Almost speechless...

Ezra Klein Finds a Fascinating Chart

2009-05-22T01:13:00.004-04:00

He explains below.

You're seeing two things here. The light blue line measures paid sick days. This is what you use if you need to take three days off because you have a fever. The dark blue line is paid sick leave. This is what you use if you need to take three months off because you have cancer. Every other country on the list offers at least one. Most offer both. The United States is alone in guaranteeing neither.

Klein goes on to say "I'm working at a serious newspaper now [WaPo] and so I'm going to try to avoid words like "barbaric" to describe policy decisions I don't like."

No, barbaric is precisely correct. And if people started saying it in "serious" newspapers like the Washington Post, then maybe we could do something about it.

I'm working on a series called American Evil. In it I will examine a different kind of American exceptionalism. One of the focuses will be on our barbaric health care system.

Obama administration sides with Bush officials against outed CIA agent

2009-05-21T21:50:00.001-04:00

George and Barack. Peas in a pod sometimes.

The Obama administration has decided to oppose the reinstatement of a civil lawsuit filed by outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.
The move represents the first public position by the administration on the issue. Obama’s position mirrors that of President George W. Bush, whose aides found themselves in the cross-fire after the agent, Plame Wilson, was outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak.

A Washington, D.C. district court dismissed the suit — Wilson v. Libby et al. — which posited that key Bush and Cheney officials violated the constitutional rights of Plame and her husband, a former ambassador. Those sued included former Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage for their gross violations of the Wilsons’ constitutional rights, as well as “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the case.

Obama’s Justice Department says the Wilsons have no legitimate claim to sue. They also put forward another startling claim.

“The Obama administration has gone one step further, suggesting Mr. Wilson failed to provide any evidence that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby harmed him,” Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility reported on their blog Wednesday. “This is particularly ironic because the government had moved to have the case dismissed before the Wilsons had the opportunity to uncover the details of how Ms. Wilson’s covert identity was revealed.

In a statement, the group’s director said they were “deeply disappointed.”

“We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson,” CREW chief Melanie Sloan said. “The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions.”

David Waldman Devastates the Dim Bulbs on CNN

2009-05-21T21:18:00.003-04:00

Waldman, always one of my favorite bloggers at Daily Kos, literally walked over a panel on CNN yesterday.

Our Man at Bilderberg

2009-05-21T20:18:00.004-04:00

The common convention is that people who care about such organizations as the Bilderbergs are suffering from some paranoid obsession that often afflicts people who have seen too many episodes of the X-Files. But as Charlie Skelton demonstrates, writing for the Guardian, it is the Bilderberg crowd that clearly suffers from paranoia.

I've never had much interest in groups like these. This is because I have never seen evidence that a group like the Bilderbergs exercise direct political power like, for example AIPAC. But when a journalist like Skelton, working for a prominent newspaper like the Guardian, gets treated like a terror suspect to impede his coverage of what is billed as a benevolent chat among elites, I get interested. From the Guardian Series: Our Man at Bilderberg:

Ten years ago, when Jon Ronson dared to report on Bilderberg, he found himself "chased by mysterious men in dark glasses through Portugal". He was scared for his safety.
"When I phoned the British embassy and asked them to explain to the powerful secret society that had set their goons on me that I was essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth, I wasn't being funny. I was being genuinely desperate," he wrote. I know exactly how he feels.
Only out of sheer desperation did I try to arrest one of the goons following me and then follow my flimsy leads up the Greek police ladder, finally catching one of the goons wet-handed in the lavatory of the department of government security. And only then did I know the extent of Bilderberg's paranoia: they had set the state police on me.
So who is the paranoid one? Me, hiding in stairwells, watching the pavement behind me in shop windows, staying in the open for safety? Or Bilderberg, with its two F-16s, circling helicopters, machine guns, navy commandos and policy of repeatedly detaining and harassing a handful of journalists? Who's the nutter? Me or Baron Mandelson? Me or Paul Volker, the head of Obama's economic advisory board? Me or the president of Coca-Cola?
It makes me want to spit, the absurdity of it: the cost, not just in Greek tax euros, but on my peace of mind, of having (conservatively) a dozen Jack Bauers assigned to tailing me. I hope the operation at least had a cool name: Operation Catastrophic Overreaction, perhaps.
So, yes, Bilderberg's paranoia is half to blame. But there is another reason why Ronson was hounded round Portugal, why I was chased round Greece, and why on Sunday the Romanian journalist Paul Dorneanu was strip-searched by goons in Vouliagmeni, held for four hours and forced to purge his camera of images (for the crime of trying to film the delegates leaving). And it is this: they can harass and detain us only because so few of us are there.
Just now, I searched for "Bilderberg" on Reuters. I did the same on AP. And this is what I turned up:

Publicity is pure salt to the giant slug of Bilderberg. So I suggest next year we turn up with a few more tubs. If the mainstream press refuses to give proper coverage to this massive annual event, then interested citizens will have to: a people's media. Find the biggest lens you can and join us for Bilderberg 2010. No idea where it's going to be, but there's usually a few days' notice.
We'll have a barbecue selling bilderburgers (with extra lies), and we will set up our own press centre near the cordon. Get some lanyards. Email me at bilderberg2010@yahoo.co.uk and we'll start prepping.
Meanwhile, petition newspapers to send a correspondent. Petition your MP to ask a question in parliament. This happened a few days ago in Holland. Citing an article by Paul Joseph Watson on prisonplanet.com, a Dutch MP asked in parliament about the involvement of the prime minister, the minister for European affairs and Queen Beatrix, asking them to make public any items that were on the agenda, and whether the ratification of the Lisbon treaty was discussed.
I've got a couple of questions I would like to ask Peter Mandelson, mainly about the freedom of the press and what he thinks about a Guardian journalist being detained, shoved and intimidated by the Greek state police on his behalf. Mandelson's office has confirmed his attendance at this year's meeting: "Yes, Lord Mandelson attended Bilberberg. He found it a valuable conference."
Oh, good. Maybe he stole a bathrobe. Peter has been a busy baron these last few days: all that beach volleyball and global strategising, then straight back to address the Google Zeitgeist conference on Monday, where he talked about "the need for regulation" of the internet. "There are worries about the impact of the internet on our society," he said. I bet he is worried; but not half as worried as I am about "the need for regulation".
But these worries are small potatoes compared with the biggest concern Bilderberg 09 has given me. My experience over the last several days in Greece has granted me a single, diamond-hard opinion. Meaning I now have two: that John McEnroe is the greatest sportsman of all time; and that we must fight, fight, fight, now – right now, this second, with every cubic inch of our souls – to stop identity cards.
I can tell you right now that the argument "If I've done nothing wrong, why would I worry about showing who I am?" is hogwash. Worse than that, it's horse hockey. It's all about the power to ask, the obligation to show, the justification of one's existence, the power of the asker over the subservience of the asked. (Did you know that most Greek police don't wear a number? This is an obligation that goes one way.)
I have learned this from the random searches, detentions, angry security goon proddings and thumped police desks without number that I've had to suffer on account of Bilderberg: I have spent the week living in a nightmare possible future and many different terrible pasts. I have had the very tiniest glimpse into a world of spot checks and unchecked security powers. And it has left me shaken. It has left me, literally, bruised.
I can tell you this from personal experience: the onus upon the individual to carry with them some external proof of their identity is transformative of his or her status as a human being. The identity card turns you from a free citizen into a suspect. It is a spanner with which to beat the individual around the head. It is the end of everything. And how much easier to put all that information inside a microchip so you don't have to carry around that pesky card all the time. How much more efficient!
Listen. I don't care if you don't love liberty. For the love of yourself: fight identity cards. Don't let them happen. STOP IDENTITY CARDS. Stop identity cards. And while you're about it: stop identity cards. And that's all I have to say, you will be delighted to know, about Bilderberg 2009. Oh, except for a giant word of thanks to everyone who has written supportive or interested comments on these blogposts (let's meet up for a proper debrief!) And one little correction: for the record, Kenneth Clarke's office has said he was "in his constituency" at the weekend, not at the Astir Palace doing sambuca shots with the CEO of Airbus. Just in case he remembers differently when asked again.

The Embarassment that is the GOP: Con't

2009-05-20T17:58:00.002-04:00

This is why I've almost stopped paying attention to these clowns. If it weren't for their sponsors in the corporate media, they would have probably dissolved by now. But as long as cable news and the Sunday talk shows still pretend they matter, the GOP will keep pretending they haven't completely self-destructed.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Party leaders are dropping a proposal aimed at changing the name of the Democratic Party.

In a deal reached Wednesday, the GOP will not vote on a resolution asking the Democrats to rename their party the "Democrat Socialist" party.

Two Republican National Committee members who had backed the measure say that supporters have agreed to change the resolution's language to urge Americans to oppose what the GOP is calling the Democrats' "socialist" agenda.

GOP Chairman Michael Steele had opposed the name-changing resolution, and other party leaders have called it "stupid" and "absurd."

Wow

2009-05-20T17:38:00.003-04:00

Via The Hill

Arlen Specter defending Pelosi?

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to -- I was about to say candid, that's too mild -- to honesty."

TPM Muckracker has more...

"Director Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn't mean that they're all giving out the information."
Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said he understands the agency's hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate in my opinion because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from ... how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

OK, you can chair the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Greenwald on where idiocy and cowardice merge once again...

2009-05-20T17:26:00.002-04:00

I really have nothing to add to this except read the whole thing.

The "debate" over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it's hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the steps that typically lead to America's National Security policies:
(1) Right-wing super-tough-guy warriors project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world -- either because they are really petrified by it or because they want others to be ("Putting Muslim Terrorists in our prisons will make us Unsafe! -- Keep them away from me, please!!!");
(2) Rather than scoff at the inane fear-mongering or point out simple facts to reveal its idiocy, Democratic "leaders" such as Harry Reid echo the right-wing fears in order to prove how Serious and Tough they are -- in our political debates, the more frightened one is, the more Serious and Tough one is -- and/or because they are genuinely frightened of being called mean names by Sean Hannity ("Harry Reid isn't as scared of this as I am, which shows that he's weak");
(3) "Journalists" who are capable of nothing other than mindlessly reciting what they hear then write articles depicting the Right's frightened neurosis as a Serious argument, and then overnight, a consensus emerges: Democrats are in big trouble politically unless they show that they, too, are as deeply frightened as the Right is.
Until recently, I thought the single most embarrassingly stupid event of the last decade's national security debates -- the kind that will make historians look back with slack-jawed amazement -- was the joint dissemination in the run-up to the war by the Bush administration and the American media of playing cards that featured all of the "Most Wanted" Iraqi Villains and their cartoon villain nicknames. Saddam Hussein was the Ace of Spades; Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash -- Mrs. Anthrax -- was the Five of Hearts; Ali Hassan al-Majid -- Chemical Ali -- was the King of Spades; sadly, Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha -- the dreaded "Dr. Germ" -- didn't make it to the deck, but she certainly had her day in the American media sun (AP: "Iraq's 'Dr. Germ' Surrenders to Coalition" -- CNN: "U.S. military holding 'Dr. Germ,' 'Mrs. Anthrax'").

AIPAC's Hidden Persuaders

2009-05-19T07:27:00.001-04:00

The Israel lobby is aiming to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran. Americans should resist its propaganda

by Richard Silverstein

Despite the ballyhoo of the recent Aipac national policy conference in Washington, when Israel-US bonds were feted, relations between the two countries are currently more strained than at any time since 1991. That was when the elder George Bush, as US president, fiercely lobbied Yitzchak Shamir to join in the Madrid peace conference. Relations then reached their nadir when James Baker uttered his infamous remark about Israel's American-Jewish supporters: "Fuck the Jews, they don't even vote for us."

If relations continue to deteriorate in coming months, we might have to go back in time to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a time when relations were this fraught.

A case in point is Iran. That bogey-nation was everywhere at the Aipac conference. Every keynote speech - if they weren't directly written by that group's staff - seemed unmistakably scripted and "on message", dedicated to the existential threat that Iran poses not just to Israel, but the entire world.

A glossy brochure distributed at the Aipac meeting showed a map (pictured below) centred on Iran and beyond, with a dark ominous ring around Iran's neighbours and as far away as India, Russia, Africa and eastern Europe. The message: these are the countries under imminent threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

A map contained in a brochure distributed at an Aipac meeting

The brochure copy even intimates that the next step for Iran is "building a missile with range to reach US territory". (Never mind that Iran doesn't yet have any ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the bomb itself for anywhere from a year to five years depending on which you source you choose to believe.)

Israel is in the midst of a massive diplomatic, political and intelligence campaign, both public and covert, that could lead - if those officials behind it have their way - towards a military strike on Iran. It is a war for the hearts and minds of Americans. Or you might call it the war before the war. In intelligence circles, this Israeli project is known as perception management and defined by the department of defence as:

Actions to convey and/or deny information ... to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders ... ultimately resulting in foreign behaviours and official actions favourable to [US] objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception and psychological operations.

The Israelis are following the template of the Bush administration's run-up to the Iraq war. First, the US government advocated half-hearted efforts at diplomatic engagement. Then it ratcheted up pressure through sanctions and UN resolutions. That is where the Israeli campaign stands now.

Aipac's members carried a unified message to Capitol Hill during their lobbying of US senators and members of Congress. They demanded that Congress pass the most draconian sanctions ever proposed against Iran. They demanded that Iran be offered a limited time in which to respond to an ultimatum insisting it drop its nuclear programme.

What then? If you review Aipac's literature and the various commentaries published either by Israeli diplomats or their supporters in the US media, they don't specify what comes next. But any sensible person can guess that the final step will be war: "Israeli leaders have ... hinted at pre-emptive military strikes if they decide that diplomacy has failed."

The Israelis surely know that the Obama administration will never go to war against Iran. In fact, they know that Obama would not approve of Israel doing so. But I've become convinced, in doing the research and speaking to knowledgeable sources, that Israel is prepared at some date in the near future to attack Iran itself, even against the wishes of the US.

This of course will put Obama in an untenable position: do US forces attack the Israelis (in effect defending the Iranians) and risk the fallout that would occur in relations between the Democratic administration and American Jews? Or does he allow the Israelis to carry on to their targets and bomb Iran, accepting the bloodletting and mayhem that will inevitably result? If Israel wishes for the latter outcome, they must lay the groundwork here in the US for tacit acceptance by the American people of a third-party attack on Iran.

Indeed, they are already a good deal of the way toward this goal, as the latest polling from Rasmussen Report reveals. According to it, 49% of Americans believe that if Israel attacks Iran then the US should help Israel.

Some readers may say this is alarmist. Before I learned some of the information I gathered from sources both public and not, I also would have labelled this as overly dramatic. But Israel hasn't shrunk, for example, from drafting opinion columns for US newspapers on the menace posed by Iran, and telling the editor that a local Jewish community leader would be attaching his name to it.

Within the US Israel exploits a willing circle of Likudist advocacy groups and thinktanks - such as the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, the Israel Project, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs as well as Aipac itself - that are closely scripted and co-ordinate their political message with Israeli diplomats. While some of these groups deny such a close affiliation, there is proof of scripting and amplification of the Israeli government's agenda. And of course there may be cases in which the organisations know the needs of their patron so well that they need no prompting.

In another example, Israeli diplomats monitored and encouraged a member of Congress to host an anti-Iranian conference that would advocate Israel's message of sanctions (and more).

Israel, along with enablers like Aipac, has not shrunk from hounding its critics. One peace activist in the US so angered Israeli authorities that he was driven from a job through a whispering campaign in the community, which also included a disparaging article leaked to a willing reporter.

The level of hubris necessary to pull this off is astonishing. Fresh off the dismissal of the Rosen-Weissman spy charges involving its own employees, Aipac is flexing its political muscle and reminding the world of its resurgence. It does this through a combination of manipulation, public lobbying and punishment of its enemies.

We in the US must be prepared to resist. We must protect ourselves from Israel's propaganda offensive ginning up war with Iran. We must encourage President Obama to stay strong in his commitment to Israeli-Arab peace, whether or not Israel is a willing partner. Keeping our eyes on the prize of peace is going to be the hardest challenge of all, because the Netanyahu government is doing everything it can to divert the world's attention.

Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama

2009-05-19T07:16:00.002-04:00

This would be funny.

Update: In response to an email query, Katie Grant, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “The letter was discussed with AIPAC, and a staffer named it that.”
Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC, said he wasn’t familiar with the particular letter but that he could “only guess that whoever wrote the [letter] used it that title as shorthand, since it’s well know that we support the Hoyer/Cantor letter it is attached to.”

GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process.

Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document.

Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

AIPAC stands for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a powerful bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group. Recently, the group found itself in the news over allegations that two former staff members were involved in espionage — though the Justice Department recently dropped the case against them and no wrongdoing was alleged against the group itself.

The file name flub was discovered by The Washington Post’s Al Kamen in his “In the Loop” Column Friday.

The email to congressmembers seeking their support said they hoped they’d sign onto “the attached letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process,” which argued that the US “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel” and added, “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.”

“Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something,” Kamen quipped. “AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?”

The practice of lobbyists writing letters for congressmembers — to which they affix their names — is not uncommon. The custom was prominently in view during the scandal involving fallen power-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose staff were sometimes responsible for drafting letters that found themselves on congressional letterhead. Abramoff pled guilty to fraud and corruption charges in 2006.

An email to Hoyer’s press secretary was not immediately returned. The spokesperson for Cantor could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could a spokesperson for AIPAC.

The letter follows as a GIF. The PDF version can be downloaded here.

President Barack Obama spoke to the AIPAC Policy Conference in June 2008.

Like Bush, Obama White House Chooses Secrecy for Key Office

2009-05-19T06:11:00.001-04:00

More same as it ever was.

ABC News

President Obama's recent about-face to fight the release of photographs purportedly showing detainee abuse met with sharp protests from watchdogs and open-government advocates.
President Obama calls it a dark and painful chapter in our history.

But it's not the first time the White House has acted at the expense of Obama's promise to run "the most transparent and accountable government in history."

A sweeping new Obama administration openness policy doesn't apply to a key White House office that supports most of Obama's key staff and advisers, administration officials confirm. Rather, the Obama White House has opted to retain a Bush-era policy that blocks information about those operations from public release.

Just weeks after taking office, the Obama administration adopted an unprecedented policy of sunlight, directing bureaucrats across government to "apply a presumption of openness" regarding the release of documents to the public, according to a memo by Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder.

Thunder From the Left - How Progressive Dissent Shaped the New Deal

2009-05-19T01:34:00.006-04:00

There has been much talk lately about the Great Depression, how it parallels our current economic crisis, and how passage of the New Deal might serve as a model for the Democrats and the new Obama administration in their attempts to rescue the economy.

But it is how the passage of the New Deal may serve as a model for the Progressive movement that I want to discuss here. For, as I will demonstrate, if it were not for the Progressive movement, and Roosevelt's harshest critics from the left, we would have ended up with a very different New Deal - one which, arguably, would not have been much of a deal at all.

