Blog Archive 7 Sep 2009-Aug-2011

Aug 9, 2011

Obama the Cowardly Lion

Kennedy was far from perfect, but Obama isn't just a disappointment; he isn't just a failing President the way Carter was, he's failing the country, and it's probably because of who he is. Drew Westen's essay in the NYT is damning, with faint praise. Clearly, Westen is an admirer of the New Deal (so am I), but he sees Obama as someone who doesn't really know who he is; it changes with each person he works with; and he doesn't know how to deal with a bully.

Obama's pacific nature would have been well-suited to the situation Bush W faced in 2001. The outcome would have been very different, as it probably would if the Supremes had allowed Gore to be elected.

Westen pointed out that Obama's stories never include a real villain; anything bad is rather abstract, or in passive mode. And, he doesn't stand up to a bully, like McConnell, or Boehner; he wants to appease.

My wife, the inestimable Elizabeth Cunningham, told me long ago, "He's just like me! He wants to placate so the unpleasantness will go away. I know how to stand up to a bully, though; he doesn't."

But he also doesn't know if he's for progressive politics, although that's where he started, or if he really thinks more like Reagan. He may have been corrupted, in the moral sense, or he's just more of a chameleon than anyone knew: conservative when Republicans make everyone seem to be to his right--not a comfortable place to be--progressive when among Democrats, but never far out left.

That's why "centrism" is like a religion in the Obama White House: along with Change We Can Believe In, Obama's other great theme in the election was Unity. After health care, it's been little change, but too much effort for achieving unity when none is possible, except through a dead-pan or ambiguous surrender.

It's true that S&P blamed the GOP's obstructionism in their downgrade missive, but they're seeing only half of the picture; the other half has Obama cringing before GOP leaders. Obama enables bullies. The bullies are also incredibly destructive. They brought the US over the brink of fiscal credibility, and it's probably like the title of my long ago discarded first novel: When Wrong Ways Prevail.

The novel wasn't about the Roman Empire; it took place in modern India, and the wrong ways were personal, not economic or political. However, my non-fiction book, the Selfish Class, available onsite, details 21st Century parallels with the late Roman Empire's takeover by the wealthy and the military.

That's what seems to be happening here, now: tragically, even with Obama.

My novel, Attila, also onsite, takes place only decades before Rome's fall.

Aug 8, 2011

Money Trumps Empire

Republican obstructionism on behalf of their constituency, the wealthy and selfish (cf. the Selfish Class on this site), has done what the debt-ceiling agreement narrowly averted: brought into question the financial credibility of the US Government.

This is a big deal. Whether S&P used questionable measurements, whether it acted out of its own political agenda, it still did what no one had done since the US dollar became the reserve currency of the world. A credit downgrade from AAA to AA+, unless it is quickly reversed (unlikely), will lead, first of all, to higher borrowing costs for all of us.

Take that, barely whimpering economy!

But the decision will also hasten the day when the dollar will no longer be The reserve currency. That's an even bigger deal. It could mean the beginning of the end of the American Empire, because how can the US pay for its bloated military in 120+ countries, when borrowing costs really begin to rise? It can no longer just continue to borrow and expect the rest of the world to lend to us at rock bottom rates. Of course, the US can continue to borrow, and to inflate the value of the dollar, since it still owns its own printing press (the Treasury), and supposedly controls its own reserve bank (the Fed).

But then the US would be acting like any banana republic, except that US debt far exceeds the debt of any other country, or combination of them. There is no one who could bail us out, and most economies--including the US, of course--would be driven into such a Depression that the 1930's would look like an early rehearsal.

The world economy would have good reason to collapse. If it doesn't do so, then political leaders will have finally come together to save our civilization, but, on the evidence of the last 12 years, cooperation is not a great bet.

America's fall may come a lot faster than Rome's.

Rome had terrible credit and was continually diluting (inflating) its currency. But during Rome's long expansion it was also robbing the wealth of the peoples it conquered; it paid off its debts with the proceeds: gold, other treasures, and most of all, slaves.

In the US, the considerable profits of empire are pocketed not by the US government, but by private, effectively stateless, global corporations. Maybe that's why they pay so little in US taxes, even with billions in profits--profits are earned abroad. Corporations avoid declaring profits in those nations, also. It's easy to find an island/city-state with nearly zero taxes.

Aug 4, 2011

We'll Always Be Rich

That's what's most tragic about the whole debt-ceiling "debate;" the rich are always sure they'll always have it all. The plumber was "ripped off for $40,000" by a friend of the man who said this. He was also rich.

Not all wealthy people are indifferent, or feel so entitled, or are as unfeeling and cheap, but a lot are. The debate, if you can call a one-sided shouting fest a debate, so often appeared to be based on the same assumption, but with one further step: if they're always rich, then I have to court them, because I need campaign funds if I'm going to get re-elected.

Yes, there were some Democrats (and one independent) who objected that not raising taxes on the wealthy was unfair, but most Democrats were rather circumspect with the same argument. None, not even independent Sanders, were as vehement as were the Republicans against raising taxes. Many Tea Party Republicans had actually signed a pledge never to raise taxes, and people like Boehner declared that he would not raise taxes on the "job creators." He added, that he'd never voted to raise taxes, and never would.

To get a debt-ceiling compromise, somebody had to blink; it was the Democrats. You could argue that Obama and the Democrats were the grown-ups, while the GOP was having a tantrum--and got away with it. However, Democrats didn't get such a bad deal. They gained a veto over any further cuts, by requiring that half of all cuts would have to come from the military ($750 billion), if the super-committee did not come up with an additional $1.5 trillion reduction in the deficit.

Republicans hate cutting Defense about as much as they hate raising taxes. Further, the Bush tax cuts will be expiring, reducing the deficit, and raising taxes on the rich, as well as everyone else. In addition, entitlements are protected in this second round, except for Medicare providers, and so is Medicaid and some other programs benefiting the needy.

