MLK Hangover

When is an anti-war activist for a war? In the case of Martin Luther King, Jr., apparently, it's 43 years after his death. Yes, the Pentagon celebrated Martin Luther King Day. The address by the Pentagon's Counsel, a friend and classmate of MLK's son, didn't entirely elide King's opposition to the Vietnam war--and war in general-- but Johnson certainly tried to sugarcoat it for those listening. American soldiers as Good Samaritans:

"Those in today’s volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people." (Jeh Johnson's Address to the Pentagon on MLK Day).

I would be the first to applaud the unusual military men and women who do "administer aid" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but wanting "peace, freedom and a better place" in those war-torn countries is not the same as bringing peace. However, the military is brainwashed into thinking that it is.

American planes rain down destruction on both places, as do unpiloted drones in Pakistan and the border areas, Special Ops go out on night raids and kill people, some of whom are labeled "bad guys" after they are killed, while others are hauled off to hell-holes like Bagram, where they are mistreated and/or tortured. How does this bring "peace" and "freedom," how does this create a better place? Too often, innocents, including women and children are killed. Sometimes, Americans have even falsified the carnage afterwards to make it look as if the innocents were "insurgents," placing guns, or explosives paraphernalia near them to incriminate them after the fact.

So many observers have pointed out that every woman and child, every non-combatant killed, or detained in our notorious "black" prisons, creates dozens of supporters of the insurgency, even if many don't know what the insurgency is. Some go over to the other side even with their eyes wide open: they know the brutality of the Taliban, and its retrograde social policies, but they see the US/NATO as worse!

Their conclusion is justified, even if the Taliban are more intentionally brutal than US/NATO forces. It is the US/NATO presence that drives the war; its technology and money makes the destruction possible.

If MLK were alive now, he'd say 'let the Afghans choose their own way.' He'd also denounce the huge sums of money spent by the US on destruction (euphemistically labeled 'Defense.') He would point out, in his resonant voice, that all those hundreds of billions of dollars were snatched from the hands of babes, children, and our future, that if we spend on destruction, instead of education, we'll reap the whirlwind.

That's what the Romans did. They didn't even spend money on their famed roads, only on their 'volunteer' (mercenary) military. Look where that got them!

Serfdom Better than Wage Slavery

My son was not laid off last week, but a lot of people were. They came in to work and were told they no longer had a job: just like that. My son works for a firm that services Wall Street. Instead of growing by 40% in the next year, as its leaders had forecast, its business this year will not grow at all. So, they restructured.

But imagine: working for a firm for years, and then walking in one day and being told, "You don't work here anymore."

The only thing that may drive this small corporation to give at least several months' pay, and decent severances, is to protect its reputation on the Street.

My daughter helped unionize an office of Calpirg's subsidiary, The Fund, only to see this ostensibly progressive non-profit put roadblocks against negotiating a first contract, while management fired the shop members one by one--until finally my daughter lost her job; soon thereafter the division was closed and with it the union shop.

Corporations are people: remember? They can give unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. They are so humane.

I also helped found a union, back in the days when unions weren't yet targeted for destruction. I played a small part of bringing a union to the University of Central Florida: the faculty voted 80% for. Why? Without a union, department chairs and college deans frequently overrode faculty recommendations, whether it was for hiring, promotion, or tenure. Our chair promoted his favorites.

The union didn't change much, but it was some insurance on job tenure and promotions.

Working in firms like my son's, people have no security. He's paid well, including a nice bonus ("not Wall-Street-size, Dad"), but he could walk in tomorrow, or next Friday, and not have a job!

Does the corporation care for the people who work for it? Even the CEO is expendable, although he's probably careful to have a golden parachute in his contract. But corporations are not people. They use people, and spit them out. If you're lucky, you may have a good job in a corporation for a long time. It used to be that you'd get a pension if you lasted until retirement, but now you and your employer jointly fund a 401K while you work there. If the market goes bust, as it did in 2007-8, then your retirement fund could go bust, too; the switch from pensions to contributory funds is accelerating, expressing employers' lack of concern for employees.

In the hundred years before Rome fell, all but the Senators were reduced to serfs. Employees with no security are more at risk than serfs or slaves, but that's the direction in which we're headed.

Heroism, Viciousness and Social Security

On the one hand, you have the heroism of people like Patricia Maisch in that Arizona crowd, and you have the deranged hatred of the killer, Loughner. And yet, on a scale of viciousness, I would rate Loughner less vicious than the people, both in Congress and in finance, who want to wipe out or weaken the only economic security deprived Americans can count on--Social Security.

Who has Maisch's kind of heroism in the realm of national politics? On the one side, we appear to have the mean and meaner, and on the other, we have people who might have good instincts, but so many are corrupted by politics.

Conservatives claim that the left hates the free enterprise system, hates business and is elitist. This is ironic, since even Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a Socialist, works to bring business to Vermont, and speaks like the New York working class Jew his family was. Democrats do the same: they want to get re-elected.

What the elected tribunes of business claim, is that no regulation is best for business, even when the lack of it led to the crack up of 2007-8, which was surely not good for business--except, ultimately, the big banks. But that's not enough. No, Republicans want to "partially" privatize Social Security, even after the stock-market crash that wiped out so many people's retirement portfolios, and private pension funds.

What is that about? The right-wing enthusiasm for going after Social Security is driven by several different, reinforcing motives. One is simply ideological: it's a government program; it's well-run and popular, thereby giving the lie to the claim that governments can't do anything.

It is not running out of money, either. Down the line, its financing should be tweaked, but a second motive animating the right is all that money: they want to get their hands on it, just like the bailout money, just like the commodities exchanges and currency markets, just like the money of the millions of us suckers, who dabble in the market. But Social Security money would be trillions, and so many more could be sucked dry, by high finance.

