming," I asked?
It's as good an explanation as any for why the corporate owners and billionaires fund disinformation campaigns against the existence of climate change and its human causes.
Yes, disinformation campaigns. Fox News and on-the-one-side, on-the-other-side remainder of the brain-dead media, are spreading false information, knowingly, about global climate change and its causes. By acting as if as many knowledgeable people deny its existence as those who warn against it, the US media is, in effect, providing false information. That's why nearly a majority of Americans believe climate change is an elitist conspiracy by corrupt liberal scientists, and that its existence and causes haven't been sufficiently proven. So, no action is necessary.
But since most of the real elite, the billionaires, etc., are well-educated and well-informed, they probably know that climate change is not only happening but accelerating. So, why do they spend so much money to persuade others that it's not? Maybe they really are aliens. After all, unless they are aliens, why would they think they, or their children and grandchildren would be immune to the huge environmental damage their profits promote?
"Aliens," my daughter offered, "will be better off when climate change drives off the humans."
"Is Mitt Romney an alien?"
"Only half," she told me. "The other half is a robot."
"I always thought Romney was a 'bot."
Perhaps all the aliens are billionaires and most billionaires and multimillionaires are aliens. That would explain why they appear to have so little empathy for people poorer than they. While raising their taxes would hurt them far less than current taxes or program cuts affect those with significantly less income, still, the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Adelsons are actively campaigning, through millions of dollars, to get their taxes reduced, and to cut programs benefiting poor people.
Seriously, there appears to be a disconnect between these people who are willing to spend hundreds of millions to make millions miserable and any rational thought about what good that will do--for them, or anyone else.
Ideology, and provably false ideas, make these people into aliens, even if they didn't come from outer space.
Some facts: climate change is accelerating, and human causes are to blame, and could be correctable. Lower taxes for the wealthy, and the greater inequality resulting, makes everyone poorer: societies that are more egalitarian grow more rapidly, as in the 1950's US. Extreme class differences a la fifth century Rome lead to spreading poverty and economic stagnation. Finally: austerity creates greater deficits and greater poverty, when an economy is in a recession. Austerity politics drove the Roman imperium into bankruptcy in 476, after centuries of depression.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Stimulus or Austerity
What do we hear from the movers and shakers? Still, austerity.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Counter-Revolution Paid For By
Scott Walker's "easy win" over old line Democrat, Tom Barrett, shows the relative effectiveness of two strategies: buying elections and media, versus organizing "the masses." Maybe there weren't enough of the masses, or there were too many Fox consumers, but buying an election worked, mass organizing didn't. Also, Tom Barrett's moderate stance of "let's reason together," didn't work. He lost this time by more than last time, before Walker slammed public sector unions and women, and students, and, and, and.
Wisconsin was a laboratory for those freed by Citizens United to spend unlimited funds in order to buy the kind of government they want: slashed services, cowed workers and slashed taxes for the wealthy.
And they won. Big.
Walker is a hero of the right. To them, he's someone who stood up to unions, who stood up to uppity women: he called their bluff and cut taxes for corporations. All the outrage, all the organizing, all the demonstrations against him and the Republican coup d'etat comes down to this: Walker won with a higher percentage of the vote than he won in 2010, before he revealed how radical he was.
The real winners are the people I've called the Selfish Class. It's not clear, yet, whether their campaign spending (seven to one versus Democrats, reportedly, 2/3 from out of state, versus 1/4 for Democrats) or the longer propaganda campaign of Fox News and snide talk radio was most important in waging the counter-revolution. Both were paid for by the same kind of people: the selfish class, whether corporate donors, or billionaires wanting to protect and expand what is theirs.
What is clear is that even if Obama ekes out a win in November (18% of Walker voters said they'd support him), it is the selfish class that really won. Walker's agenda was tailor-made by them: bash unions into impotence, humiliate women into 1950's-type subservience and cow dissidents, minorities and students into hiding. Most important: cut taxes on the wealthy to the bone.
Obama may win against Romney by piecing together a coalition of feminists, gays, minorities and enough independents impressed by his anti-terrorist cojones, but you can bet he'll be reluctant to support strengthening unions, or pushing for a real stimulus, or going after Wall Street. He may be marginally better than Romney, but he's not going to undo the counter-revolution.
There is a real divide in this country, and much of the world. The uber-rich selfish class, like Fifth-century Roman Senators, has their hangers-on and their subservient serfs, who have been taught that their heroes' good fortunes will trickle down. And there are the rest of us, who haven't yet accepted the message.
We haven't accepted it, because it isn't true: with austerity, slashed services and increasing inequality, the wealthy will prosper, but, if they prevail, we'll be driven into a centuries-long depression, just like the fifth-century Roman Empire.
Wisconsin was a laboratory for those freed by Citizens United to spend unlimited funds in order to buy the kind of government they want: slashed services, cowed workers and slashed taxes for the wealthy.
And they won. Big.
Walker is a hero of the right. To them, he's someone who stood up to unions, who stood up to uppity women: he called their bluff and cut taxes for corporations. All the outrage, all the organizing, all the demonstrations against him and the Republican coup d'etat comes down to this: Walker won with a higher percentage of the vote than he won in 2010, before he revealed how radical he was.
The real winners are the people I've called the Selfish Class. It's not clear, yet, whether their campaign spending (seven to one versus Democrats, reportedly, 2/3 from out of state, versus 1/4 for Democrats) or the longer propaganda campaign of Fox News and snide talk radio was most important in waging the counter-revolution. Both were paid for by the same kind of people: the selfish class, whether corporate donors, or billionaires wanting to protect and expand what is theirs.
