Mitt's Debut

"This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. This president can tell us that the next four years he'll get it right, but this president cannot tell us that you are better off today than when he took office." Mitt Romney's convention address 8/30/2012.

Like much else that Romney and Ryan said, this statement is factually wrong. Things aren't great, but we are better off than we were when the financial system was imploding with the housing market. Further, although unemployment rose after Obama was inaugurated, it fell in response to his policies--just not far enough. The problem was that his policies were too timorous, in part because Obama made attempt after mistaken attempt to compromise with the GOP minorities in both the House and the Senate: mostly the Senate, where the latter wielded its filibuster veto.

His attempts were mistaken, because Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, had made it very clear that his party would do almost whatever it could to insure that Obama would be a one-term President.

Neither Romney, nor Ryan, nor any of the other so-called leaders in the GOP, are willing to admit it now, but they are at least as responsible for the parlous state of the nation as Obama. They blocked whatever initiatives Obama attempted to bring about a recovery of the economy their (and Clinton-Rubin's) extreme laissez-faire policies had brought to the brink.

The GOP's hypocrisy is extraordinary, so the string of falsehoods promulgated by Ryan and then Romney at the convention should not be surprising.

What I do find surprising is the lack of "message control" on the part of the most prominent participants in the Republican Convention. Only the lesser lights, like Susana Martinez and Ann Romney stayed on message: to promote Romney as their standard bearer. Aside from the disastrous "address" of Clint Eastwood, Republican stars like Chris Christie, and even Paul Ryan appeared at best lukewarm in their promotion of their putative nominee.

This leads me to wonder: perhaps Mitt isn't even the super-manager he claims, or perhaps the GOP isn't really uniting behind him, after all. Ron Paul hasn't endorsed him, Clint referred to him as "the other guy" and many others seemed to treat him as an afterthought.

Maybe, the huge financial advantage Republicans have gained from Citizens United and their billionaire "super-pacs" has made them careless. After all, Sheldon Adelson has said he'd spend "whatever it takes" to defeat Obama, so, why worry? They'll just smother the airwaves with their lies.

I hope enough people tune out their distortions, but this is a classic case of the selfish class attempting to take over what had been at best a limited democracy. If their class succeeds, the US, and the world, will look increasingly like the last, fumbling years of the western Roman Empire.

Rapists for Romney-Ryan

Rapists: just think, if the GOP wins the White House and Congress, then the women who carry your babies will just have to have them, hah, hah! You can go around the country forcing women to have your sons and daughters. Won't that be fun? Oh, you might have to go to prison, but that's a small price to pay. And just think, if the nasty woman you’ve impregnated tries to "get rid of it," she'll end up in prison, too!

And think of it this way: you're carrying out God's plan to be fruitful and multiply. Maybe the GOP will pass a law that your rap-ee will have to marry you, sort of like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Hey, as far as Afghanistan goes, the only thing wrong with their social policies, from a Republican point of view, is that they're justified by the Quran, not the Bible; it's like going back to the Fourth Century, when the Catholic Church even humiliated Emperor Theodosius the Great!

Some Republicans, like Michelle Bachmann, are worried that the US will be governed under Sharia law, if Obama is re-elected, but really, if the Republicans are elected, maybe they'll re-institute stoning: it's in the Bible, after all.

Anyone who thinks it would have been much nicer in the Dark Ages, should vote for Republicans. Just think: if the GOP swept away all the regulations they enjoy complaining about, we could be re-visited by the Black Death, since basic sanitation would have to be left up to the "Free Market," meaning no one would do anything about accumulating garbage, unless someone paid them to: What! The Government? No, no! They'll have "drowned it in the bathtub."

Now, if you’re a billionaire, you should also vote Republican because you'll get at least $250,000 more to piss away any way you want to, instead of being subjected to the indignity of having to give it to the Government. You can spend it on ermine pillow covers instead of Govmint spending it on all sorts of ridiculous things, like job training, early childhood education, or even Food Stamps so some un-enterprising slobs don't go hungry at night! Or maybe they'd spend it on those awful women, who seem to think they should get birth control for free, probably, even if they're raped.

If women don't want to be raped, they should pack an automatic, or just don't go out anywhere, unless they have an escort, preferably male and over 6 feet tall--or, or hold an aspirin between their knees.

That's why women should really stay home, you see. Again, the Taliban have had the vision to create the glorious future that Republicans are only now beginning to realize--if it's Christian, of course.

What Is To Be Done?*

I despair the politics of this era, the lies and distortions that impel it, the money that drives it. Mitt Romney is its perfect symbol; Paul Ryan is the embodiment of its deceptive promises of reaction snake-oil.

The Economist asks, 'Who, really, is Mitt Romney?' I doubt he can answer, except: he's determined to win the Presidency; he has no goal, other than winning it. He's been both a moderate liberal as governor of Massachusetts, and an "extreme conservative," (his own words), while running for President, even after winning the nomination. He was pro-choice, and now, he'll run on a Republican platform in which even rape and incest are not exempt from its absolute ban. He insists, after Akin's blooper, that he'd allow abortion for either reason, but who knows whether he would, or could, given his party.

