Ted Cruz, in the last Republican “debate,” explained how he was for “legal status” for illegal immigrants, but not amnesty, not citizenship.
That’s when he tipped the GOP’s real game on immigration. He had sponsored an amendment to the immigration bill that he knew was probably a poison pill, but in the debate he simply explained what the amendment would do: grant legal status, but ban citizenship to all illegal immigrants, regardless of reason or duration in the country—legal status after jumping through a series of hoops.
So, all the illegal immigrants throughout Texas should know: Ted Cruz is going to find a way to keep you from ever voting in the United States. This is stealing elections for the next generation. Republicans are a forward-thinking lot.
We all know so many other forms the Republicans have concocted to insure that they win elections, even if they get fewer votes.
First of all, they have all the voting restrictions being piled on, to insure against voter fraud, when it hardly ever existed, anywhere, except in cemeteries in Chicago in the 1960 election. I take it back: corrupt town and city governments bought votes: Heritage Foundation cites 300 cases. Voter ID laws wouldn’t remedy most of those abuses. But they would make it more difficult to vote, if you’re ‘one of those people.’
Voter ID laws proposed are legion, in 19 states they actually passed. Generally, they require that the voter have one of four official ID’s. The most common is a driver’s license, but a lot of poor people don’t drive, especially a lot of poor black people. Some states require a State issued ID. Again, the problem is that some can afford to make the trip to get one, easily, but others can’t afford it, period.
Other kinds of voter restrictions are for reducing early voting, especially early voting on weekends. Black churches had organized their parishioners to turn out on a Sunday, to vote. Can’t have that.
Like the simple 138 word amendment Cruz offered to the Immigration bill that failed in the last Democratic Senate, almost all these election restrictions have a common motive: restrict voters of color—there’s too damn many of them—so that decent white folks can continue to run things their way: the right way of course.
Some Republicans are so dead set at halting the influx of foreigners (with the exception of those with high skills), that they almost have to steal elections, legally, of course.
Gerrymandering congressional and state legislative districts when the GOP gained new majorities in states and Congress in 2010 and again in 2014, has been the most effective means of stealing elections since ol’ Jim Crow. Black and Latino votes are piled as closely together in districts as possible, through strange map configurations, while white majorities are assured in a majority of districts, again through the magical convolutions of Republican map writers.
Abacadabra! The US House of Representatives, and a majority of the nation’s state legislatures are now, apparently, solidly controlled by Republicans, although Democrats received more votes.
Another way to steal elections: a negative campaign gives advantage to the Republican by discouraging voters from turning out: Democratic voters, overwhelmingly.
Illegal theft of elections is also a distinct possibility, especially with the increasing use of computer/scanner technology and internet transmission. Stealing an election from a computer terminal would be a whole lot easier than dumping opposition ballots in the river, and substituting your own. It might even be difficult to know whether it’s happened, or not.
In the last elections there was little electronic fraud uncovered, or, at least, confirmed, but computerized alterations of the vote counts could be subtle algorithms that just alter enough, of a sample of votes, to change the outcome substantially enough that no recount makes sense.
This kind of election fraud might not even be partisan: it might be corporate. It is worrying, that, as voting becomes more dependent on technology, public elections become increasingly dependent on the private corporations that make the machines and their software. “Back doors” to the software that codes and calculates the vote have been found by hackers. But corporations processing the vote through their machinery may have a particular interest they can influence through manipulating the vote—against the candidate calling for their regulation, for example.
Billionaires and corporations are also stealing votes, by spending millions, possibly billions, to disinform, to persuade voters of their viewpoint and their preferred candidates, often through manipulation of data, falsification of facts and invective.
Even if a billionaire engages in none of the above, but still spends many millions of his own money, he is, in effect, trying to steal the election by buying it: because of his inordinate wealth. Buying something that is illegal to buy—unless you spend millions or billions, perhaps. Buying an election used to be called corrupt practices. Except, maybe no longer, in this new world confected by Justices Roberts and Scalia.
Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it isn’t stealing, only that we’ve legalized it.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Friday, January 29, 2016
Helots and Immigrants: Response to Cruz
Ted Cruz let slip his plans for illegal immigrants in the 1/28/15 debate:, according to his short amendment (138 words, I think he said) anyone who entered the nation illegally, no matter the reason, could get “legal status,” after passing through many tests, but could never earn citizenship.A life-long handicap simply because they came through US borders without the proper papers and procedures? Even if they were fleeing inhuman conditions wherever they came from.
What does this mean?
In Sparta and ancient Athens, “foreigners” were a large part of the population, and an important part of the economy: they were helots, not slaves, but not really free, because they had no rights. They were easily exploited and abused.