What is clear is that even if Obama ekes out a win in November (18% of Walker voters said they'd support him), it is the selfish class that really won. Walker's agenda was tailor-made by them: bash unions into impotence, humiliate women into 1950's-type subservience and cow dissidents, minorities and students into hiding. Most important: cut taxes on the wealthy to the bone.
Obama may win against Romney by piecing together a coalition of feminists, gays, minorities and enough independents impressed by his anti-terrorist cojones, but you can bet he'll be reluctant to support strengthening unions, or pushing for a real stimulus, or going after Wall Street. He may be marginally better than Romney, but he's not going to undo the counter-revolution.
There is a real divide in this country, and much of the world. The uber-rich selfish class, like Fifth-century Roman Senators, has their hangers-on and their subservient serfs, who have been taught that their heroes' good fortunes will trickle down. And there are the rest of us, who haven't yet accepted the message.
We haven't accepted it, because it isn't true: with austerity, slashed services and increasing inequality, the wealthy will prosper, but, if they prevail, we'll be driven into a centuries-long depression, just like the fifth-century Roman Empire.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Pentagon Propaganda for US?
The Pentagon already shades the truth abroad, with their information services, but that's "psy-war." Now its supporters want to give it the legal right to wage psy war against the American people (The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (H.R. 5736) to modify the NDAA 2013. It would lift the ban against US government propaganda targeted towards the American people.
The House added this provision to the 2013 NDAA, already obnoxious enough because like the 2012 NDAA, it permits indefinite detention, even of citizens, by Presidential fiat: the NDAA Obama signed!
Has Obama gone over to the dark side? Does the military, or the behind-the-scenes Establishment hold a gun to his ribs, or threaten his daughters' lives? Or was Obama always more hawkish than we knew: his first claim to fame was an eloquent speech against the Iraq War, before it was launched.
The indefinite detention provision has been struck down in Federal Court, a hopeful first step; let's hope the Senate doesn't pass the House bill with the Pentagon propaganda provision.
If it does, we soon won't even know that we've entirely lost what little democracy we have. We could be transformed into a warrior state. War would become a commercial venture, taxes would rise, and services vanish--isn't that the Tea Party dream? The "candidates for intervention" are legion. Even the poorest countries have wealth to extract: resources and possibly businesses, labor and customers. There's a word for this: imperialism.
Yet now, the American military are being forced to cut budgets--so, the DOD propaganda arm could swing into action--using taxpayer dollars--to persuade us the military should be as fully funded as the generals want.
Is that what the elite wants, the movers-and-shakers, the selfish class? It worked for Rome, didn't it? And for the British Empire--for awhile.
Their heydays were when they were economic colossi, when the riches flowing from imperial dominance fueled the rise of a wealthy elite: Rome's Senators built palaces all over the Empire; they became centers of stagnation and impoverization in the Fifth century.
But the US is no longer in its heyday. China, India, Russia and Brazil are growing faster; Chinese influence is rising in every region. Meanwhile the US is the most indebted nation in the world. If the US continues attempting global control, it would have to be on the Chinese dime. How long would China stand for that?
Pentagon propaganda would lead the US to bankruptcy, not world ascendancy; we can't afford more adventures abroad. I wish we could spend most of the Pentagon's billions on redeveloping the national economy; the US could lead the world out of the growing "great recession" and people would have jobs: a billion spent on Defense creates only half or fewer jobs than comparable civilian sectors.
We still have choices, but not for long. A security establishment that can indefinitely detain and spout its own poison would complete our transition to a police state.
The House added this provision to the 2013 NDAA, already obnoxious enough because like the 2012 NDAA, it permits indefinite detention, even of citizens, by Presidential fiat: the NDAA Obama signed!
Has Obama gone over to the dark side? Does the military, or the behind-the-scenes Establishment hold a gun to his ribs, or threaten his daughters' lives? Or was Obama always more hawkish than we knew: his first claim to fame was an eloquent speech against the Iraq War, before it was launched.
The indefinite detention provision has been struck down in Federal Court, a hopeful first step; let's hope the Senate doesn't pass the House bill with the Pentagon propaganda provision.
If it does, we soon won't even know that we've entirely lost what little democracy we have. We could be transformed into a warrior state. War would become a commercial venture, taxes would rise, and services vanish--isn't that the Tea Party dream? The "candidates for intervention" are legion. Even the poorest countries have wealth to extract: resources and possibly businesses, labor and customers. There's a word for this: imperialism.
Yet now, the American military are being forced to cut budgets--so, the DOD propaganda arm could swing into action--using taxpayer dollars--to persuade us the military should be as fully funded as the generals want.
Is that what the elite wants, the movers-and-shakers, the selfish class? It worked for Rome, didn't it? And for the British Empire--for awhile.
Their heydays were when they were economic colossi, when the riches flowing from imperial dominance fueled the rise of a wealthy elite: Rome's Senators built palaces all over the Empire; they became centers of stagnation and impoverization in the Fifth century.
But the US is no longer in its heyday. China, India, Russia and Brazil are growing faster; Chinese influence is rising in every region. Meanwhile the US is the most indebted nation in the world. If the US continues attempting global control, it would have to be on the Chinese dime. How long would China stand for that?
Pentagon propaganda would lead the US to bankruptcy, not world ascendancy; we can't afford more adventures abroad. I wish we could spend most of the Pentagon's billions on redeveloping the national economy; the US could lead the world out of the growing "great recession" and people would have jobs: a billion spent on Defense creates only half or fewer jobs than comparable civilian sectors.
We still have choices, but not for long. A security establishment that can indefinitely detain and spout its own poison would complete our transition to a police state.
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