Romney even threatens a Gold Commission to investigate returning to the Gold Standard--presumably to mollify Ron Paul supporters.

Then Senator, George McGovern, wrote an awful forward to The Promise of the Coming Dark Age: McGovern touted the Khmer Rouge as a beacon! If Mitt is able to buy the Presidency--that's what it would be, a purchase, costing several billion dollars--then the Dark Age could be upon us: the Roman Senators of old couldn't match the callous disregard the elite bear today for the rest of us. Romney would cut services (Food Stamps, Medicaid) for the desperate and cut taxes for his (lightly taxed) class of multimillionaires and billionaires. He'd also increase Defense spending, possibly for fighting another war: Iran, probably, although he'd also start a trade war with China the day he's inaugurated.

Romney appears to have chosen "extreme conservative" over moderate liberal, although he's still claiming he lives in Massachusetts (there is a question whether he did, when he filed taxes and voted in Massachusetts, claiming residence in his son's basement, a possible felony). But Romney still resists political, as well as geographic, definition.

His party tries to rally natives against immigrants, whites against blacks, men against women--its absolutist anti-abortion position is only a small part of that--but all is subsumed in the general war against all who are not owners of significant capital.

Capital is the contemporary version of the gold, land and slaves controlled by Roman Senators in the fourth and fifth centuries. Unlike the wealth of old, however, capital is expandable, and radical. Roman Senators could do only a small fraction of the damage that can be done, is already being done, by our contemporary elites, from eviscerating the safety net, environmental pollution and impoverishing the non-rich, to global warming, global immiseration and buying this election.

Can sanity stop them? Even the sitting President, Obama, doesn't have the money to beat back their misinformation, smears, and outright lies: example, their claim that Obama is reviving welfare.

What is to be done?

*Lenin used the same title.

Democracy Needs Wikileaks

It's not just disturbing, that the US, UK and Sweden are ganging up on Julian Assange, and Ecuador.

You can be sure that none of the first three nations are concerned about the rough sex accusations made against Assange (the charges are not for rape, but for a kind of sexual aggression only prosecuted in Sweden; but he's not even formally charged: the extradition is only for questioning).

So, the UK threatens Ecuador's Embassy, and despite the threatened action being a breach of international law, the US and Sweden both make encouraging noises.

Why, because under Assange's leadership Wikileaks published thousands of US diplomatic and military documents, classified from NOFORN to Secret. Newspapers all over the world published articles about them, and even Americans now know a lot more about what our nation is doing to the rest of the world. Wikileaks enabled one of the US's most crucial freedoms--freedom of information--to be dramatically, if temporarily, expanded.

Wikileaks sympathizers claim that the US is pressuring both the UK and Sweden to extradite Assange to the US. They say the US intends to try him for espionage, which is punishable by death. Of course, the three principal nations deny everything. But note what the US is not saying: it's not saying that Britain should honor Ecuador's grant of asylum to Assange; it's not saying that Britain shouldn't threaten Ecuador and it's not saying that it won't prosecute Assange for espionage.

Meanwhile the UK denies him safe passage.

All three nations boast about their freedom of the press. Ecuador has only recently had such freedoms: its media was privately owned, in bed with dictators and staunchly opposed to Rafael Correa's government, which has not repressed it.

But the Obama administration appears as zealous as the former USSR to crush dissident Assange; and Romney, if anything, would try to outdo Obama. US media say Ecuador's President has attacked his own press, but that appears to be a distortion.

Correa's government faced a hostile, partisan private oligopoly dominating Ecuadoran media; his supposed "assault" is his government's attempt to nurture a fairer press. Ecuador has promoted public and cooperative outlets, so they could compete with private media.

It would be as if Obama promoted NPR and MSNBC. Oh, he has?

So, why are Assange and Ecuador the new bad-guys to three supposedly democratic governments?

Both bad-guys have defied the American Empire. If they prevail, The Empire looks weak. So, it doesn't matter that the New York Times and WaPo, co-publishers with Assange, are just as culpable as Assange himself. They're connected to power; Julian isn't.

"Hang the bastard!" parallels Rome's response in its declining years. The Fifth Century Empire tortured and "slow-burned" its opponents, but still it lost control, long before CE 476.

Reporters and Corruption

Everything is for sale, including our supposedly representative government. What I find almost worse is the market of public information--and what, apparently, is not for sale.

Fox News, the most popular (faux) news channel, is despite its slogan "Fair and balanced," an unabashed propaganda mill that actively disseminates half-truths that become, momentarily, lead stories in the rest of the news.

Supposedly, on the other side, is NPR, which Congressional Republicans and candidate Romney both want to cut off from the public teat. NPR may favor Democrats, you see, because it's just as wishy-washy as they are. It's not hard-line for tax cuts for the wealthy, but it takes no position and attempts to present a 'fair and balanced' presentation of the issue.

NPR listeners are better informed than Fox watchers, or those of MSNBC, but none of the above present serious analyses of an issue, like reasonable rates of taxation. Even on NPR, the tendency is to parrot whatever one side said, and then how the other side responded: a he-said-she-said model that requires of the reporter no thought or research.