What Ted Cruz was proposing was the creation of just such a class. So, unlike the Donald, he won’t ship all 11 or 12 million illegal immigrants “back to” anywhere. He’ll just create an easily exploitable class of never-citizens, doomed to work for others in demeaning, low-paying positions.
If one followed Cruz’s logic, these helots would also lose a lot of other rights, not all at once, but piecemeal: after all, if they can never vote, even their protests won’t mean much. If a President Cruz didn’t move to eliminate the minimum wage, rather than raise it, he’d certainly propose a significantly lower minimum for the helots. Maybe, he’d even try to make them ineligible for membership in unions or political groups.
Further, helots would populate the lower rungs of society, probably commit a disproportionate share of crime, and would “take away” good jobs, by their own vulnerability to exploitation. They would lower the bar. The new helots would be a legally defined underclass, convenient for keeping other working Americans from successfully demanding higher wages, or better working conditions.
The new helots would also be a large, restive class, vulnerable to groups like Daesh aiming to take advantage of their discontent. Cruz could be creating a rejectionist “fifth column,” inside the fearful, authoritarian, billionaire-dominated United States.
The Republican re-made nation would no longer be a haven for the displaced, oppressed and desperate.
Ironically, while Republicans, excepting Jeb, excoriate paths to citizenship or amnesty, more illegal entrants are going home than are entering the country.
The angry, punitive approach to immigration appears to be the general Republican position, despite the presence of at least three primary Presidential candidates, who are first generation Americans: Trump, Cruz and Rubio.
Their theme seems to be: I’m here, dammit, so close the door!
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Flint was poisoned by a Republican Governor’s “caretaker.”
Marx would have said, it’s all determined by economic relations between classes, the wealthy, the middle class and the vast poor, who do all the work.
Krugman said, it’s not partisan, it’s ideological. (NYT 01/25/16)
It all depends on where you stand.
A billionaire at Davos said he was “mystified” as to why people are so angry. He doesn’t see anything wrong. After all, he’s doing fine!
Face it, Republicans like Governor Snyder, like Speaker Ryan, like Trump and Cruz are all bound by an ideological construct that denies government can ever do anything positive for its citizens; it can only get out of the way. Then, if business can profit from it, it will work.
Why is this a class issue? Flint is mostly poor and non-white, therefore ‘those people’ can’t afford good services; nonpayments prove it. If government is going to act at all (provide water services), it should provide terrible service, because you can’t waste money on something worthless like poor people’s water! Now, water for Grosse Point, that’s another issue: their citizens work hard (look at their average income), and they’ll be willing to pay for better service.
Republican “conservatives” (the label is misleading), are ever wary of spending public money, because they’re positively averse to raising taxes (even a tiny move, towards rates where they were in the booming Eisenhower years: 91% top rate, vs 39+% now.).
Why tax averse? Because the wealthy (who fund them) already think they pay too much: in fact, as a portion of their overall income they pay much less than everyone else.
So, all kinds of infrastructure, a public good, are not replaced, maintained, or upgraded. That’s why even China has better rail systems than we do. That’s why our bridges collapse, or are condemned, why children are taught in shabby, overcrowded schools.
Some even putatively liberal politicians appear to prefer private and “charter” schools to public ones, because you know what kinds of children are left in the public ones. And the charters and private schools are largely non-union. The charter movement has subtracted from the resources that public schools need to serve those who need it most: the poor.
Who loses when a public road becomes a private toll road? Easy, the people who can’t afford the extra money it will cost them: the poor.
As Elizabeth Warren has pointed out for several years, the system is rigged against the vast majority of people, so that large corporations, especially financial institutions, can siphon off the value created by everyone’s hard work: well over 90% of all new wealth created since the Great Recession in 2008 turns up in the accounts of the top 1%, and even more, the top 0.1% of income earners. No wonder, most peoples’ incomes are stagnant or declining in buying power.
No wonder people are angry.
How does this work?
Wages are kept low through monetary and fiscal policy: trillions to resuscitate the banks, while money for programs to help ordinary people are cut in the name of fiscal austerity.
Taxes: while Obama raised the marginal income tax slightly for top income earners (from 33% to 39+% for those with incomes over $ 411,000), Republican local and state governments have slashed taxes on the wealthy, and cut expenditures for everyone else. They propose to do the same at the Federal level in the name of austerity, even though budget deficits have been very low, and borrowing costs have been lower still.
So, government programs are not available to boost employment, and a large army of the long-term unemployed remains (Marx described this as a reserve army of the poor). The effect of this reserve army is to keep wages low. “Free” trade treaties maintain downward pressure on wages, as well, and encourage corporations to profit from expanding world markets, since American consumption lags with low incomes.
