Drones, "minimization procedures," "targeting procedures," "metadata" "US persons" "non-US persons…."
It's okay: we're only "targeting" non-US persons abroad; if we've mistakenly targeted a US person and there is indication of a crime, that's also okay. So, surveillance not only stops terrorism in its tracks--NY subway bombing plot, etc.--it also fights crime--at home and abroad.
No wonder, neither Hong Kong, nor Russia are jumping through US police-state hoops! Moscow doesn't "know'" where Edward Snowden is. The crimes the US accuses of Snowden reveal the extent of crimes the US commits against people in Russia--and everywhere else--the "legal" targets are non-US persons on "foreign territory." We accuse Putin's government of authoritarian practices, but we're listening in on all those non-US persons in Russia. So, why should the Russian or Hong-Kong governments cooperate with the US? Why should Ecuador, or Iceland?
Talk about a widening gulf! It's between everyone else vs official Washington, which thinks the surveillance of virtually everyone--except US persons--is easily justified because the US has to stop terrorists. After all, even Brits and Canadians aren't "US-persons."
Even an American resident or citizen can be tracked if there is evidence of a crime. How do the authorities establish evidence of a crime? 'Accidental' surveillance?
There have been at least two high profile politicians/public figures recently, who were caught because of such accidental surveillance: Elliot Spitzer and General Petraeus. The former was caught through a bank alert for suspicious money transfers, and then phone surveillance in 2008, the latter in 2012, when the FBI traced harassing emails from Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell, to a woman she feared was competing with her for Petraeus' affections.
Cases like those may have prepared the American public for Snowden's revelations. They may explain the shrug, accompanied by: "we knew they were doing it all along," reaction of so many--instead of outrage.
Why no outrage? Turks and Brazilians are rioting against their governments because of specific accusations--authoritarianism, or corruption and misplaced priorities--the US has its share of similar abuses and they may actually be worse. The vast extent of American surveillance exceeds anything Russia or China can mount.
Which makes it okay?
The NY Times, the Guardian, et al; were the entities that published the leaks, i.e. made them public--so that even al Qaeda can read them! Why aren't they prosecuted for treason, too?
The real treason--betrayal of American and international civil liberties--is perpetrated by the accusers: the US Government (including Obama), and the Congress and Courts permitting it.
The US, in its decline, has the potential to become more authoritarian than the Roman Empire. Surveillance gives the tools to crush all opposition. Even Stalin's powers were puny compared to these! A President elected with our contemporary Roman Senators' support wouldn't bother to assure us (as Obama has) that he wouldn't use these powers to crush opposition. He/she would use them to maintain control.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Pot and Big Brother
There seems to be a push, at least in the leftish media, to promote the inevitability of legal marijuana.
At the same time, we have the revelations of Edward Snowden: the US is massively watching all of us, through virtually all our communications except face to face. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother could do even that. Scared yet?
But maybe marijuana is a plot, of the liberal/socialist government under the tyrant Obama…. Hold that thought.
The commercial possibilities of legal marijuana, already being experienced in the two states that made it legal as a recreational as well as medical drug--Washington and Colorado--seems very attractive, especially to cash-strapped state and local governments. Huffpo published a piece on how much money could be realized in taxes and reduced prison costs, would cut the price of pot dramatically, and yet increase legal employment and taxes collected, all based on those two states' early experiences.
I could attest to other advantages: anyone with a small plot of ground, or a closet, could grow their own! Wine and liquor stores might notice a falling off of demand for their drug of choice, however. That's where opposition to legalization may come from.
But think, for a moment, how the widespread availability of marijuana might affect the nation as a whole. Marijuana rarely causes violence; alcohol does, but marijuana does have an influence on how people think: most become more reflective, or passive and introspective, or creative, according to Bill Maher. You've seen giggling potheads? That's about the closest potheads get to violence, as far as I've seen--admittedly a small sample.
There's a precedent for the political use of drugs. The Inca used coca leaves to dull rebellious impulses among its subject peoples. They chewed and worked harder. After the Conquest, Spaniards used it to quiet rebellion and induce hard work by the subject Quechua. The USSR and so many other nations had cheap vodka, or gin, or….instead of rebellion.
So: would legal marijuana be a boon to the State, not just as a revenue raiser, and cost-cutter (as in prisons not needed), but also as a social control? The Feds can know where you are, whom you talk to and for how long, even if they don't eavesdrop, but marijuana might induce people not to care, i.e. be more easily controlled.
I'm no subscriber to the tyrant-socialist-Obama school, nor to conspiracy theory. But I do think there are powerful people, who want to be sure government does have control. They know, perhaps unconsciously, that the .001% holding so much wealth are vulnerable to popular outrage and worse--Emperor Maximus, the wealthiest Senator to wear the diadem, was literally ripped apart by the mob in 455.
So, marijuana might be seen by the super-elite as another way to "mellow out" the opposition, the way lotteries give the millions just a little hope. It bears thinking about.
At the same time, we have the revelations of Edward Snowden: the US is massively watching all of us, through virtually all our communications except face to face. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother could do even that. Scared yet?
But maybe marijuana is a plot, of the liberal/socialist government under the tyrant Obama…. Hold that thought.
The commercial possibilities of legal marijuana, already being experienced in the two states that made it legal as a recreational as well as medical drug--Washington and Colorado--seems very attractive, especially to cash-strapped state and local governments. Huffpo published a piece on how much money could be realized in taxes and reduced prison costs, would cut the price of pot dramatically, and yet increase legal employment and taxes collected, all based on those two states' early experiences.
I could attest to other advantages: anyone with a small plot of ground, or a closet, could grow their own! Wine and liquor stores might notice a falling off of demand for their drug of choice, however. That's where opposition to legalization may come from.
But think, for a moment, how the widespread availability of marijuana might affect the nation as a whole. Marijuana rarely causes violence; alcohol does, but marijuana does have an influence on how people think: most become more reflective, or passive and introspective, or creative, according to Bill Maher. You've seen giggling potheads? That's about the closest potheads get to violence, as far as I've seen--admittedly a small sample.
There's a precedent for the political use of drugs. The Inca used coca leaves to dull rebellious impulses among its subject peoples. They chewed and worked harder. After the Conquest, Spaniards used it to quiet rebellion and induce hard work by the subject Quechua. The USSR and so many other nations had cheap vodka, or gin, or….instead of rebellion.
So: would legal marijuana be a boon to the State, not just as a revenue raiser, and cost-cutter (as in prisons not needed), but also as a social control? The Feds can know where you are, whom you talk to and for how long, even if they don't eavesdrop, but marijuana might induce people not to care, i.e. be more easily controlled.
I'm no subscriber to the tyrant-socialist-Obama school, nor to conspiracy theory. But I do think there are powerful people, who want to be sure government does have control. They know, perhaps unconsciously, that the .001% holding so much wealth are vulnerable to popular outrage and worse--Emperor Maximus, the wealthiest Senator to wear the diadem, was literally ripped apart by the mob in 455.
So, marijuana might be seen by the super-elite as another way to "mellow out" the opposition, the way lotteries give the millions just a little hope. It bears thinking about.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
F**k 'Em All!
So saith my soulmate, upon hearing that we might intervene militarily, again, on one side of an ancient Muslim sectarian dispute.
The Syrian civil war is increasingly a war between Shia, including Alawites, and the Sunni majority. The Sunni powers, the Saudis and the Emirates, are supporting the rebels, including al Qaeda affiliates; the Shiite powers, Iran and Hezbollah, and behind them, Russia, are supporting Assad's Alawite-dominated government.
So, since Russia is heavily arming Syria and Hezbollah, shouldn't the US jump in to support the rebels, along with its long-time 'democratic friends,' the Sunni-dominated monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf? Shiite-controlled Iraq, on which the US squandered almost a trillion dollars, is permitting passage of Russian and Iranian weaponry to Assad and Hezbollah.
So, the US should do it again, in Syria, not just offer small arms? It should go in with massive equipment and training for the rebels, or more, even though prominent numbers of the rebels claim sympathy with, or allegiance to, al Qaeda?
The US helped create al Qaeda, back when Americans were seeking allies to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The US supported and trained Osama bin Laden. Don't Americans ever learn? The US's second adventure in Afghanistan turned out so well that a majority of the US House of Representatives (including conservative Republicans) just demanded the US leave Afghanistan by the end of 2013!
Not only has hot-head McCain insisted America intervene in Syria, on the rebel side, but he was publicly seconded by Bill Clinton, who warned Obama would be a "wuss," if he didn't act forcefully on Syria.
It's true the Syrian rebellion started out as a peaceful, secular protest demanding democracy, and the Assad regime attempted violent suppression. Assad had no compunction attacking Syrian civilians with his military: in 1982, his father, Hafez, murdered at least 10,000 Syrians in Hama, alone. But this time, Sunnis rallied and the protest turned into a rebellion, fueled by money and arms from the Sunni Persian Gulf oil monarchies. Hence, Syrians now fight both civil war and sectarian war.
The US will support the Sunni side, along with al Qaeda, why?
Sunni and Shia have been battling since 661 CE (1,352 years), over who should succeed the Prophet. Why should the US have anything to do with either? Especially, why, since it has already failed twice in its Mideast interventions--Iraq and Afghanistan--and the outcome of its third, Libya, is still uncertain.
The US loses, if it intervenes. As horrendous as the carnage in Syria, the US would make it worse. But Empire is so seductive, especially to the Defense industry. Americans could be bankrupted as the Romans were, but unlike Huns, or Germanic barbarians, US 'enemies' do not threaten America's existence, only each others'.
Let them kill each other until they're exhausted--they will anyway. Or see reason. Let the UN pick up the pieces.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Treason?
The judge in Bradley Manning's trial has stated that it is enough for the prosecution to show that al-Qaeda, like the rest of the world, reads WikiLeaks.
So, Bradley Manning is an enemy of the people, because he's made public the war crimes committed in the name of the American People. Since terrorist groups focus their attention on the US and what it does, of course the lead group, al Qaeda, our publicly declared enemy number one, has sought out the Wikileaks documents made possible by Manning's document release. So has anyone who reads the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers.
The judge, in this carefully controlled show trial, didn't allow Manning to show his intent: to reveal war crimes in order to stop them. He isn't allowed, either, to demonstrate that nothing he revealed did anything but publicize war crimes, manipulation and cynical deception on the part of the US and many of its allies. He is not allowed to show that his document dumps harmed no one.
The mass media portrays the Manning trial, if it portrays it at all, as the trial of someone who disclosed sensitive documents to al Qaeda, a traitor and "weirdo," and obviously either misguided or evil. This is the line taken by the prosecution: now the MSM has become spokesmen for the government's side in a court case!
If we follow the prosecution's logic, not only the Washington Post and the New York Times should be prosecuted. In addition, any paper, website, radio broadcaster, online article writer (including me), could be prosecuted on the same grounds: making information public about possible US war crimes--as long as al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization--might have an interest in it, or might have downloaded the material(s) onto their computers.
That's the kind of logic that the USSR used to classify most maps of their empire as secret; it's the kind of logic that made information about Krushchev's New Lands program classified, so that no one, including the Kremlin, knew that it was a horrendous failure: wheat can't successfully grow in an arid climate like Kazakhstan.
It's the kind of logic that the Roman Empire used to ban any information except by the Church, or in the mouths of panegyrists, whose business it was to extol the virtues of the sitting Emperor and to condemn all opponents as devils.
It's the logic of an authoritarian government terrified that the public will find out what horrible things it is doing in their name. The first Bradley Manning release by Wikileaks was a perfect example: the video of a helicopter gunship gunning down civilians on a Baghdad street, including the disturbing chatter of the American crew while shooting.
Manning shouldn't go to prison; he should get the Nobel Peace Prize, instead. Perhaps Manning and Edward Snowden, the former CIA who leaked information on Prism and Government seizure of Verizon "metadata," should both be nominated.
So, Bradley Manning is an enemy of the people, because he's made public the war crimes committed in the name of the American People. Since terrorist groups focus their attention on the US and what it does, of course the lead group, al Qaeda, our publicly declared enemy number one, has sought out the Wikileaks documents made possible by Manning's document release. So has anyone who reads the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers.