Will the Watergate break-in, and the investigations that issued from it, be our last really serious and effective investigative journalism?

Fewer and fewer news bureaus have reporters on the ground, either around the nation, or around the world. A worker-police massacre in South Africa is reported on by a journalist in Nairobi, 1780 miles away. If something happens in Minnesota, the reporter may be sent in from Chicago.

And more and more reporters only report: recording what the official, and/or his opponent say, without any reflection like: What the hell is "legitimate rape?" Or, damn, is that how contraception works: "the woman's body" somehow knows how to get rid of it--no abortion needed? Should I report that Congressman Akin don't know nothin'?

Maybe Akin made even the laziest reporters sit up and realize: they can't just report; they've got to base their reporting on facts.

Maybe. If extremists--who seem to be overwhelmingly on the right during this period--keep on attempting to present fiction as fact and fact as fiction, ever more wildly, maybe a more responsible information system will emerge. I hope it will finally allow most people to really know what's going on, and why it affects them.

On the optimistic side: people do help each other, and given a choice, most people will lend a helping hand when needed. Factual and analytic reporting would help people.

On the negative: fear is probably our most powerful emotion, and the one-percent, ably represented by Fox and Limbaugh, are backed by much more money, because our moneyed Roman Senators only want more money, and think in zero-sum terms: if they pay workers more, or protect us more from their pollution (pay their own external costs), they'll get less. Their strategy: keep'em scared and angry.

Will fear and anger work?

Romney-Ryan Can Win by Losing

It's more likely Romney won't win the Presidency, having named Paul Ryan. Ryan defines Romney, clarifies that he's not some "compassionate conservative," as W pretended to be--until he was elected.

But winning appears to be less important than changing the conversation.

Radical reactionaries won't meet the fate they did with Goldwater in 1964. Then, conservatives had neither think-tank brainpower, nor the financial power unleashed by Citizens United. Goldwater went down hard, because Democrats/progressives dominated the conversation.

It wasn't until Reagan that conservatives gained a second chance, but they won only a toehold.

The reactionary, Ayn Randian ideas of Paul Ryan are far more extreme than Reagan ever dared. They represent an aspiration to turn American political society back to the Robber Barons, before not only the New Society (Medicare-Medicaid), New Deal (Social Security, fair wages, labor union power), but even before the Anti-Trust Progressive era, when governments began to regulate and tax corporate and personal excess.

If Democrats/progressives/liberals/labor are able to get the word out, a slim majority of voters in "contested battleground states" will probably vote for Obama, and maybe even for a Democratic Congress and Senate.

That's a big if, since Ryan's name has drawn over $3 million to Republican coffers in just two days. Self-interested moneybags will mobilize to send much more--not just to the GOP, but to the so-called super-pacs, to spend on bile against Obama, or anyone to the left of Attila the Hun (I wrote Attila's autobiography, which you can buy here: http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G).

Still, there are ways incumbent Presidents can get the word out. But the election is only part of the story, perhaps the least likely part. Ryan is important even if he and Romney don't win: the right wing will have succeeded in shifting the conversation far to the right in their favor.

The great failure of Goldwater was that LBJ's landslide shifted political ideals and policy leftward. But with millions to billions of dollars mobilized against Obama and Democrats by Ryan's candidacy, Obama and even other Democrats might still win, but the election will probably be close.

So, the ideas put forward by Ryan and the Tea Party, will not only NOT remain unthinkable, they will become The Alternative, if nearly half the electorate supports Romney-Ryan-Republicans.

Romney has never, until now, allowed himself to be defined in policy terms: he's run away from his one signal accomplishment as Massachusetts Governor (Romneycare), but by naming Ryan, he becomes dependent upon the Tea Party and its radical corporate base: addled activists subsidized by Robber Barons.

So, today's equivalent of Fifth Century Roman Senators will attempt to control virtually all levels of government--and, of course, their own serfs. That's why they're willing to spend (100's of) millions of dollars against Obama.

Conspiracy

I never used to believe in conspiracy theories as a way to explain our world: the Bilderbergs, or Illuminati, the Communists, or aliens, Satan or the Anti-Christ. When I muttered darkly about climate destruction, a health foods store proprietor told me about contrails: "They're destroying the atmosphere, so we'll all have to buy their food."

"Who?"

"The Government."

That was a new one. Or maybe not so new; I saw it mentioned online the next day, and remembered that the health store lady had whispered "contrails" years before.

But what is happening in Congress, in election campaigns, in dismissals of bank fraud charges, in watered down or canceled regulations, in timorous actions by Obama and his administration--and other governments even more so, well, it does look more and more like a grand, if informal, conspiracy by a small group of people to grasp firm control. Rising inequality, the international power of corporations and Billionaires International--the richest man in the world is Mexican, though more billionaires hail from the US than anywhere else--does begin to look like a kind of conspiracy.

It's backed by billions of dollars (to protect trillions); it's international in scope: the US, Canada, most European nations excepting Greece, seem to have been taken over by this global elite, as have the white nations down-under. Russia, China, Korea, Japan, India and maybe Brazil are joining up, as well.