In what I like to call the Children's History of America, FDR, elected on a reform agenda, swept into office and, within his first one hundred days, passed a bunch of bills that are known as the New Deal. Consequently, as the story goes, ,millions of people returned to work, the economy eventually recovered, and a new era of social security was ushered in that would last for decades. But this history is false. In fact, one cannot understand the passage of the New Deal, or FDR's first term, without giving full consideration to the forces that rose up against him from the progressive, populist, and very angry left. For those forces did more to shape the New Deal, and ensure its success, than any other factor.

If you're not a historian, chances are you don't know that there was essentially a second New Deal - the sweeping set of programs enacted in 1935 - after the 1934 midterms and before FDR's 1936 reelection campaign. Many historians even refer to this period as the Second 100 Days. In the children's history, you don't hear much about the "Second New Deal". That's a shame, for it was this set of legislative accomplishments that actually, more than any other, constituted what would be known as the New Deal. It is this set of programs that changed the country. Here is a partial list:

Emergency Relief Appropriation Act

Public Works Administration (PWA)

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Formation of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

The Wagner Act

Public Utility Holding Company Act

Social Security Act

These programs, to a large degree, were the New Deal. The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, along with the PWA and WPA created the government works program which eventually put over 10 million people to work.

The NRLB and Wagner Act effectively created organized labor by ensuring, among other things, the right to unionize and to bargain collectively with employers.

The Public Utilities Holding Company Act broke up the utility monopolies and ensured local ownership of public utilities. This was no small deal. Until its partial repeal in 1993 under Clinton, which directly led to the Enron fiascoes in California, and its full repeal in 2005, the PUHCA had maintained a tightly regulated, highly stable system of energy delivery for seventy years.

And then there's the Social Security Act. No other program of the New Deal has had a more enduring impact and affected more lives. Yet it's easy to forget just how radical this idea was in the 1930s. Roosevelt actually opposed it as too costly and opted for just the unemployment insurance part.(1) But, as it was in 1935, politicians were going along with a lot of things they had originally opposed.

"The Populist Uprising "

By the spring of 1935, the New Deal was a failure. Not that some of the measures enacted in the first 100 days hadn't helped. The economy had grown a little bit. Businesses started to feel a bit more confident. And a couple million people had gone back to work. But after two years, recovery began to falter - the country was still in a depression and approximately 1/5th of the workforce was still unemployed. And to make matters worse, the Supreme Court had declared, by unanimous consent, that Roosevelt's flagship program, the National Industrial Recovery Act, was unconstitutional. This was a devastating blow - the NIRA was not just another remedial government program, it was the remedial government program, a massive, very high profile national campaign that included a PR blitz, celebrity endorsments, and even a logo business participants could put in their windows. The administration had practically bet the farm on the NIRA and now it was dead.

But the Court was the least of Roosevelt's problems that year. Public dissatisfaction with the lack of progress on the economy was reaching a fevered pitch. It appeared, from all sides, FDR was under siege.

The Hooverites and business leaders had opposed the New Deal from inception and thought Roosevelt had gone too far in his first hundred days. Many in High Society refused to even mention FDR's name. (I don't mean they wouldn't talk about him. I mean they deliberately made a point of referring to him without mentioning his name.) But the real threat to FDR was from his own left flank. The Progressives, both Democrat and Republican, were deeply dissatisfied and thought FDR hadn't gone far enough. They also believed he was far to favorable to the oligarchs, despite his having fallen from their graces.

There were others too, outspoken critics, often referred to as the demagogues, who, by late 1935 had grown so dissatisfied with FDR that they began to plot a third party run in the upcoming 1936 election. They too believed the New Deal was too protective of the banking interests and the wealthy and didn't go far enough to help the poor. These included Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semite who railed against the bankers and the Jews, but none the less built up a following of as many as 40 million listeners to his radio show. He advocated nationalizing the banks and abolishing the Federal Reserve. And Dr. Francis Townsend, who advocated providing the elderly with a $200 a month income, had grown widely popular by mid-thirties.

Another threat to FDR was, and one that particularly caught his attention, was the a new progressive alliance in Wisconsin. Long a hotbed of progressive sentiments, Wisconsin had just elected a progressive Governor who actually ran as a "radical" telling voters, "I am not a liberal, I am what I want to be - I am a radical." In the 1930 race for Wisconsin's governor, Olson actually defeated his Republican opponent by an astounding 200,000 votes. Once in office, he introduced such progressive reforms as a progressive income tax, public unemployment insurance, and old age pensions. In 1935, he vowed to run against FDR unless he produced a more radical New Deal.

But it was Huey Long who posed the biggest threat. Despite his flamboyant, clownish demeanor, he was a lawyer and an incredibly astute politician. He had taken on the corrupt Standard Oil machine in Louisiana and won. This was unheard of. When elected governor of Louisiana, Standard oil owned that state's politics. (This fact is often excluded by establishment historians' accounts of Long's own corruption. For all his faults, he entered a game that had few rules and adapted. As a result he was able to do an immense amount of good for the poor people of his state.)

Long's popularity in the troubled years of the Depression had grown far beyond the borders of his state, however. And his 'Share the Wealth' program - where every citizen was guaranteed a base income of $2500, and every family would receive $5000 to buy a house, car and radio - was gaining immense support amongst the poor and working classes throughout the country. Democrats were concerned that if Long, who formerly had supported Roosevelt and the New Deal, was to launch a third party run in the 1936 presidential campaign, he could cost FDR the presidency.

And so, in 1935, as Franklin Roosevelt began preparing for his 1936 reelection bid, this was the environment he found himself in. A stalling recovery program, mass public dissatisfaction, and mounting opposition from his own left flank. The result was a dramatic shift to the left and the passage of a legislative coup that would have been unthinkable only two years earlier.

Stealing Huey's Thunder

Now, while it would be convenient for my thesis to depict Roosevelt as a failed moderate who was too orthodox to rise to the occasion and so was destined to historical failure were it not for the populists coming in to set him on the right path and rescue his legacy, that simply would be incorrect. The truth is much more complex. For example, some measures enacted in 1935, like the National Labor Relations Board and the Wagner Act, had been under development in Washington for years. On the other hand, Social Security, with retiree pensions, was a direct response to Dr. Townsend. In fact, the whole idea had been dubbed the "Townsend plan", though he was not the first to think of it.

And how precisely populist pressure affected Roosevelt is not wholly known. According to Raymond Moley, one of FDR's top advisors, the president had confided in him that much of the Second New Deal was to "steal Huey's thunder".(2) And some hold the position that the threat of a Long presidency merely gave the president and the Democrats cover for programs they had always supported. Call it the "now make me do it" view.

Fortunately for my thesis, however, it doesn't matter either way. The end result was that pressure from the left, often in the form of rage and condemnation of the president, moved this country dramatically in a better direction and either forced, or allowed, depending on which you prefer, Washington to enact progressive legislation that served the people.

Historians don't all agree on the extent of the impact of this pressure. But one need no further illustration than the appeals of New York Times columnist Arthur Krock. Krock was a highly prominent and influential writer in his day. A sort of "dean" of the press corp in Broderian terms. He had won four Pulitzer Prizes and mostly towed the establishment line. So his warnings of the potential of Huey Long occupying the White house struck fear into the heart of the monied class. Here is an excerpt from one of Krock's warnings:

In Washington; Roosevelt, Long or Townsend Our Social Security Choice
New York Times - Jan 18, 1935

"Nevertheless, as a glance at any Senator's correspondence will demonstrate, many, many people--perhaps several millions--believe firmly in the practicability and justice of the Townsend plan. Mr. Long, on his oath as a tribune, gets "more than 50,000 letters a week, 99 per cent approving" his share-the-wealth formula.

Alternatives Less Cheerful.

"All this should tend to reconcile those who "wonder why the President is bringing up this utopian stuff now, when business is flat on its back." It should convey to them that business could be a lot worse off than in its supine position."

And so it was. The "utopian stuff" was passed and signed into law. Not out of the will of good men wanting to do the right thing. But out of fear. Fear that unless they were willing to give the people a little piece of the pie, the people would take the whole thing.

1. Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (pg. 342)

2. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years

My liberation from Daily Kos

2009-05-19T01:22:00.003-04:00

Now that I've been banned from Daily Kos, it gives me a good opportunity to do some things I've been putting off for far too long. Namely, posting regularly to this blog.

I will be posting a final comment on my banning soon with some thoughts on Daily Kos, and some responses to the smear attempts made against me by the Usual Suspects.

In the meantime, if anyone has come here looking for my new home, this is one place. I will also be a contributor to ePluribus Media as well as Docudharma.

How Einstein Discovered Time Travel

2009-01-19T22:35:00.005-05:00

Back at the beginning of the 20th Century, there was a problem. A mundane problem perhaps, but as you will see, it led to the most revolutionary discovery in the history of science - changing the way we view space and time forever.

Scientist had kept trying to measure the speed of light, and they kept being dumbfounded.

You see, when we measure the speed of something, we have to measure that speed relative to something else. The speed of your car is measured relative to the surface of the earth. If you are riding on a train traveling 100mph, and you shoot a bullet forward 500mph, than relative to the train, the bullet will travel 500mph. But relative to the earth, it will travel 600mph - the speed of the train + the speed of the bullet.

The speed of light, however, is different. If the train traveling 100mph turns on its headlights, one might expect the light to be traveling the speed of light + 100mph. Like the bullet. But alas, this is not the case.

No matter what the frame of reference the scientists of young Einstein's day measured the speed of light against, it always traveled the same speed - approximately 186,000 miles per second.

So, if light were a bullet, and we fired it in the same direction as the train is moving, it would not move, relative to the earth, the speed of the train (100mph) + (the speed of light (186,000mps). It would just be traveling at 186,000mps. Light is always measured traveling at the same constant speed, no matter what you measure it against.

This, of course, was baffling. Light appeared to defy the laws of motion. And no matter what they came up with, scientists could not solve the problem. Until Einstein came along.

Einstein was the only one who had enough of an open mind to accept the unorthodox solution to the problem. If the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames, then space and time itself, must be relative. Indeed, even mass is relative.

This led to an astounding discovery. If one travels faster through space, for the speed of light to remain constant, the passage of time must slow down for that object. In a sense, time must be flexible to accommodate the constancy of the speed of light.

If us earthlings sent a space ship to a far away star, the faster that ship went, relative to the Earth, the slower time would appear to pass on the ship, relative to Earth. As a result, we would not only be sending that ship further into space, but further and faster into the future.

A decent way to understand this is that we are all traveling through time. We are traveling into the future. But with Einstein's discovery, we now know that the rate at which we travel into the future is elastic. And the faster we travel through space, the faster we travel into the future.

This means that we could build a spaceship that would travel at extremely high speeds, and what would be only 3 years of travel for the occupants of the ship, could be 20,000 years for those of us left on Earth.

So while nothing in Einstein's principle of relativity allows traveling backwards in time, it very conclusively allows traveling into the future at very high rates relative to Earthlings.

This would allow us to, say, build an ark of sorts, with seeds of millions of species, and send it on a high speed trip around the galaxy, only to return when Earth has recovered from some mass extinction event.

I'm sharing this because it is an important tale about the power of orthodox thinking in preventing the solving of problems.

Einstein literally had to pull the rug on our notions of time and space to account for a practical physics problem. I believe our economic problems are quite similar.

And just as with the speed of light problem in Einstein's day, the orthodox solution to our economic problems will fail. We live in the richest nation on Earth in terms of real wealth. We have an abundance of natural resources, human capital, and intellectual capital. We could, starting tomorrow, begin building the greatest, most sustainable, most compassionate and just civilization the world has ever known.

But we can't afford it?

As I've said before, money is only a symbol, a tool used to represent real wealth. And under our constitution, it is the sole authority of Congress to create money for the purpose of trade of those goods and services. Yet Congress, with the signature of Woodrow Wilson, gave that authority, in no small part, to a cartel of private bankers.

As a result, since 1913, whenever the economy has grown, and new money was needed to keep up, instead of just printing that money to accommodate, our government has in fact had to borrow it with interest. And we wonder why we are the biggest debtor nation on Earth.

It is Congress's job to make sure there is enough currency in the system to facilitate trade and keep our people at work.

How can we not afford to build the greatest infrastructure, the greatest schools, the greatest health care system, and the greenest civilization, when we have such an abundance of everything we need to do these tasks?

Our economic system is retarded. I mean that in the literal sense of the word. It can't keep up. And monetary policy is central to that retardation. Our government has the full authority to create money out of thin air, interest free, to finance the rebuilding of our civilization. Instead, we have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the banker's debt.

The orthodox "solution" is to continue to allow private individuals and foreign governments to finance our endeavors, with interest we can't afford, and keep the parasite class in charge of our economy.

The real solution is to use the instruments of our democracy to reclaim our economic future, and begin the business of rebuilding our country.

We need a new, debt free, legal tender currency, much like Abraham Lincoln's Greenbacks, to finance reconstruction and greening. This currency would only be backed by the US federal government. Since the issuance of this currency would be proportional only to the amount of good, services, and real wealth it creates, it would not be inflationary.

While this may sound unorthodox, radical even to the generations of Americans who have known no other system, it is really just the restoration of the general system we had for almost the first 150 years of our nation's history - minus the gold standard.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea how money is created as debt to private bankers. Or how the Federal reserve is neither federal or a reserve. It is a privately owned, central bank.

Many of our greatest presidents, and most of the Founders, were adamantly opposed to a central bank. Wise men? Or commie radicals

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.... The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. -James Madison

If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. -Andrew Jackson

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham Lincoln

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. - Theodore Roosevelt

The real truth of the matter is,as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson... -Franklin D. Roosevelt (in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)

Of course, despite all this wisdom, the bankers eventually won. And we may have a better chance of building a spaceship to travel to a time when we have figured out how to run an economy before we purge them once and for all.

Nixon's Wet Dream

2009-01-19T21:11:00.002-05:00

One of the most important aspects of this whole FISA mess has been largely overlooked. That is that it is not just about privacy. Or principle.

It is about political power.

The power of the Executive to spy on Americans is an incredible political weapon. Our Founders understood this even back in the 18th Century - information is power.

And if one has any doubt about the dangers of such power, one has to look no further than the presidency of Richard Nixon. There's a great scene in the movie All the President's Men where Woodward finally gets Deepthroat to talk. It is not, as far as I know, taken from an exact quote. But it is an accurate depiction of what Woodward learned:

Woodward: I'm tired of your chickenshit games. I need to know what you know.

Deepthroat: ... Mitchell [Nixon's attorney general] started doing covert stuff before anyone else. The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It's incredible.

The cover up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There's more.

What Woodward and Bernstein discovered not that long ago was that the entire intelligence establishment was being used as a political weapon against Democrats, the Democratic party, whistleblowers like Danial Ellsberg, and anti-war activists. just the way we now know the Bush administration has used the Justice Department. (A study found that Bush's Justice Dept. investigated seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as Republican officials.)

For those who may not recall, the Watergate investigation began when some CIA men, working for the Nixon reelection campaign, were caught trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Do Democrats in Congress really have such short memories?

The system, for example, put in place in AT&T's secret Room 641A, where AT&T's internet traffic is vacuumed in for mass surveillance is a delightful playground for malicious, politically motivated spies.

And by giving the authority to the president's men, without serious oversight or accountability, we are guaranteeing a repeat of the Nixon years or, probably, much worse.

What can you do with your political enemies phone calls, private information, or emails? What did Nixon's men do? They used them for opposition research. And there are already strong indications that Bush's henchmen have done the same.

As reported at by Jeff Stein at CQ:

U.S. intelligence tapped the telephone calls of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, starting in 2002.

This may well be news to many people, even though Wright revealed the taps himself in a sprawling, 15,000-word article on electronic surveillance in the Jan. 21 edition of The New Yorker magazine.

Perhaps because the article was not available online it lacked the link-juice to propel it into a frenzy over the "domestic spying" on the Web, the cable news shows and leading American newspapers.

As far as I can tell, only Pam Hess of the Associated Press picked up on Wright’s confrontation with spy chief Michael McConnell over the phone taps, and no major paper ran it.

You may not care much at the thought of your phone being tapped. Innocent people usually don't. But I can't imagine anyone passionate about politics who is okay with president Bush, or a president McCain, having the freedom to tap the phones of journalists, progressive activists, or even Democratic politicians, without detection or oversight.

This is what is at stake with this FISA bill. As has been pointed out repeatedly, even without the telecom immunity, this bill actually diminishes the judicial oversight that was put in place because of the abuses of the Nixon administration.

From the ACLU:

H.R. 6304, THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 (6/19/2008)

The ACLU recommends a no vote on H.R. 6304, which grants sweeping wiretapping authority to the government with little court oversight and ensures the dismissal of all pending cases against the telecommunication companies. Most importantly:

• H.R. 6304 permits the government to conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.

• H.R. 6304 permits only minimal court oversight. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what or where will actually be tapped.

• H.R. 6304 contains a general ban on reverse targeting. However, it lacks stronger language that was contained in prior House bills that included clear statutory directives about when the government should return to the FISA court and obtain an individualized order if it wants to continue listening to a US person’s communications.

• H.R.6304 contains an "exigent" circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time "intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired." By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn’t swallow the rule.

• H.R. 6304 further trivializes court review by explicitly permitting the government to continue surveillance programs even if the application is denied by the court. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever it gathered in the meantime.

• H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the telecommunication companies that facilitated the warrantless wiretapping programs over the last 7 years. The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that they were, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be killed.

• Members of Congress not on Judiciary or Intelligence Committees are NOT guaranteed access to reports from the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Inspector General.

House Negro

2009-01-19T21:10:00.003-05:00

The vultures are circling in on Obama now. And the levers of power are all busy positioning themselves for the big seat at the new table. And more importantly, they are exerting their considerable influence to shape Obama's cabinet and his presidency.

I had always suspected that Obama received so much establishment support because they believed he would be their house negro - weak, pliable, and under control. I've never been more convinced of it than now. I think they might be surprised.

To understand what is happening with these appointments and the power plays going on, you have to understand the pluralist nature of American politics. Aside from the usual Washington cronies - Clinton people, Beltway Democrats etc.- who are all lining up for jobs, there are several pluralist blocks who are all moving fast to make sure they pull the levers of the new president-elect.

These include the gray eminences of Wall Street - investment bankers, financial titans etc. Then there are the pro Zionist Jews - the AIPAC crowd etc. Then there are the energy barons and oil tycoons. And there are the national security and foreign policy gurus."

Many of these groups intersect and to try to see them as simple teams of players is a mistake. They often play on multiple teams, switch sides on occasion, and will devour each other if they get the chance.

One thing they all have in common though is they are extremely invested in their opposition to any real change, and the one team they rarely, if ever, play on is our, the American people's team.

Obama has his work cut out for him. Navigating the labyrinth of interests, and chess like maneuvers that they will and are pulling will be harder than anything he's ever tried before. And all this talk about a new bipartisan spirit is for public posturing and consumption. The vultures are circling. That's what they know how to do. And there are literally trillions of dollars at stake.