There are enough pro-Defense Democrats on the committee to make a majority, so they will have to come up with a solution. Will there be enough Democrats to prevent that "the solution" will only cut programs that don't affect the rich? There aren't enough of them; they'll have to raise taxes somehow.

Will the rich always be rich? FDR attempted redistribution, to moderate extremes of wealth and poverty; he probably saved capitalism. Without the New Deal, we could have had a Communist or Fascist revolution. If the New Deal is turned on its head, we could have Tahrir Square, or a Fascist takeover. In Pinochet's Chile, the wealthy were happy; they were in charge again.

In Rome, the Senators drove the Empire into the hands of the barbarians, and thought, until the end: "We'll always be rich."

Their selfishness cut their throats (and almost everyone else's).

Jul 24, 2011

Centuries of Idiocy

For Paulists, paper currency is anathema. Paper, or fiat money, can be managed by central banks like the Fed, whereas only the market manages gold. If you have more gold than other nations, you're rich, if not, not. If that leaves you without capital to develop your nation, tough luck, unless you sell out to the global elite.

The magical thinkers, on the other hand, believe that if you cut government spending in a recession, you create jobs. If there is even less money earned or spent in the economy, how does that create jobs? Corporations and small businesses expand and hire in response to perceived demand for their products or services. They're not hiring for lack of capital, but because people have too little money; you can't grow demand for goods and services with less consumption. As more become unemployed, there will be even less money to sustain purchases.

So, why would cutting the deficit create jobs? It requires cutting jobs, cutting programs that create jobs, and cutting payments to hospitals, seniors and poor people, making less money available to buy goods and services. If someone's Social Security is slashed, he's going to be more frugal; he may be unable to keep up his house payments: less money is spent in the economy. A default on a home even subtracts wealth. Finally, Republicans insist: you can't possibly raise taxes on the one segment of the population that is actually doing very well.

The argument (or propaganda line) is: they're "job creators," so you can't raise their taxes, or they won't create jobs. But they don't create jobs; they invest in places like China. Why? In China, there is surging demand for goods and services.

Demand creates jobs, not millionaires/billionaires; they just take advantage of demand--when it's there. They go elsewhere when it's not, or 'invest' in speculation, or, like fifth century Roman Senators, in gold. Roman Senators didn't survive long after Rome's fall.

The worst time to cut the deficit is in a recession: expenditure cuts cause lower government revenues and increase the need for government relief--thereby increasing deficits, and the nation's debt.

Yet, Obama offered devastating cuts, and puny tax increases in the debt-ceiling talks; Republicans walked out, refusing to raise taxes at all.

Only a small rump of Democrats still lives in the 21st century: they object to needless cuts and demand government jobs programs plus tax increases for the wealthy.

Jul 22, 2011

Selling Out to the Devil

What has Rupert Murdoch, and his son, done to the so-called 'information industry?' Rupert clearly has a conservative, or simply pro-Murdoch politics, but what he's specialized in is sleaze that purports to be news, so that he can titillate and horrify and excite, and appeal to the basest of instincts, like ghouls sniffing at corpses. And at the same time, he specializes in misinforming his publics so that he can make even more money with even fewer restraints.

An honest and honorable man, captain of a huge corporation, would take responsibility, like the captain of a ship. But no, Rupert and his son deny all responsibility. Funny, how hacking into phones, and bribing for information do not seem to be limited to just one publication, News of the World, or even one country, the UK. It must have been, um, someone else, one of his employees, someone who has betrayed him. Right. Rachel Maddow pointed out parallel findings for some of Murdoch's American holdings several nights ago.

It wouldn't be fair to blame Murdoch for all the trivialization of the media, the sensationalism of it, the depraved depths to which it now sinks. But Murdoch has had a marked influence on the degradation of news, which he, and his emulators, only see as "product" that can be sold; the more gruesome, disgusting or exploitative a 'true' story, the better the 'product,' because it gains more audience.

There is another side to this sordid news: it rivets the masses' attention, so they don't even care that Rupert, and others, are ripping them off, front, right and center. And Rupert's political ideas are subtly, or not so subtly driven home: the best government is the one that leaves him, or others like him, alone to prey on everyone else.

People like Murdoch, and the leaders of banks and hedge funds, are in business to seize everyone else's wealth; like Mitt Romney, they play at being "job creators."

Republican politicians are almost all either part of this predator class, or spokesmen/women for it. Democrats are a more mixed bag: there certainly are Democratic politicians who are conscientious, and who have a sense of the interests of the voters they represent; they may even share them, or they may, at least, try to represent them. There are other 'Democrats,' unfortunately, who either are, or share the interests of the predators; in subtle or not so subtle ways, they have been bought off.

Predators: the selfish class, like the Roman Senators of fifth century Rome, is like Rupert Murdoch today.

Jul 21, 2011

A Fatal False Issue

The extreme right, true-believer "tea party" Republicans, the new guys on the block, are the tail wagging the dog.

Neither Obama, nor Democrats, nor the Republican leadership want to risk default. Also, Democrats know, at least, that Americans support them on not cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But they also believe Americans want them to be reasonable, so if Republicans refuse to budge until the last minute, Democrats and Obama may compromise even on cuts to the big three--in order to avoid a default.

Such a compromise may be in the works between Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Minority Leader McConnell. Reportedly, it would cut $1.5 trillion, contains no new revenue, and is only short-term. You can bet that cuts won't be in subsidies to oil and coal, or more than token Defense cuts. That leaves the big three.

Also, there emerged the "gang of six" Senators: three from each party, who have now proposed a sweeping plan that would cut $4 trillion in ten years, while also dramatically lowering taxes for the wealthy, more so than for anyone else, but cruelly slashing funding for programs and transfer payments that help people, rather than corporations--and cutting Medicare and Medicaid.

Why can't Obama and Democrats stand up, and fight for the issues they believe in, issues supported overwhelmingly by the American public. Are Democrats in Congress and the Whitehouse as scared of the extremist fringe as German moderates were of Hitler? Moderate German politicians thought they could compromise with him, especially since Nazi (NSDAP) strength in the Reichstag was far from a majority. Yet, in less than a year, Hitler gained virtual control over all Germany.