But it isn't a tight conspiracy, maintained by communication and central control; that's why it's so successful. This amorphous elite has socked away anywhere from $30 to $60 plus trillions, according to estimates by various sources, hidden in ways that are difficult for governments to trace--or certainly to tax. That's at least several times the GDP of the largest economy in the world: the United States.

Where is this money?

It's parked in low-wage countries outside of US, or other nations' control, largely in banking havens, where no one asks questions. Mitt's overseas accounts are emblematic.

Mitt isn't anywhere near the wealthiest, nor most powerful of this elite, but he represents their most overt attempt at gaining control. It isn't as if Obama has stood resolutely in the way: he's not one of them, but people around him, like Tim Geithner, probably are.

It's possible that many of this elite would rather the GOP and Romney didn't make their project quite so obvious, but Citizens United has so stacked the deck in their favor that it's difficult to stop.

Think of all the services, education, training, infrastructure and jobs that could be bought by the US portion of that $60+ trillion--without raising taxes on anyone else! Occupy made a valid point.

Even if Romney loses, we are on the cusp of the takeover by a global elite even more dominant than Roman Senators in Fifth Century Rome. Who knows how long it could last--until a popular explosion/revolution, or a global environmental disaster.

Celebrity-itis

As in disease. I wonder what percentage of Americans are in the grip of it.

In my last blog, I pointed out that Batman of Dark Knight Rising is a billionaire, who, like most billionaires, according to the new GOP religion, is a hero, whose "job creation," or other heroic action, is essential for our society to function. That's why they and multimillionaires should get tax breaks, so that their share of Americans' wealth will become even more extreme than it already is, paying even lower tax rates than they do now: less than half the rate of the middle class, earning a middle class income, working a 50+ hour week.

But then, after all, billionaires are heroes, job creators.

And celebrities? Celebrities are the ones who keep the stupid slobs' attention, so they don't even think about how they're being ripped off, every day.

It's like a crime team. The billionaire is the thief, who hoists your wallet when you're not looking. The celebrity is the reason you're not looking: he or she diverts your attention: they're the con man's partners, so they share in the loot: that's why they're paid so much.

Most people are persuaded not to bother even looking. Cynicism about politics may be justified, but it enables the thieves, and disables a politics of community, or sharing power and wealth. It doesn't have to be this way, but we're taught that it does.

Our whole culture, created by corporate hype, has been unsubtly taken over by the likes of Jamie Dimon and the Koch brothers. They've sunk millions (mere change to them) in think tanks, media outlets, shows, movies, even colleges and universities, to persuade us: only the very wealthy should be free--that's what freedom means. Freedom to be rich, a celeb, so you can do anything--buy elections, or pollute, and not pay damages you impose on others. That's freedom. You can break laws and then change them, like Sheldon Adelson, who's apparently 'investing' $100,000,000 so a Romney administration will change (or ignore) the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Then he'd avoid a trial, maybe jail(!), for million-dollar bribes in the Chinese gambling capital of Macao!

What about freedom for the poor slobs who aren't multi-millionaires/billionaires? Too bad. You don't have enough money to buy freedom: you'll have to work even harder: 60+ hour weeks just to pay the rent and groceries. And if the billionaires' party gets its way, it will privatize Social Security and Medicare--and get even richer, but poor slobs will have to work until they collapse--in the street.

Like the serfs in the fifth century Roman Empire: yet the Roman Senators lived well--until the whole edifice collapsed.

Billionaires Will Save the World

Or not.

Let me get this straight: Batman is a billionaire named Bruce Wayne, but when Wayne drops out, everybody suffers. You see, it's what the billionaire does that creates profits, and without profits from his company, the world begins to fall apart--because he doesn't care. When he does care, everyone prospers; when he doesn't, poverty and misery extend over the land, because 'socialists' take over and enforce 'equality,' which in the vision of Dark Knight's Director, Jonathan Nolan comprises expropriation, not creation. And, of course, it's the bad guys who are socialists and egalitarian, and the good guys are for the "free market."

Never knew that's why there are billionaires, did you? They’re heroes, you see, who carry the world on their shoulders: that's why they have so much money!

The "free" market is hardly free, when there are billionaires like the Walton (Walmart) family, who underpay their employees--and their developing nation suppliers--so they can amass the largest (combined) fortune on the planet. The market isn't free, because large agglomerations of capital give firms oligopoly and monopoly power, enabling them to skew market prices to their own advantage, and laws and government "regulations," as well.

By mis-delivery, I received World magazine, which seems to be a mouthpiece for evangelical Christianity. I'll put it back in the mailbox tomorrow, so it can be correctly delivered to its addressee, about a mile and a half down the next road. The above came from World's review of Dark Knight Rising: it fell open to that page when I picked it up.

The review, and editorials and other articles reminded me of the ravings of Salvian, a fifth century priest, who denounced almost anything secular, or of the panegyrists, like Ausonius and Claudian, who recited their paeans to the powerful of their day: rising Senators, as well as the Emperor, "God's Vice-Regent on Earth."