People should try to keep all this in mind when judging Obama's moves - his cabinet appointments etc. We've heard in the idiot press a lot about Lincoln's bipartisan cabinet appointments. What they don't talk about is why he did this - not for some kumbaya spirit of cooperation. He did it to, as the old saying goes - keep his enemies closer.

FDR did the same thing. He scared the shit out of the progressives of his day palling around with the Astors and such. He was smarter then all of them.

So, while these appeals to "trust" Obama and wait before criticizing reflect a conception of American democracy that our Founders would have found appaling and frightening, there is a defense of Obama's moves that don't invite, through blind devotion and loyalty, a totalitarian state.

And that is, stop thinking of checkers. We're in chess world now. And if you want to be a part of the political process that helps the situation and extends beyond tattooing an "O" on your forehead, at least try to figure out what the game is.

For example, Rahm Emanuel. This is a man I don't like. He represents the unprincipled demise of the Democratic party and everything it stands for. But he is a smart SOB and knows the ropes on the Hill. And, by choosing him, Obama went a long way towards neutralizing a potentially deadly opponent - the AIPAC crowd. Kind of like capturing the bishop.

Obama will almost certainly choose a free market ideologue, Wall Street insider, who's bloody, neoliberal fingerprints are all over, not only the current financial crisis, but the decline of the American middle class for the last decades, as treasury secretary.

This could be the perfect instrument to execute dramatic changes in economic policy - unless he changes Obama. This is the danger with surrounding your self with enemies. It's like playing with your queen out front. Effective, but dangerous.

But if you only take one thing from this diary, let it be this: Obama cannot pull the country to the left by tugging at the edges. As so many progressive activists have discovered, this usually leads to those edges just tearing off and becoming useless in our hands.

If you think of the political spectrum as the astroturf on a football field, the 50 yard line is now about where our 20 yard line used to be under Nixon. The way to pull that back our way is to yank the whole thing from the center.

This is how we change this country. But pulling it from the center takes far more strength than tugging at the edges. This is why Obama needs everyone, even some powerful Republicans.

So there will be a lot of people who don't understand what Obama's game is. He will be accused of being the house negro, as I witnessed only yesterday, or an Uncle Tom. Or, like after FISA, he will be accused of being a sellout.

So thicken up your skins people. Politics is war. It's going to get bloody. Criticize, debate, hold him accountable, that's our job. But try to do it with some understanding of what's going on. Because if you really knew, you might spend more time praying then you've ever done in your life.

Caving To Senator Israel

2009-01-19T21:10:00.001-05:00

Behold the power of The Lobby. They get to keep their Neocon Senator in place, firmly rooted in the US national security complex. Congratulations AIPAC.

To my timid friends who think this has nothing to do with Israel, or the fact that Lieberman is a Jew, you need to be deprogrammed.

There is a block of Jewish Americans, hard liners, right wing, and radically loyal to Israel, who have an incredible amount of power in this country. If it weren't for them, Lieberman would be out the door.

It is not anti-Semitic to acknowledge this. It has nothing to do with Jews as a race. In fact, the vast majority of Jewish Americans DO NOT support the militant, radical agenda of The Lobby.

That doesn't stop them from trying to play the race card every time someone criticizes their radical, militant agenda. According to them, Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is an anti-Semite.

But here in the real world we obviously have a problem. The right wing Jewish Lobby has way too much power over the American political system and specifically, the Democratic party.

If Joe Lieberman and the other Friends of Israel had their way, we would be at war with Iran right now, and possibly Syria too. In fact, the Middle East would probably be a burning cinder right now. And they will do everything in their power to ensure that Barack Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq are a complete failure. Fortunately, the power of The Lobby is not without limits and their grand plans for Iran have been put on hold. But not for long.

Remember, it is they who ushered the rise of the Neocons, many of which are dual American/Israeli citizens. I'm talking about the Richard Perles, Paul Wolfowitzes, and other Bush Neocons who are defacto agents of the Israeli foreign policy agenda. The power behind the Neocons has always been AIPAC and company. It is striking that so few on the left have actually acknowledged this fact. And it is The Lobby that is behind many of the caves on foreign policy by the Democrats.

Yet people on the Left always say the Dems are caving to Bush. No, they are caving to the Jewish Lobby.

The problem for the Left in discussing this is we really have two kinds of Jews here. We have the Jewish race, who are our brothers and sisters and, far more often than not, our political allies. And then we have the right wing, radically pro Israel Jewish political block. The latter is a completely different thing. And only when we separate the two, will we be able to even discuss it, much less defeat this political foe.

The Jewish political block hides behind their race for protection from criticism. They claim that criticism of their radical agenda is really an extension of the racial persecution they have endured for generations. And since this persecution is quite real, it is an extremely effective cover.

One of my best friends is a Jew. And he finds it incredibly offensive when the hardliners cry anti-Semitism every time someone challenges their agenda. He believes it is a dishonor to the real Jews who were persecuted for their race. I agree.

If anyone claims that Lieberman's retaining of his chairmanship is anything but a cave to the Israel lobby, you are either pathetically uninformed, or a liar. I have no doubt that some will pop up in the comments.

And for those who will inevitably cry anti-Semite at me, let me say in advance, I am the most anti-racist person you could meet. I love all peoples and I love the Jewish people. Most of my heros, Dylan, Einstein, the Gershwin brothers, many others, are Jews.

This is not about Jews the race. It is about the right wing Jewish political block. They are a threat to the political process, our national security, and world peace. They must be defeated. And allowing Joe Lieberman to stay is not the way to do it.

How the US Government Was Overthrown In Three Easy Steps

2008-12-10T07:06:00.002-05:00

So what if I told you that the powers of financial capitalism (bankers etc.), had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.

This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations?

And what if I told you they had succeeded?

Wow! The most powerful bankers creating a world system of financial control, dominating the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole, with secret meetings. Surely you would think Tocque has fallen under the spell of a wild conspiracy theory.

But you can put away the cat in the tinfoil hat. Those are not my words. And it's not a theory. They are the words of one of the greatest, most eminent historians in modern times, the late Carroll Quigley - of Harvard, Princeton and the Georgetown Foreign School.

Here is bill Clinton referring to his former college professor Quigley at the 1992 Democratic convention:

"As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest nation in history because our people had always believed in two things: that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so."

Quigley could write credibly about the far reaching aims of these ruling elites because he himself was a member of the ruling class and, as such, he was given unprecedented access to their private files and records. When he published these words in his 1300 page tome, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, not only was he adding to the historical record a previously untold story, he was making history himself in doing so.

The story I am about to share is critically important. One simply cannot understand politics without understanding the significant role the ruling class plays in it - behind the scenes, and beyond the grasp of democratic oversight. Quigley is an essential introduction to what I call the adult history of the world. And it is only with this historical understanding that we can understand the forces shaping our world, and possibly hope to affect them.

The time for the common man, or at the very least the educated political class like us, to be let in on the secret has long since passed. To take our country back, we must know who exactly we are taking it back from. And we must know what their real agenda is, and their methods for achieving it. It is simply unacceptable in this information age for so many to be oblivious to the real forces of political power, and to allow those forces to operate in secrecy.

These excerpts from Quigley are just the beginning. And while his revelations are about the financial powers of the early 20th Century, they are essential for understanding the power structures that exist today.

Perhaps most importantly, his revelations help us recognize that there is indeed a power class, working behind the scenes, acting upon our government, the mass media and education to bring about a world that is very much contrary to the interests and aims of the public.

The Historian Spills the Beans

Tragedy and Hope is not a book about the ruling class, and it is certainly not a "conspiracy" book. It is, as its title says, a history of the modern world. Quigley has merely reinserted the role of the ruling powers back into the narrative where they belong for any accurate account.

But in the process, Quigley drops a number of bombshells. And I don't mean two week press cycle bombshells. I mean rewrite history bombshells. Here is an incredibly brief synopsis of some of them, followed by the relevant excerptions. (I have linked to the excerpt that corresponds to each item. Just click the number to quickly scroll down.)

BOMBSHELL #1

Cecil Rhodes, the founder of De Beers and creator of the Rhodes' Trust (of which the Rhodes' Scholarship is a part) formed a secret society with some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Britain and New York. The primary goal of this group was to federate the English speaking world and to expand the British empire. The structure of this society was an inner circle of "initiates" and outer circles of "helpers." The outer circles were called Round Table groups.

This was during the Gilded Age and it is difficult to even comprehend the wealth of these people (I posted a pic of one of their houses just to convey). And to truly understand their aims, you have to appreciate the reach of their industry. These were the first globalists of the modern era and their vision was breathtaking in scope. They sought to create a transnational trading system that would allow them unfettered access to markets and resources worldwide with minimal red tape. In essence, they were the pioneers of globalization and national sovereignty and colonial unrest was their primary impediment.

It appears the specific goals of this group evolved over the years, and their dream of a world federation gave way to a softer, more subtle alignment. But one can only describe their general aim of recalibrating the political environment, consisting of most major nations, into a global free trading system as being highly successful.

We are witnessing now the fruition of a plan set in motion over a century ago, conceived in secret, and implemented over multiple generations. And while the modern world certainly differs from that imagined by these founders, they are truly the architects of what we may call the Anglo-American empire that thrives today. They laid the foundation, both for the transnational banking and industrial system we have now, and for the methods of exerting the power to create that system.

Intermission

At this point, if this isn't blowing your mind a bit, it's because you already know all about Carroll Quigley and his revelations, you haven't been reading carefully, or you think I'm off my rocker. Let me assure you, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I have zero interest in secret societies. Skull and Bones bores me. My only interest in the ruling class is their subversion, for their own aims, of American democracy, and the many crimes against humanity and nature they commit daily around the world.

It is only to the extent that they are a force in politics that I have any interest at all. Through my involvement in the entertainment industry and academic associations I have known more than a few in the ruling class (mostly their offspring) and I can tell you unequivocally that they are not all evil, Bohemian Grove is not a cult but a fancy camping trip, and that almost all the conspiracy theories you will find on the interenet are wrong. There is, as far as I know, no Illuminati or any other such bullshit. And this is not the X-Files.

What we have is pluralism meets feudalism with a hefty amount of mafia thrown in. The ruling class in the early 20th Century, as it is now, was not monolithic. And in spite of their working together to bring about one globalized order, they often compete and work against each other, just like any other political bloc. It is imperative to understand, this is not a conspiracy. It was in its conception. And the powerful certainly conspire and collude daily. But "globalization" is a movement, not too unlike the progressive movement. The difference is the globalists have literally trillions of dollars, euros, and pounds to throw around on their campaign.

BOMBSHELL #2

The Council on Foreign Relations was a front organization for this group. This shouldn't come as any surprise. The CFR is known well now as a trade lobby. And many also already have a pretty good idea of their role in empire maintenance. But to discover their secret origins was one of Quigley's greatest finds. And if one has any doubt about the power of the CFR, one merely has to read this bit of homespun wisdom spoken on the Senate floor from Senator Earnest Hollings (D) of South Carolina (Congressional Record, June 30, 1993, S8315):

If you ever run for President, you get very wonderful, embossed invitations from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, and you get the coffee and fine china, and, man, you are really a high muckety-muck.

And then what they do is get you to swear on the altar of free trade an undying loyalty and support---free trade, free trade. That is all they want. And they co-opt every one of these young Senators that want to run for President.

In England, the front is called the Royal Institute of International Affairs or Chatham House.

BOMBSHELL #3

Here Quigley describes the methods the group uses to implement its far reaching aims. I'm going to revisit this part in my next post. But this should be of special interest to us all. In fact, I place this as the most important of all of Quigley's revelations.

"The methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from [certain universities) and the linking of these men to the [Group] by matrimonial alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the [Group] in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention. (Carroll Quigley - The Anglo American Establishment

Thus the title of this diary - Three Easy Steps. This movement has penetrated every power structure civilized life - from politics of course, to journalism (See bombshell #4), and even down to our schools and universities, all with the goal of facilitating their control.

BOMBSHELL #4

The group had significant control over the most powerful newspapers in the US and Britain, and infiltrated the Left-wing with such instruments as the New Republic:

The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript)

Here begins the excerpt section. It's a hard read with many unfamiliar names - and some you will know. But I highly recommend reading it. There is far more treasure in here than I outlined.

#1 The Plot

This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher), and Lord Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle of Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization)....Thus the central part of the secret society was established by March 1891. It continued to function as a formal group, although the outer circle was, apparently, not organized until 1909-1913.

Quigley describes the "outer", Round Table group's formation thusly:

The Round Table Groups have already been mentioned in this book several times, notably in connection with the formation of the British Commonwealth in chapter 4 and in the discussion of appeasement in chapter 12 ("the Cliveden Set"). At the risk of some repetition, the story will be summarized here, because the American branch of this organization (sometimes called the "Eastern Establishment' ) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation.

The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups organized by Lionel Curtis, Philip H. Kerr (Lord Lothian), and (Sir) William S. Marris in 1908- 1911. This was done on behalf of Lord Milner, the dominant Trustee of the Rhodes Trust in the two decades 1905-1925. The original purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and William T. Stead (1849-1912), and the money for the organizational work came originally from the Rhodes Trust. By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries, including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a rather loosely organized group in the United States (George Louis Beer, Walter Lippmann, Frank Aydelotte, Whitney Shepardson, Thomas W. Lamont, Jerome D. Greene, Erwin D. Canham of the Christian Science Monitor, and others). The attitudes of the various groups were coordinated by frequent visits and discussions and by a well informed and totally anonymous quarterly magazine, The Round Table, whose first issue, largely written by Philip Kerr, appeared in November 1910.

...

Money for the widely ramified activities of this organization came originally from the associates and followers of Cecil Rhodes, chiefly from the Rhodes Trust itself, and from wealthy associates such as the Beit brothers, from Sir Abe Bailey, and (after 1915) from the Astor family. Since 1925 there have been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J. P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company.

The chief backbone of this organization grew up along the already existing financial cooperation running from the Morgan Bank in New York to a group of international financiers in London led by Lazard Brothers. Milner himself in 1901 had refused a fabulous offer, worth up to $100,000 a year, to become one of the three partners of the Morgan Bank in London, in succession to the younger J. P. Morgan who moved from London to join his father in New York (eventually the vacancy went to E. C. Grenfell, so that the London affiliate of Morgan became known as Morgan, Grenfell, and Company). Instead, Milner became director of a number of public banks, chiefly the London Joint Stock Bank, corporate precursor of the Midland Bank. He became one of the greatest political and financial powers in England, with his disciples strategically placed throughout England in significant places, such as the editorship of The Times, the editorship of The Observer, the managing directorship of Lazard Brothers, various administrative posts, and even Cabinet positions. Ramifications were established in politics, high finance, Oxford and London universities, periodicals, the civil service, and tax-exempt foundations.

#2 Expanding the Empire to the US - Council on Foreign Relations

At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this system had to be greatly extended. Once again the task was entrusted to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J. P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group. The American organizers were dominated by the large number of Morgan "experts," including Lamont and Beer, who had gone to the Paris Peace Conference and there became close friends with the similar group of English "experts" which had been recruited by the Milner group. In fact, the original plans for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations were drawn up at Paris. The Council of the RIIA (which, by Curtis's energy came to be housed in Chatham House, across St. James's Square from the Astors, and was soon known by the name of this headquarters) and the board of the Council on Foreign Relations have carried ever since the marks of their origin. Until 1960 the council at Chatham House was dominated by the dwindling group of Milner's associates, while the paid staff members were largely the agents of Lionel Curtis. The Round Table for years (until 1961) was edited from the back door of Chatham House grounds in Ormond Yard, and its telephone came through the Chatham House switchboard.

The New York branch was dominated by the associates of the Morgan Bank. For example, in 1928 the Council on Foreign Relations had John W. Davis as president, Paul Cravath as vice-president, and a council of thirteen others, which included Owen D. Young, Russell C. Leffingwell, Norman Davis, Allen Dulles, George W. Wickersham, Frank L. Polk, Whitney Shepardson, Isaiah Bowman, Stephen P. Duggan, and Otto Kahn. Throughout its history the council has been associated with the American Round Tablers, such as Beer, Lippmann. Shepardson. and Jerome Greene.
...

The academic figures have been those linked to Morgan, such as James T. Shotwell, Charles Seymour, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Philip Jessup, Isaiah Bowman and, more recently, Philip Moseley, Grayson L. Kirk, and Henry M. Wriston. The Wall Street contacts with these were created originally from Morgan's influence in handling large academic endowments. In the case of the largest of these endowments, that at Harvard, the influence was usually exercised indirectly through "State Street," Boston, which, for much of the twentieth century, came through the Boston banker Thomas Nelson Perkins.

The American Group and the CIA

Closely allied with this Morgan influence were a small group of Wall Street law firms, whose chief figures were Elihu Root, John W. Davis, Paul D. Cravath, Russell Leffingwell, the Dulles brothers (Alan Dulles was head of CIA) and, more recently, Arthur H. Dean, Philip D. Reed, and John J. McCloy. Other nonlegal agents of Morgan included men like Owen D. Young and Norman H. Davis.

Roots of the Anglo-American alliance

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy. In England the center was the Round Table Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company or its local branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Some rather incidental examples of the operations of this structure are very revealing, just because they are incidental. For example, it set up in Princeton a reasonable copy of the Round Table Group's chief Oxford headquarters, All Souls College. This copy, called the Institute for Advanced Study, and best known, perhaps, as the refuge of Einstein, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, and George F. Kennan, was organized by Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller's General Education Board after he had experienced the delights of All Souls while serving as Rhodes Memorial Lecturer at Oxford. The plans were largely drawn by Tom Jones, one of the Round Table's most active intriguers and foundation administrators.(cont. below)

#3. The Triple Front

THE MILNER GROUP could never have been built up by Milner's own efforts. He had no political power or even influence. All that he had was ability and ideas. The same thing is true about many of the other members of the Milner Group, at least at the time that they joined the Group. The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton (Viscounts Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook). The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886. This Cecil Bloc was built up by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne and third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903). The methods used by this man were merely copied by the Milner Group. These methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the Cecil Bloc by matrimonal alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention.

#4. Controlling the Media

The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript). In fact, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor was the chief American correspondent (anonymously) of The Round Table, and Lord Lothian, the original editor of The Round Table and later secretary of the Rhodes Trust (1925-1939) and ambassador to Washington, was a frequent writer in the Monitor. It might be mentioned that the existence of this Wall Street, Anglo-American axis is quite obvious once it is pointed out. It is reflected in the fact that such Wall Street luminaries as John W. Davis, Lewis Douglas, Jock Whitney, and Douglas Dillon were appointed to be American ambassadors in London.

...This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The Observer, the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table (founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called "Chatham House" (of which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford...

Infiltrating the Left-wing and the New Republic

More than fifty years ago the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy ... or take over but was really threefold: (1) to keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could "blow off steam," and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went "radical."

There was nothing really new about this decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. What made it decisively important this time was the combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall Street financier, at a time when tax policy was driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges for their fortunes, and at a time when the ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to appear under the banner of the Third International.