Could it happen here? Crisis breeds authoritarianism, but Obama seems an unlikely Diocletian; he was the Emperor who took military power, and then turned the whole empire into a totalitarian state to avoid more civil war. Nevertheless, Obama's actions in Libya and the drone war confirm the tug of the imperial Presidency.

If Republican back-benchers refuse compromise on the debt ceiling, the economy could collapse with the default. American anger might explode. Either Obama emerges in 2012 as a new Diocletian who will set things right, or an extremist like Bachman will triumph; she has all the answers.

Given America's rightward turn, an imperial, Diocletian-type totalitarianism, or a fascist takeover seems more likely than a popular revolution, but either would take over a fast failing empire. We'll no longer be able to borrow to maintain it.

Do our Roman Senators, the extremely rich, think they will survive the apocalypse? They do think so, which is a big part of the problem. The Roman Senators of old did not survive, despite their huge caches of gold.

Jul 14, 2011

The Paradox of Thrift

When everyone is thrifty, or simply isn't spending because they don't have any money, even less will be sold; there will be fewer transactions of any kind. To cut spending by governments, laying off workers, closing parks, doubling up in classrooms, even laying off police, is only going to compound the problem: even more people who did have jobs, no longer have them. How is this going to create jobs?

Why would the investor class, what the GOP calls "job creators," hire more workers, when demand is sagging even further?

Perhaps it's counter-intuitive, but if government spends more money now, in targeted ways, to employ the unemployed--there's much to do with our crumbling infrastructure that's falling far behind the world standard, for example--it will more likely erase deficits sooner than if it cut back expenditures and reinforced the "beggar thy neighbor and thyself" process that Obama has caved to. His strength was not economics.

It's very simple: if people are already spending too little to maintain the kind of demand--for goods and services--that will employ the unemployed, then cutting jobs and programs in the government sector will only make things worse. This is especially true because the investor class ("job creators") are sitting on huge piles of cash, or are investing it in places like China, so it's not a lack of capital that stymies the US--and Europe; it's low demand.

Only the Federal Government can create money, and only the government can create demand when there is none: by employing people, and paying them.

Despite all the anti-government sentiment in the US, governments do a lot of positive things, when they're creating demand. In the Depression, the CCC restored land destroyed by the dustbowl, roads were built, even, the WPA hired painters to paint murals for our central post offices; they are still there today. Now, a new WPA could build high-speed rail lines, or rehab neighborhoods blighted by defaults, install insulation in public or private buildings, teach smaller classes; there are lots of things the unemployed could do. Americans are among the most highly skilled of workers, but they will be decreasingly so, the longer large portions of the workforce remain out of work.

Rome tried the "beggar thy neighbor" policy in the 3rd Century: it never recovered.

Jul 12, 2011

Debt Ceiling Chicken

Perhaps the Republican leaders do get it, that a default would be bad, very bad, but both Boehner and McConnell have as much as said, more than once, that their real mandate is to insure that Obama fails, and is not re-elected. If they do force a default, however, it's not clear that Obama wouldn't be able to campaign against them for causing it, and for opening the way for other unpleasant things: like the dollar no longer being the reserve currency, our huge debt becoming hugely more expensive and our freedom to import whatever we want whenever we want it going away.

I think Obama knows this, so he's playing chicken, too. No short-term fixes, he asserts: this is America; we don't fix our books for 3 months at a time.

Some tea party types do actually argue that a default would be a good thing, and I could, too, from one perspective. They argue, and I wouldn't agree, that we'll have to cut back on all those senseless 'consumption' programs like Medicare and Social Security (say insurance), and that as far as Medicaid is concerned, the recipients are mostly no-goods, anyway.

I argue that a default would mean we'd no longer be able to afford our costly military and its world empire. We actually can't afford it anyway. And, ultimately, we'd be much better off without it: all those things we "can't afford," like high quality education and Medicare for all, we'd easily be able to pay for--if we weren't spending almost three-quarters of a trillion yearly on "Defense" and its relatives, like Intelligence, Energy and "Homeland" Security.

And we'd be freer, too. No longer would our police forces try to emulate (and get funds from) the military, for things like tanks and armored cars. No longer would the military be so sacrosanct. And no longer would the rest of us be treated as if we were potential terror suspects.

However, a default would be painful for everyone but bond and currency traders; for them it could create fortunes. A default would mean: the beginning of the end of American Empire. Bankruptcy caused the "Fall of Rome."

Jul 8, 2011

Cuomo & Obama Both Betray Us

Now, why would he do that?

Frackers have a lot of money to spend on politics, on lobbying and campaign funds. Vulnerable New Yorkers do not. Most of western New York will be put at risk and Cuomo's decision will make it impossible for them to protect themselves. Here's why.

By the very nature of fracking--horizontal drilling--frackers can do damage to their neighbors for miles around, even if they only buy a few acres in which to place their well-head, or, they find one agreeable landowner, who sells them drilling rights. Then all the neighbors' wells can be polluted, either by the secret toxic cocktails used in fracking, or by the release of gas, which can percolate upwards into their water sources. And, of course, while the fracker, and possibly the landowner, can profit, everybody else potentially loses.

It's all about money.

If the government does not protect those vulnerable New Yorkers, there is no way they can protect themselves--unless they vote overwhelmingly against any politician, including Governor, who acquiesces in such palpable injustice, such obvious obeisance to BIG MONEY.

In Washington, Obama is now offering Republicans the enticement of substantial cuts to Social Security and Medicare, in return for closing loopholes allowing multi-millionaires and billionaires to pay lower tax rates than anyone else. Yes, you read that right: cuts to Medicare and Social Security. This is after the special election in New York's 26th Congressional District, a very Republican District, where Kathy Hochul, the Democrat won by opposing Republican plans to cut Medicare. Further, national polls show super-majorities oppose cuts to either Social Security or Medicare; even a majority of Republicans are opposed. And majorities favor taxing the rich, as well.

Why does Obama do this, i.e. hand away the store before the bargaining begins?