Jonathan Nolan, especially, appears to parallel the fifth century panegyrist who went on for hundreds of verses about the virtues of Emperor Honorius, Heaven born: Honorius was clearly of below normal intelligence; he preferred to play with his roosters (one was named Rome), than attend to affairs of State. While Batman is not an identified present ruler, or candidate for office, it's easy to see him representing someone like Romney, or Bloomberg; his heroism and centrality to making Gotham work is almost a caricature of Romney's whole raison-d'être: I'm so wealthy because I know how to make the economy work.

In a way, that's true: he knows how to make it work for him, but not for the rest of us. He and his kind know how to skew the rules to favor themselves: as he says repeatedly, he didn't break any laws when he evaded taxes. Of course. His class, his fellow wealthy, paid for those loopholes fair and square.

The Paraguayan Model

On June 22nd, Paraguay quickly impeached its leftist President, Lugo, and installed vice President Franco (from a right of center party), as the new President. A month later, the new President's government pushed forward negotiations with Rio Tinto Alcan for building a huge aluminum plant on the Parana River. It offered $700 million in infrastructure to enable the plant's construction, and agreed to thirty years of subsidizing its electricity supply from its two hydroelectric facilities, enough power to provide electricity to 9.6 million people, while many Paraguayans go without. All this for 2,500 jobs at a cost of about $560,000/job up front..

Former President Lugo had blocked Rio Tinto.

The former President had also blocked Monsanto's application to plant GM. Franco approved it, meaning that large-scale agriculture will continue to dominate the country, in tandem with Monsanto; the majority of landless peasants will continue to be excluded from landownership.

CBS played up, however, Franco's claim of issuing 79 land titles to landless people in his first 15 days in office, while the former government issued only 3 in six months, but it was the dispute over land reform that did in the former President. He had favored land reform, but had been unable to implement it, because of opposition by large landowners, including foreign corporations. The opposition blamed President Lugo for a confrontation between police and land occupiers in which seven police and 11 occupying peasants died. Lugo was impeached by Congress one day and expelled from office by the Senate the next, giving him only two hours to defend himself.

Large multinational corporations benefited from the change in government almost immediately. At the same time, Latin America's Mercosur governments, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and applying member, Venezuela have all denounced the "coup" and withdrawn their ambassadors.

The US pretends to be neutral, just as it was in Honduras, before recognizing the coup regime there, also a pro-business takeover.

Land ownership in Paraguay is even more extreme than the US's unequal distribution of wealth. Much of the land held by the elites was expropriated (sometimes violently) from campesinos who had lived and worked it; they held no legal title: it had been common land, or traditional landholding. Large tracts have been converted into agribusiness holdings, with widespread use of GM soy and intensive spraying of pesticides and herbicides. The toxins have literally driven out neighboring campesinos.

In both Honduras and Paraguay, their takeovers put a small elite, backed by foreign corporations, back in control after a short-lived challenge to their power.

Will the US do something similar through unlimited billionaire and corporate campaign funds? Paraguay looks more like Fifth Century Roman society than does the US, so the parallels between the US and Paraguay highlight US similarities to Roman Senators' takeover of all wealth and power prior to Rome's fall.

Climate Disruption and Global Warming

It's no coincidence that we've lost power (electric) three times in the last month due to "violent" storms. Since over 60% of the US is suffering from a severe drought, the corn and soybean crops even for the upper Midwest are in the process of being lost, and the west is going up in flames, we consider ourselves lucky.

Bill McKibben of 350.org fame, has pointed out that there is an easy way to explain our problems: through three numbers (Rolling Stone, 07/19/2012).

The one thing the failed environmental conference in Copenhagen agreed to in 2009, was that a global rise in temperature of more than 2 degrees Celsius had to be avoided. Considering that global temperature has only risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius, and we have seen dramatic changes already, that 2 degrees Celsius agreement looks overly indulgent.

It is the 327th month that global temperature averages have been higher than global averages in all of the 20th Century. In addition, the US had the warmest Spring ever recorded, by a huge margin, a third of Arctic summer ice has disappeared, the oceans are 30% more acidic (threatening much marine life) and the atmosphere over the oceans is 5% wetter, opening the world to severe flooding.

Yet the Rio environmental summit this Spring was not attended by any important national leader, and the issue of global warming, or "climate change," seems to be a non-issue in the Presidential and Congressional/Senatorial campaigns in the US, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases driving global warming.

Two other figures sum up our global predicament. The first, McKibben identified is 565 gigatons of carbon, the amount the world can add to the global atmosphere with a four in five chance that we won't exceed the 2 C target. One in five chances, however, says that even this figure is too high. This may especially be true, since the amount of carbon already released has not yet been fully realized in the 0.8 degrees rise in global temperature. Global climate changes have a lag time. 565 gigatons means the amount of additional coal, oil, gas, methane and burning forests the earth might be able to sustain, before we exceed the 2C limit. Yet, except for the recession year of 2009, the world has been pouring out more and more carbon into the atmosphere every year.

The third figure, however, is the most devastating. It is 2,795 gigatons, the amount of carbon contained in the proven reserves of all the oil/coal/gas companies and countries, (Venezuela to Canada). Why devastating? This number represents the assets of producer countries and companies. If they're not allowed to burn it, their "investments" become worthless. That's why Exxon and others spend hundreds of millions to persuade us there is no global warming.