The best example of this alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing publications was The New Republic, a magazine founded by Willard Straight, using Payne Whitney money, in 1914. Straight, who had been assistant to Sir Robert Hart (Director of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service and the head of the European imperialist penetration of China) and had remained in the Far East from 1901 to r9l:, became a Morgan partner and the firm's chief expert on the Far East. He married Dorothy Payne Whitney whose names indicate the family alliance of two of America's greatest fortunes. She was the daughter of William C. Whitney, New York utility millionaire and the sister and co-heiress of Oliver Payne, of the Standard Oil "trust." One of her brothers married Gertrude Vanderbilt, while the other, Payne Whitney, married the daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who enunciated the American policy of the "Open Door" in China. In the next generation, three first cousins, John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney, and Michael Whitney ("Mike") Straight, were allied in numerous public policy enterprises of a propagandist nature, and all three served in varied roles in the late New Deal and Truman administrations. In these they were closely allied with other "Wall Street liberals," such as Nelson Rockefeller.

The New Republic was founded by Willard and Dorothy Straight, using her money, in 1914, and continued to be supported by her financial contributions until March 23, 1953. The original purpose for establishing the paper was to provide an outlet for the progressive Left and to guide it quietly in an Anglophile direction. This latter task was entrusted to a young man, only four years out of Harvard, but already a member of the mysterious Round Table group, which has played a major role in directing England's foreign policy since its formal establishment in 1909. This new recruit, Walter Lippmann, has been, from 1914 to the present, the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs. His biweekly columns, which appear in hundreds of American papers, are copyrighted by the New York Herald Tribune which is now owned by J. H. Whitney. It was these connections, as a link between Wall Street and the Round Table Group, which gave Lippmann the opportunity in 1918, while still in his twenties, to be the official interpreter of the meaning of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to the British government.

A final word

Please use caution when reading this. There is a broader context to this that I am unable to address in this space. Quigley's Tragedy and Hope is over 1300 pages and these citations are scattered seamlessly throughout.

The point is not to assert that there is a secret group who is pulling the strings of the modern world. It is far more complex. It is possible that there still exist the inner circle of "initiates." But I have no evidence for it. In fact, the evidence strongly suggest that after 1910 or so, the whole organization took on a new character. And it certainly got uglier.

The point is to draw light on this hidden part of our history and the inner workings of the one percent of one percent. They love the shadows and secrecy. They control the flow of information to a horrifying extent. They have untold influence over our government in ways most people can't imagine.

And they have a perilous vision for our world. Who has jurisdiction over a transnational economy. Who can regulate it? What democratic institution can even stand up to it?

This is the central downfall of the globalization idea. As David Rothkopf observes in this Newsweek column, having a global economy is great for the pirates, but is devasting for democracy, sovereignty, and justice.

The current financial crisis is another such example, producing serious questions about the influence of the superclass. Of the world's elites, none has strutted the world stage for the past decade like global investment bankers. Masters of money, they created something new: global markets and a constantly evolving array of securities that were both beyond the reach and the comprehension of regulators. Now, the value of some of the complex investment vehicles they created is proving to be illusory.

As a consequence, the world economy was set for the crisis that is currently unfolding. There was no effective global regulator to keep the system in check, and there was no real voice for the average Joe. The Federal Reserve stepped in to stabilize the burnout of one of these major market makers—even though they have no jurisdiction over investment banks, even though many of those supporting the bailout/buyout were the same who have long clamored for "self-regulation," even though many were the ones who had cited the moral hazard of helping to bail out homeowners and encouraging their bad borrowing behavior. And so you have a financial leadership structure that bails out investment bankers worldwide, but not homeowners.

I'll leave you with this video clip I excerpted from the publisher of Harper's and Texaco heir Lewis Lapham's movie, The American Ruling CLass

"The ruling class is so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control democracy, I feel." - Walter Cronkite

ABC News: US Military Plotted to Attack US Cities - Frame Cuba

2008-01-21T02:25:00.000-05:00

From ABC News May 1, 2001

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

But wait. There's more...

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

Read the rest of the article from ABC News

Corporations Sure Bring Out the Best in People

2008-01-01T01:06:00.000-05:00

What is it about the corporate business model that brings out such good in people? Is it that view of the Manhattan skyline that makes one look out over the masses and think, how can I serve humanity today? Is it that corporate charter that demands, Do the right thing? Or maybe it's just those multi-million dollar Christmas bonuses.

I have spent over 20 years trying to figure it out. Of course the corporation is merely a neutral organizational structure. It can't be blamed for what real people do within that structure any more than you can blame the road for bad drivers. Right?

Not exactly. In the San Fernando valley all the main roads were designed to run a pretty perfect north-south, east-west. The result is that twice a day, in the east-west direction, the sun setting or rising silhouettes the traffic lights making them practically invisible. This is an example of road design bringing out the worst in drivers. And incidentally, one that almost cost me my life.

The corporate model, as implemented under US law, has some design flaws of its own. And these design flaws go to the heart of why corporations tend to make people, far more often than not, behave in either unethical, immoral, or even abhorrent ways.

Here I will show that the widespread anti-corporate sentiment so many Americans feel, which may seem reactionary and undefined, is in fact quite rational and based on a real phenomenon. Countless accounts of corporate crime and malfeasance have been documented in film, books, and online. (None more succinct than the film 'The Corporation' where scores of top corporations were analyzed using standard behavioral models and found to be sociopaths. This wasn't just a clever trick. Modern corporate behavior met all the criteria for deviant, anti-social behavior without conscience.)

Personal experience too has shown people first hand that dealing with corporations, from credit card companies, insurance companies and telecommunications companies, to even their local drugstore chain, often leaves them victims.

But rarely is an attempt made to explain the phenomena. And as long as bad corporate behavior is attributed exclusively to people instead of the system itself, we will never be able to address the problem.

So here's what took me years to figure out. Not that it should have. It's extremely simple and part of it is right there in bold print: LLC. Limited liability corporation.

I have identified three fundamental components of the corporate model which contribute to sociopathic behavior. But none is more influential than limited liability. This is nothing short of an invitation to act without consequence. And when people are allowed to act without consequence or accountability, they will do bad things. We are an imperfect species, susceptible to temptation. Even decent people are capable of doing bad things without the threat of accountability. We've known this since the stone age. This is why we have laws.

But the corporate model protects people from the law. It allows people to act behind a shield of limited liability and as a result, corporations willingly break the law knowing that the increased profit gained will be less than the fines imposed for the illegal act. This shield also benefits the shareholders who get to participate and profit from a criminal operation from a nice, tidy distance.

There's another primary contributor to the sociopathic tendencies of corporate operators. And it is written into the law itself. As corporate attorney Robert Hinkley writes in his essay, "How Corporate Law Inhibits Social Responsibility:

The provision in the law I am talking about is the one that says the purpose of the corporation is simply to make money for shareholders. Every jurisdiction where corporations operate has its own law of corporate governance. But remarkably, the corporate design contained in hundreds of corporate laws throughout the world is nearly identical. That design creates a governing body to manage the corporation–usually a board of directors–and dictates the duties of those directors. In short, the law creates corporate purpose. That purpose is to operate in the interests of shareholders. In Maine, where I live, this duty of directors is in Section 716 of the business corporation act, which reads:

...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders....

Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, its legal effect does not. This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders.

Think about this. What these laws, in every state of the Union, say is that corporations are required to place profit above every other consideration. What if you or I placed profit above every consideration? What would we be? Sociopaths.

Yet we have institutionalized this very standard into US law. A legal precept that not only allows, but requires that corporations place the profits of their stakeholders above the interests of society as a whole.

It is fun to watch the disciples of Ayn Rand and Milton Freidman jump through intellectual hoops to try to rationalize how corporations acting exclusively in their own self interests somehow benefit society. And many get paid big bucks to do this circus act.

But a circus act it is. Even wild dogs understand that acting in the interests of the pack is often necessary for survival. Perhaps the Rockefellers should have started with a kennel before attempting the University of Chicago.

Some will argue correctly that corporations are not all evil and many provide great benefits to society through the products and services they provide. This is true, but it is also a strawman argument. There is no requirement that, for a business to be profitable and provide a useful product, it must be limited of liability and possess the singular consideration of maximizing profit at the expense of all social responsibility.

To the contrary, our economy would be far more prosperous without these lawbreaking sociopaths devouring real innovation and competition. And as time has shown, the harm they do to society and the environment in their tunneled quest for profits costs our economy far more than it pays back.

As corporation buy up a greater and greater share of our economy, and permeate more and more of our lives with their sociopathic ways, they threaten far more than our economy. They are destroying good itself. I'm beginning to see the corporate ethos trickle down to ordinary people and small businesses. A new era of Darwinian animalism is taking hold in our society where the choice of doing right and wrong is made on a calculator.

I see more and more commercial advertisements where desire for a product is represented by greed and selfishness. One even depicted a father stealing his small child's waffle from the breakfast table - because it was just so delicious. This was supposed to be cute. But it was really just sick. A sick commercial for an increasingly corporate society.

There is one last point I want to make. While the corporate system of unaccountability and sociopathic profit seeking allows otherwise decent people to do bad things, it also attracts people who already have sociopathic tendencies. If you're a veritable scumbag who wasn't cuddled enough as a baby, you will thrive at Exxon, or CIGNA, or Citibank, or literally thousands of other top corporations. Someone did a study that showed just that (Link provided kindly by OHdog. Much gratitude.)

The epidemic disease of corporatism has spread so much that I'm not sure how it can be stopped. But however we stop it, I am sure it will involve clearly defining its root causes.

The shield from accountability and the singular goal of profit at the exclusion of all other considerations is a bad system. It's bad for the planet, bad for society, and even bad for the economy.

Social Capitalism

Muhammad Yunus, who won the Noble Prize in Economics last year, proposed an interesting idea at his acceptance speech. Here's a brief excerpt:

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

...

Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.

Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and the second type of business as social business.

Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be ploughed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.

Once social business is recognized in law, many existing companies will come forward to create social businesses in addition to their foundation activities. Many activists from the non-profit sector will also find this an attractive option. Unlike the non-profit sector where one needs to collect donations to keep activities going, a social business will be self-sustaining and create surplus for expansion since it is a non-loss enterprise. Social business will go into a new type of capital market of its own, to raise capital.

Young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries, will find the concept of social business very appealing since it will give them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative talent. Many young people today feel frustrated because they cannot see any worthy challenge, which excites them, within the present capitalist world. Socialism gave them a dream to fight for. Young people dream about creating a perfect world of their own.

Almost all social and economic problems of the world will be addressed through social businesses. The challenge is to innovate business models and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial services for the poor, information technology for the poor, education and training for the poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy - these are all exciting areas for social businesses.

I don't fully subscribe to Yunus' idea as presented because I believe it underplays the role of democratic government, which I still very much believe in. But what an incredible thought. Social businesses. Owned by everyone. With two simultaneous goals - success and social benefit.

I included his opening salutations to give you the idea of who he was addressing that night. I would love to know how badly his speech horrified his audience.

TheTruth About Global Warming

2007-11-07T01:03:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make. I've been lying about global warming for years. You see, I have known for over a decade that we were long past the "tipping point" for preventing catastrophic climate change. But I also believed, and still do, that it is a moral imperative to act as though we have a chance, just in case the data is wrong. And so when people asked if there was anything we could do to prevent global warming, I would lie.

Because of my involvement with certain environmental organizations, I was exposed to the science of climate change pretty early. We didn't call it global warming back then. We called it the greenhouse effect. But the truth is, all the way back in the late 70s and early 80s, the facts about global warming were very well established (a very important point I'll get to in my next diary). And way back then, scientists, like modern day prophets, were already predicting what we're witnessing right now - extreme weather events, melting at the poles, droughts, fires and floods. It's almost spooky now, to remember back when these predictions were only abstract notions of a seemingly uncertain future. But facts they were then, just as they are now.

There is one fact that I've never written about or even discussed with close friends until recently. It's the kind of fact that makes people want to give up (We can never give up). But I now believe that circumstances require us to confront the truth of our situation, no matter how painful or scary it may be.

Residence Time

Let me tell you a secret. Or at least it might as well be a secret because hardly anyone talks about it. It's called residence time. This is the measure of how long a gas stays in the atmosphere before being reabsorbed. And the residence time for CO2 has grave consequences for our planet and our future - which is why I suspect no one wants to talk about it. It wasn't in Al Gore's movie. But if you're one of the overwhelming majority of people who has never even heard of this term, let that be an indication of just how far we are from having even a remotely serious discussion about global warming.

This figure shows the degree to which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions persist in the atmosphere over time. The lifetime of a gas in the atmosphere is generally known as its "residence time", but unlike other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide does not undergo a simple decline over a single predictable timescale. Instead, the excess carbon is first diluted by the carbon cycle as it mixes into the oceans and biosphere (e.g. plants) over a period of a few hundred years, and then it is slowly removed over hundreds of thousands of years as it is gradually incorporated into carbonate rocks.

The dilution of carbon is such that only 15-30% is expected to remain in the atmosphere after 200 years, with most of the rest being either incorporated into plants or dissolved into the oceans. This leads to a new equilibrium being established; however, the total amount of carbon in the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system remains elevated. To restore the system to a normal level, the excess carbon must be incorporated into carbonate rocks through geologic processes that progress exceedingly slowly. As a result, it is estimated that between 3 and 7% of carbon added to the atmosphere today will still be in the atmosphere after 100,000 years (Archer 2005, Lenton & Britton 2006). This is supported by studies of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a large naturally occurring release of carbon 55 million years ago that apparently took ~200,000 years to fully return to pre-event conditions (Zachos et al. 2001). (Source)

Image by Robert A. Rohde and courtesy of Global Warming Art.

What this means is, if humans stopped the engine of the entire world today, shut down every coal fired power plant from here to China, turned off every single automobile, stopped burning any carbon based substances from natural gas to firewood, and miraculously reduced global greenhouse emissions to exactly zero, we could not stop what is happening, and about to happen to our planet.

And because we have entered what I call runaway climate change, with numerous feedback loops kicking in, even if we stopped the engine of the world, not only will global warming continue, but it will continue to get worse.

The global warming we're seeing now is not the result of decades of CO2 emissions. It is the accumulative result of centuries of emissions. All that CO2 that went up George Washington's chimney, and all that CO2 that came out of Henry Ford's Model-T is still up there, suffocating our planet. And all the CO2 that we have been emitting over the last 50 years, billions of tons, will still be suffocating our planet in the year 2200. Some of it will even be around in the year 202,000 A.D.

We have permanently altered our atmosphere, and our climate.

Our New Moral Imperative

It's time to face reality. We can't "fix" global warming. And we can't prevent it. We don't have seven years. We don't have five.

Al Gore and Richard Branson have offered a reward if someone can figure out a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I pray some one wins that prize. But when you really think about what that will take, it seems unlikely it can happen in time to reverse what has already begun.

But this contest at least confirms to me that Mr. Gore is familiar with the residence time of CO2 – not that I had any doubt. I suspect he has been operating under the same moral imperative I have – pretend we can fix this just in case, by some fluke, we can.

But we now have a new moral imperative - we must prepare the people of the world for catastrophic global climate change, and take measures to minimize the inevitable suffering that will result.

Mr. Gore has called for a Global Marshall Plan, based on the initiative after WWII to rebuild Europe, to move the world toward environmental sustainability. I strongly support that effort. But our Global Marshall Plan must also include mobilizing our resources to deal with global water shortages, mass migrations, the crashing global economy, and the threat of numerous wars.

We cannot continue to walk blindly into this future hoping that some miracle will rescue us from peril. Our moral imperative now is to survive that peril.

Foreshadowing

Yesterday, a new report was released called "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change".

This report is similar to the Pentagon study released in 2003 called An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United

Both reports address the implications of global warming from a national security perspective. And both reports read like a geopolitical horror story.

It's almost funny. We've gotten to see a little microcosm of the kind of world conflict envisioned in both reports play out right here in the US. Georgia, Alabama and Florida are in a spat over water rights as the long drought diminishes supplies. Lawsuits have been threatened.

Now imagine if Georgia, Alabama, and Florida all had their own armies, even nuclear weapons. This is what we're looking at. Water wars, mass migrations, famine and severe political turmoil.

We can take steps now to help mitigate the social and geopolitical disaster that is every bit the threat posed by the climate disaster. But we have to acknowledge it first.

A Civilization Policy

I want us to work to fix global warming. But we haven't even begun to think seriously about what is involved. Our entire civilization has been designed around fossil fuels. Cheap oil is written into the blueprints of modern civilization in ways we don't even realize, from suburban sprawl, to global trade. Five years? Try two hundred. We're talking about reinventing our entire society, infrastructure, economy.

For over a century we've been designing our civilization around cheap fossil energy. Where once communities sprung up in walking distance, now you most likely have to drive miles just to get a loaf of bread.

And let's not even mention business and trade. It takes a lot of oil to get all that wheat gluten from China. And yet the oligarchs are dead set on fulfilling David Rockefeller's dream of a one world economy.

Then we have Ted Steven's bridge to nowhere. I really wish we would let him build it. What a fine monument to a failed idea. A failed civilization.

We can change civilization. But let's not delude ourselves that this is merely an energy problem. We have to restructure our entire way of life, from the way we trade and distribute goods, to where we work and live. I believe what we lack in a replacement for cheap energy, we can make up for in efficiency and restructuring. Did you know we waste as much as 80% of the energy we use? And yet almost every estimate on how much solar energy we would need to replace fossil fuels uses current consumption levels. If we even approach 50% efficiency, solar energy becomes much more feasible.

But we have to get serious. Our energy policy needs to become a home and office insulation policy. A civil engineering policy. A trade policy. An electric car policy. It needs to be a restructuring of Western civilization policy.

There is hope

Having the residence time of CO2 out in the open is not just to plan for the worst. It also informs our strategies for planning a solution.

The Gore/Branson initiative for example. I think we should put everything we have into carbon sequestration technology - which is what their contest is going for. It may not bear fruit for decades. But it does offer the promise of correcting our mistake.

Massive reforestation is a potent form of carbon sequestration. But we also must develop technology to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Granted, it's a long shot. But it is by no means impossible. And until the carbon cycle becomes a serious part of the debate, not only will we not prepare for the worst, we will greatly diminish our chances for a possible solution. We must change the nature of the discussion.

But our political leaders, the media, and even our fellow citizens are living in a fantasy world. I won't even honor the proposals by the Democratic candidates for president by mentioning them. And the Republicans. Well, they'll be one of the first extinct species. They're almost there now.

Runaway Global Warming Has Begun

Meanwhile, back in reality land, something is occurring that I've been fearing for a long time. That something is runaway climate change.

'Carbon Sinks' Lose Ability To Soak Up Emissions

A dramatic decline in the ability of the Earth to soak up man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, and a corresponding acceleration in the rate of increase of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, have been detected for the first time by scientists.

This little news item effectively says that that chart above is wrong. Turns out the residence time for CO2 just got an extended stay.