It's about money, and maybe character. Obama is continually trying to "split the difference" between outrageous GOP proposals and his own agenda; so the more outrageous Republicans become, the more he buys into their agenda, not his own. It's also about money, simply because multi-millionaires and billionaires have it--lots of it--and since so much of it is discretionary (i.e. surplus beyond their most extravagant dreams), they can spend it on politics. Obama apparently believes he has to get his "fair share" of that money so he doesn't propose tax increases.

Does Obama really think voters will support him if he sells out?

Who's really in charge? If Obama gets a few symbolic loopholes plugged, in return for his proffered entitlement cuts (likely), only Republicans and our contemporary Roman Senators will gain. They may have won already.

Jun 29, 2011

Short-term Profits, Long-term Disaster

American corporations don't think like this. At most, they plan ahead for the next quarter, or the next year. Speculators and large Wall Street firms gamble to exploit people's misfortunes, they don't plan ahead to help others (only themselves).

The issue of fracking is illustrative of how this works. Natural gas producers are flocking to fracking, because there appears to be an abundance of gas in a large number of enormous shale deposits deep in the earth. However, fracking requires two things that make it potentially damaging to huge numbers of people. One landowner could sell drilling rights on his land to a drilling company, but the company, after drilling down about a mile, turns the drill bit horizontal, so one surface well could have impact on people for miles around, even if all of them oppose drilling under all circumstances.

And what is the impact?

Once the wells are drilled, both vertically and horizontally, the producer pumps in a toxic stew at high pressure to fracture (hence, to frack) the shale formation in which the gas has been trapped. The drillers claim there is no danger from the toxics--they pump them out again--but no one can guarantee they won't end up in our drinking water, either from natural upward flow, or from unintended spills. This is a short-term venture that could spoil a long-term resource that is not only in short supply, it's essential to life. Many civilizations have foundered when they destroyed, or lost, their water supply. The Mughal city of Fatehpur Sikri was abandoned shortly after it was completed; it had too little water. Mayan cities disappeared for the same reason. The Romans piped water in North Africa from the southern mountains: Islamic extremists destroyed them and with the aqueducts the agricultural resources of the whole region.

Fracking oil companies act like these ancient doomed civilizations: short-term thinking only, in pursuit profits.

All this is to say: business will pursue fracking because they can make short-term profits and either: 1) they believe all the complaints about adverse effects are wrong, or 2) they're betting they'll do no damage, or 3) any damage they do won't appear until they've extracted their profits and gotten out.

In New York State, frackers have been pouring money into the legislature to prevent a moratorium, or to limit its duration. Yet, the Marcellus shale region undergirds almost all the water resources needed by New York City in its extensive reservoir system. If natural gas, or worse, the frackers' injection fluids pollute those reservoirs, New York, our financial and cultural capital, might have to be abandoned like Fatehpur Sikri, or those Mayan cities. This is just plain stupid; especially since frack wells don't last as long as conventional ones.

Instead of 'do no harm,' modern corporations appear to believe in 'do harm' if there's profit in it.

Jun 25, 2011

Nowhere Near Enough

More than "the military wanted." Do you get it? Barack Obama is not Commander in Chief: David Petraeus is. He set out the "options," and the only gesture made towards popular opinion, especially towards Obama's 2008 supporters, is that Barack chooses the "option" that draws down the troops a little faster than the military would like. Maybe even that takes courage, given how dominant the military has become. The President was elected on a groundswell of get-us-out sentiment vis a vis Iraq, and secondarily, Afghanistan. Obama's main focus re Afghanistan was about stopping al Qaeda.

In his speech, Obama made no implied criticism of spending $2 billion a week on sustaining the Afghan war and the corrupt government we put into power there. Yet, he proposes only a 10% cut in the number of troops, even if Obama said the right things about rebuilding America, instead of some foreign country. We'll still be spending about $1.8 billion per week on this senseless war. Meanwhile, honeyed demands rise for cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, to pay for the deficits incurred by our imperial overreach.

What do we get out of the Afghan war? Are we safer? Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan, The Afghan government is almost mythically corrupt. Our man, President Karzai, keeps on making noises about not wanting us there: if he honestly said what he wanted--continued American presence so that he could continue to rip us off--Afghans and Americans would both be dismayed. Karzai is dependent on our largesse, not just because it enriches him, but because it gives him extraordinary means to pay off his followers.

The economy of Afghanistan appears to be largely dependent upon American/NATO aid and opium sales, and it's still one of the poorest nations on the planet.

More and more Americans are agreeing that we shouldn't be going into debt to "develop" or pacify Afghanistan, when we don't have enough money for our own schools, or our retirees.

Obama's decision is clearly too little, too slow and too obeisant to his military overlords, who don't mind if they impoverish and then bankrupt the rest of us.

Would even Ron Paul, or Russ Feingold do any better if either were President? Or would the military overawe them, too? It seems likely, but then neither would be able to get elected, anyway.

What has been emerging since Reagan, at least, is a military that is NOT really subject to civilian control--although it still keeps up appearances. While the generals don't interfere with domestic policy, they have gained a stranglehold on military policy/foreign policy. They will drive the American empire either to Armageddon, or more likely, to bankruptcy.

Jun 20, 2011

All Temples Fall

Nations that have never been empires don't spend more than half their discretionary budgets on "Defense." Instead, they spend to make their people better off. Does spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year on war-making give Americans better lives? It's spent all over the world by our generals, trying to maintain dominance. Germany learned through bitter defeat, but Germany, today has universal healthcare and lower unemployment than they had before the Great Recession; they aren't spending their substance on foreign wars.

Americans spend $750+ billions on the most deadly killing machine the planet has ever seen: our military. So, they bomb Afghanistan. Are we better off? We help in bombing Libya, while our generals work hard to persuade Afghans and Iraqis that American troops should stay in their countries indefinitely, even if they do bomb the occasional wedding procession, or informal gathering.