The economic system will destroy the planet for most humans--by orders of magnitude worse than the Roman Empire's desertification of the Mediterranean world in the fifth Century.

Crony/Cartel Capitalism

Rachel Maddow made a case (07/16/12) that Sheldon Adelson, the $25+ billionaire pouring over $100 million into Republican campaigns, has something very specific to buy: immunity from criminal prosecution for violating the US's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He made his money on a huge gambling enterprise in Macao by buying Chinese compliance, probably with million-dollar bribes.

The same week, the LIBOR scandal broke, revealing that global big banks have been fixing borrowing rates to their advantage: the market is not operating freely; a cartel was manipulating it. The Justice Department is reportedly building a case to prosecute the LIBOR collaboration; defendants might include regulators as well as bankers.

This same week, Romney has been caught claiming one thing--that he retired from Bain Capital VI in 1999, to run the winter Olympics in Utah--while official filings with the SEC said another: that he was sole owner, CEO, President and Chairman of the Board until 2002, when Bain was bankrupting companies and outsourcing workers. Actually, it was also doing that before 1999.

Pressure is building on Romney to release his income tax returns going back 20+ years, instead of the 2 he's so far revealed. It's not only Democrats, including Obama, who are pressuring him, but conservatives like George Will; he hopes the release might contain the damage.

We already know that banks found all sorts of creative ways to wrest billions from ordinary people--homeowners, investors, you name it: from shepherding credit-worthy minorities into high-cost subprime loans, talking others into deceptive balloon mortgages, to selling toxic bundles of mortgage securities and betting against their own products that had been designed to fail. In addition, HSBC just admitted to massive money laundering of Mexican drug billions.

The financial industry, authors of these frauds, was bailed out by US taxpayers. Now, Wall Street is funding Republicans over Democrats, in the election campaign, because Democrats passed the Dodd-Frank "reform," which though extremely watered down, does, at least, make an attempt to regulate the financial industry.

Other businessmen, represented by the Koch brothers, abhor regulation, and are willing to pay millions to avoid it. They want to be free to pollute, while society pays the price, and to run unsafe plants, again, while society pays the costs they incur on workers and environs. So, they push millions on super-pacs, hoping to bury Obama and Democrats in negative ad-hysteria. Their aim: to elect Romney and a Republican Congress, both of which will be expected to do their bidding.

This is the world that Citizens United has unleashed. It is not "free enterprise." It is not market capitalism. It is crony/cartel capitalism, dominated by a few extremely wealthy, who want laws to permit their corruption. It is a coordinated effort by the selfish class, like fifth century Roman Senators, to dominate the US, and then "the known world," just like the Roman Senators of old.

br>Buy Attila's autobiography here http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G.

Romney and a Two-Class Society

In Fifth Century Rome, there were two sets of laws: one for honestiores and the other for humiliores. As you might guess from the words, the former were Senators and a few others: not slaves or serfs; the latter were slaves, serfs, non-citizens and everyone else.

It seems that we are now developing a similar system: Romney may well have committed multiple felonies (on taxes and SEC filings), yet no charges have been filed, and probably won't be. Further, even if he did not commit felonies, it's startlingly obvious that the "carried interest" loophole, which allows him to file his income as if it were capital gains (15% instead of 35%), is comparable to the kinds of privileges enjoyed by the honestiores--and he has enjoyed many others.

Even more egregious, it's clear from the LIBOR scandal, as well as the robo-signing scandals and other bank and corporate misdeeds, that huge thefts were carried out by banksters, CEO's, etc. Yet, so far, no one has even been charged, let alone gone to jail, except for people like Bernie Madoff, who didn't play by the rules, and didn't get away with his multimillion-dollar thefts. The LIBOR, EURIBOR and other rate-thefts, may amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, since they affected interest rates on an estimated $10-600 trillions worth of transactions. Since those thefts affected other elite institutions (banks, municipalities, corporations, even countries), it is more likely that there could be huge civil penalties incurred, but I'll bet practically no one goes to jail.

Yet, consider how easy it is for a young black or Hispanic male to be jailed. All they have to do is walk down a street in NYC with a little bit of pot in their pockets and have a little bad luck. The US now has by far the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, which is saying something, since we're competing with the likes of Russia and Communist China.

Also, consider that police departments in the US have been militarized: equipped with high tech weaponry, and even armored personnel carriers and tanks. This weaponry is not targeted against the Romney's of this world, our honestiores. But it's already been used against the Occupy movement in Oakland, and we'll see it out in force for the political conventions. It could be used against any popular revulsion to elite rule. The same is true of the rapidly increasing surveillance programs.

Attorney General Holder aggressively raids and prosecutes medical marijuana dispensaries and whistleblowers (he wants to catch Julian Assange, too), but he and Treasury Secretary Geithner (both with strong links to Wall Street), have been extremely forgiving of banks and other large corporations--and their leaders.

If Romney and Republicans win control, this pattern will be consummated, but even if Obama and Democrats win, the US will be well along its way towards the two-class society found in Fifth Century Rome.