The judge, in this carefully controlled show trial, didn't allow Manning to show his intent: to reveal war crimes in order to stop them. He isn't allowed, either, to demonstrate that nothing he revealed did anything but publicize war crimes, manipulation and cynical deception on the part of the US and many of its allies. He is not allowed to show that his document dumps harmed no one.
The mass media portrays the Manning trial, if it portrays it at all, as the trial of someone who disclosed sensitive documents to al Qaeda, a traitor and "weirdo," and obviously either misguided or evil. This is the line taken by the prosecution: now the MSM has become spokesmen for the government's side in a court case!
If we follow the prosecution's logic, not only the Washington Post and the New York Times should be prosecuted. In addition, any paper, website, radio broadcaster, online article writer (including me), could be prosecuted on the same grounds: making information public about possible US war crimes--as long as al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization--might have an interest in it, or might have downloaded the material(s) onto their computers.
That's the kind of logic that the USSR used to classify most maps of their empire as secret; it's the kind of logic that made information about Krushchev's New Lands program classified, so that no one, including the Kremlin, knew that it was a horrendous failure: wheat can't successfully grow in an arid climate like Kazakhstan.
It's the kind of logic that the Roman Empire used to ban any information except by the Church, or in the mouths of panegyrists, whose business it was to extol the virtues of the sitting Emperor and to condemn all opponents as devils.
It's the logic of an authoritarian government terrified that the public will find out what horrible things it is doing in their name. The first Bradley Manning release by Wikileaks was a perfect example: the video of a helicopter gunship gunning down civilians on a Baghdad street, including the disturbing chatter of the American crew while shooting.
Manning shouldn't go to prison; he should get the Nobel Peace Prize, instead. Perhaps Manning and Edward Snowden, the former CIA who leaked information on Prism and Government seizure of Verizon "metadata," should both be nominated.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Keep Guantanamo Open!
In response to GOP Congressional insistence on including a $200 million Defense appropriation to build new barracks at Guantanamo, after Obama declares he'll try again to close it:
Anything that boosts Defense Appropriations is a good thing, obviously.
It's estimated that 3-8% of released Guantanamo detainees may have returned to terrorism. Even if a third of detainees returned to terrorism--largely in their own countries--would their actions cost more than the loss of credibility the US expends by keeping Guantanamo open? Guantanamo continues to imprison 86 men convicted of no crime, and cleared for release three years ago.
It's about the money. Defense contractors favor their friends: Republicans continue to be their loudest and most effective supporters.
The Guantanamo appropriation is symptomatic of the whole Defense complex. It makes you wonder: who really controls?
Noam Chomsky suggested in a recent article, "Humanity Imperiled," that the US has consistently opted for policies that increase tensions not reduce them. Examples included: JFK not agreeing to a public compromise to the Cuban Missile Crisis, risking nuclear war to achieve a secret deal that appeared as if only Krushchev backed down.
In '73 Kissinger risked nuclear war, calling a high nuclear alert, to warn the USSR not to interfere in the Arab-Israel war; in 1983, Reagan ordered SAC bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace to test their responses--risking nuclear war, again. Last year, Obama rejected meeting multilaterally with Iran to consider a nuclear ban in the Middle East.
A decade earlier, Clinton quashed an Israeli-North Korean agreement that would have stopped North Korean exports of nuclear and missile technology in return for Israel's recognition. Agreements with North Korea by Clinton and later, Bush, were sabotaged by the latter, when he reneged on the agreement and intensified sanctions. Obama just oversaw a US-South Korea military exercise that had mock bombing runs up to North Korea's borders. Each incident elicited a predictably bellicose North Korean response.
The US invaded Afghanistan claiming it was responsible for 911 (most of the 911 terrorists were Saudis, the planning was done in Germany and the US), and then invaded Iraq--Bush's personal vendetta--and upended the Middle East. Now the US is engaged in sub-rosa wars: in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and probably in more places we don't know about.
Is there a pattern here? Regardless of the President, ever since Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the "defense-industrial complex," US policy has favored an increasingly militaristic foreign policy. The military, and/or the industries that batten from it, push the US toward aggression: they profit from it.
Everyone else, worldwide, is impoverished and endangered, including the American Empire. Its overreach, and the selfishness of our Senatorial class, is bankrupting us and helping to destroy the planet, much as Rome despoiled Europe and the Mediterranean, then bankrupted itself through endless wars and the rapacity of the Senatorial class.
Anything that boosts Defense Appropriations is a good thing, obviously.
It's estimated that 3-8% of released Guantanamo detainees may have returned to terrorism. Even if a third of detainees returned to terrorism--largely in their own countries--would their actions cost more than the loss of credibility the US expends by keeping Guantanamo open? Guantanamo continues to imprison 86 men convicted of no crime, and cleared for release three years ago.
It's about the money. Defense contractors favor their friends: Republicans continue to be their loudest and most effective supporters.
The Guantanamo appropriation is symptomatic of the whole Defense complex. It makes you wonder: who really controls?
Noam Chomsky suggested in a recent article, "Humanity Imperiled," that the US has consistently opted for policies that increase tensions not reduce them. Examples included: JFK not agreeing to a public compromise to the Cuban Missile Crisis, risking nuclear war to achieve a secret deal that appeared as if only Krushchev backed down.
In '73 Kissinger risked nuclear war, calling a high nuclear alert, to warn the USSR not to interfere in the Arab-Israel war; in 1983, Reagan ordered SAC bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace to test their responses--risking nuclear war, again. Last year, Obama rejected meeting multilaterally with Iran to consider a nuclear ban in the Middle East.
A decade earlier, Clinton quashed an Israeli-North Korean agreement that would have stopped North Korean exports of nuclear and missile technology in return for Israel's recognition. Agreements with North Korea by Clinton and later, Bush, were sabotaged by the latter, when he reneged on the agreement and intensified sanctions. Obama just oversaw a US-South Korea military exercise that had mock bombing runs up to North Korea's borders. Each incident elicited a predictably bellicose North Korean response.
The US invaded Afghanistan claiming it was responsible for 911 (most of the 911 terrorists were Saudis, the planning was done in Germany and the US), and then invaded Iraq--Bush's personal vendetta--and upended the Middle East. Now the US is engaged in sub-rosa wars: in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and probably in more places we don't know about.
Is there a pattern here? Regardless of the President, ever since Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the "defense-industrial complex," US policy has favored an increasingly militaristic foreign policy. The military, and/or the industries that batten from it, push the US toward aggression: they profit from it.
Everyone else, worldwide, is impoverished and endangered, including the American Empire. Its overreach, and the selfishness of our Senatorial class, is bankrupting us and helping to destroy the planet, much as Rome despoiled Europe and the Mediterranean, then bankrupted itself through endless wars and the rapacity of the Senatorial class.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Fascism or the Radical Left?
Two Stratfor articles, "Geopolitical Journey: An Empty Highway in Spain," and "Europe: Unemployment and Instability," suggest that there is an underlying problem of social distance and lack of empathy that leads political elites, and the German public, to continue to insist on austerity, because they don't feel the effects the recession is having on others. Germans, for example, can get judgmental about the shiftless southern Europeans, and insist that only they know what's good for everyone: more austerity.
The US faces a similar problem, because of the widening disparity of wealth. The call for austerity among Republicans expresses the preferences of the very wealthy, who want lower taxes and see no utility in "coddling" what Romney labeled the dependent 47%. So, unemployment is not perceived as a problem, either in Germany (as yet), nor among Wall Street bankers, or their socioeconomic cousins, the very wealthy. That's why almost all the debate in Washington centers on austerity: how to accomplish the Sequester more rationally, how to cut more from social programs like SNAP (food-stamps), so that debt and deficits can be reduced. This debate continues, even though there is stubbornly high unemployment, and especially high long-term employment. "Conservatives" see no reason to stimulate job growth, since the stock market is surging, profits are high, and housing prices are rising.
In Europe, the result very well could be radical politics--or worse. Not only has Italy given 25% of its votes to a new untried political party, The Five Star Movement, led by a comedian, but Hungary's right-wing government has passed a law banning all political opposition!
Unemployment rates of 27% (Greece and Spain), or even around 15% (Lithuania, Portugal, Ireland) begins to look really scary, especially when you have youth unemployment at or more than double those rates. As the Stratfor articles mention, this was the climate that created Fascism and Nazism after WWI. The response this time could be as radical, and of either the right or the left (Greek extremist parties are at both ends of the political spectrum).
The apparent quiescence in Spain and other European nations in recession could easily explode, given the seeming hopelessness faced by the unemployed, especially the youth. If I were in their shoes, I'd be tinder for anyone who started yelling that he/she could solve it.
Meanwhile, austerity and the Sequester are destroying the future of both regions.
What this may mean is that the economic/political system in which we exist could undergo radical transformation sometime soon, and it might not be pretty. However, our elites (European, American, Chinese) don't seem to have a clue, which makes all our political systems that much more vulnerable to upheaval.
If there is no transformation, we could go the way of the Late Roman Empire: monopolized wealth by today's equivalent of Roman Senators, and immiseration for everyone else.
The US faces a similar problem, because of the widening disparity of wealth. The call for austerity among Republicans expresses the preferences of the very wealthy, who want lower taxes and see no utility in "coddling" what Romney labeled the dependent 47%. So, unemployment is not perceived as a problem, either in Germany (as yet), nor among Wall Street bankers, or their socioeconomic cousins, the very wealthy. That's why almost all the debate in Washington centers on austerity: how to accomplish the Sequester more rationally, how to cut more from social programs like SNAP (food-stamps), so that debt and deficits can be reduced. This debate continues, even though there is stubbornly high unemployment, and especially high long-term employment. "Conservatives" see no reason to stimulate job growth, since the stock market is surging, profits are high, and housing prices are rising.
In Europe, the result very well could be radical politics--or worse. Not only has Italy given 25% of its votes to a new untried political party, The Five Star Movement, led by a comedian, but Hungary's right-wing government has passed a law banning all political opposition!
Unemployment rates of 27% (Greece and Spain), or even around 15% (Lithuania, Portugal, Ireland) begins to look really scary, especially when you have youth unemployment at or more than double those rates. As the Stratfor articles mention, this was the climate that created Fascism and Nazism after WWI. The response this time could be as radical, and of either the right or the left (Greek extremist parties are at both ends of the political spectrum).
The apparent quiescence in Spain and other European nations in recession could easily explode, given the seeming hopelessness faced by the unemployed, especially the youth. If I were in their shoes, I'd be tinder for anyone who started yelling that he/she could solve it.
Meanwhile, austerity and the Sequester are destroying the future of both regions.
What this may mean is that the economic/political system in which we exist could undergo radical transformation sometime soon, and it might not be pretty. However, our elites (European, American, Chinese) don't seem to have a clue, which makes all our political systems that much more vulnerable to upheaval.
If there is no transformation, we could go the way of the Late Roman Empire: monopolized wealth by today's equivalent of Roman Senators, and immiseration for everyone else.
Monday, May 27, 2013
War? Or Peace?
The war authorization passed by Congress after 911 will be necessary, military officials told the US Senate, for 10-20 years, and will enable them to put US military on the ground, from Syria to the Congo to Boston!
"This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I've been to since I've been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today," Sen. Angus King said. [Huffpo 5/21]
On 5/23, Obama said the war on terror was winding down, and with it the utility of the 911 war authorization.
What's going on here?
Since 9/11/2001, there has been a huge growth in the military and related security services. Think of the department always referred to as "sprawling" Homeland Security, which didn't even exist on 9/11. Think of the CIA running covert wars in places most Americans still can't find on a map: the Tribal Agency in Pakistan's Northeast frontier, and in Somalia and Yemen.
Think of all the money those services spend--or waste, or give away. Does anyone really know how many $100's of billions? Wouldn't it be nice if the CIA came calling to your house, instead of to President Karzai's palace, and dropped off anonymous bundles of $20 bills?
We'll probably see a good many more of these conflicting statements, coming out of the White House and the Pentagon--or its related services. There's a lot of money involved: the sequester cuts the military somewhat more deeply than other government programs, but still leaves most of its "Terror" funding intact. Obama's statement puts many security programs in the cross-hairs of budget cutters.