We've known all along that when global warming really kicked in, it would snowball. This is because the atmosphere is a nonlinear thermodynamic system. The slightest, even linear change in input will most probably result in a dramatic, exponential change in output. And when you factor in that the input, CO2 emission rates, is also nonlinear, and the many feedback loops at play - deforestation, co2 sink rates, arctic reflectivity, and melting permafrost, just to name a few - you see what I believe we are clearly seeing now - not just a change in global weather patterns, but an exponential change.

The thing to understand about science is it often lags behind knowledge. For example, it was over a decade after Einstein first conceived of his General Principle of Relativity before he was able to publish on it. While he had firmly formulated the concept, incontrovertibly so in my opinion, he didn't know of a mathematical formalism to represent it. He had to consult a mathematician friend who suggested Reiman's work in non-euclidean geometry.

Climate science is similar in that you can see patterns clearly, know they're occurring, and yet spend years putting together the necessary data to actually prove what you already know. Of course, this is the way it should be. And the measured, conservative projections of climate models are the only way to ensure accuracy.

But because of the exponential, extraordinary rate of change we're seeing in global climate patterns, and the extreme complexity of the data, the science just can't keep up. This is why of late, we are also seeing an exponential increase in the number of studies claiming 'We were wrong, it's much worse than we thought.'

Again, our problem is not just energy or greenhouse gas emissions. It is our entire global way of life. Feedback loops are a consequence of warming, feeding back to create even more warming. But other severe contributors, like wiping out half of the South American rainforest, are not. And this double whammy has yet to be fully included in climate models. So over the next decade, we are going to see a switch from scientists trying to predict what is going to happen to scientists trying to explain what is already happening.

OK, I'm Depressed

You may be reading this and thinking, OK, even if I buy all this residence time crap, and accept that the world is going to tank, what can I do about it. This is just to big for little old me.

Well, you would be right. It's too big for any individual. But the amazing thing about this internet thing is it allows individuals to become groups. And as a group, we can do what we do best, raise awareness.

I have a one year old daughter. I know she's not going to grow up in the world that I did. But I believe that she can grow up in a world that is sustainable, peaceful, and happy.

Just as we have a model for how to proceed with Mr. Gore's Marshall Plan, we also have a model for how not to proceed. We can call it the Katrina plan. Katrina was a disaster. But it didn't compare to the man made disaster that followed.

So it is with global warming. If we don't plan for the worst, the greatest disaster will not be climate change itself, it will be our response.

You Can Laugh, But the Gore Mania Should Tell You Something

2007-10-11T01:02:00.000-04:00

I have a little device I call the Dean-O-Meter. I keep it in my shirt pocket close to my heart. Every time I watch a Democratic debate, or see a candidate speak, I can pull it out and measure how they rank compared to any given Dean speech. Sometimes I think my Dean-O-Meter is broken. The little needle just sits there. Then someone will say something, like when Edwards talked about taking on corporate power, and it will flicker a bit.

I know I'm not the only one. In fact, the way I see it, this little meter thing is the perfect instrument to explain why Al Gore, a man who has not given even a hint that he's going to run, is still the candidate of choice for so many Democrats.

Yes, you can laugh at all the Al Gore diaries which, admittedly, are beginning to resemble Elvis sightings. But there's a message in there somewhere. And that message, to my ears, is straight from an old Peggy Lee song, 'Is that All There Is?'.

Quite simply, and this should be obvious to anyone who's honest about it, the current slew of candidates fail to inspire. And, most importantly, they have failed to tell the truth.

You want to know what Ron Paul's appeal is? Every now and then, he speaks the truth. I am no more fond of Libertarianism than I am of Conservatism. Both philosophies fail to recognize that societies are more than an aggregation of individuals, but are indeed a cohesive system - An interconnecting, interdependent whole. And the collectivism they so vehemently oppose looks a lot like democracy to me.

But that doesn't mean someone like Ron Paul is wrong all the time. And every now and then, regardless of his misguided - I'd say absurd - philosophy, he speaks the truth. The kind of truth that rattles the conventional wisdom and scares the Washington establishment - like saying the reason we were attacked on 9/11 is not because they hate our freedom, but because of our imperial misadventures in the Middle East.

Not to draw too close a comparison, but Howard Dean did that too. He rattled the conventional wisdom with his opposition to the Iraq war way back when Hillary and Edwards were still holding their political fingers in the wind.

But more than anything, Howard Dean's campaign was about empowering people. Not just empowering Howard Dean. "You have the power" he would yell, and we believed him. And that scared the Washington establishment most of all.

And so they took him down. But when they took down Howard Dean, they really took us down. And the old saying, 'Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer'? That is why Howard Dean is still DNC chair - that once powerful position now a retirement home for old threats to the established order.

The Democratic establishment hates John Edwards too. At least if you believe MSNBC's Chuck Todd who, in a rare moment of candor for those up late enough to see it, said as much after the Democratic debates last week. "The democratic elites" he called them, "hate John Edwards." I'm surprised no one else caught it, or at least wrote about it.

But I'm not surprised they do. They hated Al Gore too. They have a cushy gig there in the Beltway. And the last thing they need are principled populists and visionaries to fuck things up.

I wonder how many people realize that for every election, there are actually two campaigns: one for the people's vote, and another, behind the scenes, for the support of the money people and their conventional "wisdom." This is why Democratic candidates are so strained to say anything meaningful on the stump - it would conflict with what they've been saying behind closed doors. Incidentally, Hillary won the money race back in 2006.

The Republicans don't have to work so hard, speaking in forked tongues. Their message of lower taxes, deregulation, and reducing the size of government to a defense contract is the same out front as it is in the back room.

Will we ever get a candidate who can speak to the American people, honestly and without hesitation, without the internal conflict of knowing he or she doesn't believe a word they're saying.

I think that's what people see in Al Gore. Someone who has the integrity to tell the truth, and the clout to make it mean something. Someone who's both a member of the establishment, and a patron of the people.

Al Gore's become almost a Messiah like figure, someone said. But I think it's more like Moses. Born a prince, exiled a peasant, coming down from the mount, reborn and white haired, to lead his people to the promised land.

Me, I'll settle for anyone who can make this Dean-O-Meter thing work. Cause I can almost swear it's broken.

The True Power of the Netroots

2007-10-07T01:04:00.000-04:00

The most powerful force in our modern world is not government, politicians, the military industrial complex or even Wall Street directly. It is the big, agenda setting media - and mostly the television networks. Their ability to control information, shape the parameters of acceptable discourse, and spread lies and misinformation trumps all other forms of political power - including protests, political campaigns, and any other action you can think of.

This is what we're up against. This is what Democratic leaders who want to do the right thing are up against. A zeitgeist of pundits on the payroll, PR firms, news publishers and tv producers, radio talk show hosts, and others who all serve to shape the American consciousness into accepting the status quo and believing that real change is both impossible and dangerous.

How many times have you turned on your TV and thought, 'what world are they in? Don't they know what's really going on?'

Of course they do. It is their job to keep the rest of us from knowing it though. The self appointed role of the agenda setting media is to maintain a stable and docile society. To keep us happy consumers and protect the corporate economy. Providing the public with disturbing news of the state of the world is not on their agenda. The people might revolt.

And this is the good side of the big media. The truly nasty side is the spread of lies and misinformation to serve the perpetual war machine, feed on people's fears to make them compliant and powerless, prop up evil regimes like very popular guy you want to have a beer with Mr. Bush, and serve the goal of corporate empire.

From "news" to entertainment programming, the big media is nothing but one big infomercial. And their selling the corporate takeover of our country - indeed the world. And the feckless public, unaware of how they're being manipulated by the cleverest of means, is buying it. Sort of.

Out of all the actions we can take, none is more important and more effective than what OPOL and the rest of us are doing right here - challenging the zeitgeist, informing the people, and raising awareness. OPOL is particularly effective at this task because he takes it to the next level and goes beyond informing. He inspires.

The internet as a means of spreading political knowledge is the best weapon we have against the very real corporate takeover of our country - and other countries as OPOL pointed out. Those who mock and condemn OPOL and others as all talk and no action are forgetting an incredibly important point - all action must first begin with an idea.

The Vietnam protests were the response to information. Information that was spread by the big media who, at that time, had turned on the war.

The big media has somewhat turned on the war now, it seems - or at least Bush's bungling of it. But the Bush admin and the Pentagon are highly effective at keeping them in line. They went into this war with hindsight of how a few brave journalist ended the war in Vietnam. And so they took steps, like embedding journalists for example, to prevent a repeat.

But the broader issues of the general fascist like elements affecting our world are largely unknown to the masses. We here are on the front lines of the information war. We mine data from disparate sources and connect the dots and dig up the truth. Most however, are still getting their information from the fascist-like media. We have a lot of work to do.

People have always been able to organize and protests etc. The whole "let's take over the party from the grass roots" is not new either.

What is new, and gives us hope, is this ability to spread information and knowledge. This is our real power. And that's why the big media people have been trying to discredit us from the start.

I'm all for taking action. But, quite frankly, we ain't there yet. The public, and the necessary consensus we need for real change, is lagging behind, still drinking MSM cool aid.

Before people can begin taking meaningful action, they must first be informed about why action needs to be taken. And let's face it, they aren't. They watch Desperate Housewives and Britney TV and are mesmerized by flashing colors on their screen and have no fucking idea that they are conquered.

If even half of the American public were as informed as we are here, we would be living in a different country. And that, my friends, is the real power of Daily Kos.

So next time OPOL or others post an awareness raising diary, and the predictable critics pop in to ask, "what are you going to do about it?", ask them how many people they informed today? How many people got a little closer to understanding the truth about their world as a result of you?

Most historians believe the printing press was one of the greatest developments in human history for a reason. It facilitated the spread of knowledge and gave people the power to understand and change their world.

This is our new printing press. And using it is very much taking action.

And to all you super organizers, leaders of meetups, and even you OPOL with you protest drives, please keeps something in mind. People don't need to be pushed to organize and take action nearly as much when they are informed enough to be outraged.

That's what we're doing here. Write it and they will come.

A few misconceptions

2007-10-05T01:00:00.001-04:00

Misconception #1 Our health Care System Is Broken

Our health care system is not broken. It is working flawlessly. Just not for the vast majority of Americans. If you're a major stockholder of an HMO or an insurance company though, then we have the best health care system in the whole world.

Misconception #2 The Mainstream Traditional Corporate Media is Broken

The big media isn't broken either. They aren't incompetent or unqualified. Those people on TV are doing a great job. It's just not the job we think they're doing.

The big media's role is to keep us docile and complacent consumers. Stupid even. What Herbert Hoover liked to call happiness machines. I often hear people say, "Where's the outrage?" - after some revelation surfaces about yet another atrocity by someone in power. The outrage got lost somewhere between 60 Minutes and Desperate Housewives. Probably during a commercial for a shiny new combustion engine device.

The most accurate way to look at television is as one big infomercial. But they're not just selling little products. What they're really selling is one big product - American life. Complete with soccer moms, and breakfast cereal dads, and happy kids with headphones. What they're selling is a belief system. That cheap products from Indonesia and China will fill our emptiness. And what that doesn't provide, pharmaceuticals will. And no matter how shitty your job, your life gets, you can come home, turn on the fantasy box, and escape for an average of 5 hours a night.

Is it a conspiracy? It was in the beginning. The power class saw television as a way to manipulate the masses and shape society around the capitalist, consumer economy. They were also scared to death. They saw the mass rioting and upheaval during the Great Depression. A lot of it was filmed, but you probably won't see it on television.

But now it's just a norm. Everyone who works at a network, or in a newsroom for that matter, knows the boundaries. And they know what the masters in the boardrooms like. When it was decided to sell the Iraq war, for example, it didn't take a memo. It's a lot like when you go to a dinner party, no one has to tell you not to urinate on the houseplants.

Misconception #3 The Democrats Are Spineless

Another misconception is the idea that the Democrats are spineless, weak, pussies, or however you would put it.

In fact, to the extent one can generalize, the Democrats in power are strikingly agile creatures. You see, they have a much, much harder job than Republicans.

Republicans only have to serve one master. They are expected to be the party of big business, the wealthy and powerful. Their only selling point to the less well-offs is that if, one day, the less well-offs should become well-offs too, the republicans will save them a place at the trough. This seems to be effective on a good number of people.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are traditionally known as the Party of the People. And apparently, this has traditionally meant that in the age old conflict between the well-offs and the not so well-offs, the Democrats would be siding with the not so well-offs.

But in the late 60s, some powerful business leaders got together and decided that it would be better for them if the Democrats started acting more like Republicans. And so they schemed to start using their money and power to bring that about.They formed little groups like the Business Roundtable to exert their influence and they funneled vast fortunes to elect these new Republican-like Democrats and, though they couldn't buy them all, they eventually got so many that they reshaped the party. Why, they even got a Republican-like Democratic president.

But this created a bit of a problem for these new Democrats. Like wolves in sheep's clothing, they had to do costume changes every time they went from the cloak room to the courtyard.

What we interpret as weakness is really the intrinsic strain of internal conflict. What we hear as the voice of timidity is really the thrashing of a forked tongue.

The simple truth is our leaders know who brung em to the dance. And they're not about to leave with the bussboy. Or Howard Dean for that matter.

To the extent one can generalize. And that's a problem in itself. Congress is a club. And so complex are the machinations, the cover they can provide each other makes it hard to tell where anyone really stands on anything.

Until they vote on something really important. But even then, you never know. If my memory serves, 62 House Democrats voted down the Markey amendment preserving Net Neutrality. Coincidentally, that was just the number of votes needed to defeat it. One never knows.

But it doesn't take FISA warrant to know that what they say behind closed doors and what they say up front don't exactly mesh.

So, let's cut them a break. It's really, really hard to keep the military industrial banking media Wall Street complex happy and us progressives too.

Sociopath Nation - How Free Market Ideology is Destroying Society

2007-09-09T00:58:00.000-04:00

A Daily Kos diary was posted attacking the baby boomers and their dietary shortcomings. The argument was made that they should not be allowed unlimited health care because they don't deserve it - they should have eaten better.

This is typical Right wing nuttery. But what surprised me was the response.

Many arguments accepted the premise that health care is earned and responded by proposing that the baby boomers have indeed earned their health care because they are paying for it - with social security etc.

What I didn't see was one argument that addressed the real issue - that access to health care is not something you earn, it is a right.

As decent people of good conscience we must reject the Right wing frame of health care as a privilege or something you must earn. What kind of society turns away the sick because they don't "deserve" health care? A sick society.

This is the disease of the free market ideology - the idea that everyone, working in their own selfish interests, creates an equilibrium which benefits society as a whole.

What this ideology creates is a society of sociopaths. We must restore the health care debate to the realm of common decency.

And we must reject the fallacy that Adam Smith's invisible hand can replace our basic obligation to our fellow man.

Humans, on the most instinctual level, have always understood that we depend on each other to survive. Society itself is a product of this understanding - why we have always ran in tribes instead of going solo.

The ideology of the free market, the view of society as the aggregation of individual self interests, and its insidious byproduct, "Market Democracy", are just inventions designed to allow the corporate model to operate without conscience or regard to social responsibility.

It has been embraced and propagated by capitalist forces who see democratic institutions and government regulation as enemies to profit. The health care system is only one egregious manifestation of this sociopathic ideology. There are many others from environmental abuse to economic injustice.

What the Left has allowed in the US is nothing less than the defeat of the idea of society as a social compact. We have allowed Right wing forces to slowly redefine our most basic values and subvert the instrument of Social Democracy.

Even entertaining the sociopathic notion that people should be denied access to health care because, by some criteria, they don't deserve it, is evidence of how far we have fallen.

The instrument of Social Democracy, the way we as a society make collective decisions on how to benefit society whole, is democratic government.

But the Left, and Democrats specifically, have largely accepted the Right's fallacy that government is inherently flawed. We have allowed the subversion of the most powerful agency of social justice in the history of man - the US federal government.

This could not have happened at a worse time. The problems facing our country, indeed our world, from the health care crisis to global warming, require not some fictitious Invisible Hand, but the wise governance of the democratic process.

The first Americans fought and died for the same government that Ronald Reagan, the presidential candidate, called "the problem." We must fight for our government again. We must fight for the idea that a free, thinking people can come together and work for not only the interests of the individual, but the interests of society.

US Attorney-Gate Was About Carol Lam

2007-06-07T00:55:00.000-04:00

Once the press get's its narrative, it's almost impossible to change it. The narrative on the firing of eight US attorneys? Politics, of course. "And that's just wrong. Not a crime mind you. But wrong." Even many on the left are a bit speechless when asked what the crime is here. Bill Maher's eyes glazed over when promted.

Here's the freakin crime:

18 U.S.C. § 1512 c. which states:

(c) Whoever corruptly—
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

It is simply incredible to me that months have passed over this scandal and the talking heads, the Democratic leadership, and many in the blogosphere have failed to clearly stake out this relatively simple case.

Kyle Sampson's email proves intent:

McClatchy:

In an e-mail dated May 11, 2006, Sampson urged the White House counsel's office to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," who then the U.S. attorney for southern California. Earlier that morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lam's corruption investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had expanded to include another California Republican, Rep Jerry Lewis.

Perhaps what is lost in all this confusion over who said what when and which prosecutors were bushies and which were not is just how significant Lam's investigation was. This paragraph from an August 2006 article in Vanity Fair will instruct:

Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.

Remember, this was published in August of last year. It was almost certainly written many weeks earlier. Washington was unravelling. But the very next paragraph brings it home:

"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations. "Many felonies went undetected because in the Defense Department a lot goes on in secret, and these crimes grew in the shadow of both 9/11 and one-party rule—with little scrutiny. So what you're looking at is a world where money, secrecy, sex, and indulgence were all in play. Where everyone is guilty of something."

Carol Lam simply had to be stopped. The name of that article by the way is 'Washington Babylon'. I highly recommend everyone read it.

As Josh Marshall said, "By almost any measure this is a public corruption indictment of historic proportions." Indeed.

Remember, as a direct result of her investigation, the head of the CIA, Porter Goss resigned. His number three was indicted. It had been leaked that the investigation was now to include the Republican chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. There was even a Wall Street banker to complete the picture.

But if Washington's cesspool of corruption has a heart, it is the Committee on Appropriations and it's little stepchild the Subcommittee on Defense. That's where all that dirty defense money comes from. You know, phony contractors, war profiteers and Bush Pioneers.

Carol Lam's investigation threatened to shine a big bright light on the darkest, most most secretive corner of the federal government. The place where the so-called Military Industrial Complex and their armies of lobbyist go to drink from the cup that overfloweth - otherwise known as the US Treasury.

"the highest levels of government"

Then, last week, it was revealed that when Lam had "requested additional time to ensure and orderly transition in the office, especially regarding pending investigations and several significant cases that were set to begin trial in the next few months", it was rejected by the "highest levels of government."

From Lams statement:

"He [Michael Elston] insisted that I had to depart in a matter of weeks, not months, and that these instructions were "coming from the very highest levels of the government."

This is obstruction and it points right to the White House.

On a scale of 1 to 100, the Lam firing was 100 to the seven other's 3. In fact, it is highly reasonable to suspect that the other seven were merely fired to cover for ousting Lam.