Run Against Congress!

Even the conservative Chamber of Commerce blames Congress for the US's fiscal inaction! Ben Bernanke has said, many times, that the Fed is only doing what it can with monetary policy, because Congress isn't doing what it should with fiscal policy. So, the Fed puts forward Quantitative Easing, keeping interest rates at rock-bottom and shifting its portfolio from short to long-term assets to drive down the price of longer-term borrowing, as well as "printing" money. But everyone knows that isn't enough.

What is really needed, Bernanke implies, and Economist Paul Krugman has stated repeatedly, is government spending on stimuli, to enliven job markets, plus bring teachers, police, etc., back to work.

Congress is split; it is split between fiscal "hawks" and "doves(?)." The former, dominated by GOP Tea Partyers, claim, like a blindered former friend of mine, that "debt is debt," and The Government must stop borrowing at all costs.

The "doves" don't know what to do, because the conservative-led media has persuaded a near majority that government must cut spending NOW. But the costs really are tangible, and the GOP's solution--cut taxes on the so-called "job creators"--isn't going to create jobs, except maybe in China, only a larger deficit, probably more speculation with the extra money freed for the speculators, and draconian cuts to the programs that allow people to hang on by their fingernails, like Food Stamps.

Krugman agrees that once we are out of this recession/depression, the US will have to begin to pay down its overhanging debt, but now is not that time. Now, the US should borrow money; it's at historically low rates, because the US is the safe harbor for troubled money the world over. Now we should spend money to re-invigorate the economy: spend it on helping states re-hire their laid off workers, spend it on rebuilding and improving our shabby infrastructure and education and spend it on new ventures, like alternative energy industries, all of which will expand the tax base.

Some businesses are not hiring because no one knows what the deadlocked government will do. But why hire if there is no demand for goods and services, anyway? If demand were injected into the economy, companies would hire workers. The Fed can't cause that; only Congress and the President can.

But Republicans are vehemently opposed to any policy that would help Obama's reelection, and vehemently opposed to any further debt. Democrats, on the other hand, are timid, and too many of them are beholden to interests that want deadlock, or little government action--except on their behalf: the selfish class, I've called them.

That's where we stand today. We could go down the road to near-permanent Depression if we choose "austerity" and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the direction the Roman Empire took in the 4th and 5th Centuries.

Obama should run against Congress, and for a huge new stimulus, instead.

Mormons and Bishop Romney

Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, spun a whole saga, spanning about a thousand years of "history," beginning with Eli, a prophet, who led his people out of Jerusalem before the Captivity--he prophesied Jerusalem's doom. He and his son, Nephi, led his people to--the New World! And prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ.

Smith creates a whole alternate history derived from the supposed translation of the golden tablets (by him, with the aid of the angel Moroni). The 'Nephites' depart from the sinners of Israel for the New World (America), but are continually attacked by the descendants and followers of Nephi's evil brothers. The skins of these apostates darken, and they are shown using only stone implements: guess who they are! The tablets, revealed by the angel, were "given back" to him by Smith, after the translation was completed.

This alternate history continues until almost 400 years after Jesus' death and resurrection--his "believers" in the New World receive confirmation of his existence and resurrection-- but later turn wicked, except for Mormon--and Moroni--and all but Moroni are killed in battle. However, the golden tablets survive--to be found over a thousand years later, by Joseph Smith!

Quite a story! Having written a novel of a man's life, who appeared once in an account of a Roman-Greek's visit to Attila's court (I, Zerco, on the website link), I know how such stories can be spun--if you have a good imagination.

Afterwards, Smith, had quite an excitin souri and Illinois (apparently leading rebellions)-- and was killed by a mob as he attempted to escape it, outside his second prison, in Illinois.

Not only did Smith 'translate' untraceable golden tablets, he had continuing revelations, published later. His successor, Brigham Young, cemented Mormons' practice of polygamy (he married about 55 women), but was apparently illiterate. He was also racist: at his instigation, black people were denied priest-hood or sacraments until a Mormon leader abolished the prohibition in 1978, 101 years after Young's death.

Although most Mormons now repudiate Brigham Young's racist teachings and polygamy, Mormonism still is based on an alternative history much like the fiction of Orson Scott Card (a Mormon).

Romney isn't just a believer and large donor: he's a Bishop, possibly equivalent to priest. He's admitted, obliquely, that he baptized dead people, as do other Mormons, one of whom baptized Anne Frank!

Quite aside from his questionable claim that, as a (vulture) financier, he knows how to fix the US economy, do Americans realize the strangeness of Romney's religion?

He's the quintessential one-percenter, figure-head for the corporate/wealthy's coup d'état, and a believer in a fantastic fiction. If elected, he'd mark the takeover of the American Senatorial class, much like Roman Senators' unchallenged dominance in the Western Roman Empire's last century.

And would we all have to become Mormons?

Plantation America

…is what we're entering. It's why the elites no longer seem to care if people are employed, or desperate. It's why a significant portion of the elite is determined to repeal the healthcare law, now that the Supreme Court has upheld it. The hoi-polloi must be driven down, like the slaves of yore.