There are a lot of peoples' jobs at stake; even more important, from a monetary point of view, there are billions of dollars in military and security contracts on the line.
It doesn't matter whether these programs are necessary: covert action sections, new weapons, highly trained employees. That isn't the point of the disagreement reflected in the statements of "military officials" versus President Obama.
Obama has declared war and his opponents were fighting back--they knew which way the wind was blowing before the President's statement. The Military-Security-Industrial complex isn't going to let a good thing be taken away. The MSI will martial its forces to ensure that what it has won, first with GW and then with Obama, won't be cut.
Of course, the "military officials" implied their programs should be expanded, not curtailed: they want to fight all over the globe, even in Boston.
If the MSI prevails, we'll continue to flex our muscles globally, while hollowing out the nation internally: a sure recipe for following the Roman Empire into oblivion.
Considering the miniscule number of deaths caused by Terrorism, and the huge numbers caused by out-of-control-capitalism, I'd happily defund "Defense," to adequately budget needed social programs. Hope for Obama's new vision. It's the best chance we've got.
"This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I've been to since I've been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today," Sen. Angus King said. [Huffpo 5/21]
On 5/23, Obama said the war on terror was winding down, and with it the utility of the 911 war authorization.
What's going on here?
Since 9/11/2001, there has been a huge growth in the military and related security services. Think of the department always referred to as "sprawling" Homeland Security, which didn't even exist on 9/11. Think of the CIA running covert wars in places most Americans still can't find on a map: the Tribal Agency in Pakistan's Northeast frontier, and in Somalia and Yemen.
Think of all the money those services spend--or waste, or give away. Does anyone really know how many $100's of billions? Wouldn't it be nice if the CIA came calling to your house, instead of to President Karzai's palace, and dropped off anonymous bundles of $20 bills?
We'll probably see a good many more of these conflicting statements, coming out of the White House and the Pentagon--or its related services. There's a lot of money involved: the sequester cuts the military somewhat more deeply than other government programs, but still leaves most of its "Terror" funding intact. Obama's statement puts many security programs in the cross-hairs of budget cutters.
There are a lot of peoples' jobs at stake; even more important, from a monetary point of view, there are billions of dollars in military and security contracts on the line.
It doesn't matter whether these programs are necessary: covert action sections, new weapons, highly trained employees. That isn't the point of the disagreement reflected in the statements of "military officials" versus President Obama.
Obama has declared war and his opponents were fighting back--they knew which way the wind was blowing before the President's statement. The Military-Security-Industrial complex isn't going to let a good thing be taken away. The MSI will martial its forces to ensure that what it has won, first with GW and then with Obama, won't be cut.
Of course, the "military officials" implied their programs should be expanded, not curtailed: they want to fight all over the globe, even in Boston.
If the MSI prevails, we'll continue to flex our muscles globally, while hollowing out the nation internally: a sure recipe for following the Roman Empire into oblivion.
Considering the miniscule number of deaths caused by Terrorism, and the huge numbers caused by out-of-control-capitalism, I'd happily defund "Defense," to adequately budget needed social programs. Hope for Obama's new vision. It's the best chance we've got.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Snake Oil Salesmen
The Chamber of Commerce's lead article (05/16/13) states: "The Keystone XL Pipeline is a viable remedy for many of the threats and concerns that plague small business owners."
The Chamber (and others) spread misinformation that XL will unleash lower energy prices, and create jobs. Temporarily, it might create a few jobs, but TransCanada has been transparent about its intention to sell its hydrocarbon sludge abroad. The petroleum market is world-wide and fungible, anyway; oil is basically sold at the same price, subject to world-wide demand and supply--and speculation. Canadian sludge won't drive prices down, nor even keep them from rising, if China, India and other emerging economies continue to hunger for more--as they will.
The Chamber of Commerce, pretending to represent small business, claims the XL pipeline is needed for small businesses, to promote jobs and lower energy costs. There's no mention that it's one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, and that its addition to the fuel mix will increase global warming and climate change significantly. Nor does the Chamber mention the recent disastrous spills of this toxic mess in Nebraska and Michigan. The author of the Chamber's lead article promoting this: Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.), is Chairman, Small Business Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade.
He sells snake oil.It's the line Republican Congressmen, from gerrymandered districts, follow, as well.
You mustn't regulate emissions, but you must protect "job creator" subsidies for Exxon, etc. and you can't let government functions out-compete "free enterprise," like the Postal Service, or Social Security. That's really why both, plus Medicare/Medicaid, have been targeted by the GOP: Yet costs are lower, and public benefits are obvious, while corporations (or their shareholders) don't profit.
From the Chamber of Commerce rightward, there appears to be an alternate reality, and almost half of Americans have been persuaded it's real: government can't do anything good. They've been persuaded that government stimulus even during recession, will trigger galloping inflation, though inflation isn't as high as the Fed has targeted; the minimal stimulus drove us (barely) out of recession, unlike the austerity-driven EU, and the dollar has gained value against other currencies. The right-wing solution for this non-problem, is to cut government expenditures, laying off teachers and police, civil service workers and firemen, cutting government services and aid to those in need: the grand sequester.
Given austerity's dismal failure to resolve Europe's financial problems, why can't we learn from their mistakes (let alone those of FDR in 1937)? Because corporations could profit more from austerity?
The right-wing's alternative universe is wreaking a terrible toll. The only example of more damaging policies would be the Roman Senators, who ran the Fifth Century Roman Empire: they ran it into the ground.
The Chamber (and others) spread misinformation that XL will unleash lower energy prices, and create jobs. Temporarily, it might create a few jobs, but TransCanada has been transparent about its intention to sell its hydrocarbon sludge abroad. The petroleum market is world-wide and fungible, anyway; oil is basically sold at the same price, subject to world-wide demand and supply--and speculation. Canadian sludge won't drive prices down, nor even keep them from rising, if China, India and other emerging economies continue to hunger for more--as they will.
The Chamber of Commerce, pretending to represent small business, claims the XL pipeline is needed for small businesses, to promote jobs and lower energy costs. There's no mention that it's one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, and that its addition to the fuel mix will increase global warming and climate change significantly. Nor does the Chamber mention the recent disastrous spills of this toxic mess in Nebraska and Michigan. The author of the Chamber's lead article promoting this: Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.), is Chairman, Small Business Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade.
He sells snake oil.It's the line Republican Congressmen, from gerrymandered districts, follow, as well.
You mustn't regulate emissions, but you must protect "job creator" subsidies for Exxon, etc. and you can't let government functions out-compete "free enterprise," like the Postal Service, or Social Security. That's really why both, plus Medicare/Medicaid, have been targeted by the GOP: Yet costs are lower, and public benefits are obvious, while corporations (or their shareholders) don't profit.
From the Chamber of Commerce rightward, there appears to be an alternate reality, and almost half of Americans have been persuaded it's real: government can't do anything good. They've been persuaded that government stimulus even during recession, will trigger galloping inflation, though inflation isn't as high as the Fed has targeted; the minimal stimulus drove us (barely) out of recession, unlike the austerity-driven EU, and the dollar has gained value against other currencies. The right-wing solution for this non-problem, is to cut government expenditures, laying off teachers and police, civil service workers and firemen, cutting government services and aid to those in need: the grand sequester.
Given austerity's dismal failure to resolve Europe's financial problems, why can't we learn from their mistakes (let alone those of FDR in 1937)? Because corporations could profit more from austerity?
The right-wing's alternative universe is wreaking a terrible toll. The only example of more damaging policies would be the Roman Senators, who ran the Fifth Century Roman Empire: they ran it into the ground.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Feudalism Corporate-style
The US is leaving Afghanistan (too slowly), but just think of the profits big corporations can make on its most important export.
Really, there must be some way Pfizer, Novartis, etc, can profit on Afghan opium (Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's crop). Big corporations increasingly dominate world trade. They're pressing globally for patent rights even to basic food crops. Patents as monopoly grants, provide corporations monopoly profits.
Corporations promote war, any war: they can make obscene amounts on it. They have a near monopsony, as well: the US Defense Department; it buys more from defense corporations than all other buyers combined, close to a definition of the word, monopsony.
The US strides, giant-like, across the world--trampling, too. But it, and almost every other nation, is bowing to a multiplicity of fiefdoms called corporations.
When the Roman Empire was self-destructing in the late 300's to late 400's, it was ruled by a class that created the model for what came after: Roman Senators lorded it over huge latifundias, with estates from Gaul to North Africa, all manned by hundreds to thousands of serfs and slaves. Senators also provided the bureaucratic skills to run the Empire, usually to their personal advantage. Over time, the Senators' holdings grew as there became fewer of them (small families), but then shrank as the Empire withered: losing estates in North Africa, for example, when the Vandals took over there--due to incompetence and rivalry between Imperial services.
But what prevailed became the feudalism of the Medieval period, dominated by Germanic conquerors--rampaging hordes that settled down to enjoy their pillage in one place.
Something similar is happening today. Corporations are the new Senatorial latifundias, spreading their thirst for profits worldwide, but in their own niches. We have feudalism of food production by Monsanto, or of pharmaceuticals by Glaxo-Smith-Kline, or of oil and coal production by the Koch brothers.
Workers are treated increasingly as serfs, as unions are driven out, workers are laid off, wages are cut and the remaining employees work harder in fear for their jobs.
Now, with the secret negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ascendancy of these corporations lurches forward. Only "stakeholders" (not the public or Congress) are permitted to know what the negotiations entail, but leaked accounts indicate that corporations will be able to sue to block environmental and labor laws, expand patent and copyright rights, and generally override sovereign nations' regulations, as long as they can claim their profitability/interest is threatened.
Corporate feudalism is like the Roman Senators, who held life and death power over their 'dependents.' But once the nation-state is pushed aside, will there just be rampaging corporations? No governments will be able to protect the people from the corporate hordes.
Really, there must be some way Pfizer, Novartis, etc, can profit on Afghan opium (Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's crop). Big corporations increasingly dominate world trade. They're pressing globally for patent rights even to basic food crops. Patents as monopoly grants, provide corporations monopoly profits.
Corporations promote war, any war: they can make obscene amounts on it. They have a near monopsony, as well: the US Defense Department; it buys more from defense corporations than all other buyers combined, close to a definition of the word, monopsony.
The US strides, giant-like, across the world--trampling, too. But it, and almost every other nation, is bowing to a multiplicity of fiefdoms called corporations.
When the Roman Empire was self-destructing in the late 300's to late 400's, it was ruled by a class that created the model for what came after: Roman Senators lorded it over huge latifundias, with estates from Gaul to North Africa, all manned by hundreds to thousands of serfs and slaves. Senators also provided the bureaucratic skills to run the Empire, usually to their personal advantage. Over time, the Senators' holdings grew as there became fewer of them (small families), but then shrank as the Empire withered: losing estates in North Africa, for example, when the Vandals took over there--due to incompetence and rivalry between Imperial services.
But what prevailed became the feudalism of the Medieval period, dominated by Germanic conquerors--rampaging hordes that settled down to enjoy their pillage in one place.
Something similar is happening today. Corporations are the new Senatorial latifundias, spreading their thirst for profits worldwide, but in their own niches. We have feudalism of food production by Monsanto, or of pharmaceuticals by Glaxo-Smith-Kline, or of oil and coal production by the Koch brothers.
Workers are treated increasingly as serfs, as unions are driven out, workers are laid off, wages are cut and the remaining employees work harder in fear for their jobs.
Now, with the secret negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ascendancy of these corporations lurches forward. Only "stakeholders" (not the public or Congress) are permitted to know what the negotiations entail, but leaked accounts indicate that corporations will be able to sue to block environmental and labor laws, expand patent and copyright rights, and generally override sovereign nations' regulations, as long as they can claim their profitability/interest is threatened.
Corporate feudalism is like the Roman Senators, who held life and death power over their 'dependents.' But once the nation-state is pushed aside, will there just be rampaging corporations? No governments will be able to protect the people from the corporate hordes.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Foolish Capitalism
Investment in tar sands (the XL Pipeline) is "foolish," says James Hanson of NASA. He says we're already at about 395 ppm CO2, above the target of 350 ppm that would limit global warming to 2 degrees C. The Earth has warmed less than a degree, so far, and already we have super-storms like Sandy, record-breaking droughts, heat spells and flooding.