But I think there's another reason, one alluded to by Helen Thomas, the recently displaced star White House reporter. She concluded that we shouldn't give the newly empowered Republicans, "the ability to wipe out or even mitigate the only economic security deprived Americans can count on."

Think about that: the only economic security deprived Americans can count on--like a number of my friends. What the movement to privatize would also do, if successful, is render the elderly a new frontier to "invest" in--even down to our last dentures. And it would make us even more vulnerable than most of us are right now.

To the vicious, that's attractive, too: the Populus can then be managed, just as they were in Rome.

Why Dismantle the US?

It doesn't seem to make sense that Americans, many from old families living in this country for many generations, would want to dismantle the country that nurtured them.

In my Dec. 7th blog-post, "Come-on to Apocalypse," I showed how a libertarian/conservative list was promoting relocation to any of "80 beautiful countries." Allegiance to the US seems absent among the moneyed. Their attitude: take your fortune somewhere else, where you won't be so heavily taxed/regulated/controlled. The assumption is that the US is all of these things, although our tax burden is lower than almost all other developed nations. In many developing ones, however--and some developed ones like Greece--taxes and regulations are not enforced.

I expect the emigres would evade taxes of both their new abode and their former one, but it's ironic that the site promoting emigration also highlighted free medical care, something most conservatives complain about when it's "Obamacare."

So, the financiers, or other wealthy, have places to go. Their means of enrichment, however, might even suggest a parallel to fugitives from the law, who flee the country to escape imprisonment. For example, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al, get virtually free money from the Fed, which they use to speculate through computer programs and algorithms, doing split-second trades for billions of dollars, and profiting with fractions of a cent. Actually what they are doing is ripping off millions of dollars daily, from everyone else. How different are they than the cyber-criminals who siphon unnoticeable fractions of a cent from millions of transactions? There have been crime movies, in which super-criminals invade bank security networks and do the same thing.

But Goldman, et al aren't criminals, at least in the legal sense: they're Wall Street operators. Why do they want to dismantle the US? Because they can: they can come away fabulously wealthy, but at the expense of everyone else.

The same ethos rules many American businesses: military contractors who overbill, "frackers," who don't care if they ruin our drinking water, for-profit prisons gaining "clients" from corrupt judges and manufacturers who outsource to avoid taxes and union wages.

This isn't just economics, it's politics: the effect of trade treaties. Mexican or Chinese workers undercut American labor. Trade barriers were lowered or eliminated enabling corporations to break unions and force American workers to compete with the lowest-paid labor globally.

Again, why? There is strong anti-union feeling among those who earn from capital: after all, the more a worker gets, the less they get--and vice-versa. Additionally, workers without unions can't resist the boss.

It boils down to class struggle. Capital is winning, never mind if it's destroying the country. With their money, the wealthy can always go somewhere else: one of those "80 beautiful countries." They can even find new victims.

In Rome, Senators voted to hand Italy and the Emperor over to the Ostrogoths, rather than raise taxes on themselves.

How to Dismantle the US

It really hasn't taken that long, and it's nearly successful. The mouth-frothing "revolutionaries" think it's a return to True Principles--like slavery, a friend joked--but it isn't.

The counterrevolution began because of the moderate success of progressive politics in the late 1960's. The initiators? The extremely wealthy, who felt threatened by everything from civil rights to Medicare to that old perennial: taxes. They funded think tanks and talk radio that began to spread their ideology, supplemented later by Fox News: their views boil down to liberty for wealth and corporations, but liberties for ordinary people only to the extent they don't conflict with the interests of wealth-holders and corporations. In effect, they promote democracy for money, corporate "free" trade, and neglect or dictatorship for everyone else.

Ever notice that the Department of Education is a favorite target of frothers? Good public education promotes democracy, even in the workplace (!). It also creates a highly skilled workforce. This would be good, if you wanted a relatively egalitarian society. If you want greater class differences, managerial power, and profits for shareholders, with only a small minority able to get decent jobs, then you oppose school budgets until you destroy the public system--good people send their children to private schools (and have the money to pay for them).

The rest become surplus labor, like Marx's lumpen-proletariat, like the Roman mob getting "bread and circuses." That keeps wages down and destroys unions. "Free" trade does the rest.

Anyone earning wages (as opposed to capital gains), pays taxes to support the only parts of the Empire worth maintaining: prisons and the war machine.

What about the great consumption market that underlay American power? Now, corporations make their money in Asia, Latin America, even Europe: places where the middle class is emerging, or has been able to protect itself. In the US, dwindling numbers can afford middle-class consumption. Notice that US output has now recovered to pre-crash levels--yet with 10-19% unemployment, and few prospects for the unemployed. Corporations earn greater profits than ever, but mostly abroad.

Republicans block job programs, demand tax cuts for the wealthy, and try to de-fund all public programs but the military--and the police. You need the police, and fear of "Terror," to keep the restive masses in line. Fox, etc. promote the latter.

So, the Pentagon gets about $1.35 trillion, or about $4,000 per person. Other discretionary expenditures are nugatory in comparison. Social Security and Medicare ran surpluses from the payroll tax until this year, against which government borrowed, to reduce the deficit.

Meanwhile, other nations spend on green infrastructure, education and health: they surpass the US (14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics. Shanghai came in first). No wonder Google, etc. set up research centers in China!

Our military will be all that's left--until the world stops lending us money.

Roman Senators: 400 AD, 2010-2011 AD

They're much the same. Roman Senators in fifth century Rome were the wealthy elite; they had formal titles; our elite does not. There are no legal disabilities and privileges dividing society, as there were in the fifth century, but it hardly matters.