Sara Robinson (Alternet, 06/28/12) offers an intriguing theory: the wealthy now most articulate, most politically active, increasingly dominant, are from a different aristocracy than men like FDR, or even George H.W. Bush. They have not, she points out, inherited the Puritan-based values of social justice and noblesse oblige, derived mostly from the Northeast. Instead, like the younger Bush and Mitch McConnell, they inherit their ideas from the plantation aristocracy of the Tidewater South, and ultimately from the even more brutal plantation society of the West Indies.

The plantation heritage emphasizes the 'divine right' of the elite to lord it over their slaves--and everyone else, brutally, if necessary. It also rejects the idea that the elite has an obligation to aid those less fortunate, or the later idea that equality is a good: it's not: it's an evil, in their eyes, to be beaten down (literally). Further, freedom, for them, is only individual, and only realized fully by elites, because they should have the freedom to suppress everyone else.

You could go further back and draw parallels between the Puritan vs Plantation aristocracies to the European feudal regimes vs the latifundias lorded over by the Roman Senators towards (and after) the break up of the Roman Empire. The process of Senatorial takeover parallels our own: yeomen peasantry, urban proletariat, and the middle class were all driven into serfdom, under the control of the few Senatorial families monopolizing all wealth. Anyone not of Senatorial rank was treated like a serf.

In feudal society, there was at least the idea that nobility had an obligation to protect and look after their subjects, although this often degenerated into something more like the late Roman system. Its degeneration led to the French Revolution and the English Civil War, but also to social democracy in most of Europe.

It is the southern, plantation ethos that pervades the Tea Party, or rather, its funders, like the Koch brothers and Karl Rove. They are not constrained by ideas of justice, the rule of law or fairness. The Kochs, for example, believe they have a god-given right to pollute the air, water and land and shouldn't have to pay for the damage they do to anyone else; that's their justification for adamantly opposing any kind of environmental regulation: they call this "freedom."

Looked at this way, the contest between conservative and liberal/progressive, between Republican and Democrat, is a contest between two elite cultures, or tribes. The older, more established northeastern ethos appears tired, and lacking conviction. The brash, southern and western tribe pours its resources into gaining dominance.

It doesn't look good.

The "Liberal" Media

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

Climate Change, Politics and Money

Our political campaigns debate regulation, austerity and stimulus. The multi-millionaires and billionaires funding super-pacs to elect Republicans and Romney abhor taxes and regulations, whether it's building codes, global warming gas emissions or casinos.

Why, they could be on their way to earning trillions if it weren't for "job-killing regulations" and taxes! The Kochs, fossil fuel producers, have been cited over and over for emissions pollution, have paid large fines (small compared to their incomes), and legal fees that probably dwarf the fines: their pac funding dwarfs both. A Texas billionaire is a builder of shoddy developments; he's been sued repeatedly for using inferior materials, and not surprisingly, he's for "tort reform" that would cap jury awards for damages. So, he, the Kochs, and many others donate millions to Romney or GOP-supportive superpacs.

Why do they do this? Simple, in each case, they "donate" to get what they want through Congress and the President--the Congress and President they are buying. And while the money advanced is almost small change to the super-rich, it floods the election process.

What does this have to do with global warming? Warming increased last year faster than expected (3.5% over 2010), and the world is on track to warm 3.5 degrees Celsius; Earth will be a much warmer place than it has ever been since humans evolved. Earth was as warm eons ago, but it's not clear that people can survive it without major disruption and mass die-offs. The reason the earth is warming so rapidly, according to Climate Action Tracker(CAT), is because no nation has even met its (inadequate) targets for cutting emissions, and even if they did, none would be enough to slow global warming. The US's inability to adopt carbon emission reduction programs like cap and trade is symptomatic: Brazil's and Mexico's gestures, according to CAT, are ineffectual or worse. But the world as a whole is even more so: nations appear unable--or unwilling, like the US--to meet their climate change pledges.

The reason for the puny response is political. There is no lack of technology to battle climate change. But private interests are donating funds to prevent its use, and persuade others it's unnecessary. The Kochs, for example, have a stake in preventing programs to ameliorate climate change. Citizens United has opened the financial floodgates, rendering billionaires even more effective at blocking positive action.

The flood from the super-rich parallels the near monopoly of wealth and power of Rome's Senators in the fifth century. Then, everyone else was driven into serfdom; now its wage slavery and debt--if you're lucky enough to get a job--but now the world's people will be corralled into an overheated ditch.

Maybe the billionaires think they can create their own climate-controlled havens to survive?

Attila as Told to his Scribes Just Published

Copy and paste the link I'll provide below and you'll go to Amazon's listing of the Kindle book, Attila as Told to his Scribes.

It's $5 for a very long read. If you like historical fiction, romance and adventure and a deep exploration of a charming megalomaniac, this book is for you.

Attila begins his tale (yes, he tells it to his scribes, it's an autobiography), when he's on the cusp of adolescence, already a warrior, when his father is killed before his eyes. It ends with his death, told by his last scribe and his last bride.

http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337727607&sr=1-1