Why does Karzai, originally American-sponsored, want Americans to stay? He wants Americans because he can siphon billions off us, for him, for his family, for his cronies, for his allies bought and paid for. Can he really believe that more years of war are better for his people than a settlement? The Taliban has a central demand, which, for nationalists makes sense: any settlement must require that US and NATO forces leave. Our negotiators refuse to discuss withdrawal, but demand the Taliban submit to "the constitution," which was written with American guidance. Why not negotiate when to leave, and what to get in return and negotiate how to work under the present constitution?

American generals don't want to leave Afghanistan: it's a moneymaker, as well as an opportunity for promotion, power and cushy jobs after retirement. The same goes for Iraq, and for any of the 120+ countries in which we have a presence.

Wall Street promotes empire, too, because of the money it can make from war, and so does the media. Until recently, no one cared whether we had to go into hock to maintain "full-spectrum dominance."

At least, the "budget warriors" are beginning to realize: useless wars cost too much. Who is hurt by empire? Anyone affected by all the cuts to programs aiding them, or the taxes they have to pay for useless wars. Few in power stand up to the generals and say "No!"

But the generals are determined: they desperately hold on; they don't care if America can't afford it. They'll bankrupt and impoverish us to get their way.

"All temples fall," Elizabeth Cunningham sings. All empires do, too. Elizabeth will sing this song when she promotes her upcoming Red-robed Priestess the last of her Maeve Chronicles, set during Boudicca's rebellion against Rome. But it's happening now with the American Empire.

Jun 13, 2011

First they Came for the Jews

The above was written by Pastor Niemoller protesting the Nazis after millions of Jews were gassed and he was nearly executed. Now, similar things are beginning to happen, a step at a time, here in the US and abroad, under US aegis. First, foreigners are detained arbitrarily, then American citizens, even tortured, held for years with no charges, held in solitary, force-fed if they protest their illegal imprisonment with hunger strikes. It's not only Bradley Manning and Abdullah al Kidd, but hundreds of others.

While we may sign petitions, and while some protest in the streets, the screws only get tighter: we are marching rapidly towards a police state. What's scary is that Obama's election appears to have accelerated the process, but his next electoral opponent would likely be even worse.

Guantanamo is not closed, Bagram has expanded rapidly, "super-max"-security prisons proliferate in the US, routine solitary confinement goes viral, while ordinary citizens are subjected to intrusive searches in airports. Furthermore, Abdullah al Kidd, the Supreme Court has ruled, cannot sue former US-AG John Ashcroft for wrongful detention, and as Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame) has noted, now everything Nixon did to him (like breaking into his psychiatrist's office for blackmail material) is now legal.

The creep of surveillance in this supposedly democratic nation has reached the point in which no one is safe and virtually anyone can be watched. Given our more highly developed communications technology, surveillance is also easier.

The government has been given the legal legs through the just renewed Patriot Act to continue and expand its Big Brother activity, but even private corporations like Progressive Insurance are pushing new versions of surveillance: Progressive will discount rates for customers who submit to electronic monitoring of their "driving habits." Ironic name, right? The states also get into the business: a friend was mailed a speeding ticket, after Easy-Pass monitored his speed from Great Barrington to Boston on the Mass Pike!

The protest against full body scanners (also referred to as 'porno-scanners') has pretty much died down. Either you go through them at the airport, or a TSA officer will feel you up--all for "security" reasons.

Why do Americans passively allow these outrages? As Ben Franklin noted: "Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY."

The American Empire, like the Roman one, has jettisoned both--even for our equivalent of Roman Senators, like Congressman Weiner and ex-Governor Spitzer.

Jun 11, 2011

Our Debt Trap

I have friends who are barely making it, working full time; they're good at what they do, highly valued by their employers, yet they're paid too little to afford the minimal American lifestyle.

Prices go up, although Bernanke tells us we don't have meaningful inflation, that deflation is the danger. Deflation is a danger, not just in the housing market, where prices are marching downward, but in the labor market. Workers are paid less and less, because everything, including rent, goes up--except their wages. The result is that people have less and less money to spend; they economize. In the country, people only drive to the store when they have multiple tasks; gas costs too much for multiple shopping trips, so there is less money as demand for goods and services.

Meanwhile, corporations are sitting on piles of cash, much of it from foreign earnings, and from squeezing more work out of fewer workers. The rise in unemployment (from 8.8% to 9.1%) is driven by labor deflation, i.e. people don't have enough money to maintain the demand necessary for businesses (small and large) to hire more workers.

No tax cuts for corporations and wealthy investors will stimulate job creation when there is flagging demand for the goods and services those businesses sell. No lay offs of public employees (Federal, state and local) is going to create more jobs; the opposite is true; layoffs drive demand downward.

Two policies would create jobs: resolving the housing collapse by allowing people to stay in their homes and renegotiating mortgages based on their homes' current value, and/or subsidizing housing payments. And, government creating needed jobs directly. Our crumbling infrastructure alone indicates that WPA-type jobs would be positive investments in the nation's future. It doesn't matter where the money comes from, but only the Federal government can make a political decision to invest in jobs.

Instead, governments slash jobs and spending, suddenly reducing money available for goods and services. The result is a debt trap. Fewer jobs mean less money being spent. This results in lower tax revenue and higher expenditures on services to the unemployed, which then forces cuts of even more jobs. This self-reinforcing deflation, is a debt trap. Deficits will rise as expenditures are cut; debt will increase as unemployment rises and as people spend less. That's not a paradox, it's how things work.

Rome was caught in a debt trap in the 4th century--and never got out of it. Keynes and FDR found a way out in the 1930's. Why don't we?

Jun 5, 2011

What's Wrong with GOP's Hensarling?

What's wrong with this picture? Regulators have gone wild? Polluters went wild under Bush, speculators went wild; banks went wild, causing the recession. The "tax increase" Hensarling mentions, is the expiration of Bush's unfunded top-rate tax cuts. Tax rates for millionaires are lower now than at any time since 1929 and income inequality is higher.