In both eras, the dominant "Senators" constructed schemes to loot the wealth everyone else produced. Maybe it was a natural outgrowth of the Roman Empire's conquest-slave society. But it's happened here especially with the explosion of the financial sector--supported by empire, the US and wealthy nation's national banks.

Alan Greenspan helped create the casino financial system, opening the door to Wall Street's "inventions," like Credit Default Swaps, and even, variable interest mortgages, encouraging homeowners to cash in, to gamble, or buy ATV's.

In Roman times, Senators arranged it so they could collect everyone else's taxes, while avoiding taxes themselves. They used their positions and connections in the Imperial bureaucracy to collect all the gold, land and slaves in the empire, impoverishing everyone else. In the US, today, Warren Buffet and his hedge fund colleagues pay taxes, but despite the many millions they earn, they pay at about half the rate of ordinary Americans. Obama and Congress just extended low income tax rates for the wealthy, who already pay lower rates on capital gains, interest, and payroll taxes. They’ve cornered most of the new wealth created since 1975.

In the US, the Fed creates money for the elite: it's been expanding the money supply for decades. Why for the elite? Low interest rates--virtually zero for the banks--allow them to make cost-free profits on the rest of us. Have you ever borrowed money at zero interest? Further, cheap money induces fools (like me) into the stock market, but the sophisticated traders, the ones with "algorithms" and computer programs--and lots of virtually free capital--are the ones who walk away with profits. The rest of us buy high, sell low, and enrich our brokers with fees.

Of course, Wall Street isn't the only reason why US wealth concentrated at a staggering rate since the 1970's. There was the Reagan "revolution," the proliferation of conservative "think tanks" (propaganda sites now fueling Fox News) the Clinton collaboration, W's triumph, and now Obama's compromise/capitulation. With the important exception of Clinton's tax hike on the wealthy, all the rules, all the financial innovations, all the dilution of regulations, were directed toward the enrichment of a tiny elite.

And it has prospered. Wall Street, after the massive government bailouts of 2007-8, has sucked in greater profits, largely from gambling with government money, than it ever did before: in the midst of the Great Recession, with 9.6-18% unemployment, job insecurity, and banks gambling, instead of lending.

We're not out of recession, but we're on our way to another bubble crash. The elite, like 5th century Roman Senators, could capture all the wealth.

Tax Cuts a Bad Deal

So, the tax-cut compromise is a done deal.

The Republicans were clever; they repeated ad infinitum: don't raise taxes in a recession. But continued tax-cuts for the wealthy will be counterproductive.

We'll have to borrow $700-$800 billion (probably from China or Saudi Arabia) to pay for their lower taxes. But that money will not stimulate the economy. It will buy speculation on the stock market, or investment overseas long before it creates a single job here. It will also exacerbate US inequality. Already the US has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth among developed nations.


Tax cuts for those below $250,000 income, will mostly be spent in the US, on consumer goods, and on homes, creating demand for jobs. Even here, many of the consumer goods would be imports, so many of those dollars will fly out of the country. Leakage of any kind of spending, except direct government expenditures on something like a WPA, is to be expected in an economy as open as ours.

The effects of the tax cuts are not only economic; they are also social. Economic inequality increases social distance. When you have escalating social distance, you lose a sense of community. That's why legislators who have lived lives insulated from economic hardship, elected by money from the wealthy, can credibly threaten to cut off an unemployment extension, or argue that poor rich kids need tax breaks even more than the long-term unemployed need benefits. Further, high inequality is an economic handicap to the nation, since consumption by the wealthy cannot substitute for mass consumption as an economic base for a stable economy; inequality makes economic instability more likely: prosperity depends on a small minority.

Inequality is even a health hazard: inequality of wealth is directly correlated with poorer overall health of the population. This is partly due to unequal access to health care, but is also due to higher levels of anxiety, which extends even to the wealthiest. Why? Greater inequality breeds resentment, crime and violence.

Obama's compromise was a bad deal for everyone. The pre-Bush tax rates for the over $250,000, should have been restored. I think they should be raised, because the top 2% have cornered most of the growth in wealth produced by everyone since 1980. That's why wages have hardly budged since the '70's.

Further, corporations are swimming in cash, and only slowly hiring or loaning out money. So, more money in elite pockets will not promote investment, or create jobs--except maybe in China or Malaysia.

As the recent elections demonstrated, large aggregations of wealth skew the balance of political power. The Compromise illustrates the consequences: a one-year unemployment extension vs two years of high-end tax-cuts and a more unstable economy.

Our equivalent of fifth century Roman Senators has prevailed, to even their ultimate detriment. It is one more step towards our own 476 ( (See: Fall of Rome).

Next Right-wing Target

They anticipate that their dirty deal with Obama is sealed, and will pass even in the Democratic House. Why Democrats will pass such a monster is another question.

So, right-wingers are pleased about the $700-800 billion in income tax breaks for those who don't need it--people earning over $250,000 a year. They also are moderately pleased with the Estate Tax deal, in which estates under $5 million will be exempt, and the rate above that is lowered to 35%. Actually, many right-wingers want to eliminate the estate tax altogether. They don't call it the "Death Tax" for nothing. Under Bush, they had put in place the budget-busting Medicare Part D, which is lavish to big Pharma, as well as the tax cuts now being renewed.

So, what is their next target? They are mobilizing to prevent the GOP from supporting "compromise" on the debt ceiling. It's currently at $14.3 trillion.

That looks like a large number, and it is, but the US keeps on bumping up against whatever ceiling is current law; it has been for years--except during Clinton's last two years.

Before the Great Recession, the biggest and fastest addition to the debt was during the Bush II administration. Trillions in debt were added from the two unjustified wars, the two rounds of tax cuts and the unfunded Medicare Part D.