Hanson makes sense, but government bureaucrats and officials are wary of him, because his opinions affect things like energy policy. Not what a scientist should be saying, or writing, they imply.
Is it so questionable to say that blowing up mountaintops, piping sludge and blowing apart underground shale formations is also "foolish?" Obama's "all of the above," Hanson points out, is bad strategy: it increases carbon from all the above sources, even if it also promotes wind and solar. Further, "cap and trade" is ineffective. Yet, policy-makers around the world hear mostly from fossil fuel interests, not their constituents, so even marginal policy reforms like the above will likely be rejected.
But humans are "foolish;" the Dutch, by way of example, live at sea-level, and although increased CO2 is already causing seas to rise, threatening their very existence, they continue to burn coal, the most greenhouse gas-intensive fuel.
The world is overrun with foolishness, but one of the most foolish is to subsidize fossil fuels, instead of demanding that fossil fuel producers pick up the tab for external costs: not only for lung disease and heart attacks from air pollution, but for global warming, itself. Sandy alone cost the taxpayers over $100 billion. Hanson proposes a carbon tax to cover external costs, the proceeds to be distributed to all taxpayers.
For the Capitalist, nothing's foolish if you can make money on it, but huge investments in fossil fuels is foolish: they're betting against a stable climate in the long run, for profits in the short-run.
Capitalists are foolish in other ways. They're eager to sell/produce in China, even though the US now documents that China's stealing them blind, of technology and innovation, as well as through corruption. They're stealing American (and European) competitive advantage. They fulfill Stalin's adage: "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."
Capitalism, ultimately, is foolish: it's driven by a blind thirst for profits in the short term, regardless of consequences, and growth at any cost. Its proponents demand minimal or no regulation or taxes, and avoid all external costs for as long as possible. Stock newsletters tout oil producers, and even tar sands. Fox News, the Koch's etc. promote misinformation and blindness. Capitalism is not the market: it demands a market with its eyes put out.
Unless we can overcome blind capitalism, we're doomed: the Roman Empire did the tiniest fraction of the damage the American Empire--as capitalism unchained--has done and will do, unless somehow many someones can put a harness on it.
Hanson makes sense, but government bureaucrats and officials are wary of him, because his opinions affect things like energy policy. Not what a scientist should be saying, or writing, they imply.
Is it so questionable to say that blowing up mountaintops, piping sludge and blowing apart underground shale formations is also "foolish?" Obama's "all of the above," Hanson points out, is bad strategy: it increases carbon from all the above sources, even if it also promotes wind and solar. Further, "cap and trade" is ineffective. Yet, policy-makers around the world hear mostly from fossil fuel interests, not their constituents, so even marginal policy reforms like the above will likely be rejected.
But humans are "foolish;" the Dutch, by way of example, live at sea-level, and although increased CO2 is already causing seas to rise, threatening their very existence, they continue to burn coal, the most greenhouse gas-intensive fuel.
The world is overrun with foolishness, but one of the most foolish is to subsidize fossil fuels, instead of demanding that fossil fuel producers pick up the tab for external costs: not only for lung disease and heart attacks from air pollution, but for global warming, itself. Sandy alone cost the taxpayers over $100 billion. Hanson proposes a carbon tax to cover external costs, the proceeds to be distributed to all taxpayers.
For the Capitalist, nothing's foolish if you can make money on it, but huge investments in fossil fuels is foolish: they're betting against a stable climate in the long run, for profits in the short-run.
Capitalists are foolish in other ways. They're eager to sell/produce in China, even though the US now documents that China's stealing them blind, of technology and innovation, as well as through corruption. They're stealing American (and European) competitive advantage. They fulfill Stalin's adage: "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."
Capitalism, ultimately, is foolish: it's driven by a blind thirst for profits in the short term, regardless of consequences, and growth at any cost. Its proponents demand minimal or no regulation or taxes, and avoid all external costs for as long as possible. Stock newsletters tout oil producers, and even tar sands. Fox News, the Koch's etc. promote misinformation and blindness. Capitalism is not the market: it demands a market with its eyes put out.
Unless we can overcome blind capitalism, we're doomed: the Roman Empire did the tiniest fraction of the damage the American Empire--as capitalism unchained--has done and will do, unless somehow many someones can put a harness on it.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Discarded World
Sunday at sunrise I saw a car parked in our parking lot along the dirt road, not far from houses and an equestrian center. A guy got out, did something with his leg, and then, as I approached, he got back in the car and drove off. There was someone in the passenger seat.
The driver had discarded something and its foil wrapper. He was probably proud of himself: it was an oversized used condom. On his way to church?
That pretty much epitomizes relations with our social, natural and international world. We trash the natural world, we trash each other; we also trash other nations: cancer has skyrocketed in Iraq because our depleted DU munitions litter the landscape. Our military is proud of them; they're more effective than lead or steel in penetrating tank armor. Who cares about the Iraqis?
Margaret Thatcher was known for popularizing a politics epitomized by: "Screw you, Jack! I've got mine." Our "conservatives" are less eloquent.
Sequestration was meant to force Democrats and Republicans to agree to something sensible, but the first adjustment insures that flights aren't delayed, so Congressmen and Senators can get home during their break. Meanwhile, cuts to Head Start, schools, health research, medical care, extended unemployment insurance and to so many other government programs cause far more damaging consequences: lives lost, children untaught, research not done, people driven homeless: long-term costs to everyone--except the wealthy.
And for what? Both the Alesina/Ardagna article on "expansionary austerity," and the Reinhart/Rogoff article positing the economic danger of a 90+% budget deficit--Economists' arguments promoting austerity--have been proven false, while real experiments with it in Greece, Spain, Ireland, the UK and Portugal have demonstrated its destructive effects.
I sent two of Krugman's anti-austerity articles to a fundamentalist friend; he refused to read them: said they were "all false," and "ideologies will never replace the wisdom and power of the Word of God." Facts didn't matter. To him, and apparently to a large contingent of Republicans in Congress, "debt is debt," an evil--except for Defense, or corporations, or mortgages, or….
My friend made money in California real estate, The austerian agenda makes sense to him: why should he pay for losers, driven homeless, and/or jobless by the burst housing bubble; he made money, so what's wrong with them?
People like him, and those much wealthier drive the political agenda. We don't live in a democracy; the powerful listen to the one-percent, not to the rest of us--except, maybe, the 5%. Our contemporary Roman Senatorial class has conquered. High unemployment benefits them: it makes workers compliant; bosses can cut wages and raise their own salaries: life is good.
It will last until either revolution or collapse, the latter from the instability inherent in extreme inequality; it contributed to Rome's fall in 476.
The driver had discarded something and its foil wrapper. He was probably proud of himself: it was an oversized used condom. On his way to church?
That pretty much epitomizes relations with our social, natural and international world. We trash the natural world, we trash each other; we also trash other nations: cancer has skyrocketed in Iraq because our depleted DU munitions litter the landscape. Our military is proud of them; they're more effective than lead or steel in penetrating tank armor. Who cares about the Iraqis?
Margaret Thatcher was known for popularizing a politics epitomized by: "Screw you, Jack! I've got mine." Our "conservatives" are less eloquent.
Sequestration was meant to force Democrats and Republicans to agree to something sensible, but the first adjustment insures that flights aren't delayed, so Congressmen and Senators can get home during their break. Meanwhile, cuts to Head Start, schools, health research, medical care, extended unemployment insurance and to so many other government programs cause far more damaging consequences: lives lost, children untaught, research not done, people driven homeless: long-term costs to everyone--except the wealthy.
And for what? Both the Alesina/Ardagna article on "expansionary austerity," and the Reinhart/Rogoff article positing the economic danger of a 90+% budget deficit--Economists' arguments promoting austerity--have been proven false, while real experiments with it in Greece, Spain, Ireland, the UK and Portugal have demonstrated its destructive effects.
I sent two of Krugman's anti-austerity articles to a fundamentalist friend; he refused to read them: said they were "all false," and "ideologies will never replace the wisdom and power of the Word of God." Facts didn't matter. To him, and apparently to a large contingent of Republicans in Congress, "debt is debt," an evil--except for Defense, or corporations, or mortgages, or….
My friend made money in California real estate, The austerian agenda makes sense to him: why should he pay for losers, driven homeless, and/or jobless by the burst housing bubble; he made money, so what's wrong with them?
People like him, and those much wealthier drive the political agenda. We don't live in a democracy; the powerful listen to the one-percent, not to the rest of us--except, maybe, the 5%. Our contemporary Roman Senatorial class has conquered. High unemployment benefits them: it makes workers compliant; bosses can cut wages and raise their own salaries: life is good.
It will last until either revolution or collapse, the latter from the instability inherent in extreme inequality; it contributed to Rome's fall in 476.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Extreme Wealth Corrodes Democracy
The United States was, for a short time, a democracy, if only of white male property owners--much like early Athens. Counterrevolution began with the Constitutional Convention.
Democratic forces were predominant in other eras in the US, but they didn't last. There was the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and brash new western men. There was the early radical Republicanism of the Civil War. There was the Progressive era: the overweening power of the trusts was busted, at least temporarily. There was the New Deal, extending through the Great Society, in which government made it its business to extend equality and its benefits.
But each democratic era has been followed by a period of reaction and hardening elite rule. However, up until now, America has always had an upwardly mobile society: the son of the worker, farmer, or clerk becoming the new rich. And always before, the elite made way for them, even if they hated "upstarts" and "new money."
Today, class mobility in America is lower than in class-bound Britain; American society is becoming rigid and stratified--though no one will admit they are anything but "middle class." The difference between the new financial wealthy and everyone else has never been greater; CEO's are paid 100's or 1000+ times more than their workers, a greater margin of difference than other developed nations. Inequality increased even more rapidly after the so-called Great Recession and subsequent "recovery" under Obama's leadership. More than 90% of the gains since 2009 have gone into the pockets of the extremely wealthy, while unemployment hovers around an official 7.8% and is nearly twice that when counting workers who have given up looking for work.
The intransigence of conservative Republicans is not surprising, nor the timidity of Democrats: they both reflect the changing balance of power in the US. Unions have declined to single digits of the private sector workforce, and Republicans have sharpened their knives to eliminate the power of public sector unions, as well.
Meanwhile, state legislatures and Congress promote austerity, and cut programs benefiting the less affluent, while attempting to lower taxes and eliminate regulations that irritate the resurgent wealthy.
Why not? Politicians easily accumulate wealth from their connections. Anyone in government, even idealistic Obama staff, can legally line his/her nest by cooperating with the moneyed, our Roman Senators. None live in ghettos, or working-class neighborhoods. None see or hear the people who are hurt by the wealthy bias in media and politics.
And the media, largely owned by our Roman Senators, naturally reflects their bias; so even the poor tend to accept the agenda of the wealthy, insisting that austerity is necessary and even Social Security benefits must be cut.
This isn't just the swing of the pendulum; this smells like "takeover" by the very wealthy, like the Roman Senators' monopoly of power in Fifth Century Rome--before its fall.
Democratic forces were predominant in other eras in the US, but they didn't last. There was the Democracy of Andrew Jackson and brash new western men. There was the early radical Republicanism of the Civil War. There was the Progressive era: the overweening power of the trusts was busted, at least temporarily. There was the New Deal, extending through the Great Society, in which government made it its business to extend equality and its benefits.
But each democratic era has been followed by a period of reaction and hardening elite rule. However, up until now, America has always had an upwardly mobile society: the son of the worker, farmer, or clerk becoming the new rich. And always before, the elite made way for them, even if they hated "upstarts" and "new money."
Today, class mobility in America is lower than in class-bound Britain; American society is becoming rigid and stratified--though no one will admit they are anything but "middle class." The difference between the new financial wealthy and everyone else has never been greater; CEO's are paid 100's or 1000+ times more than their workers, a greater margin of difference than other developed nations. Inequality increased even more rapidly after the so-called Great Recession and subsequent "recovery" under Obama's leadership. More than 90% of the gains since 2009 have gone into the pockets of the extremely wealthy, while unemployment hovers around an official 7.8% and is nearly twice that when counting workers who have given up looking for work.