Who are "job creators?" People who put up the money? Neither large corporations nor entrepreneurs are hiring. This is because employers do not "create" jobs. In order for hiring to happen, there has to be demand (or its potential) for goods or services in the economy (demand is not created by the employer), and there have to be people with the requisite skills to fill the jobs needed (provided by good schools). Entrepreneurs take advantage of many things they don't create: people, skills, demand, a legal system, and basic security.

Imbedded in that legal system are regulations, which establish a predictable marketplace. They also force businesses to compensate for damages to society. Polluters, for example, either pay the costs their pollution caused to society, or society has to pay it instead: in poorer health, a major cost. Why should a polluter profit from the lung cancer he causes in a hundred victims downwind?

As for debt: the greatest part of the debt Republicans like Hensarling rail about was caused by: two Bush tax-cuts, two unfunded wars and an unfunded mandate added to Medicare (Part D) by Bush and his Republican Congress. Then, to the debt was added the Great Recession caused by the lack of regulation which culminated with Bush, but had been building since Carter.

In recessions, governments take in less (in revenue) but have to spend more (for things like unemployment payments and Food Stamps), unless they're going to revert to a Dickensian age when people starved in the streets. Our experience in the Depression demonstrated that government programs (contrary to conservative dogma) created jobs, value and demand, and started the US climb out of the Depression--not completed until the massive deficit spending necessary to wage WWII.

Cutting spending does not create jobs, as evidenced by the rise in unemployed state and federal workers here, and renewed recession in budget-cutting UK. But it does increase inequality, and therefore the power of the extremely wealthy, our equivalent of the Senators of Fifth Century Rome.

Those Senators did much the same thing, weakening Rome, laying the stage for its fall, in 476.

Jun 3, 2011

We Won't Pay!

It makes sense in the US, too. Who caused the global recession, and what is causing the world economy to lean towards a renewal of it? The banks speculated and committed fraud on all of us, and got away with it--at our expense. The American economy is limping towards a "double-dip" in part because of all the government cutbacks (federal, state and local). It's also because jobs in the private sector are not returning; there was too little stimulus--except for the trillions thrown at Wall Street.

In Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the bankers demand huge cutbacks to services, pensions, any public expenditure, but it was the bankers who caused the crisis, yet the banks are not being asked to pay for it. The bailouts will probably doom those countries to continued recession; their governments won't be allowed to re-stimulate their economies.

The US may be doomed as well, by political shortsightedness, greed, ideological blindness and the overweening power of the Selfish Class, our contemporary Roman Senators.

When you have persistent unemployment rates (officially now 9.1% and unofficially 16-18%), with wages flat and workers scared, you are not going to have expansive demand. Without growing demand, corporations are not going to hire, whether their taxes are raised or lowered. Corporations have been sitting on piles of money and neither hiring, nor investing.

Ordinary people have been left in the lurch. Any commitment on the part of the Obama administration to stimulate hiring, or to aid the housing market by mortgage reform has been abandoned in the face of Republican demands. Impose the same kind of draconian cuts and restructuring as the IMF: huge cuts in services, pensions (like Social Security and Medicare) and jobs, to pay for the debts incurred by the finance nightmare, two unfunded wars and a series of unfunded tax cuts that have enriched a tiny 1% of the nation.

We are told that the US is broke; it's not. The problem is that the wealthy and the corporations are looting the nation--as they looted Portugal and Greece--and they have the political clout (and paid media support) to persuade the political elite, that massive cutbacks are necessary--on others' backs. They even insist, via Republicans like Ryan, that they are over-taxed; the opposite is true.

Many corporations avoid paying any taxes, despite huge profits; many wealthy find enough loopholes, too, to reduce their already low, 33% top tax rate. In the booming 50's, the top rate was 91%, and it was still 70% in the prosperous 1960's.

Shout: "Hell no! We won't pay!" The people and corporations who created this mess should pay for it. Governments should create jobs with their money. To accept the cutbacks is to reinforce the takeover by our Roman Senators. We'll retreat to Fifth Century society made up of Senators and serfs.

Jun 1, 2011

Who Controls This "Democracy"?

Yet pundits, experts, politicians and decision-makers all propose the opposite: cut taxes on the wealthy, revamp or cut Medicare, urge Iraqis to keep American troops after 2012, and minimize any withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Among the in-crowd in Washington and the major media markets, the burning question of the day is: how to cut the deficit and the debt. Beyond the beltway, where most people live, the deficit isn't the problem: it's jobs.

Nine percent unemployment implies 91% employed, so most are still working--non-workers are not counted. Given declining demand driven by the double-dip housing market and the fall in demand for workers, a large proportion of those employed fear lay-offs and therefore put up with speed-ups, increased workloads, longer hours and stagnant wages. Further, unions are so weak they can't even keep their members' wages abreast of escalating costs of living.

But Republicans ignore the jobs issue, after using it to gain power in Congress in 2010: everyone they know is doing pretty well. Just ignore all that whining about jobs. Eliminate all social programs like Medicare, instead.

Obama is only marginally better.

The debate on alternative budgets demonstrates how skewed our public dialogue has become. It leaves out the only proposed budget to truly cut the deficit, reduce the debt and create jobs. Why is GOP Ryan's budget proposal considered the only serious alternative to Obama's? It would replace Medicare with vouchers and block grants for Medicaid, and wouldn't significantly cut deficits; it might actually raise them, because of Ryan's tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet, it's considered serious. Obama's budget freezes Federal pay, cuts Food stamps, finds savings in Medicare and Medicaid cut-backs and greater efficiencies in health care, and nominally cuts Defense. Obama doesn't raise taxes on the wealthy until after 2012, and he doesn't significantly cut the deficit, either.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget raises income taxes and estate taxes for the top 1% of earners, on high-earners' payroll taxes and corporate taxes, while capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. It cuts healthcare costs through negotiating Medicare pharmaceutical prices, better management and by adding a public option. It cuts defense by bringing the troops home and shifting defense priorities. It also invests $1.66 trillion in job creation, infrastructure and alternative energy. Progressives claim they'd achieve a budget surplus of $30.7 billion by 2021.