The recession, as recessions always do, caused the debt to rise further, because the unemployed and/or defaulted homeowner is unlikely to pay income tax, but aid to both means the government has to borrow. Would it be better to let people starve in the streets? Or sink into a depression?

Right-wingers seem to think so. They don't expect to be the ones who do the starving. They apparently assume that if people don't have jobs, it's their own faults--after all, jobs are listed in newspapers and online, so why aren't people working? They have it too easy with unemployment insurance! Those stupid Democrats wanted unemployment benefits extended; it was the lever Republicans used to get their way.

However, if the government runs out of money, it won't pay unemployment. To stop the government from borrowing will, effectively, stop the government from operating.

Why do right-wingers want this?

There is much rhetoric in right-wing venues about the damage government does. Their assumption is that a coming period of stalemate will be a good thing: it will stop that African Socialist, Obama, from expanding government programs and regulations. It will also demonstrate what right-wingers believe: government can't do anything right. If they can hamstring government until the 2012 election, then right-wingers can regain power.

But they don't appear to care if, in the process, they drive the US into a depression. If they succeed, the US will lose the dollar's reserve status. Then, goodbye American Empire.

Wiki-Revolution II

Wikileaks has added a new wrinkle to non-violent protest. Neither Gandhi, nor Martin Luther King could reach so many, to unveil the secrets, of violence and corruption, by so many, over most of the globe. Neither could stop wars, and perhaps wikileaks can't either, but it can certainly reach the masses of people with the information they need, so popular revulsion could stop them. It's possible.

The wikileaks case is radical. Political alliances crumble, and others emerge in unforeseen places, like conservative libertarians and anti-war progressives: Ron Paul insisted that Assange is only the publisher and that nobody was killed by the document dump, compared to the many killed in illegal wars caused by lying, the very thing the documents illustrate. He said if Assange is prosecuted, then the Times and WaPo should be as well. He claimed (as Ellsberg has) that what Assange did was just as legal as Daniel Ellsberg, and the Pentagon Papers. Some claim that Assange is no Ellsberg, but one funny fact is: Ellsberg loudly proclaims that he is.

However, this is bigger than one person. What wikileaks wrought is not simply Assange's creation. As wikileaks' name implies, it involves the cooperation of numberless collaborators all over the world, but it has also awakened a sleeping giant--yes, like Gandhi awakening colonized Indians from their torpor. The counter-offensive, after wikileaks was attacked, on the web and financially, has made people wake up. If you have a computer, and you're enraged at the world as presently constituted, here is a bloodless, even relatively safe, way of expressing your outrage, and perhaps forcing changes. Technology now being what it is, it is entirely possible that a small global movement, say 1 million strong, could force the world's governments to negotiate, to stop their wars, to enforce fair labor laws worldwide, to oppose the power of global corporations, or to act definitively and decisively on global climate change.

Anonymous demonstrates a whole new power, much more direct, non-violent, and populist. Yes, you have to have minimal understanding of computers, and a computer, of course, but computers and computer literacy are like a disease spreading across the globe with lightning speed.

On matters of free speech, and on wars and secrecy, progressives should look around them. As Ron Paul's speech indicates, progressives can find allies in funny places: progressives and libertarians have more in common than they think. There will be more libertarians, and hardly fewer progressives in the next Congress. Think how progressive the free exchange of information could be.

In addition, the resulting generation of hacktavists could make it possible to dismantle The Empire without bloodshed. The US might emulate Britain, peacefully withdrawing, instead of collapsing, like the fall of Rome.

Bloodless Wiki-Revolution

One of the things about the confrontation, wikileaks vs authorities, is that no blood has been spilled.

Despite all the bombast about "endangering Americans and our allies," it's clear that wikileaks and the cooperating news outlets have been very careful to insure no individual will be endangered. People are shown to be corrupt, or brutal, arbitrary or incompetent, but that doesn't kill them. It may shame them, but shame may be justified. Or, they may be embarrassed.

If there is one thing people of large egos fear more than death, it's embarrassment. Almost all political leaders, almost by definition, have large egos.

I said, on my 11/30 blog, that "if people laugh, it's all over." Maybe, that's why there have been such determined offensives by the US, and by some corporations against wikileaks: they could have been modeled on any number of authoritarian regimes. Corporate responses: shutting off donation routes, shutting off accounts, canceling site hosting, may be protective (in case GOP crazies make business with wikileaks into treason). Maybe, as well, they responded because wikileaks is attacking their people, the ones they influence, know and work with: their Generals, administrators, diplomats, Congressmen, Senators, President, the government they support, because it supports them.

It is heartening to know that revolutionary protest isn't confined to France or Thailand, and is possible, in cyber terms, all over the world. And it is strikingly non-violent.

We have enough blood and guts wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, maybe Somalia, Yemen--. So, by contrast, General Assange's master-stroke flew through electronic space, killing no one. Further, his "attack" only makes it more difficult for governments to hide behind secrecy, or to rely on it.

Is that so damaging? Perhaps to people used to exercising power out of the public eye. For them it could be a danger to their careers, at least. There were demands that Hillary resign, when the first State Department cables were released by wikileaks, although the demands have since died down.

Wikileaks emerged into my consciousness a couple of years ago, when "Julian" started sending me documents on Kenyan political corruption, and then classified military handbooks. I was initially startled, because my son's name is Julian. Unfortunately, I couldn't use Assange's documents, so, I joke, "Julian" went to the NY Times, instead!

Wiki-allies' counter-offensive, if only symbolic, like one-day walk-out strikes, demonstrates that there are real populist forces out there in cyber-land, and they aren't toothless. Think about it: if enough people became so discontented that they became hacktivists, if their number grew into the millions, instead of a few thousand, they could bring civilization to its knees! What would they demand? Freedom of information.