The intransigence of conservative Republicans is not surprising, nor the timidity of Democrats: they both reflect the changing balance of power in the US. Unions have declined to single digits of the private sector workforce, and Republicans have sharpened their knives to eliminate the power of public sector unions, as well.
Meanwhile, state legislatures and Congress promote austerity, and cut programs benefiting the less affluent, while attempting to lower taxes and eliminate regulations that irritate the resurgent wealthy.
Why not? Politicians easily accumulate wealth from their connections. Anyone in government, even idealistic Obama staff, can legally line his/her nest by cooperating with the moneyed, our Roman Senators. None live in ghettos, or working-class neighborhoods. None see or hear the people who are hurt by the wealthy bias in media and politics.
And the media, largely owned by our Roman Senators, naturally reflects their bias; so even the poor tend to accept the agenda of the wealthy, insisting that austerity is necessary and even Social Security benefits must be cut.
This isn't just the swing of the pendulum; this smells like "takeover" by the very wealthy, like the Roman Senators' monopoly of power in Fifth Century Rome--before its fall.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
It's Not Working!
The vaunted American system of politics.
We have endemic and pervasive gun violence in the cities, and frequent massacres of innocents by crazies in the suburbs, and make it easier to buy and keep guns than any other "developed" country. And yet, the Senate can't even get to a vote on expanded background checks (supported by about 90% of Americans), because the murderous, corporate NRA cows most Republicans and enough Democrats.
Immigration reform may be stopped in its tracks for the same kind of reason: a small minority represented by a disproportionate number of Senators and/or Representatives, will try to block any immigration reform bill because, in this case, majorities in the South and the under-populated southern mid-section of the nation, are paranoid xenophobes.
On the other hand, Monsanto can insert special language in the Food bill, privileging GMO's, in what has been unofficially labeled "the Monsanto Protection Act." It passed and Obama signed it.
Finally, we have a Democratic President who won reelection championing defense of Social Security and Medicare, legacy programs of Democratic Presidents, but now he attacks them in the name of reform. Obama proposes to cut benefits through indirection: changing the price index used to calculate Social Security benefits, and by cutting payments to providers like doctors and hospitals, to "reform" Medicare.
Social Security does not contribute to government deficits: over the years, Congress and Presidents have borrowed trillions from its trust fund to pay the bills, and now it needs to be paid back. It has pre-funded the bulge in senior boomers, but 'bidness' wants to get its greedy little hands on those funds. Social Security won't need additional funding until the 2030's. Obama's "reform" is splitting his party, and he still won't get Republicans to support it.
A better case can be made for reform of Medicare/Medicaid: to make medical care more efficient. The US shouldn't spend double what other countries pay for comparable medical care. A restructuring is in order, involving what is paid for: patient outcomes, or discrete tests and hours; drug prices should be negotiated, not monopoly prices and hospital fees need to reflect medical needs, not business priorities. Maybe that's what Obama has in mind.
The most positive aspect of Obama's retrograde offer: Republicans will defend both programs in order to attack him.
It seems that only through the courts, sometimes, can progress be realized, as in the Pennsylvania Judge who found that corporations could not claim proprietary secrets for fracking fluid. How long will that "anti-corporate" ruling last?
The Supreme Court may attempt to sidestep the same-sex marriage issue, yet it boosted corporate power in Citizens United when that wasn't even the intent of the suit.
Who rules? The 0.1% and the corporations they own, whom I've labeled "our Roman Senators", like the Selfish Senators of 5th Century Rome. Their influence may be even more pernicious.
We have endemic and pervasive gun violence in the cities, and frequent massacres of innocents by crazies in the suburbs, and make it easier to buy and keep guns than any other "developed" country. And yet, the Senate can't even get to a vote on expanded background checks (supported by about 90% of Americans), because the murderous, corporate NRA cows most Republicans and enough Democrats.
Immigration reform may be stopped in its tracks for the same kind of reason: a small minority represented by a disproportionate number of Senators and/or Representatives, will try to block any immigration reform bill because, in this case, majorities in the South and the under-populated southern mid-section of the nation, are paranoid xenophobes.
On the other hand, Monsanto can insert special language in the Food bill, privileging GMO's, in what has been unofficially labeled "the Monsanto Protection Act." It passed and Obama signed it.
Finally, we have a Democratic President who won reelection championing defense of Social Security and Medicare, legacy programs of Democratic Presidents, but now he attacks them in the name of reform. Obama proposes to cut benefits through indirection: changing the price index used to calculate Social Security benefits, and by cutting payments to providers like doctors and hospitals, to "reform" Medicare.
Social Security does not contribute to government deficits: over the years, Congress and Presidents have borrowed trillions from its trust fund to pay the bills, and now it needs to be paid back. It has pre-funded the bulge in senior boomers, but 'bidness' wants to get its greedy little hands on those funds. Social Security won't need additional funding until the 2030's. Obama's "reform" is splitting his party, and he still won't get Republicans to support it.
A better case can be made for reform of Medicare/Medicaid: to make medical care more efficient. The US shouldn't spend double what other countries pay for comparable medical care. A restructuring is in order, involving what is paid for: patient outcomes, or discrete tests and hours; drug prices should be negotiated, not monopoly prices and hospital fees need to reflect medical needs, not business priorities. Maybe that's what Obama has in mind.
The most positive aspect of Obama's retrograde offer: Republicans will defend both programs in order to attack him.
It seems that only through the courts, sometimes, can progress be realized, as in the Pennsylvania Judge who found that corporations could not claim proprietary secrets for fracking fluid. How long will that "anti-corporate" ruling last?
The Supreme Court may attempt to sidestep the same-sex marriage issue, yet it boosted corporate power in Citizens United when that wasn't even the intent of the suit.
Who rules? The 0.1% and the corporations they own, whom I've labeled "our Roman Senators", like the Selfish Senators of 5th Century Rome. Their influence may be even more pernicious.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
The Stalemated State
Lobbies, and the corporations behind them, block almost all change in the US.
Back in the 1830's, de Tocqueville rhapsodized about how the new United States had groups organized wherever he went. He saw it as the blossoming of democracy.
Now, however, organization itself is big business. Lobbyists in the thousands insure that the powers-that-be maintain their monopoly-oligopoly, their stifling of innovation that might threaten a lock on their markets--as well as a government that caters to their interests and therefore discriminates against smaller, more nimble competitors.
The IMF recently held that subsidies for traditional energy companies (oil, coal, gas) were holding back the move to non-traditional sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels). Still, even the elite-led demand for reducing government expenditures hardly touches on those subsidies: billions a year to companies making billions in profits. In addition, thanks to people like VP Cheney, drilling companies are largely free of regulation. We still don't know what poisons frackers inject into the earth in order to force out oil or gas, because that's a "proprietary secret." Pennsylvania even gives frackers powers of eminent domain!
Chemical companies (mostly petroleum based) are also protected. Smaller competitors attempting to replace toxic materials like styrene with bio-based non-toxic materials are stymied: the EPA is not allowed to declare styrene's known carcinogenicity, let alone ban it, and similar hands off treatment is SOP for a whole raft of other chemicals. In addition, Monsanto succeeded in inserting language in the new food law that virtually exempts GMO's from regulation. Meanwhile, the FDA can't require them to be labeled as GMO's, either.
Big Pharma protects its monopoly patents world-wide, but especially in the US, and Medicare/Medicaid is required to buy drugs at inflated prices (often 10 times a possible generic); no negotiated prices are permitted.
So, it's not surprising that Congress, after much effort on the part of gun victims families, gun control advocates, governors and even the President, may or may not pass the most minimal of gun control measures: universal background checks, despite 90% support for it in most polls. Gun manufacturers have organized the NRA and now the even more militantly "pro-gun" Gun Buyers of America, to lobby all their captive Congressmen against any regulation except for militarizing the schools with subsidized armed guards (creating another subsidized market).
The ultimate subsidized market is Defense. Corporate contractors still get cost-plus contracts, still get reimbursed even for hotel taxes in Maryland--and then, Lockheed has the chutzpah to demand that Maryland reimburse it, too! And that's in addition to the huge subsidy derived from US insistence on maintaining hegemony worldwide.
The US is truly a corporate state wedded to outdated technologies, corporate behemoths and the greedy class, our Roman Senators, who own them. Stalemate will doom it, unless it and the corporations are able to transfer their dominance worldwide. That's why the Indian decision against Novartis is so important: the sclerotic American Empire is losing control.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Bad Ideas
George McGovern endorsed a terrible book, The Promise of the Coming Dark Age: it saw the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as the great promise: our communitarian future, in which capitalism would be transmuted into abundance for all.
From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge murdered a larger share of their people than the Nazis or Stalin: virtually any non-Maoist with education, or anyone from the middle class and any city-dweller. Later, anyone not ideologically "reliable" was eliminated, as well. The total murdered were between 1.7 and 2.3 million out of a population of only 7 million: between a fourth and a third of all Cambodians.
The idea that attracted McGovern was the Khmer Rouge's advocacy for a communitarian (Communist) agrarian society that was supposed to be fully self-sustaining, and purged of all western influence or technology. McGovern, et al ignored the violence, the authoritarianism, the ideological rigidity and the KR's flight from reality.
Finally, Vietnam ousted the KR in 1979, but Cambodia has suffered famines and near social collapse ever since, unable to overcome the KR's nearly successful attempt to destroy urban Cambodia and western education.
The KR glorified their agrarian past, just as the GOP glorifies a Norman Rockwell view of "real America." Ayn Rand, their ideological guru, glorified the unrestrained entrepreneur stifled by big government. As politicians attempt to put her vision into practice, it might not be so bloody as the KR, but many more will be impoverished. Randism inspires Republican enthusiasm for the sequester, in which the poor and middle class lose the services they depend on, while a small elite benefit from the cuts through privatization and lower taxes.
Ever since Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers' strike, the corporate wealthy have successfully carried Republicans and many Democrats with them. Since 1980, income and wealth have concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Disasters, like Katrina in New Orleans, and Sandy in New York, and the nationwide implosion of the financial sector in 2008, have accelerated the process. Wall Street was bailed out, but the country as a whole is still only slowly recovering. The vast majority of productivity gains and new wealth created since the implosion has ended up in the pockets of the wealthy; the banks that precipitated the crisis have gotten bigger and wealthier, yet last month only 88,000 private sector jobs were created. The nation needs at least 150,000 per month to recover.
The wealthy want the Government to cut back, not because there is a real, immediate debt crisis, but because continuing high unemployment serves them: it keeps wages low, workers compliant.
Unless there is some revolutionary upheaval, some Hugo Chavez, the takeover of the wealthy corporate class will continue, much like the monopolization of wealth and power in the hands of the Roman Senatorial class in the late 4th and early 5th century. It won't end well.
From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge murdered a larger share of their people than the Nazis or Stalin: virtually any non-Maoist with education, or anyone from the middle class and any city-dweller. Later, anyone not ideologically "reliable" was eliminated, as well. The total murdered were between 1.7 and 2.3 million out of a population of only 7 million: between a fourth and a third of all Cambodians.
The idea that attracted McGovern was the Khmer Rouge's advocacy for a communitarian (Communist) agrarian society that was supposed to be fully self-sustaining, and purged of all western influence or technology. McGovern, et al ignored the violence, the authoritarianism, the ideological rigidity and the KR's flight from reality.
Finally, Vietnam ousted the KR in 1979, but Cambodia has suffered famines and near social collapse ever since, unable to overcome the KR's nearly successful attempt to destroy urban Cambodia and western education.
The KR glorified their agrarian past, just as the GOP glorifies a Norman Rockwell view of "real America." Ayn Rand, their ideological guru, glorified the unrestrained entrepreneur stifled by big government. As politicians attempt to put her vision into practice, it might not be so bloody as the KR, but many more will be impoverished. Randism inspires Republican enthusiasm for the sequester, in which the poor and middle class lose the services they depend on, while a small elite benefit from the cuts through privatization and lower taxes.