Anti-union policies add to the downward spiral of wages: workers lose their bargaining power to raise them and their political power to represent themselves.
With wages low, corporations can raise profits, and stockholders can “earn” higher dividends, while executives are paid ridiculously high salaries and bonuses. Ergo, inequality becomes more and more extreme.
It’s in this context that Bernie Sanders proposes free college, single payer health care, break-up of the big banks and financial institutions and higher taxes for the wealthy to pay for these programs.
Critics have pointed out, however, that these institutions: finance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, doctors, large corporations, generally, will martial their huge resources to oppose any threat to their earning power. Obamacare was constructed to work with these institutional heavy-weights, which is why drug prices, insurance premiums and doctors’ salaries have risen as Obamacare is implemented.
This is also why Bernie’s proposals have no possibility of realization, unless there is a thorough-going political revolution (which he advocates). What would be needed, at minimum, would be large congressional majorities (a mandate) in favor of his programs, and a replication of these majorities in the states.
The GOP and the Supreme Court have conspired to make this kind of political revolution close to impossible: voting restrictions and partisan gerrymanders after 2010, have made it highly unlikely that any popular movement could overthrow the Republican majority in the House, or in the states.
Ironically, Clinton and now Obama, through their trade deals, have made it more likely that corporations will have virtual veto power against any radical change that will adversely impact their profits, or their CEO’s salaries.
But, there is enormous hunger out here (in the world, right now in the US) for the kind of Revolution Bernie talks about.
If it happens, we’ll be spared the bloody mess of a violent revolution. If radical reform doesn’t happen, an explosion will. Not now, but soon. Or, an alternative: a fascist totalitarianism to hold down the lid; it would make Stalin and Hitler look like pikers.
Krugman said, it’s not partisan, it’s ideological. (NYT 01/25/16)
It all depends on where you stand.
A billionaire at Davos said he was “mystified” as to why people are so angry. He doesn’t see anything wrong. After all, he’s doing fine!
Face it, Republicans like Governor Snyder, like Speaker Ryan, like Trump and Cruz are all bound by an ideological construct that denies government can ever do anything positive for its citizens; it can only get out of the way. Then, if business can profit from it, it will work.
Why is this a class issue? Flint is mostly poor and non-white, therefore ‘those people’ can’t afford good services; nonpayments prove it. If government is going to act at all (provide water services), it should provide terrible service, because you can’t waste money on something worthless like poor people’s water! Now, water for Grosse Point, that’s another issue: their citizens work hard (look at their average income), and they’ll be willing to pay for better service.
Republican “conservatives” (the label is misleading), are ever wary of spending public money, because they’re positively averse to raising taxes (even a tiny move, towards rates where they were in the booming Eisenhower years: 91% top rate, vs 39+% now.).
Why tax averse? Because the wealthy (who fund them) already think they pay too much: in fact, as a portion of their overall income they pay much less than everyone else.
So, all kinds of infrastructure, a public good, are not replaced, maintained, or upgraded. That’s why even China has better rail systems than we do. That’s why our bridges collapse, or are condemned, why children are taught in shabby, overcrowded schools.
Some even putatively liberal politicians appear to prefer private and “charter” schools to public ones, because you know what kinds of children are left in the public ones. And the charters and private schools are largely non-union. The charter movement has subtracted from the resources that public schools need to serve those who need it most: the poor.
Who loses when a public road becomes a private toll road? Easy, the people who can’t afford the extra money it will cost them: the poor.
As Elizabeth Warren has pointed out for several years, the system is rigged against the vast majority of people, so that large corporations, especially financial institutions, can siphon off the value created by everyone’s hard work: well over 90% of all new wealth created since the Great Recession in 2008 turns up in the accounts of the top 1%, and even more, the top 0.1% of income earners. No wonder, most peoples’ incomes are stagnant or declining in buying power.
No wonder people are angry.
How does this work?
Wages are kept low through monetary and fiscal policy: trillions to resuscitate the banks, while money for programs to help ordinary people are cut in the name of fiscal austerity.
Taxes: while Obama raised the marginal income tax slightly for top income earners (from 33% to 39+% for those with incomes over $ 411,000), Republican local and state governments have slashed taxes on the wealthy, and cut expenditures for everyone else. They propose to do the same at the Federal level in the name of austerity, even though budget deficits have been very low, and borrowing costs have been lower still.