Transparency is probably the most democratizing force on the planet, but things may have to fall apart further, before our Roman Senators withdraw their grubby fingers from deep inside our pockets.

Come-on to Apocalypse

Today, I got a letter, no heading, from the "President of the Sovereign Society." She has a website: she spells the nation, "Amerika," as in escape from! She sells a how-to to gain dual citizenship and more.

These missives come from a conservative publishing group: I recognize the MO.

Many trot out tired bromides of the right, but this one is revealing. It lays out the dream of would-be capitalists, who scream loudest about Freedom, and: America has been ruined (by that Socialist Obama and that cowboy, W). Astoundingly, Erika is selling "government health programs and FREE prescriptions," while you "live like royalty for less than $390 a week;" the four countries most affordable for retirees; how you can gain business and tax benefits with dual citizenship, and so on.

Other newsletters in the network provide interesting stock analysis and questionable advice, but the MO is telling. It never lays out something for you to read, until after you subscribe. They give a presentation: a rolling script, while a voice hypes the argument. You can't move forward or back; it forces you to hear each agonizing minute if you want to figure out what they're selling. If you try to cancel, it yells at you, in print--or voice over it--that you mustn't give up this chance NOW! Every time I've watched one, it concludes by selling a subscription to another, more specialized newsletter that will: solve all your health problems, or make you rich, instantly, protect you from the coming apocalypse, or, in this case, sell you a newsletter for fleeing the United States. The subscriptions go upwards from the $35 for an extended advertisement for other newsletters, to several thousand for the "elite" stock advice sheets.

Having received one for free and then another for $35 (deductible as an expense), I can see a pattern. First of all, a significant share of the financial advice is either to buy gold, since everything will collapse soon, or oil, the more polluting the better. Some recommendations are interesting, but when I check the buy figures, they're almost always late--buy below $6.50, when it hasn't been below $6.50 for weeks. The newsletters are sparing of real recommendations, but lavish in selling other newsletters.

Their star economic commentator, a Brit, gives scornful analysis of the US economy; he lives in Taiwan.

There is something this audience shares with the left: a conviction that the US is in inevitable decline. However, they are sanguine about it--and eager to exploit it. Then, as reward, there are "over 80 beautiful, get-away countries," where you could establish residency, and maintain "your personal privacy and affluence."

They are wannabe Roman Senators; Roman Senators buried their gold before Rome's "fall." Afterwards, the barbarians tortured them to get it for themselves.

Obama: Ordinary Politician

The American people have been betrayed. An election stolen; a popular election and a surge of hope: hope disappointed; another election bought.

Obama perpetuates the failing policies of the past: he depends on "experts" from the past. While he could give inspirational speeches as a candidate, he's a pedagogue as President, rarely a fighter. He went from talking about changing the dialogue, to repeating it.

Obama is now going to cut (government) workers wages to trim the deficit, while unemployment is high and borrowing is dirt-cheap. Wage-cuts will slow down the economy further, increasing the deficit. He's talking about "compromising" with Republicans, by caving in on continuing tax cuts to the over $250,000 crowd. That would add $700 billion to the deficit, but few jobs.

He signed a health care bill, but like Medicare Part D, signed by W, it caters to the needs of the health care industry far more than patients, and provides no alternative to private health insurance; he could have pushed for the public option but Rahm Emmanuel persuaded him otherwise. "Reform" will give insurers huge new markets, subsidized by Uncle Sam.

He did sign a New Start treaty that cuts nuclear weapons, but his timid, transactional politics, reinforced by the Senate Democratic leadership, makes it unlikely to be ratified in this Congress; it won't be in the next.

Has he gotten us out of wars? Obama campaigned against Iraq, but we're still in it: our military is angling to stay after the 2011 treaty cut-off negotiated by Bush! And we're in up to our ears in Afghanistan--now until 2014. And Pakistan, and--the torturers are unpunished, and Guantanamo still has inmates.

Obama campaigned on the need for an international agreement on climate change, deploring Bush's rejection of Kyoto. He went to Copenhagen empty-handed from Congress (no climate change legislation passed), but he didn't use the EPA's so-far unchallenged mandate to regulate CO2 as leverage. So, no agreement was reached, just a handshake on the "we'll try to reduce emissions," mantra.

Then there's the deficit commission. Obama appointed advocates for dismantling Social Security and Medicare. So, of course, the co-chairs propose cutting Social Security, not raising the cap to better finance it, and cutting Medicare, not restructuring health care so we can pay for it.

Obama hasn't even challenged the false notion that Social Security contributes to the deficit; it doesn't. Instead, he tries to co-opt Republican anxiety about deficit spending, while millions are without jobs, or homes, and the economy is stuck. The nation needs a huge public works/public jobs program, not deficit-cutting: not until unemployment is slashed.

Obama is hardly a reformer like Emperor Majorian. Despite his rhetoric, he is a lesser Emperor, like Glycerius, creature of Generals and Senators, two years before the fall of Rome.

Leaks Spill Empire

The latest wiki leaks spill awful confirmations of what so many have been saying for so long: how sleazy is the Imperial enterprise.

I'm hoping it's the beginning of a graceful end to the American Empire. Since it does not legally exist, I cannot be accused of treason to say I'd love to see it go. The United States is a great Republic, not an Empire. Empires make nations into exploitative, brutal machines, which enormously benefit a very few, at the expense of nearly everyone else.

It happened with the Roman Empire, and the Spanish, and give a gander to the grand estates the British gentry showed off to each other. Those former empires are now prosperous states, more or less, if the bond speculators and the supine governments don't bring them all down.