Ever since Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers' strike, the corporate wealthy have successfully carried Republicans and many Democrats with them. Since 1980, income and wealth have concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Disasters, like Katrina in New Orleans, and Sandy in New York, and the nationwide implosion of the financial sector in 2008, have accelerated the process. Wall Street was bailed out, but the country as a whole is still only slowly recovering. The vast majority of productivity gains and new wealth created since the implosion has ended up in the pockets of the wealthy; the banks that precipitated the crisis have gotten bigger and wealthier, yet last month only 88,000 private sector jobs were created. The nation needs at least 150,000 per month to recover.
The wealthy want the Government to cut back, not because there is a real, immediate debt crisis, but because continuing high unemployment serves them: it keeps wages low, workers compliant.
Unless there is some revolutionary upheaval, some Hugo Chavez, the takeover of the wealthy corporate class will continue, much like the monopolization of wealth and power in the hands of the Roman Senatorial class in the late 4th and early 5th century. It won't end well.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Who's More Corrupt?
Did you know that the "oil spill" in Arkansas over the weekend was actually tar sands (the stuff to be piped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline)? Tar sands are probably exempt from the taxes that fund the clean up of such spills, yet this sludge is more toxic and more difficult to clean up than conventional crude.
Some interesting facts: the first, for me, was Oil Change's report, identifying the spill with Canadian tar sands. It wasn't reported that way in the New York Times, which used the euphemism "heavy crude from western Canada," nor on NPR, which simply reported it as a major oil spill until the following day.
Tar sands aren't oil. After much processing (requiring much heat, polluting more than coal), this "bitumen" sludge can be converted into an oil feedstock for further refining, but to call it "heavy crude" conceals what it really is and why a spill is much worse than conventional oil.
Toxicity is one of the reasons for blocking the XL Pipeline, which may be why even supposedly "objective" media outlets misled. Tar sands money has corrupted Canada's politics, and is adding to the endemic, legal corruption here. It may inspire right-wing billionaires, like the Kochs, to purchase media outlets like the LA Times.
Look at the contrast between India and the US: here the courts are influenced by major corporations, especially after Citizens United, and demand outrageous privileges, like patent monopolies indefinitely extended.
India is famous for its petty and not so petty corruption, personally observed when I lived there 33 years ago. Contemporary accounts imply it's as bad now. However, in some ways it might be less corrupt than the US, where corporations get anything they want, like Novartis' minor tweaking of an AIDS drug allowing indefinite monopoly protection. An Indian judge did something our Congress and courts have rarely managed: he stood up to Big Pharma, striking down Novartis' claim that its minor modification justified a new patent (monopoly protection) for the 20 years the Indian patent law permits.
In the US, regulators, courts and Congress bend over backwards to give corporations what they want--like the covert insertion of the "Monsanto protection act" into the Food bill.
The US may have fewer officials and politicians with their hands out, but the powerful use legal corruption. Their bribes are more lucrative: campaign funds, insider info, high paying jobs, and promotions when they recycle back from private to public sectors.
They are in service to our ultimate Roman Senators--the Koch brothers, Murdoch or Lockheed Martin--who know that control of the media is key.
Outside the US, people get freer news: in the US, Congress is writing a law to more strictly control the Internet, our best remaining source for a free flow of information.
Are we already a corporate state, a plutocracy like the later Roman Empire? Hard to tell with the managed information we're fed.
Some interesting facts: the first, for me, was Oil Change's report, identifying the spill with Canadian tar sands. It wasn't reported that way in the New York Times, which used the euphemism "heavy crude from western Canada," nor on NPR, which simply reported it as a major oil spill until the following day.
Tar sands aren't oil. After much processing (requiring much heat, polluting more than coal), this "bitumen" sludge can be converted into an oil feedstock for further refining, but to call it "heavy crude" conceals what it really is and why a spill is much worse than conventional oil.
Toxicity is one of the reasons for blocking the XL Pipeline, which may be why even supposedly "objective" media outlets misled. Tar sands money has corrupted Canada's politics, and is adding to the endemic, legal corruption here. It may inspire right-wing billionaires, like the Kochs, to purchase media outlets like the LA Times.
Look at the contrast between India and the US: here the courts are influenced by major corporations, especially after Citizens United, and demand outrageous privileges, like patent monopolies indefinitely extended.
India is famous for its petty and not so petty corruption, personally observed when I lived there 33 years ago. Contemporary accounts imply it's as bad now. However, in some ways it might be less corrupt than the US, where corporations get anything they want, like Novartis' minor tweaking of an AIDS drug allowing indefinite monopoly protection. An Indian judge did something our Congress and courts have rarely managed: he stood up to Big Pharma, striking down Novartis' claim that its minor modification justified a new patent (monopoly protection) for the 20 years the Indian patent law permits.
In the US, regulators, courts and Congress bend over backwards to give corporations what they want--like the covert insertion of the "Monsanto protection act" into the Food bill.
The US may have fewer officials and politicians with their hands out, but the powerful use legal corruption. Their bribes are more lucrative: campaign funds, insider info, high paying jobs, and promotions when they recycle back from private to public sectors.
They are in service to our ultimate Roman Senators--the Koch brothers, Murdoch or Lockheed Martin--who know that control of the media is key.
Outside the US, people get freer news: in the US, Congress is writing a law to more strictly control the Internet, our best remaining source for a free flow of information.
Are we already a corporate state, a plutocracy like the later Roman Empire? Hard to tell with the managed information we're fed.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Gay Marriage, Drones & Inequality
Social progress seems slow, but in societal terms it's probably moving about as fast as it can: acceptance of gays, even if the Supreme Court can't keep up with the changes in society, is lightning fast.
On the other hand, environmental progress is moving in reverse along with economic equality. War and instability have become more destructive, even if there is no "world war."
Post-Citizens United: corporatist conservatives must punch themselves with glee: successes small: sneaking through "the Monsanto protection act" in the Food bill, and big: persuading the chattering classes inside the Beltway that the deficit/debt is an urgent problem that only can be solved by cutting what they derisively call "entitlements," not subsidies to the burgeoning wealthy.
Our media is so skewed towards the agenda of the wealthy and corporations, that it doesn't seem absurd that we're slashing government spending when unemployment is far too high. Our media is more controlled by wealth and corporate interests than it was in Venezuela before Chavez. He opposed it with state-owned media, and selective de-licensing.
US media excoriated Chavez as a dictator, while he won landslides in at least five elections, elections certified by Carter as freer than the US.
Venezuela may have more democracy than we do, since Republicans work assiduously to deny the right to vote to likely opponents, and a Supreme Court Justice derides Voting Rights Act Section 5 as establishing voting rights as a "racial entitlement."
The US claims it's exceptional; it isn't, except in things we shouldn't crow about, like the highest per capita rate of incarceration, the most expensive and least effective health care system, a falling working wage, soaring inequality, and endemic violence fueled by our wide open "gun culture."
We don't, any longer, score high on educational attainment: almost every other OECD nation has higher college graduation rates: the US used to lead.
Our military is exceptional: the US has the world's most effective killing machine--long before we started using drones. But it still loses wars: Vietnam, Iraq (really), and now Afghanistan.
The size of our military is also exceptional, but that demonstrates another American failing: like North Korea, we spend more money on war-making than on any other "discretionary" government function--we substitute brute strength for sense. We value guns over children, even our own children (100+ days since Newtown and no new Federal gun control law). But the Bible is "brought to you by Walmart," an American company. Exceptional!
The American Empire hasn't lasted long; it's failing progressively and making enemies everywhere. Soon the muscle-bound US will be only the second wealthiest nation.
Targeting immigrants and homegrown terrorists with drones, disenfranchising minorities (those we haven't jailed) and the poor, the US is also becoming almost as authoritarian as China, our successful competitor.
On the other hand, environmental progress is moving in reverse along with economic equality. War and instability have become more destructive, even if there is no "world war."
Post-Citizens United: corporatist conservatives must punch themselves with glee: successes small: sneaking through "the Monsanto protection act" in the Food bill, and big: persuading the chattering classes inside the Beltway that the deficit/debt is an urgent problem that only can be solved by cutting what they derisively call "entitlements," not subsidies to the burgeoning wealthy.
Our media is so skewed towards the agenda of the wealthy and corporations, that it doesn't seem absurd that we're slashing government spending when unemployment is far too high. Our media is more controlled by wealth and corporate interests than it was in Venezuela before Chavez. He opposed it with state-owned media, and selective de-licensing.
US media excoriated Chavez as a dictator, while he won landslides in at least five elections, elections certified by Carter as freer than the US.
Venezuela may have more democracy than we do, since Republicans work assiduously to deny the right to vote to likely opponents, and a Supreme Court Justice derides Voting Rights Act Section 5 as establishing voting rights as a "racial entitlement."
The US claims it's exceptional; it isn't, except in things we shouldn't crow about, like the highest per capita rate of incarceration, the most expensive and least effective health care system, a falling working wage, soaring inequality, and endemic violence fueled by our wide open "gun culture."
We don't, any longer, score high on educational attainment: almost every other OECD nation has higher college graduation rates: the US used to lead.
Our military is exceptional: the US has the world's most effective killing machine--long before we started using drones. But it still loses wars: Vietnam, Iraq (really), and now Afghanistan.
The size of our military is also exceptional, but that demonstrates another American failing: like North Korea, we spend more money on war-making than on any other "discretionary" government function--we substitute brute strength for sense. We value guns over children, even our own children (100+ days since Newtown and no new Federal gun control law). But the Bible is "brought to you by Walmart," an American company. Exceptional!
The American Empire hasn't lasted long; it's failing progressively and making enemies everywhere. Soon the muscle-bound US will be only the second wealthiest nation.
Targeting immigrants and homegrown terrorists with drones, disenfranchising minorities (those we haven't jailed) and the poor, the US is also becoming almost as authoritarian as China, our successful competitor.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Next Question:
Why are the Democrats so timid, especially in the face of unapologetic Republican extremism? And this goes for Obama, too. He keeps talking about the "grand bargain" that he wants to negotiate, by compromising with the same Republicans who want to eviscerate any program or service that aids the poor or "middle class," want to repeal Obamacare and are determined to make Obama's presidency a failure, even if he was reelected.
Nader pointed out the obvious, when he identified the "defeatist" Democrats, who took no advantage in 2012 of the incredibly unpopular policies and votes of the Republican Congress, like cutting programs for the poor, while cutting taxes on the rich.
As I pointed out last week, the deficit/debt/austerity politics that roils inside the Beltway is also highly unpopular, except with one demographic: the wealthy. But Democrats, who call themselves The People's Party, are too scared to take a popular stand because they are almost as dependent on wealthy donors as Republicans.
In other words, we live in an extremely corrupt political system: politicians may not get direct payoffs, but they do get wealthy from currying rich people's favor. They don’t organize politics like old Boss Tweed, or Mayor Daley Senior, but they are even more corrupt: their whole agenda, such as it is, justifies and rewards the extremely wealthy--and this is not just the extremist GOP, but the "mainstream" GOP, and some Democrats, as well. Democracy does not come trippingly off the tongue.
However, the Congressional Progressive Caucus offers a no-nonsense alternative to GOP Paul Ryan's vague, reactionary budget and cancels the sequester. Progressives claim their budget, entitled Going to Work, would reduce the deficit in three years by producing 7 million jobs and increasing GDP by 5.7%.
Supporters claim that investing in jobs, in infrastructure, which civil engineers recently pinpointed for much needed repair, in teachers and cops--in people--would reduce the deficit. The budget also raises revenue by closing tax loopholes on higher incomes and raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, including taxing investment income the same as wages; it's now at preferential low rates. Proponents claim the expansionary budget would cut the deficit by $4.4 trillion. Some of the loopholes to be cut, aside from investment income: $112 billion fossil fuels industry subsidy; $70 billion: food and entertainment corporate deductions; $13 billion: yachts and vacation homes deductions and $25 billion: eliminating a stock options loophole.
The Democratic Senate's budget is timorous by comparison, although at least it protects Medicare and Social Security from cuts. But why can't mainstream Democrats advocate for an expansionary budget to grow revenue? The Fed's Bernanke says we shouldn't cut spending until growth stabilizes; even Republicans admit the "fiscal crisis" is only a future problem.