So, government programs are not available to boost employment, and a large army of the long-term unemployed remains (Marx described this as a reserve army of the poor). The effect of this reserve army is to keep wages low. “Free” trade treaties maintain downward pressure on wages, as well, and encourage corporations to profit from expanding world markets, since American consumption lags with low incomes.
Anti-union policies add to the downward spiral of wages: workers lose their bargaining power to raise them and their political power to represent themselves.
With wages low, corporations can raise profits, and stockholders can “earn” higher dividends, while executives are paid ridiculously high salaries and bonuses. Ergo, inequality becomes more and more extreme.
It’s in this context that Bernie Sanders proposes free college, single payer health care, break-up of the big banks and financial institutions and higher taxes for the wealthy to pay for these programs.
Critics have pointed out, however, that these institutions: finance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, doctors, large corporations, generally, will martial their huge resources to oppose any threat to their earning power. Obamacare was constructed to work with these institutional heavy-weights, which is why drug prices, insurance premiums and doctors’ salaries have risen as Obamacare is implemented.
This is also why Bernie’s proposals have no possibility of realization, unless there is a thorough-going political revolution (which he advocates). What would be needed, at minimum, would be large congressional majorities (a mandate) in favor of his programs, and a replication of these majorities in the states.
The GOP and the Supreme Court have conspired to make this kind of political revolution close to impossible: voting restrictions and partisan gerrymanders after 2010, have made it highly unlikely that any popular movement could overthrow the Republican majority in the House, or in the states.
Ironically, Clinton and now Obama, through their trade deals, have made it more likely that corporations will have virtual veto power against any radical change that will adversely impact their profits, or their CEO’s salaries.
But, there is enormous hunger out here (in the world, right now in the US) for the kind of Revolution Bernie talks about.
If it happens, we’ll be spared the bloody mess of a violent revolution. If radical reform doesn’t happen, an explosion will. Not now, but soon. Or, an alternative: a fascist totalitarianism to hold down the lid; it would make Stalin and Hitler look like pikers.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
CIA Propaganda?
Propaganda in the form of a TV series: it really sounds/looks as if it comes from the CIA.
Madam Secretary is a made for streaming on Netscape.
The new Secretary, “the Company’s” emergency candidate after the last one exploded near Africa, is a youngish, good-looking blonde, who doesn’t care about her appearance, until it becomes necessary. She cares about “making a difference.” It appears she’s ex-CIA, and still well-connected to it: the diplomatic corps, not at all, apparently.
Action involves a heart-rending kidnapping of two teens in Syria. Her solution, after a failed “extraction” attempt: shady international mafia/CIA connections, $1.5 million, and the two boys are kissing the ground as they arrive back in the good old USA.
You see. Just let the CIA do it. You don’t even need the Pentagon. CIA and its myriad foreign allies and illicit connections can fix everything, and for so little money.
I mean: $1.5 million to get those two American boys out of Syria: you can bet the previous “extraction” attempt cost more.
A few minutes mistake of mine cost our military $10,000, my angry Sergeant told me (in 1963).
So, the CIA solves our problems by cutting corners. But it hasn’t solved our problems in the past. The CIA’s first great triumph was overthrowing the “Socialist” (not Communist) Mossadegh in Iran, and installing the Shah and a pro-western government, that opened up Iran to US exploitation—of its oil. So, why did those ungrateful Iranians rebel and establish the Islamic Republic?
Extreme religion breeds in such instances; it finds fertile ground. The Iranian revolution was part religious, a large part nationalist, as in expel the exploitative foreigners who don’t even know how cultured and sophisticated we are, even as we are good Muslims.
But here’s the point: it was CIA meddling that destabilized Iran enough to make the Islamic revolution happen.
Not that Pentagon meddling in Iraq was even as successful. We’d be a lot better off with Saddam, and the semi-stability he maintained, than the chaos that Iraq is now. So would the Iraqis, except, possibly, the Shia in the south.
CIA disasters are legion: Bay of Pigs, Castro assassination plots, Allende-Pinochet, the Guatemalan coup against Social Democrat Jacopo Arbenz that began civil war lasting a generation. The intel during the Iraq war, perhaps “the best in the world,’ was “tailored.” CIA assessments of Soviet strength was consistently boosted, so Defense expenditures could rise.
Perhaps every major nation has to have intelligence services. Point of disclosure: I was a lowly analyst of radio traffic in places like Sinop, Turkey and Bad Aibling, then West Germany. I found the work rewarding: I was helping to monitor what the Soviets were doing, and possibly all of our work was mandated by international treaties. It was understood they did the same.
To solve problems through these same undercover institutions—and their illicit connections—injects real moral problems into American foreign policy.