Think what it would be like if the United States of America, the USA, was just an ordinary country. It would still be just as beautiful. The very rich might be less so. But everyone else would be better off. Consider, first of all, that we spend something above $750 billion strictly on "Defense." That's about ten times, what the Chinese (our nearest competitor) spends, although we borrow it from them, in effect. A good bit of the components we buy from them, too.

If we weren't spending most of that money on weapons and wars, on the ability to destroy, and actual destruction; if we weren't spending so much of that money overseas (700-800 bases in 80 countries), we could employ our people, taking advantage of their skills, we could rebuild our crumbling and out-of-date infrastructure, and afford the services everyone should have.

In addition, a constant drain to our balance of payments would be plugged. We could also enjoy the spectacle of the rest of the world trying to take care of themselves through the UN, or regional groups like NATO, in which the US is only one member. Nope, don't have the troops, don't have the airlift, either. Got rid of it. You'll just have to work it out--if you think it's important enough. How delicious that would be!

So, what brought on this vision of a Post-Imperial world? Why, Wikileaks, of course. The Wizard of Oz has been shown for the charlatan he is; the whole international "community," it seems, is crammed with small and cunning minds, constantly conniving. (I passed the written Foreign Service exam; I am so thankful I flunked the interview! I was in love, but that's a different story.)

Of course, heads of states and their flunkies, and especially Secretaries of State, etc. are extremely unhappy. Wikileaks exposes their pettiness and hypocrisy, and renders the USA less trustworthy than she was during the worst of Bush.

And after all, what is the ultimate currency of an empire? Belief that an empire will act like one.

If people laugh, it's all over.

Bees and People

I keep bees; three hives. Elizabeth asked me if I could describe them.

The oldest hive is laid back; it's the only one that had only two filled supers, but had filled some of the hive body. I left it one super. The next hive, I had assembled from bees and a replacement queen I bought from Sam's Anarchy Apiaries. Sam eschews bee-veils and gloves. He's handled hives barefoot and sleeveless. This hive is not anarchic; it works hard, but it's very gentle. With it, I could probably get by without gloves (never without a veil). It produced three supers. I harvested the two least full. The last hive was a volunteer, a gift. It swarmed into one of my spare hive bodies and it stayed. It is the most productive; it over-filled three supers and had honey down below. I took only two supers. It's always fierce, ready to defend its hive. Its bees have stung me several times.

So, here we have three collectives, each comprising at least 100,000 members, replaced by a new generation of workers every six weeks in summer, and yet each has a collective identity I can readily recognize. Other beekeepers have confirmed this: hives have personalities.

So, do cities. So, do nations. Over time, the personality of a hive may change. The laid back one has become more productive, but it's a survivor of lean years when I had to feed it. France has been fractious since at least the French Revolution, but despite its latest round of strikes, it's calming down.

The USA was big, brash, and wasteful. It's still brash, and it's hard to change its spendthrift ways, despite straitened circumstances. Americans have had a tendency to blame late arrivals for their troubles. Now, that the US is no longer so exceptional, now that nations like China and India are growing rapidly and it is not, blaming the victims flames higher. It could become a nasty wildfire, burning out of control all over the world.

The victims are immigrants, deviants from "normal," like gay men and women, and Middle Easterners, victimized by US imperial meddling.

While Obama and "moderates" think they are trying to restore order to a chaotic world, right-wing hawks want to wade into countries like Iran, or Venezuela: our primacy is threatened; those nations' governments are unfriendly.

The impulse is not pacification, not order, but assertion: "who's boss," like Paladino, defeated for NY Governor; he was going "to Albany with a baseball bat."

Palin represents that spirit, albeit with a smile and a wink: similar resentment drove Fascism and Nazism. Can she carve the American hive into a stinging, vindictive force? The American Empire on a last rampage?

I hope not.

Democracy as Distraction

Democracy As Distraction

What do you call a political system in which a tiny wealthy class trains most of society not to think? What do you call a politics that can be bought and sold, but costs more than any but the wealthiest can pay?

It isn't democracy.

The amount spent on the mid-term elections, (over $4 billion) was staggering, and the sources of much of that money may never be known. We do know that a collection of European firms ponied up almost a million. We also know that a multi-millionaire spent millions on a personal vendetta. We know that two billionaire brothers funded groups like 60 Plus, purporting to be just ordinary folks, accusing sitting Democratic Congressmen of supporting heinous provisions supposedly in the healthcare law: they weren't in it, the Congressmen didn't support such provisions, but that didn't matter. Fifty of 53 Blue Dog to outspokenly progressive Congressmen and women attacked by groups like 60 Plus were defeated.

There was no "mandate" won in this election, unless it was for deceit and misinformation. People weren't voting based on facts, but because ad campaigns generated anger and rejection--of anyone tarred with the Democratic majority, or Obama. Fury was learned amnesia. The hard times were caused by laissez-faire economics, but voters voted for laissez-faire Republicans, because Democrats, elected in 2008 to fix the economy, had failed to fix it fast enough, except for the financial industry: unemployment and job insecurity are far too high. So, egged on by negative campaigns, voters flailed out wildly against Democratic incumbents.

Democracy is a mere distraction, Elizabeth Cunningham pointed out (links to her books onsite). The real power has been grabbed by a tiny, wealthy elite; they are like Roman Senators of old, exercising power through their wealth, and through the institutions they control: in this era, corporations, financial funds and the military. They can use unlimited funds to unleash attacks on any candidate who looks at them cross-eyed.

We still think we live in a democracy? Not all anonymous funding paid off: the campaign against California's climate law went down to defeat, despite piles of oil money thrown against it. Perhaps it was defeated because anonymous donors were identified--energy companies--and voters knew the companies opposed climate change legislation for one reason only: to protect their profits.