Only in TV Land is Carol Lam just another fired prosecutor. And only in the cesspool of corruption that is the Washington establishment is this all just "politics".

Now, I think the politization of the justice department is a huge story. And so is, of course, voter fraud, false claims of voter fraud, and especially the use of the justice department as a political weapon as exposed by Donald C. Shields and John F. Cragan's studywhich was reported by Paul Krugman.

All of this is grounds for an independent prosecutor.

But make no mistake, Carol Lam was "the real problem" and her firing was a real crime.

Sweeping Jim Webb Under the Rug

2007-01-27T00:54:00.000-05:00

I've argued for some time that the real bias in the media is not left or right per say. It is pro Wall Street. And never has this bias been more transparent than with the coverage of Jim Webb's response to the State of the Union address.

My interest in the way the establishment media would react to Webb's speech began somewhere around the time he said "fairly" in the same sentence with "globalization" and "international marketplace." By the time he got to "robber barons" and "corporate influence", I was speechlessly stumbling for my laptop.

You see, there are just some things one does not say in proper company. Much less in a national address. And Jim Webb said a few of them.

Recently, to explain the devotion and commitment working class Americans once had to the Democratic party, Mudcat Saunders described how in the old days, people had two photographs on their living room wall: Jesus and Franklin D Roosevelt. It reminded me of my grandparents, who had lived through the Great Depression, with one exception - they had no photo of Jesus.

So for many of us, it is a sad fact that for a Democratic senator to use the language of class and wealth, and to speak utterances of robber barons and corporate influence, that it should be big news. But big news it was. As I pointed out in an absurd diary claiming that Webb "disappointed", this speech was nothing less than a shot across the bow of the entire establishment. It was rebuke to the Washington Consensus of neoliberal trade policies, class warfare, corporate corruption of our political process, and unchecked greed at the expense of "national wealth." Even the term 'national wealth' conjures up the bygone days of the sense of national purpose that marked the post-Depression era.

And while most, even many in the leftosphere, missed the full significance of Webb's populist appeal, I assure you the barons of Wall Street did not. As I also commented in the absurd diary, Webb should stay out of small planes.

But as significant an event as it was, providing clear indication that the populist uprising largely born out of the netroots and "people powered" movement has reached its way into the echelons of American political power, it received barely a mention in the corporate press.

It was almost funny watching Anderson Cooper's deer in the headlights face after Webb's speech, as he appeared to be receiving instructions from his producer through his earpiece. There's no way to know what he was told, but the way he and his panel completely skipped Webb's speech and resumed talking about Bush as though the Webb speech had never happened seemed just a bit awkward and unnatural.

It wasn't lost on my incredulous companions. "Their speechless", one said referring to Cooper and company. "Nothing to see here, move along", said another.

In the last four days since the speech, I have dedicated a good bit of time to tracking the reporting, or lack thereof, of the populist aspects of Webb's speech. As Devilstower noted yesterday, only a few (3) articles have even mentioned it.

Then, today, we finally get this from the New York Times: 'Looking for the Angry Populists in Suburbia'.

Note how the title editor cleverly frames Webb's speech as a political ploy. Just trying to win middle class voters. Now, the entire thesis of my post is based on the assumption that Webb is sincere. If the Times has information to the contrary, they should present it.

But the real fun happens within. David Leonhardt appears to be covering a different speech than the one Webb gave. He frames it as a Democratic appeal to middle class voters, but wonders how effective it will be since the economy is so rosy:

It was the sort of speech that one might have expected during a deep economic slump. Yet it came instead as most workers have started receiving significant pay increases for the first time in years and as polls show that most Americans think the economy has grown stronger.

This contrast was arguably the most significant part of the speech. As they plan their strategy on Capitol Hill and begin the 2008 presidential campaign, the leaders of the Democratic Party are betting that the temporary swings of the economic cycle no longer have the political power they once did.

Instead, they say, the economic shocks of recent years — technological change, globalization, the decline of labor unions and business icons like Ford Motor Company — have left many swing voters feeling anxious and insecure about the future.

After years of fighting losing battles against tax cuts, Democrats argue that this economic anxiety has altered the political landscape, making swing voters open to a new role for government — a form of what Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois has called "suburban populism."

With issues like energy policy, immigration and health care having gone largely unaddressed in recent years, Democrats see a way to define themselves as the party that can help Americans survive the 21st-century economy.

An unanswered question, though, is whether suburban populism can still have appeal during good economic times.

This is Wall Street sophistry at its finest.

"Swing voters"? Feeling "anxious" and "insecure"?

Notice how he removes the class component and replaces it with political baseball. But Jim Webb wasn't talking about swing voters. He never mentioned swing voters. He was talking about, and for, the 80 plus percent of Americans who are not just feeling anxious and insecure, but are fully aware that they are getting screwed by the new corporate economy.

These are people who can't afford health care, have no savings, are watching their grocery bills triple in 5 years. They are seeing their good jobs replaced with service jobs and their security lost in competition with third world labor.

But with all the ink invested in painting a pollyannic picture of the economy, and deflating Webb's populist call to arms as a cheap, political stunt, Leonhardt completely omits the far more poignant parts of the speech - wealth inequality and corporate influence. For corporate influence is the one subject that must never be discussed.

Webb's speech should have spurred a lively discussion on the issues he raised. But instead is was effectively blacked out. So determined to sweep him under the rug, our Wall Street press even forfeited, to a large extent, the opportunity to champion his forceful and resounding opposition to George Bush's Iraq policy - which is something Wall Street, for the most part, does support.

So this is the situation we find ourselves in in 2007 America: a handful of Wall Street corporocrats, who have so infiltrated our mass media that they can almost make a speech broadcast live to millions of Americans disappear.

How could they do this you may ask? Is it a grand conspiracy? No. They do it with a wink and a nod. Rule number one in becoming a TV personality is you never bite the hand that feeds. And the same goes at the Post, the Times and all the main news outlets.

Everyone knows the game and everyone who values their careers plays along. But Jim Webb, by breaking the rules for one evening, gave us a glimpse in the dugout. A look behind the curtain if you will. That look on Anderson Cooper's face, as they cut back to him following the speech, reminded me of a scene from The Truman Show when Truman has figured out that his whole world is a facade. That illumination is what Jim Webb gave us Tuesday night. An opportunity to see, with blinding clarity, the facade that is the Wall Street owned, corporate controlled, national media.

Defining Debate Down - How Language is Making Us Stupid

2007-01-17T00:53:00.000-05:00

Language plays a far greater role then just communication. It defines how we think. The reason you can't remember when you were six months old is not because your brain wasn't recording events. It's because you had yet to develop the intellectual framework from which to retrieve the memories of those events.

That intellectual framework, in terms of child development, is known as representation - how we convert our perceptions of the the outside world into concepts and ideas in our minds. Language is the higher development of representation - when the big round thing becomes a "ball."

Likewise, our representation of political observations not only effects our ability to communicate, but how we make sense of those observations.

Left, Right, and Center

The language of politics has been severely dumbed down by the duality of left vs right and their tripartite accomplice, the center.

These dim representations as a spectrum of political thought, and their respective correlation to philosophy and policy positions, shortchanges not only debate, but our ability to even conceive of the landscape of complex issues facing our world.

When one characterizes Hillary Clinton as a centrist, what does that actually mean? And can such a characterization have any value to the assessment of the pros and cons of her candidacy for office?

I think the answer is clearly no. The political landscape - which is just a representation of our political world using a geographical metaphor - is immensely complex. We all develop our own conceptions of it in relation to specific issues and their application to an overarching philosophy.

By relying on the LeftRightCenter framework to define this landscape, critical information is omitted. Worse, misinformation is introduced.

For example, where does Howard Dean fit into the LRC spectrum? I doubt any self-declared "leftist" in Vermont would claim him. He's been characterized as pro environment, fiscally conservative, progressive on social issues, and yet support gun rights. In terms of the LRC framework, Howard Dean is clearly schizophrenic. The fact is, Dean is all over the board on the LRC spectrum because the LRC spectrum is a myth.

All we have are positions on issues, and occasionally, an overarching philosophy from which these positions are derived.

Now, there could be an argument made that the LRC framework is code for convenience. 'So and so is a centrist on economic issues' actually means a lot of complex things that we all are capable of deciphering. But are we?

Where does candidate A stand on tariffs and trade, progressive taxation, monetary policy? Does "centrist" tell us? Even the language of conservative-liberal fails to inform. I found it striking that Ned Lamont, champion of the netroots, wasted no time after the primary to declare from the pages of the Wall Street Journal that he's a "fiscal conservative." What does that mean? Balanced budgets? Trickle down economics? Laissez Faire? The term is meaningless in the absence of clearly defined positions and an overarching philosophy from which they are derived.

Not Just What We Say, But What We Think

If you ever find yourself with a sense that something is wrong, or you disapprove of a policy, but you can't quite put your finger on why, that is usually a sign that your language of representation is ill equipped to actualize, or conceptualize the issue.

Many of the issues we face, from globalization to privatization of government functions, are so new in our political experience that it's hard to clearly define our opposition to them.

What's wrong with "outsourcing" our prison management or military intelligence to private contractors? Is there an overarching philosophy or belief system that these policies are in contravention to?

I've spent over thirty years developing my political philosophy and belief system and yet I have trouble understanding many of these issue within the framework of that philosophy. It's not that I have trouble opposing private prisons. The challenge is clearly defining, based on pre-established, proven principles why.

My working explanation is that I believe fully in the institution of democracy as acted through government and that the outsourcing of such functions undermines, and creates a barrier to the democratic institutional oversight necessary to maintain the integrity of any state action that would remove a fellow citizen's sacred freedom.

And that was an easy one. Where does candidate X stand on trade, globalization, the abject failure of the Chicago School of Economic's little experiments with neoliberal policies of the World Bank, or the WTO?

'She's a moderate.'

Oh, I see.

The Source of American Political Power and Why You Have None

2006-11-16T00:52:00.000-05:00

Years ago, when I first began participating in the experiment of online political discourse, I held great hope that this new medium would allow ordinary citizens to eventually break the stranglehold that the monied interests have imposed upon the American political process, including the American media, and give voice to the voiceless. It almost seemed divine providence that just when that stranglehold was on the verge of choking the very life from our democracy, this little miracle called the Internet emerged allowing us to bypass the primary conduits of political power and rescue ourselves from the inevitable descent into a kind of mass media slavery. After all, if religion is the opiate of the masses, television is a coma.

But it is clear to me that the potential of the Internet to restore control over the government by the people also poses the threat of being used to expand control over the people by the government - or, as is usually the case, the monied interests that control the government.

Instead of seeing the People Powered web being used crash the gates and reclaim power from the monied interest who have seized both political parties, I'm beginning to see signs of sites such as Daily Kos being used as an arm of the establishment, enforcing an almost militant loyalty to the party line, censuring dissent and criticism, and even subverting the truth in the name of expediency.

The Machiavellian rationalization behind much of this towing and subversion is derived from a very real and just understanding of the threat posed by the Bush junta, and the need to defeat it. That is certainly the reason I helped raise money for Harold Ford Jr. - despite my strong opposition to his ascension to the Senate.

But now that the election is over, we must ask ourselves where our loyalties really lie. Is it to political leaders whose own loyalties lie with the same monied interests who have waged class warfare on the American people? Is it with a complacent establishment that profits from the status quo, and resists every effort to change it? Is it with people who have chosen to protect their own power at the expense of their country and its citizens? Is it with a brand or label that has come to mean nothing in terms of ideology or action?

Or do our loyalties lie with the American people, ourselves, and the ideal of restoring our government of the people, to the people? It is fortunate that we Democrats still have leaders in whom our support does not conflict with that goal. But aside from the necessary task of defeating the Republicans, where is the benefit in loyalty to those who are Democrats in name only?

It is the nature of people to coalesce around leaders. As any sociologist will tell you, if you throw a group of people together in a room long enough, a leader will eventually emerge. This tendency to coalesce has survived over millions of years of evolutionary development so there's no doubt that it offers benefits. But in modern American politics, where groups are formed from tenuous strings of long-distance wires and radio waves, the process by which we choose our leaders is so easily distorted, so easily manipulated by those who control the wires, that we must be vigorous in our skepticism and, most importantly, we must never blindly place our loyalties at the feet of power. For it is loyalty to power that inevitably strips the people of their own.

loy'al·ism n

1. Support or loyalty to the establishment, government, political party or leaders without condition or merit.

What could compel self-ascribed conservatives to blindly follow a regime that has violated every principle on which conservatism stands? Loyalism. Indeed, conservatives in large number embraced the violation of the very foundation of conservative ideology itself - the limit of government power - in their willingness to follow president Bush and his unprecedented expansion of such power in the name of loyalty.

When one steps back and beholds the scope of government power under the Bush regime, from the massive, secret and unaccountable national security apparatus, to the more than eight hundred radio stations that blanket the nation with pro-Bush, pro-government propaganda 24 hours a day, to their very own pro-Bush, pro-government television network - not to mention countless local television stations and newspapers, even the most dedicated Bush loyalist must wonder if so much power is safe in any politician's hands. And after the 2006 election, they should also be wondering if such loyalism has been good for their party.

Likewise, we Democrats should ask if it is good for ours. Our party is certainly not immune from the unmeritorious loyalty of our members. Perhaps by design, the dualism of our two party system perpetuates loyalism. The old saying, 'he may be a crook, but he's my crook' is the axiom of modern Democratic loyalism when victory over their "crook" is not just a preference, but a moral imperative.

But we must also acknowledge that loyalism, however rationalized, comes with a severe cost. For as long as your loyalty is given freely, without merit, without condition, and with only the promise that your guy is not their guy, you have sacrificed your political power.

MONEY, VOTES, and the POWER of FEAR

For all practical purposes, there are only two forms of political power available to ordinary Americans: money and votes. And the ability to deliver either, in significant quantities, will certainly get you invited to the parade. But real power comes from not just being able to deliver money or votes, but from being able to take them away. Just ask any politician who has tried to take on big oil, or the finance and insurance industries. The real power of big money unveils itself not when it is in your favor, but when it has set you in its sights for destruction.

Currently, the Netroots has raised a lot of money for Democrats. By my estimate, around $5 million for the 2006 midterm. And yet our power remains marginal compared to K Street. Why? Because they do not fear us. Fear is the product of conditionality. And as long as our support, our loyalty is unconditional, we lose that card to play.

For years, the Democratic establishment, the Corporocrats, have been able to walk all over many of their constituent blocks - labor, African Americans, us - because of the rationalized loyalty I mentioned above. Their campaign slogan may as well have been, 'Where ya gonna go?'

If the People Power movement is ever going to break this cycle of lesser of two evils and instigate real reform in the Democratic party, we are going to have to learn how to use real power by ransoming our support. Only when the Democratic establishment fears us will they bid to our will.

There are those in the Netroots movement who advocate a different tack. They profess that the way to bring the Democratic party back to the people is for the people to infiltrate it. To run for local office, precinct captain, or your local committee chair. While these are all valuable efforts, and certainly will not hurt, this strategy is the equivalent to leading the sheep to slaughter.

There is a fundamental flaw to this strategy: It assumes that the current precinct captains etc. are the problem. They are not. We do need more local participation to recover from the failed Twelve State Strategy. But by and large, the current local party officials are pretty much the same as us. They oppose the corporatization of our party by the DLC types. They want the party to represent the interests of ordinary Americans again. And they want out of Iraq.

A massive invasion of local party politics by the Netroots would certainly be a good thing, but it is naive think it will have much effect on the core problem that is ruining not just the Democratic party, but American politics as a whole. This, of course, is money.

I think it would be safe to say that most Democratic politicians started off with high hopes for reform. Not all, but most. And just like us, they wanted to see fundamental change in the way Washington, or their states, work. But the problem is what happens once they get a little bit of power. I've seen the process up close and it ain't pretty. It takes no time at all before every freshman congressman or senator, and their many staffers, figure out the game, who the hands that feed are, and who not to piss off. And after a while, the reformer gets slowly beaten out of them. The glamor of the beltway cocktail parties, trips to Bohemian Grove, lobbyists funded weekends abroad, all add up to a powerful persuasion not to rock the boat. And pretty soon, they no longer work for us. They work for the big money contributors who can sustain their power.

The forces of the status quo have trillions of dollars at stake in the way things work. Do you really think they are going to put that in jeopardy by allowing the Democratic leadership to start embracing people power? To allow Howard Dean any power beyond raising money? He's already being shown the door in case you didn't notice. This is Steny Hoyer's party now. And Hoyer is not one of us.

There is no political change without conflict. And the only way we are going to reclaim our party, and our country, is by force. We must become a voting and fundraising block that instills fear. We must learn to hold our support for ransom. Only then will the People Power movement actually gain any real power.

The US Media is Not Just Bad, It is the Enemy

2006-01-12T00:47:00.000-05:00

You know, I've been seeing stuff like this for years. But it's almost always more subtle. A comment here, some background footage there. Always enough to know, but never quite enough to call them on. Little pieces which, by themselves, don't say very much but, when taken together, a clear pattern emerges: The Corporate Media is not on our side.

Earlier tonight however, on NBC News, something amazing occurred. In a piece by Mike Tiabbi titled, "Near-record rain, warmth in U.S.", the producers at NBC News showed their hand.

They would have done better to not cover the story at all.

I thought this was so important, that I transcribed it myself from the video which you can find online at the above link.

It opens with Brian Jennings (or whatever the latest empty shell of a human being they have anchoring now is called). He proceeds to describe some of the severe weather we're having around the country:

BRIAN WILSON: Near record rains in the West and here in the East, it's springtime for a few days at least. And so our own Mike Taibbi saw his shot to take in a day outdoors and he took it...
TITLE: Meltdown
by Mike Tiabbi
FADE IN to normal winter weather footage:
TIABBI: January in New York is usually non-stop, button-up misery. But these days with temps in the 50s and climbing, you want to take off your hat - or at least change it - and lose the top coat, and the fleece liner, right down to your, OK, your golf shirt.
CUT to Tiabbi hitting golf balls in short sleeve shirt:
TIABBI: It was, in fact, a perfect day to hit a bucket of balls, and ask teaching pro Jim McNann about your backswing.
JIM MCCANN: There you go.
TIABBI: But the unseasonable weather isn't restricted to the northeast.
CUT to mudslide and some other disaster footage:
TIABBI: With twenty-five straight days of downpour Seatle and the Pacific Northwest are approaching rainfall records. Extreme heat and lack of rain have fed the wildfires tormenting parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Rare Ocean tornados (this is some disturbing footage) have been seen of the Florida coast.
CUT to nice zoo footage and some kid eating a popsicle:
TIABBI: And in usually frigid Chicago kids eating ice cream cones watch flamingos and giraffes take the sun.
CUT to zoo official:
MEGAN WILSON (Lincoln Park Zoo): Just like the people of Chicago, the animals appreciate a break in the weather as well.
(I need to interrupt here and point out her statement is not spontaneous. It is almost certainly contrived.)
TIABBI: While skaters circled in shirt sleeves and the local snow sculpting contest was called off, for now.
Around the world, more extreme weather: the snowiest winters in generations in parts of Japan and China. The cause of all this?
JEFF RAINERI (NBC meteorologist hack): I wouldn't say that this is, uh, a long term pattern that we're stuck in. It's just.., it's mother nature and it's just how it's working in the beginning of January.
(I need to point out here that Mr. Raineri has this kind of childish grin as he says this lie. Just like a child who knows he's about to be caught lying but continues anyway)
CUT to park bench folk singer:
PARKBENCH FOLK SINGER: Oh some day everyone..(unintelligible)
TIABBI: Back to the thoroughly enjoyable weather in New York...
CUT back to golf range:
TIABBI: Up on the range, Jim said I was locked in.
Jim McNann: "Get ready for the tour baby."
CUT to favorite golf course:
TIABBI: So I hustle over to my favorite course... only to find...
Closed!!!
I guess it's a good thing. I might not have come back to the office. Brian...