So, why isn't it considered a "serious" alternative? Oh, it's only what the people want, but the public "debate" doesn't include what people want, only what the elite wants. They want to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense, like the Roman Senators in the Fifth Century. If they succeed, we'll have a declining empire, mass impoverishment and no democracy.

May 30, 2011

The World Map: Moral Decline of Empire

The US is stained gray, just like the UK, China, India, Russia and South Africa, most of Africa, Asia and more than half of Latin America. Yes, America is not an exceptional island of humanity and civil liberties. Bolivia is, and so is Uruguay.

Two years after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, it's still open for business, still holding people without charges and without justification. And there are still reports of abusive treatment of prisoners. June 3, 2009, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih succeeded in committing suicide, somehow, despite being on a suicide watch: he and five others had been force-fed through their noses for years.

And then, of course, there is Bradley Manning, who has been confined for almost a year now, has been held in solitary most of that time, with extreme isolation enforced (not even allowed to exercise in his cell, not even allowed clothes some of the time), yet he is still not charged--with anything! Many torture specialists say isolation like this is worse than physical torture; it melts the mind.

Until this spring, we also sent some of our detainees to Mubarak, have him overtly torture for us. Thanks, Hosni! Still, when the Egyptian Spring arose, we reluctantly climbed on and threw Hosni under the bus.

So, the US, even under Barack Obama, is no oasis of humanity. Canada is; Costa Rica is; Chile is; even Paraguay is, but it almost looks, when you look at this gray map of the world, that only minor nations, ones without imperial or regional ambitions--with the exception of France and Germany--can any longer "afford" to honor human rights.

Was there a time when an American President could truthfully say, "We don't torture," "We don't detain people arbitrarily?" FDR could boast the first, but not the second (the Japanese-American detainment camps), but after WWII we could boast both, with the possible exception of Vietnam, until George W. But now, still, with Obama, champion of human rights and peace, both practices are even admitted. Obama has drawn a line: excluding most direct physical torture, including water-boarding, but the treatment of Manning is on his watch, and it's torture, too: for an American citizen who has yet to be charged with a crime!

Such is the cost of Empire. Americans, struggling now to dominate the world, (remember Full Spectrum Dominance?) are now so insecure we have to torture our own to insure our "security." We have to give up our rights and allow our leaders to imprison and torture us arbitrarily (oh, there are rules and regs about how to do it, but still it's arbitrary).

This is life in the American Empire, in its rapid decline.

May 26, 2011

The Predator Class

Our selfish class has escalated the plunder of the rest of us to an order of magnitude that makes Roman Senators look like petty criminals in comparison.

Fraud permeated the housing market that collapsed in 2007-8; it was endemic at every level. But, the profits and risk escalated with each additional layer of resold, insured, sliced, repackaged, resold "mortgage securities." And where did the original money come from, the funds that underlay this whole wobbly house of cards? Mortgage payments, an increasing number of which were either sub-prime or of questionable soundness, with their fraudulent enticements of low starter rates and escalating payments, no money down but higher and higher interest rates.

The money that underpinned the great mortgage bubble came from the poor, and working middle class. Through bank swindles on those loans, the people were tossed out of their homes and the banks were left holding huge numbers of foreclosed properties.

This wasn't a great deal for the banks, initially, but before the crash, it transferred billions of dollars from the poor and near poor to the very, very rich. In the bailouts, the government handed the banks billions more, so that even if they were left holding hundreds of thousands of homes they couldn't sell, they were able to resume their speculation and create huge profits, mostly out of thin air--and made-up money.

As for the people thrown out of their homes, in many cases for clearly fraudulent reasons, they had nowhere to go. So, the collapse of the housing market, and of the financial system, threw millions out of work. But the so-called stimulus that was supposed to promote job creation--the green jobs touted by candidate Obama--was much too small, due to political timidity, to do much more than keep employment from falling off a cliff. It stabilized unemployment at below 10%. Since, it has slowly crept down to 9% or slightly lower (not counting discouraged workers).

Meanwhile, the bailed-out banks are profiting hugely, in the still largely unregulated financial markets. Corporations are posting huge profits, too, but hiring is very slow: employers would rather squeeze as much as they can out of existing employees.

As if to underline their client status to the banks and corporations, Republicans consistently advocate cutting corporate and high-earner taxes, while bewailing the huge debts incurred from similar tax cuts they adopted previously, and from their unfunded wars. To make up the difference, they propose draconian cuts to entitlements (running surpluses, so far) and to all programs serving anyone not rich.

Debtors prison has already resurfaced: will Republicans try to legalize serfdom next?

May 25, 2011

Should Dems Compromise Or Fight?

If the Republicans are intransigent, Obama and the Democrats should demonstrate that they attempted reasonable compromise, but Republicans refused, demanding only capitulation.

Ultimately, Republican sponsors, the financial firms and large corporations, will force the hardliners to blink: they don't want the US to default, either.

Democrats should not give up their principles, or let down their constituents, many of whom depend on governments for their livelihood or safety.

Where do these conservative ideas come from, which demand that Texas cut its budget by about a quarter ($23 billion), to meet its shortfall, at the expense of its children (and its future), while not raising taxes on corporations, or millionaires and billionaires by one cent--and cutting taxes on yachts? Even worse is the spectacle of Florida's Rick Scott, who simultaneously lowered "business" taxes by billions, to be paid for by corresponding billions of cuts in education and unemployment compensation.

In other words, to Republicans, people don't matter, unless they're worth millions or billions. Teachers are overpaid, they argue, and unemployment insurance just encourages laziness.

And what do corporations, millionaires and billionaires do with all this wealth for which they've avoided paying taxes? They speculate, or they buy more "property," or collect ancient coins, or gold bars. Corporations have used their profits to go private, by buying up their outstanding stocks at premium prices. Until this last quarter, they hardly spent any of their excess cash on "creating jobs," except in other parts of the world.