The "Green" referendum was an exception. Ad campaigns succeeded when their funding sources remained undisclosed; they succeeded among voters who didn't pay attention to politics until a few weeks before the election and among voters who depended for information on TV "news" (which made billions on the ads).

Unless there is a genuine mass movement, laws to require disclosure of funding sources (like the Disclose Act), and a revival of real journalism, we will be ruled by money until the selfish class bankrupts the nation. Then, when the US is a burnt-out cinder, it will move on to "pleasant climes" somewhere else.

Government "Overreach" and Powerless Emperor

My friend told me: "We are not an Empire. Empires were ruled by one man called Emperor. We are a Democracy, however flawed and inefficient."

It depends on one's definition. An empire, to me, is any state entity that attempts to rule over other states, or peoples, with or without their consent. A Democracy, on the other hand is a state ruled by the people. I suppose that's still formally the case, as it was even after Augustus took over in Rome, but the two are not mutually exclusive, again true in both the early Roman Empire and today. Augustus was formally elected. So was Obama. In the latter case, it was a genuinely democratic election, but that doesn't make much difference: the military apparently has the last say, anyway.

In the US, we have a President who made a great effort to go against "military wisdom," and decide that American troops should begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011, and that the US would abide by the treaty signed by Bush to withdraw from Iraq in the same period.

Yet, already, General Petraeus and Secretary Gates are undercutting those stated policies. Petraeus is pushing for the President to back down on his Afghan commitment, and Gates told the Iraqis that "we" would happily stay longer if they asked. In addition to the rhetoric, actions on the ground speak louder: the huge, imperial-like embassy in Baghdad, and the huge embassy now to be built in Kabul do not bespeak withdrawal; they express an expectation that we will stay, as do the huge, self-sufficient "permanent" US bases.

We can spend three-quarters of a billion dollars to construct these imperial edifices and employ thousands in both Iraq and Afghanistan to build them (and $1,000,000 per soldier/year) but we can't spend money for jobs at home: that's government "over-reach" say the newly elected GOP Congressmen and Senators.

The "emperor" will not be able to spend money at home to stimulate job creation, or to green grow the economy; that's only possible in a non-imperial nation, like China?

So, instead, the Fed attempts to re-stimulate the economy through "quantitative easing," but everyone from bond speculators to the "mad-and-can't-take-it-anymore" crowd think this will roil the dollar into an inflationary spiral. On the other hand, what should policy-makers do? Let the nation--and probably the world--slide into a double-dip recession, and not only recession, but a new Great Depression, complete with trade war?

Note: there is no inflation, despite price rises in energy and commodities, which probably means that there is deflation in a lot of economic sectors.

Unless the President/Emperor can act decisively to stop the slide, we will descend into misery, and beggar the world, too. Will the US Empire collapse?

An emperor without power is the worst of all possible alternatives.

A Vet Who Wishes There Was No Veteran's Day

A veteran on Veteran's Day
wishing there wasn't any such thing.
What good does war do?
Why are humans so violent?

We are the most deadly predators
That ever evolved.
We dominate the planet,
Kill anything that challenges us, like wolves,
Or hunts us, like cougars, or steals our food,
Like rats.

And we treat each other the same way!
And yet, humans wouldn't survive
if they didn't cooperate.
We need food others grow, clothes others make, houses others build, cars others put together, computers others design, skills others know, and the list is almost endless, isn't it?
We make or do something in return.
That's called the economic system.

But some people have always been predators,
Others become prey.

From the first century BC to the fifth century CE,
Romans were the primary predators
in the Mediterranean and European world, at least.
From the fourteenth century to the 20th
the Europeans were the primary predators worldwide
lording it over, and ripping off "the natives."

In the 20th century, an upstart settler nation
That styled itself unconsciously on Rome,
but sprawled across a new continent,
Became the hero and then the new predator,
Dominant, globe-straddling, ideologically benign
in its exploitation and destruction: we destroyed
the village in order to save it, was their motto
in the third to last of wars that would bleed
its people white

and enrich its wealthy, who can leave the ruin
of the USA--for their homes in pleasant climes
and beautiful places, anywhere in the world but here.

The 21st century will not be American; it might be
Chinese, or Indian, or maybe Brazilian.
Maybe the 21st will be the century of the BRIC

Maybe, finally, it will be a century when Veteran's Day
Is no longer a big deal.

Plutocracy?

Corporatocracy? Is it big corporations, or wealthy individuals who have stolen democracy and poisoned citizens' minds? It's both, of course. All I know is: people like Russ Feingold bit the dust, because they refused to play to the big donors, the corpocrats who were funding entities like Crossroads GPS.

Plutocracy means rule by the rich, and by that standard, the election of Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold, certainly looks like a plutocratic takeover. Feingold was not only not wealthy, he was fastidious about where he got his campaign funding, and he was notoriously independent when it came to the needs of the wealthy. So old fashioned: he insisted that ordinary people and their concerns mattered. The man who defeated Russ, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire plastics manufacturer who never held office, but was not particularly fastidious about where the money came from, and was the beneficiary of almost all the anonymously funded ads (most out of state); they either promoted his positions, or attacked Feingold.

On the other hand, Feingold raised significantly more money than Johnson (all from small donors, apparently), and spent more, perhaps more than Johnson and the out of state ad campaigns combined. The election in Wisconsin, and in many other states, has been described as "rejectionist." It was like that voter in my Election District who demanded a list of all the incumbents, so he could vote against them all. See my earlier blog for that story.