Because our Roman Senators, the extremely wealthy, control the political debate and promote their interests: lower taxes for them; no protection from their rapacity and reduced/no services for everyone else. They want a society like Fifth Century Rome.
Nader pointed out the obvious, when he identified the "defeatist" Democrats, who took no advantage in 2012 of the incredibly unpopular policies and votes of the Republican Congress, like cutting programs for the poor, while cutting taxes on the rich.
As I pointed out last week, the deficit/debt/austerity politics that roils inside the Beltway is also highly unpopular, except with one demographic: the wealthy. But Democrats, who call themselves The People's Party, are too scared to take a popular stand because they are almost as dependent on wealthy donors as Republicans.
In other words, we live in an extremely corrupt political system: politicians may not get direct payoffs, but they do get wealthy from currying rich people's favor. They don’t organize politics like old Boss Tweed, or Mayor Daley Senior, but they are even more corrupt: their whole agenda, such as it is, justifies and rewards the extremely wealthy--and this is not just the extremist GOP, but the "mainstream" GOP, and some Democrats, as well. Democracy does not come trippingly off the tongue.
However, the Congressional Progressive Caucus offers a no-nonsense alternative to GOP Paul Ryan's vague, reactionary budget and cancels the sequester. Progressives claim their budget, entitled Going to Work, would reduce the deficit in three years by producing 7 million jobs and increasing GDP by 5.7%.
Supporters claim that investing in jobs, in infrastructure, which civil engineers recently pinpointed for much needed repair, in teachers and cops--in people--would reduce the deficit. The budget also raises revenue by closing tax loopholes on higher incomes and raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, including taxing investment income the same as wages; it's now at preferential low rates. Proponents claim the expansionary budget would cut the deficit by $4.4 trillion. Some of the loopholes to be cut, aside from investment income: $112 billion fossil fuels industry subsidy; $70 billion: food and entertainment corporate deductions; $13 billion: yachts and vacation homes deductions and $25 billion: eliminating a stock options loophole.
The Democratic Senate's budget is timorous by comparison, although at least it protects Medicare and Social Security from cuts. But why can't mainstream Democrats advocate for an expansionary budget to grow revenue? The Fed's Bernanke says we shouldn't cut spending until growth stabilizes; even Republicans admit the "fiscal crisis" is only a future problem.
Because our Roman Senators, the extremely wealthy, control the political debate and promote their interests: lower taxes for them; no protection from their rapacity and reduced/no services for everyone else. They want a society like Fifth Century Rome.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Democracy?
Does the United States have a functioning democracy? All the platitudes about democracy, thundered from every quarter, would make you believe so. But if you look even at the surface of our political "debate," and of the policies that issue from it, and then look at public opinion, as expressed in polls, the US doesn't look democratic.
It looks about as democratic as Marie Antoinette, or Diocletian (see http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/history-of-the-roman-empire.html).
What are the main concerns of the public at large? Jobs, higher wages, more equity, health care, assurance that the older generation is taken care of, better schools, safety. The debt and deficits are hardly even a concern.
The debate in Washington, and in state capitols, is how to cut the debt and the deficits, and the way to do so is to cut the very services the public wants more of. The alternative offered: raise taxes on the wealthy, is still to cut deficits.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel economist, continually points out that the deficits are not a problem to be solved now, when the economy is only barely emerging from The Great Recession. And he says it's not the terrible problem those he calls "Very Serious People" constantly rail about. Government expenditures and deficits, relative to the huge size of the economy, are actually going down, and were never too large. He also points out that the deficits run by the Bush-Cheney administration were mostly wasted, while the current deficits are largely due to the extremely slow recovery and the inadequate attempts by the Obama administration to stimulate the economy: it would have been better if such deficits had been larger.
Yet, the VSP continue to insist: we must cut government expenditures now, because we have to "solve the debt crisis." And our media, and Congress, and even the President go along. Obama talks about reaching a "grand bargain," which apparently would cut benefits to Medicare, Social Security, Medicare, and a whole raft of other social programs like Head Start, in return for even a few concessions on cutting tax loopholes for the wealthy.
Popular opinion supports higher taxes on the wealthy. People know, without looking at statistical tables, that the wealthy have radically increased their share of the wealth, are grabbing even more and are taxed less, in relative terms, than the poor, or the middle class.
But higher taxes for the wealthy are a non-starter, while cuts to Medicare and even to Social Security, which doesn't contribute to deficits, are "on the table."
What's going on here?
Polls have shown that the very wealthy want cuts to social services (they don't need them); say large deficits are our worst problem and must be cut, by cutting expenditures for things they don't need--like Medicare and Social Security--but not by raising taxes on them; they need their yachts.
That's who the VSP represent: the equivalent of Rome's Selfish Class, the Roman Senators: that's plutocracy, not democracy.
It looks about as democratic as Marie Antoinette, or Diocletian (see http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/history-of-the-roman-empire.html).
What are the main concerns of the public at large? Jobs, higher wages, more equity, health care, assurance that the older generation is taken care of, better schools, safety. The debt and deficits are hardly even a concern.
The debate in Washington, and in state capitols, is how to cut the debt and the deficits, and the way to do so is to cut the very services the public wants more of. The alternative offered: raise taxes on the wealthy, is still to cut deficits.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel economist, continually points out that the deficits are not a problem to be solved now, when the economy is only barely emerging from The Great Recession. And he says it's not the terrible problem those he calls "Very Serious People" constantly rail about. Government expenditures and deficits, relative to the huge size of the economy, are actually going down, and were never too large. He also points out that the deficits run by the Bush-Cheney administration were mostly wasted, while the current deficits are largely due to the extremely slow recovery and the inadequate attempts by the Obama administration to stimulate the economy: it would have been better if such deficits had been larger.
Yet, the VSP continue to insist: we must cut government expenditures now, because we have to "solve the debt crisis." And our media, and Congress, and even the President go along. Obama talks about reaching a "grand bargain," which apparently would cut benefits to Medicare, Social Security, Medicare, and a whole raft of other social programs like Head Start, in return for even a few concessions on cutting tax loopholes for the wealthy.
Popular opinion supports higher taxes on the wealthy. People know, without looking at statistical tables, that the wealthy have radically increased their share of the wealth, are grabbing even more and are taxed less, in relative terms, than the poor, or the middle class.
But higher taxes for the wealthy are a non-starter, while cuts to Medicare and even to Social Security, which doesn't contribute to deficits, are "on the table."
What's going on here?
Polls have shown that the very wealthy want cuts to social services (they don't need them); say large deficits are our worst problem and must be cut, by cutting expenditures for things they don't need--like Medicare and Social Security--but not by raising taxes on them; they need their yachts.
That's who the VSP represent: the equivalent of Rome's Selfish Class, the Roman Senators: that's plutocracy, not democracy.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Not Just Conservative Libertarians
Rand Paul's filibuster may have uncovered an issue that resonates with more than his core conservative base. It's the overweening reach of the executive branch, especially the President's use of drones, and his claim that he has the power to kill citizens if he determines--without proof--they are "enemy combatants" involved in terrorism against the US. This is a real danger: any President unchecked could become like a King or dictator, with no limits to his power.
Paul's protest is consistent with the conservative-libertarian view that government must be limited. Progressives, like Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden, who supported Paul's filibuster, could make common cause on the issue of war powers, but not on the government's role in the domestic economy.
Conservatives and progressives might collaborate on cutting back the overreach of imperial powers, and ultimately, on reducing, or withdrawing support from the United States as empire.
Back in the Interwar Period, this impulse was first labeled isolationism; then it was short-sighted. The rising powers of Togo's Japan, and Hitler's Germany had to be stopped: they were determined to dominate everyone. Their hegemony could have created a terrifying world. The dominance of the US after WWII was relatively benign in comparison.
However, US super-power status has been fraying for years, and although the US is still by far the most powerful militarily, and largest economically, trends are against its maintaining preeminence for long. First of all, as Vietnam and then Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, military might is limited: it cannot impose American control over an unruly world, despite the US spending more on its military than all other major powers combined. Often, our "adversaries" have been able, like a judo master, to use our strength against us.
In Vietnam, the Viet Cong gained a goodly proportion of its arms from a vibrant black market, because of the flood of weaponry sent by the US. In Afghanistan, we created our own enemies: the Taliban and al Qaeda, when intervening against the Soviet takeover. In Iraq, we destroyed a relatively stable dictatorship, a sometime ally (Saddam worked with the CIA until invading Kuwait). Instead, we created an unstable "democracy" naturally allied with Iran.
In addition to the limits to military power, there is America's relative economic decline, caused by the dramatic rise of the BRIC nations, especially China, and by our trade debt. The US will not have the largest economy for long, and will not be able to afford the luxury of its huge military establishment. This is especially true as the US Dollar's reserve status weakens and we have to pay our debts with dollars earned!
It's likely we're seeing the beginning of the decline of the American Empire. I hope we can manage it more benignly than did the Romans, Spanish, or Soviets. So, Rand Paul has a point.
Maybe we can become like Monty Python's post-imperial Britain. We could have more fun!
Paul's protest is consistent with the conservative-libertarian view that government must be limited. Progressives, like Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden, who supported Paul's filibuster, could make common cause on the issue of war powers, but not on the government's role in the domestic economy.
Conservatives and progressives might collaborate on cutting back the overreach of imperial powers, and ultimately, on reducing, or withdrawing support from the United States as empire.
Back in the Interwar Period, this impulse was first labeled isolationism; then it was short-sighted. The rising powers of Togo's Japan, and Hitler's Germany had to be stopped: they were determined to dominate everyone. Their hegemony could have created a terrifying world. The dominance of the US after WWII was relatively benign in comparison.
However, US super-power status has been fraying for years, and although the US is still by far the most powerful militarily, and largest economically, trends are against its maintaining preeminence for long. First of all, as Vietnam and then Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, military might is limited: it cannot impose American control over an unruly world, despite the US spending more on its military than all other major powers combined. Often, our "adversaries" have been able, like a judo master, to use our strength against us.
In Vietnam, the Viet Cong gained a goodly proportion of its arms from a vibrant black market, because of the flood of weaponry sent by the US. In Afghanistan, we created our own enemies: the Taliban and al Qaeda, when intervening against the Soviet takeover. In Iraq, we destroyed a relatively stable dictatorship, a sometime ally (Saddam worked with the CIA until invading Kuwait). Instead, we created an unstable "democracy" naturally allied with Iran.
In addition to the limits to military power, there is America's relative economic decline, caused by the dramatic rise of the BRIC nations, especially China, and by our trade debt. The US will not have the largest economy for long, and will not be able to afford the luxury of its huge military establishment. This is especially true as the US Dollar's reserve status weakens and we have to pay our debts with dollars earned!
It's likely we're seeing the beginning of the decline of the American Empire. I hope we can manage it more benignly than did the Romans, Spanish, or Soviets. So, Rand Paul has a point.
Maybe we can become like Monty Python's post-imperial Britain. We could have more fun!
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Why "Conservatives" Insist on Cuts
Cutting government programs across the board, heedless of their impact, appears to be intentional on the part of Tea Party Republicans in Congress. At best, some of them may acknowledge that more unemployment isn't good, but all claim that the need to cut government is of much greater importance.
What macroeconomists like Paul Krugman, and liberal policy wonks like Robert Reich ignore is that radical conservatives have a radical agenda, which is why they don't care about precipitating more recession. In their simple worldview, any government that does more than maintain order, protect property and defend our borders is doing too much. In some of their rhetoric, doing more seems to be equivalent to doing the Devil's work.
The mass of people mobilized as Tea Partiers are largely motivated by an unformulated libertarian ideology pre-figured by Ayn Rand, but are also bolstered by American mythology of the frontier; Don't Tread On Me flags have been prominent in Tea Party demos, for example, along with the faux Revolutionary War costumes. Radical conservatives tend to be white, non-urban and older, they appear to subscribe to the idea that everyone is out for themselves, and everyone should be left to sink or swim.