So NBC decides to cover the bizzarre weather occurring worldwide by sending Mike Tiabbi out to a golf course. And the zoo. And to explain it all, they bring out Jeff Raineri who, as far as I can tell, was just plucked up the ranks from a local affiliate out of New Jersey.

Perhaps NBC couldn't get one of their more senior, respectable meteorologists
to stand there and lie through his teeth.

So here's the jist of the story as NBC would have Americans see it: this sure is some strange weather we're having. But don't worry, it's just mother nature acting up so get out your golf clubs and enjoy the afternoon.

There is a special place in hell for Jeff Raineri.

The powers that be at NBC and other coprorate networks could have all kinds of reasons for deliberately misleading the public about what is happening to our planet. But there is not one that is remotely justifiable.

And while there may be some instances where withholding information or even misleading the public is a right course of action, there is zero evidence that such considerations are at play here.

No, it is far more likely that the most obvious reason why the corporate media continues to deceive the public on this issue is the correct one: it is in their own interest to do so. Both financially and politically. (NBC's parent corporation, General Electric, is one of the worlds biggest carbon-dioxide emmiters. SEE: New Report: Top Greenhouse Gas Emitters Not Diclosing, Acting of Financial Risks of Climate Change

With the amount of power that these corporations have to use our airwaves to influence public opinion and policy, and to the extent that they use that power to serve their own interest against the interest of the public, in matters of life and death, they cease being merely inept or corrupt, and move fully into the station of an enemy of the American people and, indeed, the human race.

And the degree with wich my words may appear too harsh or extreme is directly proportional to your own lack of understanding about just what is about to happen to you.

Deconstruction of the Myths

2005-09-15T00:49:00.000-04:00

It is with almost divine providence that exactly one year to the day after Rudy Giuliani stood before the nation and declared "thank God George Bush is president" we would find ourselves watching in horror as thousands of American citizens fell destitute, first to a natural disaster, then to a federal one.

It was August 30, 2004, the opening night of the Republican convention, when Mr. Giuliani gave the headline speech that would set the theme for the rest of the days to follow: George Bush is a resolute leader. George Bush will keep us safe.

But on the first anniversary of that speech, as the long feared nightmare of a flooded New Orleans became a reality, it was clear that we are not safe.

Indeed, every night of last summer's convention, as one speaker after another belied the perils of trusting our nation's security to any lesser protector than George Bush, can be marked by it's own anniversial adducation of the contrary.

On Rudy's Tuesday, the day after New Orleans began to flood, and New Orleanians began to drown, we find George Bush flying to Coronado, Ca. to plug the leak in his Iraq war support. As Mayor Ray Nagin tells WWL radio that federal officials "don't have a clue what's going on down here", the president is photographed attempting to play a guitar.

Wednesday was Arnold's night to lay out "why America is safer with George W. Bush as president" and marks the return of the president from his vacation in Crawford, TX. New Orleans, fully flooded and descending into chaos and despair, sees little or no sign of federal intervention. Some did, however, see Air Force One fly over earlier in the day.

Thursday brings us the vitriolic Senator Zell Miller who declares George Bush "the man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family", and Vice President Cheney who informs us that the president "gets up each and every day determined to keep our great nation safe." But on this day, one year later, it has become obvious to even Bush's ardent supporters that something is severely wrong with the federal response. As it becomes clear that people who survived the hurricane are now dying from abandonment, Bush tells Diane Sawyer that no one "anticipated the levees would breach."

Friday, Sep 2. Final night of the convention: "I am running for President with a clear and positive plan to build a safer world and a more hopeful America." Five days after the flooding of New Orleans began, National Guard troops begin arriving. The AP reports that a "mix of cheering and swearing has greeted National Guardsman pouring into New Orleans." Stranded victims continue to die waiting for rescue.

Of course, some of us knew all along that the image being projected of George Bush was just as fictitious as his National Guard service. But the fickle media, always a sucker for a good show, declared the convention a "masterpiece".

Perhaps if any good comes out of Katrina, it will be the realization by those in the media that elections are not just about the horse race. Perhaps they'll realize that those we put in positions of power, and the decisions they make, have real effects. Not just in remote, foreign lands, but right here at home. Perhaps next time they'll check that reality bears resemblance to the myth.

But the myth of the right's pre-eminence in all things security related, which was never supported by evidence anyway, is not the only one found gasping beneath the waves of Lake Pontchartrain. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has exposed the tepid foundation of conservative thought itself: that society as a whole functions better when its participants pursue their own self interest over the interest of society. Of course, the mathematician John Nash disproved this abject fallacy decades ago for which he won a Nobel Prize. But inevitably, the forces of nature, incommensurate to human frailty, speak far more persuasively than some obscure college thesis.

This isn't the first disaster to lay bare the fundamental flaw, even inhumanity of conservatism. Just last year, in the wake of Hurricane Charley, Florida's Republican Attorney General Charlie Crist announced he would "vigorously target" those engaging in "price gouging." And he did, bringing numerous suits against vulturous businesses including Days Inn.

But isn't price gouging just the free market at work? And isn't Mr. Crist's vigorous pursuit of gougers a blatant admission of the limits of a free market to expedite our higher, moral obligations to our fellow human beings?

Some conservatives must think so. Ideologues to the end, or just sensing the threat to their very existence, they have constructed "arguments" for why gouging is not the vile, unethical exploitation of the destitute, but actually a benefit. They argue that gouging provides the market incentive for outside providers to sweep in and take advantage of the high demand thus flooding the market and ultimately lowering prices. So disaster consumers get needed supplies and services that they may not otherwise have had and eventually the normalization of prices from the abundance of supply.

There are too many flaws in this reasoning to address here, so I will just point out the most glaring: disaster victims don't have time for the market to work itself out, they need food, housing and medical supplies now. It's just one of the pitfalls of being a disaster victim.

Fortunately, the vast majority of people don't need to labor over such ideological fixations. They just know that charging a family who has just lost everything to a hurricane $50 for water is nothing less than monstrous. This is why the overwhelmingly Republican, Florida legislature has still not repealed the 1992 anti-gouging law. They wouldn't dare.

So this begs the larger question: If it is wrong to gouge the victims of a hurricane, why is it okay to gouge the sick and elderly? Is not over a million people with terminal cancer or AIDS a national disaster? Or is their only difference the political influence of the gougers?

The sudden onslaught of a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina evokes our humanity and compels us to respond. But Katrina also exposed a hidden disaster which has been playing out in slow motion for many years: poverty. This disaster kills far more people than Katrina ever could. Indeed, without it, Katrina would have killed far fewer than it did.

But poverty is a hidden disaster. Hidden from television, hidden from our gated communities, stashed away in prison cells. The press has just had an epiphany, "Where did all those poor people come from?" But they've always been there. Living out the disaster that is our two-class system. All across America, our two Americas.

And this exposes the most glaring flaw: to sustain itself, conservativism relies on the invisibility of weakest among us. The other America, always conveniently out of sight.

Katrina has proven that most people, when confronted with tragedy, will respond with compassion and humanity. They will open their homes and their hearts to those in need and even support government funded reconstruction and "socialist" price controls. Decency trumps ideology every time.

So why do we allow so many to perish every day at the hands of poverty? If the millions of Americans, destitute, sick, homeless had met their fate suddenly, in real time as have the victims of Katrina, would we not be just as appalled at the government's failure to respond? To keep them safe? Beneath all of this lies a deeper truth: George Bush's apathetic response to the people of New Orleans is merely an extension of his, and his party's apathy to the plight of millions of Americans who were already suffering.

Encapsulating that apathy perfectly was the recent statement by Barbara Bush: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Hopefully this disaster in the Gulf will compel us to revisit what kind of America we want to live in and the role that democratic government has in shaping it. Conservativism professes that man only achieves by striving for profit. That without greed, there can be no good. But we have seen, in the story of Hurricane Katrina, a thousand contraventions to that lie. When we look in the mirror, do we really want to see the face of Barbara Bush, or do we want to see the faces of those many compassionate Americans who selflessly acted to relieve the suffering of others while expecting nothing in return?

The Wolves Among Us

2005-07-30T00:51:00.000-04:00

If you can block out the movie production of Troy long enough to think about the legend of Troy, remind yourself of what that story really says. It says that the enemy within is a far graver threat than the one outside your gates. It says that traitors, turncoats, spies and general wolves in sheep's clothing will cause more damage than all the armies combined.

This is, of course, because it is always easier to destroy something from the inside.

Keep this in mind when considering the wisdom of focusing solely on the Republicans while ignoring the wolves that currently occupy our hen-house. Wolves like the ones who voted for CAFTA, the bankruptcy bill, or the energy bill.

How can so many Democrats vote for legislation that goes against everything the Democratic party stands for and expect to get away with it? Because they know we'll let them.

They know that as election time rolls around, we will flock in droves to defeat the evil Republicans so that they won't pass such legislation as CAFTA, the bankruptcy bill, or the energy bill.

They know that many of us will argue that we need to be a big tent party and not benefit the Republicans our internal strife. That our only objective is to get back into power so we can pass CAFTA, the bankruptcy bill, or the energy bill. At least then we'll have the fancy congressional offices again.

Meanwhile, the corporations and their lobbyists are laughing their way to the bank. They actually benefit from the Democrat's and Republican's pre-occupation with each other. They love the culture war. They love Plame-gate. They love everything that takes our eyes off the ball while they quietly amass all of the wealth and power into their few hands. And they know that they can count on neither Republicans or Democrats to interfere.

It's funny. Most people know that our politicians are bought and paid for. We know that Big Money is really pulling all the strings. But who knows who Big Money really is? Who are these people who are actually running the country from the back rooms of Washington? Here's a clue, none of them are named Karl.

In our quest to "take our country back" and restore power to the people, wouldn't it be wise to know who we're taking it back from? Here's a clue, it ain't George Bush.

And meanwhile, our people continue on their mass migration to the services sector. According to the Dept. of Labor, service sector jobs are the only thing keeping Bush's employment numbers out of the red. The SEIU is the largest and fastest growing labor union in the country. Yes, we are well on our way to waiterdom. Unfortunately, only so many can serve frappes to the 2% of the population that owns everything.

And then there is the Democratic Party®. I put that little trademark symbol there to get a point across. The Democratic party is more than a group or organization of people. It is a trademark. It is a core set of beliefs that are encoded into those two words.

We all have variations on those core beliefs. And we all have different ways of describing them. And indeed, those beliefs have evolved and expanded over the last century. But always, always at it's root, the brand Democratic Party has stood for protecting average Americans. It has stood for protecting and empowering the many against the tyranny of the few. Whether manifest in the fight for civil rights, progressive taxation, the protection of the elderly, or the disassembly and regulation of monopolistic corporations, there has always been a consistent, underlying statement beneath every act: America, under Democratic watch, will not allow the interests of the monied few to prevail over the commonwealth of the many. It has been so since its inception.

And then came the DLC. Like wedding brokers with solicitation of the dowry, they showed us a new way. With an endless supply of crisp, corporate cash, they forged a pact. Let our sheep graze pittantly in the electoral pasture and we'll give the wolves the keys to the hen-house.

And the Third Way began. And when the wolves rewarded the sheep with the installation of one of their own into the presidency, the sheep were so overjoyed that they stopped guarding the hen-house altogether. The wines of glory spilt over as the wolves and sheep celebrated their thirst. Good days would surely follow.

But out here in the real world, good days did not follow. Jobs, whole towns dried up and frittered away. Many families struggled to survive working three jobs. Urban and working class neighborhoods began to resemble combat zones. Small businesses failed as corporate chains moved in with scale advantage and third world imports. Public schools became holding cells for disadvantaged youth while prison occupation reached record highs. Suicide rates also reached record highs. As did drug and alcohol abuse as the sheep found their own good days in substance and television induced oblivion.

And, almost without notice, we awoke to find the brand, Democratic Party®, had lost its meaning. The leadersheep no longer spoke about the plight of the commonwealth. To many, they were starting to sound like wolves themselves. Then large flocks began to mistrust their party's alliance with the wolves. Many stayed home on election day. Many others formed their own party. And the sheep's long sworn enemy, the pigs, began to grow in power.

You see, the pigs alliance with the wolves went back to the beginning of time. And the sheep feared that alliance. They saw how the wolves would protect the pigs as they tried to hog all the food so that, at a time of the wolves choosing, the pigs would sacrifice one of their own to the wolves feast.

But the wolves found it difficult to elect a pig. No matter how many bows and ribbons they adorned, they still looked like pigs.

But when the sheep saw other sheep drinking with the wolves, the pigs no longer looked so bad. This is a new era, some would say. We are all wolves now.

The wolves also bought up all the TV channels, so they were able to make the pigs look like ponies. And everyone loves ponies.

And yet some of the sheep were not fooled. They said, "that's not a pony, that's a pig. And those aren't sheep. They're wolves in sheep's clothing." And they vowed to fight the wolves in sheep's clothing. But the other sheep cried out in horror. "How can you turn on your own? Don't you realize these are sheep? We must all stick together. A bad sheep is better than a good pig", they would say.

But the wise sheep knew better. They knew that the wolves in sheep's clothing were worse than plain wolves or the worst pigs. They remembered the legend of the pony, long told around the water hole. It was the story of how the wolves and the pigs had once conspired to build a giant pony to give to the sheep. But it was not a pony. It was a giant meat packer.

And yet, when they tried to warn the other sheep, they would not listen. They did not remember the legend of the pony. And they believed that if it was covered in wool, it was good. No matter where that wool came from.

To be continued...

There is nothing new in American politics. There is no Third Way. This is the same story mankind has been living out for eons. It is the age old struggle between the wolves and the sheep, retold for the new millennium. The ponies are only prettier in the television lights.

Our founding fathers fought the wolves and won. American history is speckled with such fights. Not all victorious.

But in our immense history I can find no fight more imperative, no threat to the average American so grave as the one we are witnessing now. Animal metaphors aside, the watchers and the keepers have all been turned. Every institutional protection of the common man has either fallen or is under siege.

There is only one intuitional agent left to our defense: democracy. And the only democratic institution which has any hope of providing The People with remedy is the Democratic party.

We can be a big tent on a lot of issues. But on one central point there can be no compromise: Democrats, in all their affairs, must as their final, chosen allegiance, serve the interest of ordinary Americans. Service to any other is betrayal.

Update [2005-7-31 2:50:4 by TocqueDeville]: A note about purity.

Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic party to empower the commoners. He saw the inevitable inclination of wealth and power to accumulate into the hands of the few at the expense of the many. His Party of the People was its remedy.

The root principle I have laid out above is not my invention. It is what, historically, the Democratic party has stood for since its inception. To claim that the expectation of our party to adhere to that principle -- and to solely represent the interest of common Americans -- reflects some form of ideological “purity” is bane Sophism.

The Democratic party, until recent times, has always stood for protecting common Americans against the potential tyranny of the few. And while such language may be somewhat out of vogue, it has never been more applicable. Looking out for the common man is to Democrats what “lower taxes” and “less government” are to Republicans. If you do not know this, then you are either too young to remember, ignorant of history, or worse.

Corporate Immorality and Comparative Advantage

2005-07-18T00:45:00.000-04:00

In his diary, "How to Create High-Paying Jobs and Slow Outsourcing bonddad implies that anyone who believes that corporations are "inherently evil" is not a member of the "reality based community." He calls such broad brush characterizations the language of socialists or communists.

To this I ask, how bout this guy:

"We must crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Or how about this guy:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Or this guy referring to corporations in a speech:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That is, in essence, fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

So, who are these unrealistic, commie socialists? Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt respectively.

The dangers of corporate power

From the beginning of our republic, wise men have understood the danger of corporations. In fact, to a large degree, our country was birthed in revolt from corporate power, specifically, the India Trading Company and the Central Bank of London.

But time elapses and people forget their history and the forces of greed and corruption manifest, yet again, in the form of corporate oligarchy.

I have spent most of my adult life studying and writing about corporate power and I can tell you unequivocally, it is immoral. And liking, or even needing one of their products does not alter that fact.

Actually, the corporation, in its pure state, is not immoral, it is amoral. The corporate objective does not include the values of good or evil. It has only the cold, objective value of maximizing profits.

But human beings cannot truly be amoral. We are not passive entities. "To be" requires action in every instance. And action always affects something and someone else. "To be" a human being, we must always choose actions that do or do not cause harm. That are morally right or wrong. There's just no way around it.

But the corporate model ignores such moral considerations. Like an insect machine, it merely strives towards its objective, maximize profits.

You can see the amorality=immorality of corporate hegemony by the way corporate culture responds to one of its own trying to "do the right thing." Such extracurricular
considerations are almost always viewed as hostile to the prime directive.

Can generally "good" people participate in an inherently immoral system. Of course. But not without costs. Every year, 60 Minutes broadcast some report from a corporate whistle-blower who has finally reached an epiphany. They can no longer detach their own personal morality from their function in the amoral system.

Non-locality: Amorality's Evil Twin

And this leads to the heart of what is wrong with not only the corporate system, but all centralized, authoritarian systems including communists, socialists and even some democratic states: non-locality.

Non-locality is a physics term referring to action at a distance. Almost all the evils of men can be measured in their capacity to conduct action at a distance.

For example, poisoning the water supply of thousands of people right from your Wall St. office with a phone call. Or making the decision to destroy an entire city's economy over lunch.

In the most human terms, non-locality means never having to look the person who's child you gave leukemia in the eye. Or the old couple who's pension fund you evaporated. And that really sums up the evil of the modern, corporate world: the absence of accountability.

We have become so corporatized -- or institutionalized in the case of centralized, non-local state rule -- that we aren't even aware of our own detachment from our fellow man. This has never been more evident than in our health care system:

A woman in distress calls the doctors office complaining about chest pains and nausea and the first thing she hears the receptionist say is, "Do you have health insurance?" I did not make this up.

Was the receptionist evil? No, she was over institutionalized.

Quite simply, we have become inhuman. Our ever increasing interaction with the corporate system has left us dehumanized and disempowered.

Socialism: Non-locality's Other Evil Twin

Bonddad called blanket anti-corporatism language socialist or communists. I disagree.

Socialism, in almost all previous incarnations, is even worse action at a distance with no accountability. And that is what is evil: action without accountability, never having to look anyone in the eye, non-locality. At least corporations have some profit motive not to screw you over too blatantly. Centralized bureaucracies often do not.