Which is what we’re doing with our drone wars, almost none of which are officially acknowledged in the country in which the bombing happens, except for our limping survivor, Afghanistan.
The CIA only conducts about a third of the attacks; they are much less mouthy about them, compared to the Pentagon. The latter will give medals to drone “pilots” in their bunkers, in the Rockies, probably in a poor attempt to bolster morale.
Drone pilots, it seems, can’t stand the work: seeing real people in real time destroyed, graphically, before their eyes, onscreen, by the drones they control 3,000 miles away—and then having to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, because the Air Force can’t train them as fast as they’re leaving. A canker at the heart of the Empire.
Which brings me back to Madam Secretary, and a lot of other “product” available at places like Netflix and Amazon. There is a noticeable (to me) attempt to persuade us that we have to be hard-boiled. We have to use any means, even torture, but only when necessary: we’re the good guys. Morality is… troublesome.
What do we stand for? It’s not at all clear, except, we’re Americans, so we must be good. I don’t think the words ‘democracy,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ were even spoken during the episode I saw of Madam Secretary.
Madam Secretary is a made for streaming on Netscape.
The new Secretary, “the Company’s” emergency candidate after the last one exploded near Africa, is a youngish, good-looking blonde, who doesn’t care about her appearance, until it becomes necessary. She cares about “making a difference.” It appears she’s ex-CIA, and still well-connected to it: the diplomatic corps, not at all, apparently.
Action involves a heart-rending kidnapping of two teens in Syria. Her solution, after a failed “extraction” attempt: shady international mafia/CIA connections, $1.5 million, and the two boys are kissing the ground as they arrive back in the good old USA.
You see. Just let the CIA do it. You don’t even need the Pentagon. CIA and its myriad foreign allies and illicit connections can fix everything, and for so little money.
I mean: $1.5 million to get those two American boys out of Syria: you can bet the previous “extraction” attempt cost more.
A few minutes mistake of mine cost our military $10,000, my angry Sergeant told me (in 1963).
So, the CIA solves our problems by cutting corners. But it hasn’t solved our problems in the past. The CIA’s first great triumph was overthrowing the “Socialist” (not Communist) Mossadegh in Iran, and installing the Shah and a pro-western government, that opened up Iran to US exploitation—of its oil. So, why did those ungrateful Iranians rebel and establish the Islamic Republic?
Extreme religion breeds in such instances; it finds fertile ground. The Iranian revolution was part religious, a large part nationalist, as in expel the exploitative foreigners who don’t even know how cultured and sophisticated we are, even as we are good Muslims.
But here’s the point: it was CIA meddling that destabilized Iran enough to make the Islamic revolution happen.
Not that Pentagon meddling in Iraq was even as successful. We’d be a lot better off with Saddam, and the semi-stability he maintained, than the chaos that Iraq is now. So would the Iraqis, except, possibly, the Shia in the south.
CIA disasters are legion: Bay of Pigs, Castro assassination plots, Allende-Pinochet, the Guatemalan coup against Social Democrat Jacopo Arbenz that began civil war lasting a generation. The intel during the Iraq war, perhaps “the best in the world,’ was “tailored.” CIA assessments of Soviet strength was consistently boosted, so Defense expenditures could rise.
Perhaps every major nation has to have intelligence services. Point of disclosure: I was a lowly analyst of radio traffic in places like Sinop, Turkey and Bad Aibling, then West Germany. I found the work rewarding: I was helping to monitor what the Soviets were doing, and possibly all of our work was mandated by international treaties. It was understood they did the same.
To solve problems through these same undercover institutions—and their illicit connections—injects real moral problems into American foreign policy.
Which is what we’re doing with our drone wars, almost none of which are officially acknowledged in the country in which the bombing happens, except for our limping survivor, Afghanistan.
The CIA only conducts about a third of the attacks; they are much less mouthy about them, compared to the Pentagon. The latter will give medals to drone “pilots” in their bunkers, in the Rockies, probably in a poor attempt to bolster morale.
Drone pilots, it seems, can’t stand the work: seeing real people in real time destroyed, graphically, before their eyes, onscreen, by the drones they control 3,000 miles away—and then having to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, because the Air Force can’t train them as fast as they’re leaving. A canker at the heart of the Empire.
Which brings me back to Madam Secretary, and a lot of other “product” available at places like Netflix and Amazon. There is a noticeable (to me) attempt to persuade us that we have to be hard-boiled. We have to use any means, even torture, but only when necessary: we’re the good guys. Morality is… troublesome.
What do we stand for? It’s not at all clear, except, we’re Americans, so we must be good. I don’t think the words ‘democracy,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ were even spoken during the episode I saw of Madam Secretary.
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