Given such a worldview, cutting Head Start, Mental Health, etc. and furloughing thousands of Federal and State workers is seen as a first victory, not as an economic disaster. That's why compromise with these folks is virtually impossible as Democrats and Obama are discovering. Further, Boehner realizes that he'll only keep his Speakership if he goes along with them, not with Democrats or Obama, or common sense.
What has made the Tea Party, or radical conservative libertarianism, a viable political movement is the money behind it. Why do billionaires like the Koch brothers invest hundreds of millions in the conservative movement? It's to their interest to dismantle government, not only to cut their own tax bills, or their regulatory headaches. It's to their advantage to disarm all the protections that citizens gained through the Progressive movement, the New Deal and the Great Society.
Once people are no longer protected by government, by entities like the National Labor Relations Board (rendered nearly toothless, already), employees will be helpless when facing their employers; small landowners will be helpless confronting corporations and minorities and immigrants will be unable to claim any rights.
Rank and file radical conservatives don't realize that "Freedom" doesn't mean their freedom; it means freedom for corporations and "job creators," aka the wealthy, and the oppression and exploitation of everyone else.
That's what happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when Senators took all the wealth and power, and reduced everyone else to serfdom or slavery.
It's already happening here: Americans have lost most rights they'd won as employees: they work longer hours, are paid less and can be fired almost at will. And all of us are losing our civil rights.
What macroeconomists like Paul Krugman, and liberal policy wonks like Robert Reich ignore is that radical conservatives have a radical agenda, which is why they don't care about precipitating more recession. In their simple worldview, any government that does more than maintain order, protect property and defend our borders is doing too much. In some of their rhetoric, doing more seems to be equivalent to doing the Devil's work.
The mass of people mobilized as Tea Partiers are largely motivated by an unformulated libertarian ideology pre-figured by Ayn Rand, but are also bolstered by American mythology of the frontier; Don't Tread On Me flags have been prominent in Tea Party demos, for example, along with the faux Revolutionary War costumes. Radical conservatives tend to be white, non-urban and older, they appear to subscribe to the idea that everyone is out for themselves, and everyone should be left to sink or swim.
Given such a worldview, cutting Head Start, Mental Health, etc. and furloughing thousands of Federal and State workers is seen as a first victory, not as an economic disaster. That's why compromise with these folks is virtually impossible as Democrats and Obama are discovering. Further, Boehner realizes that he'll only keep his Speakership if he goes along with them, not with Democrats or Obama, or common sense.
What has made the Tea Party, or radical conservative libertarianism, a viable political movement is the money behind it. Why do billionaires like the Koch brothers invest hundreds of millions in the conservative movement? It's to their interest to dismantle government, not only to cut their own tax bills, or their regulatory headaches. It's to their advantage to disarm all the protections that citizens gained through the Progressive movement, the New Deal and the Great Society.
Once people are no longer protected by government, by entities like the National Labor Relations Board (rendered nearly toothless, already), employees will be helpless when facing their employers; small landowners will be helpless confronting corporations and minorities and immigrants will be unable to claim any rights.
Rank and file radical conservatives don't realize that "Freedom" doesn't mean their freedom; it means freedom for corporations and "job creators," aka the wealthy, and the oppression and exploitation of everyone else.
That's what happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when Senators took all the wealth and power, and reduced everyone else to serfdom or slavery.
It's already happening here: Americans have lost most rights they'd won as employees: they work longer hours, are paid less and can be fired almost at will. And all of us are losing our civil rights.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Gold and the Sequester
Paul Krugman, liberal Nobel Economist, points to a huge increase in the corporate share of the economy since President Reagan: from 4-5% to 10% currently, except in the troughs of downturns. In addition, corporations aren't spending this doubled share: they're saving it.
The Roman Senatorial class in the fifth century controlled an even larger share of their economy: their capital was land, slaves, serfs, and gold. They hoarded all of them, but especially gold.
It's argued by conservative economists (non-Keynesians) that corporate hoarding (or saving), doesn’t matter, because it isn't like hoarding gold--the Roman Empire's main currency. Corporations have bank accounts: banks can turn around and lend out corporate deposits; that's their business.
Bank speculation, however, instead of lending, has become the great profit driver for big banks: they don't lend out enough during a recession like ours, because they can make so much more through playing the 'Russian Roulette' Finance game, creating derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives, betting for and against their success (hedging) and selling them to other speculators.
In the case of the Roman Senators, the effect of their hoarding gold and land was to so severely reduce the availability of money in the economy that there was long-term deflation that impoverished almost everyone.
The effect of withdrawing money from Roman society was to reduce the ability of most people to buy anything, and to increase their dependency on those with wealth. That's what precipitated the Dark Ages, AKA feudalism. The other side of this: those hoarding might have been able to buy anything their jaded hearts desired, but since there were few of them, the Empire became progressively poorer. And even marketable goods became less marketable.
The same is true of the effect of corporations hoarding: fewer goods and services are produced or consumed: hoarding intensifies lack of demand that triggers a depression or recession.
Hoarding complements austerity, the cause radical Republicans now proclaim in order to reduce dependency on government. But if people were dependent on government programs to survive or prosper, then, without them, they would be even more vulnerable to exploitation by people and corporations with money. This gets us back to the Sequester, which takes place today, cutting $85 billion in programs "across-the-board" from Defense, the big untouchable, to Head Start and Air Traffic controllers.
The radicals don't seem to care if unemployment worsens, because of the cuts they demand. If you don't have a job, you're a loser; why should we take care of you?
But look on the bright side: the cuts slash bloated Defense the most, so maybe the Sequester isn't all bad. It might force newly appointed Defense Secretary Hagel to really cut the Defense budget. He's the one who called Defense 'bloated' after all.
On the other hand, Tea-Partiers love the domestic cuts: they only hurt "takers," they're told: so far, they hear no other voices.
So, expect a down-turn by Spring.
The Roman Senatorial class in the fifth century controlled an even larger share of their economy: their capital was land, slaves, serfs, and gold. They hoarded all of them, but especially gold.
It's argued by conservative economists (non-Keynesians) that corporate hoarding (or saving), doesn’t matter, because it isn't like hoarding gold--the Roman Empire's main currency. Corporations have bank accounts: banks can turn around and lend out corporate deposits; that's their business.
Bank speculation, however, instead of lending, has become the great profit driver for big banks: they don't lend out enough during a recession like ours, because they can make so much more through playing the 'Russian Roulette' Finance game, creating derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives, betting for and against their success (hedging) and selling them to other speculators.
In the case of the Roman Senators, the effect of their hoarding gold and land was to so severely reduce the availability of money in the economy that there was long-term deflation that impoverished almost everyone.
The effect of withdrawing money from Roman society was to reduce the ability of most people to buy anything, and to increase their dependency on those with wealth. That's what precipitated the Dark Ages, AKA feudalism. The other side of this: those hoarding might have been able to buy anything their jaded hearts desired, but since there were few of them, the Empire became progressively poorer. And even marketable goods became less marketable.
The same is true of the effect of corporations hoarding: fewer goods and services are produced or consumed: hoarding intensifies lack of demand that triggers a depression or recession.
Hoarding complements austerity, the cause radical Republicans now proclaim in order to reduce dependency on government. But if people were dependent on government programs to survive or prosper, then, without them, they would be even more vulnerable to exploitation by people and corporations with money. This gets us back to the Sequester, which takes place today, cutting $85 billion in programs "across-the-board" from Defense, the big untouchable, to Head Start and Air Traffic controllers.
The radicals don't seem to care if unemployment worsens, because of the cuts they demand. If you don't have a job, you're a loser; why should we take care of you?
But look on the bright side: the cuts slash bloated Defense the most, so maybe the Sequester isn't all bad. It might force newly appointed Defense Secretary Hagel to really cut the Defense budget. He's the one who called Defense 'bloated' after all.
On the other hand, Tea-Partiers love the domestic cuts: they only hurt "takers," they're told: so far, they hear no other voices.
So, expect a down-turn by Spring.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Pope and Vatican Scandal
The Vatican, said my wise wife, is the model for all the (predatory) corporations that are despoiling our world. Her comment was prompted by the current brewing scandal of a possible reason for the Pope resigning so suddenly. According to a report in La Repubblica, a committee of Vatican octogenarian insiders revealed to Benedict XVI a faction within the Vatican “united by sexual orientation” that had been subject to “external influence” of a “worldly nature.” This translates as: a gay faction inside the Vatican, probably being blackmailed. Another Vatican source explained: “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments,” i.e. adultery and thievery.
What do predatory corporations and the Church, qua institution, have in common? Ironically, it's amorality; the willingness to do almost anything, for power, or for corporations, profit.
When did the Roman Catholic Church first become an institution more powerful than the state? Back at the cusp of the Fifth Century (390), when Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius the Great, who underwent months of penance, before, so goes the story, climbing the cathedral steps on his knees. His surrender entailed outlawing all worship of pagan gods, acknowledging the Church's monopoly on religious power.
By the end of the next generation, the Roman Church, in effect, took over from the failing Roman Empire . The power of non-Catholic Christian Visigoths and Ostrogoths like Odoacer and Theoderic, took longer to overthrow: Franks and other Catholic German tribes, replaced them with the support of the Roman church.
Do not think of the Roman church back then as a religious institution: it was the literate brains for the illiterate brawn of their Germanic allies. Priests, Bishops--and Popes--had mistresses and families. Some probably had boyfriends. They did not practice poverty, either, but since they had no military power, safety depended upon controlling the succeeding kings, in order to protect their wealth in turbulent times.
There was considerable overlap between the Senatorial class and the leadership of the church. Sidonius, one of the best-known Senators, known for his elegant writing style, became a Bishop, later sainted, in what is now Provence. He defended his diocese from the Arian Christian Goths, was imprisoned, but later was freed to (supposedly) hear Mary Magdalen's confession (according to the tablet in his crypt, although the Magdalen lived there 300 years earlier).
It's true that what classical learning and literacy survived, as well as any remnant of science and philosophy, was due to the Church. But the moral flexibility of the church was one of the reasons for the failure of the western empire: it transferred its secular support to insure its spiritual monopoly. It's likely that the Church supported the "fall of Rome," when Senators voted to overthrow the boy Emperor, Romulus Augustulus for the Ostrogothic King Odoacer, ceding him the land he coveted in Italy; they refused to tax themselves to pay him off.
What do predatory corporations and the Church, qua institution, have in common? Ironically, it's amorality; the willingness to do almost anything, for power, or for corporations, profit.
When did the Roman Catholic Church first become an institution more powerful than the state? Back at the cusp of the Fifth Century (390), when Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius the Great, who underwent months of penance, before, so goes the story, climbing the cathedral steps on his knees. His surrender entailed outlawing all worship of pagan gods, acknowledging the Church's monopoly on religious power.
By the end of the next generation, the Roman Church, in effect, took over from the failing Roman Empire . The power of non-Catholic Christian Visigoths and Ostrogoths like Odoacer and Theoderic, took longer to overthrow: Franks and other Catholic German tribes, replaced them with the support of the Roman church.
Do not think of the Roman church back then as a religious institution: it was the literate brains for the illiterate brawn of their Germanic allies. Priests, Bishops--and Popes--had mistresses and families. Some probably had boyfriends. They did not practice poverty, either, but since they had no military power, safety depended upon controlling the succeeding kings, in order to protect their wealth in turbulent times.
There was considerable overlap between the Senatorial class and the leadership of the church. Sidonius, one of the best-known Senators, known for his elegant writing style, became a Bishop, later sainted, in what is now Provence. He defended his diocese from the Arian Christian Goths, was imprisoned, but later was freed to (supposedly) hear Mary Magdalen's confession (according to the tablet in his crypt, although the Magdalen lived there 300 years earlier).
It's true that what classical learning and literacy survived, as well as any remnant of science and philosophy, was due to the Church. But the moral flexibility of the church was one of the reasons for the failure of the western empire: it transferred its secular support to insure its spiritual monopoly. It's likely that the Church supported the "fall of Rome," when Senators voted to overthrow the boy Emperor, Romulus Augustulus for the Ostrogothic King Odoacer, ceding him the land he coveted in Italy; they refused to tax themselves to pay him off.
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