Of course, I don't care for broad brushes much either. But exactly the same thing I abhor about the corporate model, non-democratic, centralized control without accountability, is a recurring them in both communists and socialists states.

It is indeed true that some systems function better centralized. These systems always involve few moving parts. Like the electric grid. And it is true that some action must take place at a distance. America is a big country. But the only way to ward off the inherent dangers of such systems is strong democratic oversight. Again, accountability.

Christian Conservatism Meets Corporate Amoralism

The great irony of the modern right-wing is the new alliance of the moral Christian conservative and the amoral corporate economic model. Corporate amorality, which again is immoral, has permeated our culture. The new faith of free market as Darwinian, social management has all but replaced our basest obligation to help and protect each other. And just as in the days of Christ, the followers have littered the alter with the icons of consumerism.

It is the altruism-is-evil sociopathy of Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss: any government action that is not limited to defense or the facilitation of commerce is socialism, that has infiltrated the Christian right. They parade their patriotism as faith while condemning the government of the people dictated by our constitution. One evangelical Christian argued to me that Christ, the miracle healer of the sick, would never have given free healthcare to the poor.

The Corporate Christian's Nemesis: Democracy

Under the American Constitution, Democracy is the medium through which human "good" is manifest. Democratic government is the sole mechanism by which we solve our collective problems, localize our plight and hold to account those agents we employ on our behalf. And we must fight to the death any system that rises up in spite of it.

Only through the strong superimposition of democratic will can we allow corporations to exist. For without it, the they will rise up like a vine weed and choke off the fruits of our collective good. We can already see the reach of that vine in every chamber of our government. Strangling the people's will.

It is not socialism to employ the agency of democracy to secure the interest of the commonwealth. It is what common people do.

Factors of Deportation

This brings me to David Ricardo and the theory of comparative advantage, another venture bonddad treated us to. Does it occur to bonddad that when Ricardo and Adam Smith were developing their trade theories, the primary form of communication was the letter? The primary form of transportation was a horse? Commercial transportation was limited to trains and boats?

What has changed? The non-localization of so called factors of production. Or the globalization thereof. Specialization localization is all but nonexistant now. We can move factors of production in a year. Robotic machination has also negated the theory of comparative advantage. Now, through the wonders of technology, anyone can hit the "On" button.

Is it not clear that this changes everything? Comparative advantage is an obsolete concept. The only "advantage" left is the limitations of labor rights and environmental regulation. Otherwise, we are all equal now.

Now, speaking of the reality based community, how about the simple fact that reality is no longer conforming to classical economic theories? Nothing Bill Clinton or Al Gore sold to the country has come true. We have at least a 600 billion dollar per year trade deficit. And this does not include the labor deficit.

Some day, historians will certainly view 21st century economists as crackpots practicing pseudoscience. Why wait?

Peer pressure and rigid academic discipline, not to mention Wall Street pressure, have compelled modern economists to close their eyes to the real condition of our economy. A condition that can only be described as savage.

Think outside the box. Go to the old part of your town and look at the architecture. Why can we no longer afford to create these structures? Why can we no longer afford to have excellent schools in excellent, inspiring buildings? Why do we not have state of the art infrastructure with high-speed rails and maintenance free roads. It appears we can't even afford to protect our children from the decimation of our air and water.

Why can't we even afford to have enough police to stop crime? All over the country, police don't even respond to anything less than a felony.

The United States is the richest country in the world in natural recourses. We have the cream of the crop. Water, energy, minerals, agriculture, even people. We should be, at this time in history, creating a super society.

Instead, we endure the fight-over-scraps economy. Like rats in the sewer, our local mayors, police, school boards, transportation boards are left fighting over scraps of funds from an economic system that is completely geared towards monied interests getting a bigger and bigger piece of the pie the commonwealth decays.

Ask yourself, what does it say about an economists who claims all is rosy while we have schools whose roofs leak, who can't afford books, who cant afford enough teachers? While the policies that have allowed the Central Banks and Corporations to accumulate 90% of the wealth in this country have left the rest of us fighting over scraps.

Bill Clinton assured Americans that we could compete in a global labor market with our higher skills and training. Aside from the fact that, as Bill Gates said, our schools don't produce high skilled laborers, even if they did, we still can't compete. How much higher skilled can we be than computer programmers? Where is the demand for Quantum Physicists?

One day, future historians will look back with absurdity that a country, a world so rich could allow so many to suffer and stagnate. That we had not the wherewithal to channel our resources to create a sustainable, prosperous civilization for everyone. Why can't we see that absurdity now? Is TV so good that we settle for scraps?

The essence of the American spirit is not to accept what is and endure it, but to see what can be and make it. I suggest we apply that principle to our economic views. We have more choices than the laissez fair capitalism and socialism duality. Perhaps it's time for Democratic Economics.

Senate Votes to Gut the New Deal and No One Notices

2005-06-29T00:45:00.000-04:00

The Senate, with bipartisan support, voted to repeal one of the most hard fought and important components of FDR's New Deal Tuesday and there's narily a mention of it anywhere.

The component I'm referring to is PUHCA (Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935). Both the Senate and House bills repeal this historic measure. And though it's not as big as repealing Social Security, it comes awefully close.

Get this straight people: This is the most important legislation to pass the Senate in years. It is a green-light for a return of the energy monopolies of the 20s and 30s. It is a green-light for the kind of market manipulation and price gouging that Enron engaged in in California -- except on a national scale.

Repeal of PUHCA is where all the money is (over one trillion dollars) in this bill, and after searching Google news for "PUHCA", I got 11 hits. This is clear testimony that the modern press is either too corrupt or too incompetent to do their jobs. Make no mistake, repeal of PUHCA is an historic dismantling of FDR's New Deal, a windfall for the energy and investment lobbies, and it will do more to effect our economy and our way of life than any other piece of Bush's energy bill.

What is the Public Utility Holding Company Act and why does it matter?

Excerpted from PUHCA for Dummies: An Electricity Blackout and Energy Bill Primer by Lynn Hargis Former FERC Assistant General Counsel, Electric Rates

Q. What exactly does PUHCA do?

A. PUHCA: (1) limits the geographic spread (therefore, size) of utility holding companies, the kinds of business they may enter, the number of holding companies over a utility in a corporate hierarchy, and their capital structure; (2) controls the amount of debt (thus, cost of capital), dividends, loans and guarantees based on utility subsidiaries (so the parents can't loot or bankrupt the utility subsidiary), and the securities that parent companies may issue; (3) regulates self-dealing among affiliate companies and cross-subsidies of unregulated businesses by regulated businesses; (4) controls acquisitions of other utilities and other businesses; and, (5) limits common ownership of both electric and natural gas utilities.

Q. (Sarcastically) Is that all?

A. Actually, no. PUHCA also limits the activities (and campaign contributions) of officers and directors of holding companies, has control over their accounts, books and records, and regulates them in a number of other ways.

Should Billionaires and Huge Oil Companies Own Our Public Utilities?

Q. Why do Warren Buffet and ChevronTexaco want to get rid of PUHCA?

A. PUHCA does not allow them to own and control utilities unless they give up their other businesses. (They can passively invest in them now.)

Q. Are you kidding? ChevronTexaco would have to give up its oil business? Buffet would have to give up Berkshire/Hathaway?

A. Correct. PUHCA was enacted because huge holding companies were using secure utility revenues to finance and guarantee other, riskier business ventures around the world, and 53 utility holding companies went bankrupt from 1929 to 1936 after the banks called in their loans.

Q. So PUHCA protects the financial health of public utilities that supply our electricity and retail natural gas?

A. Yes, by controlling their parent companies. Of course, PUHCA was also designed to reduce over-concentration of economic power in just a few companies. The top five oil companies now control 50 percent of oil production in the U.S. If they also controlled public utilities, they would be too powerful for any government to regulate.

What can we expect after PUHCA repeal

Here, we're very fortunate not to have to break out our crystal balls. We merely need to look at what happened after a 1992 exemption was passed into law:

Perhaps the most impressive display of PUHCA's powers is the effect of one simple amendment made to the statute in 1992, the exemption from PUHCA of certain power plants that sold energy exclusively for resale. This was supposed to just create a little competition among power suppliers; instead, it effectively took generation out of the control of state commissions, who had always regulated it, and put it into the hands of FERC, which, to this day, has no statutory authority over generation plants.

This PUHCA partial repeal created power marketers, and ultimately the electricity deregulation debacle in California, the Enron bankruptcy, and the bankruptcies and huge debt of numerous utilities all over the United States. Congress' decisions to amend PUHCA to allow utilities to invest in telecoms and foreign utilities have been equally or even more disastrous to utility finances.

What else can we expect?

Energy Monopolies From Here and Abroad

Anyone will be able to buy your local utility company. And they will be able to use your local utility company as collateral on risky investment thereby subjecting your local utility to excessive risk. Just like Enron.

China will be able to buy your local utility company too just as they are attempting to buy Unocal. But don't worry. Your bill will almost certainly still be in English.

Aside from turning our already chaotic (from partial repeal of PUHCA) energy market into the wild west of trade speculation, one of the biggest threats will be consolidation and centralization.

In anticipation of the repeal of PUHCA, a wave of utility mergers has already been announced, including one by Warren Buffett. His holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has a subsidiary named MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which has announced a deal to buy gas and electricity utility PacifiCorp for $9.4 billion and merge it with its Iowa utility, MidAmerican. The resulting utility would control electric and gas utilities from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Lakes. This purchase would not be possible under PUHCA, which promotes local control and effective state regulation over public utilities by confining the utilities owned by any holding company to a "single integrated system" operating within "a single region" of the country.

"FERC is deregulating wholesale electric rates on the theory that there will be increasing competition among electric suppliers," according to the letter. "This can hardly be the case if a handful of electric and natural gas holding companies can control the vast majority of the utilities in the United States."

A Threat to Our Economy

For this I'll refer back to PUHCA for Dummies:

It's the Economy, Dummy

Q. What does a utility law have to do with stocks, loans and the economy?

A. The last time there was no PUHCA we had a Great Depression. The stock market crash started it, but the collapse of the utility holding companies caused the depression to go on and on into the 1930s.

Q. Oh yeah? Why did a bunch of utility owners matter?

A. Utility stocks were held by a very large number of people, as they are now. When the holding companies crashed, both large and small investors lost tens of millions of dollars in investments.

Q. Well, why did the utility companies crash? People still needed electricity, even in a depression.

A. Exactly. It was the parent companies, or "holding" companies that owned or held stock in the utilities, that collapsed because of their non-utility investments.

Q. And that was because ...

A. There is something about electric and natural gas utilities, with their captive, rate-paying consumers, that is irresistible to venture capitalists. They want to use those guaranteed revenues to invest in risky, potentially high-profit, non-utility schemes. They want to keep the profits, and have the utility's customers bear the risks and assume the debt (certainly, that's what Westar Energy's executives had in mind, according to the Kansas Corporation Commission, see below). The holding companies of the late 1920s and early 1930s were so highly leveraged (had so much debt), all supported by the operating utilities at the bottom of the corporate pyramid, that when the banks called in the loans after the crash of 1929, the utility holding companies went down in a heap. The economic consequences for the country were severe.

It's really quite simple. Energy is not another commodity to be traded like widgets. Aside from the fact that it is a natural monopoly with captive consumers, energy is the engine of our economy. Without affordable, reliable energy, no other commodities could be reasonably produced.

What PUHCA has done for the last 70 years is to provide a firm foundation on which the rest of the economy can thrive. Once you attach our energy market to the tides of the rest of the markets, you set yourself up for extreme disaster as we experienced with the Great Depression.

There is a reason why seventy-six national and state public interest organizations came together to plead congress not to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act. It is quite possibly the single biggest cause for the economic stability we've enjoyed for the last 70 years.

Democrats Who Voted To Gut FDR's New Deal - Again

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)

Update [2005-6-29 19:59:13 by TocqueDeville]: I really should have included the Democrats who voted Nay:

Corzine (D-NJ)
Feingold (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ) Nelson (D-FL)
Reed (D-RI)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)

Worshipping the Free Market God

2004-03-31T00:42:00.000-05:00

The experiment began in the 70s with the idea, propulgated by the likes of Milton Friedman, that free markets could solve all of societies ills. The role of the Nation State, as well as of democracy itself, became second place to the miracles of the market. The traditional functions of regulation, imposed democratically to ensure the interest of public good, would now be relegated to market forces which would ensure the public good through Darwinistic selection. Those who survive and prosper do so because they provide the most service or good. Privatization of utilities such as power and water would usher in a new era of competition and lower prices for consumers. Lifting off burdonsome government regulations would free the markets to naturally select and economies would flourish.

This never happened.

Joseph Stigletz, Nobel Prize winning, former chief economist for the World Bank began to notice a pattern. Everywhere the experiment was implemented, economic disaster occured. Throughout the 80s and the 90s, all across Africa and South America the free marketeers, through the mechanisms of the IMF and the World Bank, got to try out their theories: deregulate, denationalize, privatize.

They didn't work. Facts:

"In perhaps the most comprehensive such study to date, Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and other researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research documented that economic growth and rates of improvement in life expectancy, child mortality, education levels and literacy all have declined in the era of global corporatization (1980-2000) compared to the years 1960-1980. From 1960-1980 many countries maintained protectionist policies to insulate their economies from the international market to nurture their domestic industries and allow them to become competitive. Those policies are the same ones on which U.S. economic prosperity was built.

The Scorecard findings include:

Slower economic growth for countries at all income levels;

A negative growth rate for the poorest countries;

For moderately wealthy countries, income growth declined from 100% increase per capita between 1960-1980 to a 21% increase in the last two decades;

Reduced progress in education as evidenced by declining school enrollment rates and literacy. Slower growth in domestic spending correlates to decreased educational spending;

An overall slowdown in reducing infant and child mortality and in improving overall life expectancy (this is not necessarily an indicator of policy failure--it could be a natural flattening of progress curve).

You don't have to go to Argentina to see the wrath of the Free Market God.

Yet despite these facts, proponents of Globalization, like members of a cult, ignore evidence for ideology. Here in the U.S., the neoliberal conservatives (neocons) are driving the "free market is God" ideology right off a cliff. With every indicator of failure, they respond "more".

Take the California energy crisis. This is one of the few areas where they got to try out their experiments in the U.S. By promising cheaper prices for consumers through deregulation and market selection, they lobbied and passed legislation to try out their theories. Result? In one day, electricity prices rose 7000%. No, that's not a typo. In the end they had to call in the regulators again. But not before Enron and others milked Californians for over $7 Billion.

How did they do it? The profiteered on the fact that electricity, unlike widgets, is not something you can do without. So they colluded and schemed and basically held California's electricity for ransom. Result? Spikes in prices and blackouts.

The free marketization of natural monopolies such as water and power is utterly stupid, but the free marketization of medicine is immoral. Just like water, healthcare is not optional. And yet the priest of the free market expect the forces of consumer demand to apply to kidney transplants and tonsilectomies. But they really don't expect that. They're just out to make a buck. So they falsely claim that profit incentives have created the best healthcare system in the known world. Meanwhile, 45,000,000 (45 million) Americans have to crowd into emergency rooms to get treatment and if you need something severe like a new kidney, tough luck.

Democrats: going right along.

Like Californians, all Americans are being taken for a free market ride. At every turn the neocons are trying to perform their ideologically driven, factually challenged experiment here. And the Democrats are going right along. The party of FDR has shed of it's old skin as the party of the people for a new, Gobalization friendly sheen.

But in doing so, they have also shed the post-New Deal, anti-corporate, highly regulatory policies that oversaw the greatest economic prosperity in the history of the world and led, for the first time, to the creation of the middle-class.

By bellying up to the free market alter, Democrats have largely lost their reason for existing. And it shows. For the past few decades, with the exception of civil rights and social issues, Democrats have been hard pressed to define a unifying principle. The Democratic agenda has consisted of issues: education, prescription drugs for seniors, choice or now gay marriage. But a fundamental principle around which to coalesce has been awash in inconsistencies and contradictions. The old principles of economic justice and progressive populism have given way to corporate appeasment and economic abiguity. The principles of FDR's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society have been replaced by Clintonian Machiavellianism and the myth of Globalization as vehicle for the spread of democratic prosperity.

And while the liberal left and the religious right have been fighting over partial birth abortions, endowment for the arts, and gay marriage, the corporate center have been driving off with the furniture.

This has led to an exodus from the Democratic party of progressives who no longer feel they can support policies that continue to allow the accumulation of wealth and power into corporations while devouring the poor and working class. And the exodus will spread. As free market reforms failed in South America and elsewhere, they will fail here as well. And there is nothing in our history to indicate that we are protected from the fate of those other failed countries: civil unrest, riots, military intervention. If you believe that we are fundamentally different from those in Argentina and elswhere, I suggest you look at the streets of Boston after a Celtics upset.

The inevitable outcome of extreme economic diparity is social instability. And as all of the evidence indicates, the inevitable outcome of Globalization is extreme economic disparity.

Globalization vs. Democracy

Of all the outcomes of Globalization, none is more dangerous than the subversion of democracy. Just as corporate influence is corrupting the democratic process here at home, it corrupts smaller, less institutionalized countries tenfold. But if bribery of officials and CIA covert operations are the old way of globalizing, then the new way is the WTO and GATS. The WTO is a way to give the undemocratic imposition of the corporate agenda a bit of legitimacy. Kind of like Disney in Vegas. And GATS is the new law that makes it all happen.

Globalization vs. U.S. Constitution

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Article VI.4 says that governments have a duty to hold "a balance between two potentially conflicting priorities: promoting trade expansion versus protecting the regulatory rights of governments." But who determines this balance between democratically enacted regulation and the promotion of trade expapansion? The democratically elected leglislature? The democratically elected president?

No.

A mysterious entity called the GATS Disputes Panel decides where the balance is drawn. Who is the GATS Disputes Panel? If you can find a list of it's members anywhere we'd sure like to have it. But using a criterion called the "necessity test", the GATS Disputes Panel has the authority to override U.S. legislation if it finds that leglislation causes an unnecessary burdone to the promotion of free trade.

Keep in mind, none of the trade agreements -- NAFTA, GATS, and GATT -- are debated or voted on democratically. They are negotiated in closed session and signed in closed session. So we now have an undemocratic body that has regulatory override authority over not just the United States government but over all participating countries.

Globalization is Dead

There are still many advocates of Globalization. But the tide is turning. The breakdown of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotions last year is one example. Countries such as New Zealand, Venezuela, and Maylasia have said no to the God of the Free Market and the new Globalization order and have seen their economies rebound as a result. Other countries are beginning to notice.

As John Ralston Saul points out,

Once belief is gone, the churches begin to empty. You could see this accelerating disbelief in bankruptcy court in December 2001, when, as if in the last scene of an old-fashioned bedroom farce, the "inevitability" of Global corporate leadership came face to face with Enron, filing for government protection from its private debts.

Globalization is already dead. It's just a question of how long we want to drag it's corpse around.