Except maybe the election wasn't really rejectionist. My two Democratic Senators were reelected easily, even if my Congressman lost. My Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand, are probably acceptable to what some are beginning to call the plutonomy, i.e. the wealthy, corporate movers and shakers. They have both been friendly enough to Wall Street.

The system we appear to be evolving towards looks increasingly like the end days of the Western Roman Empire. That was a true plutocracy, however, because there were no corporations. This, in some ways looks more insidious. The wealthy get what they want, which includes turning everyone else into the equivalent of serfs, but they also get to set their serfs, in far-flung parts of the world, against each other, competing for the lowest wages. And, because of mass media, they can persuade them that this is the way things have to be.

"The best democracies money can buy" means plutocracy, or corporatocracy on a world scale.

A fellow graduate student (long ago) was asked, while on a Political Science panel, what he thought about Revolution. Pointing to his small stature, he said, "I'm a small Political Scientist, so I don't like violence." I'm small, too, and I agree.

But I wonder how much misery people will willingly endure--before they erupt. Is that what suicide bombers are doing already? Are they the beginning of our era's barbarian hordes?

Government by Default

Corporate leaders, right-wing media moguls, speculators, bankers and hedge fund managers were all cheering as the election returns rolled in. Oh, they had their little disappointments, both in California and New York. The oil companies suffered the most, having spent well over a $100 million to repeal California's global warming law: their proposition failed.

Generally, big business won, defense won, and the American people were sold a shoddy bill of goods. What did the people vote for? Kicking the bums out. According to Pew's polls, the economy, i.e. jobs, was by far the most important issue (to 61%): what people wanted was more of them. Repealing health care reform, or substantially changing it was important to only 21%.

However, John Boehner, new Speaker-designate, vowed that a health care repeal bill was the first order of business. And what will Republicans propose as stimulus, to create jobs? Cut taxes, or specifically, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, including tax cuts for those poor mites who earn more than $250,000 a year, and even for those heroes of enterprise who earn a $100 million or more. That is supposed to create jobs, but corporations are already rolling in money, even as they lay off more employees.

The Fed's response is to go big ($600 billion) on Quantitative Easing, or creating money. Fed chief, Bernanke, nearly pleaded with Congress for greater fiscal stimulus, but he could see that Congress isn't going to pass one. Ironically, it may increase the deficit by cutting taxes and pushing for a more aggressive defense policy. Cutting "waste" is a fraud, and even Republicans know that.

So, how are Republicans going to solve the jobs issue? They can't; they will make it worse, so they will continue their diversionary politics--and blame all our troubles on Obama.

Meanwhile, the corporations are getting exactly what they paid for. Stalemate in Washington means: no interference, unilateral control over their own multinational estates and their pursuit of maximum profits, everywhere.

What corporations really want? Government to concern itself only with protecting them and their assets, both at home and abroad, but certainly not to concern itself with the people's welfare: ultimately, corporations want to control that, too, for a profit.

How would workers fare under unrestrained corporate rule? Forget about minimum wages, maximum hours, safe working conditions, or safe food and drink. Forget about a chance to "make it rich," an American dream that fools many into supporting the corporate agenda. Only a tiny elite will "make it," and most of them will come from the already elite. Everyone else will be overworked and underpaid, or cast off to survive however they can, including crime. Security companies should thrive! So should private prisons.

America's Roman Senators just took a giant step towards our equivalent of the Fall of Rome.

Elections and Anger

"Quick, I want a list of all the incumbents, so I can vote against them!" the voter told me, at the election "in-take" table in our rural-ex-urban Town Hall.

I said I couldn't help him; it's against election law for an election inspector to politic. The Republican inspector sitting next to me remarked, "If he doesn't know who the incumbents are, maybe he should have paid attention for the last couple years; probably, all he did was complain."

The voter, a youngish middle-aged man, was angry and frustrated, but he epitomized, for me, the mood of the electorate, not just locally, but nationally.

There was also the older voter, who was clearly confused by the new voting system (New York recently installed optical scanners and paper ballots to finally comply with the HAVA federal election law; most people wanted their lever machines back). The old man couldn't believe he actually had to blacken ovals by each candidate, and after requesting bipartisan assistance, said he'd wanted to vote for Cuomo, but now he was so frustrated he'd just vote the straight Republican line; anything else was too complicated.

The scanner did break down, repeatedly, and, after several hours wait, was replaced by another from County headquarters. At least, the "emergency" ballots voted in the interim, were easily retrieved and scanned once the new scanner was up and running. Paper ballots are a sturdy paper record.

Our incumbent Democratic Congressman was voted out; the operative mood was simply 'throw the bums out,' even though the 'tea party' gubernatorial candidate, Paladino, was soundly rejected. My Republican colleague pronounced him "crazy."

Republicans swept to control the House of Representatives, but despite tea party rants, there was no clear mandate, not only because Democrats retained the Senate, but because what voters were reflecting was the inchoate anger and frustration of my angry voter, who had no idea what he wanted, except: throw the bums out.

How can the US govern itself as a democracy, when voters have no idea what they want? Voters chose rejection, not direction.

But then Democrats, after campaigning in 2006-08 for Change, were not capable of delivering sufficient positive change, nor, especially, of undoing the economic damage wrought by Republicans and Bush. So, now we get Republicans, aiming to restore the previous, unregulated economy, even though it led to the economic collapse that caused voter anger. There even might be enough spine-challenged Democrats in the Senate to go along.

Will the US experience long-term stagnation, like Japan? Likely--unless Obama, or a rival presidential candidate, promotes war as a solution. The Washington Post has suggested Iran! Let's add Somalia, Pakistan, Venezuela, Bolivia and Yemen: WWIII. The US could lose its empire through bankruptcy and defeat, just like Japan and Rome.

Then, American elites could move to China, Brazil, or?