Kathy Hochul, a progressive Democrat, just won a special election for Congress in an upstate New York district that's about as Republican as Nebraska. She won nearly a majority, despite having three opponents, including a Tea Party candidate on the far right, a Republican who dutifully followed the party line on eliminating Medicare, and a Green candidate on the left.

Clearly, Newt was onto something when he backed away from Ryan's Medicare plan, but Republican hard-liners made him eat crow.

Maybe there's hope yet that the great muddled middle will understand that corporatists are not their friends: they represent what I've called "the selfish class" (on this website); supporting them will kill any possibility of democracy, or of a viable middle class. Their way will lead us to our own "476."

May 20, 2011

Schneiderman for President!

I do mean that. The banks created the Great Recession. People were thrown out of work; people were thrown out of their homes, because big banks played such high-stakes fraud with all the nation's mortgages. They sliced them and diced them, sold them and resold them, and cut a lot of corners when they did all this, starting with the higher than usual number of fraudulent mortgages on which these securities were based.

Unemployment still has barely fallen to an official 9%, or a real 16%, the wave of foreclosures on homes seems unending, and is about to get even worse, now that "the paperwork" has been cleared up. Ordinary people are hurting, but it's because of the insane gambling by the banks, with depositors money, their money and money the Fed, a quasi-government entity, virtually gave to them, through extremely low cost loans.

When the banks were in danger of going bankrupt, the Government and the Fed offered $700 billion to bail them out with TARP, and then gave them extraordinary access to virtually costless money from the Fed. The program worked --for the banks and bankers. They're having one of their best years, bonuses are higher than ever, profits are soaring--

But we still have 9-16% unemployment, and we still have a sinking housing market, with millions of people ejected from their homes. During normal times, construction jobs are relatively plentiful. Now they are not; housing starts have fallen off a cliff.

All of this started because the wise-asses at places like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan thought they could play fast and loose with everybody's money. They thought they couldn't lose: until they did, beginning in mid-2007, when the bottom almost fell out of the whole global financial system, and it was because of their reckless behavior.

So far, no one has gone after the banks even for the fraud. I think they're responsible for much more, but at least the fraud has been documented. Still, neither Obama's DOJ, nor the 50 states attorneys general in their suit, have pursued the banks' massive fraud, even though it dwarfs any financial crime in history. That is, no one's gone after them until now.

Enter Eric Schneiderman, New York's progressive Attorney General: he's going after Goldman, JP Morgan and Bank of America! I voted for him twice (first, in a five-way primary). The man's been busy in his first year: going after tobacco companies, Medicare fraud, corruption in state contracts, but now? Schneiderman has spurned the "deal" other AG's are negotiating. Instead, he's demanding documentation on the mortgage securitization that destroyed the housing market: he's looking for fraud. Finally, someone is!

Alert to Roman Senators! Slip some coke in Schneiderman's suit-coat; get a pimp to hook him! Your predatory schemes are suddenly at risk!

May 18, 2011

Medicare Voucher Madness

An article by John Cogan in the Wall Street Journal (5/12/11), lays out what Republicans are trying to do: persuade us that for our own good, we just can't afford what we've been promised.

What we've been promised, Cogan claims, is an average of a million dollars per couple in combined benefits, while we've only paid in an average of $500,000. He doesn't bother to mention that the latter figure is dollars in the past, and the million is dollars in the future, i.e. inflated dollars with earned, compound interest.

It's true that Medicare was set up for fiscal disaster; that was done quite cynically by Republicans, with Bush's expansion into Medicare Part D, covering prescriptions, and overpaying insurance companies to participate in Medicare Advantage programs, without providing additional funding. Medicare still cannot negotiate drug prices, under the reform law, because big Pharma found enough Democrats, as well as solid Republican support, to block it.

Republican Ryan was touted, briefly, as "courageous" for daring to call for phasing out Medicare for private insurance vouchers, until he and his cohorts went to their districts and attempted to explain his plan. Then reality hit the fan. People don't believe their lies, or simply don't accept their conclusions: they don't want vouchers; they want Medicare.

And still, "pundits" opine that we can't afford Medicare, and Republican candidates must support Ryan's plan: Gingrich was almost disowned for opposing it.

Almost all other 'developed' nations have publicly provided, or heavily subsidized healthcare, not only for seniors, but for everyone. Their health outcomes are better than ours, yet they cost less, in some cases less than half what Americans pay.

So, why can't the United States, supposedly the richest, most powerful nation on earth, afford health care even for seniors, and retirements as generous as those of other 'developed' nations?

Because we have to spend so much on Defense, or on billionaires?

Let's be clear: Medicare was created because health care for an older person was too expensive for private insurance. Seniors do need more health care; age breaks down our bodies, although, because of superior medical care, more live longer than in past eras. Most seniors, including me, would be excluded from standard health insurance programs, because of "pre-existing conditions." So, our premiums would be sky high, our vouchers would pay only a portion of our real costs, and there is no way that the "magic of the market" would somehow make healthcare affordable.

Medicare replaced by vouchers? I know I'd be bankrupted by it, yet I'm pretty healthy.

But that's the idea: impoverish seniors: one more cohort to turn into serfs, so the new Roman Senators can have more money to play with in the money markets.

May 17, 2011

US a Slum for World's Wealthy

It wasn't always this way. The United States, after World War II, modeled high wage, highly skilled union workers, producing goods for the world, and living well while doing so.

When the US occupied Germany and Japan after World War II, our government exported the highly unionized American model. Part of our rationale was that unions would foster democracy, thereby combating Japanese fascism and German Nazism. Unions would also improve lives, giving them a stake in postwar governments. Today, Germany runs a trade surplus: Germans earn high wages, work shorter hours, have long vacations and are relatively highly unionized (27% vs 9.6% in the US private sector).

And the US? Wages have at best stayed where they were in the early 1970's, while productivity has doubled. Work hours are longer in the US, and vacations get shorter. Meanwhile, our buying power erodes, and we have the priciest, least effective health care system among developed nations. Further, there are US states where unions are so scarce and so scared (like North Carolina: 3.2%) that workers effectively compete with the Chinese for lowest cost manufacturing sites. High unemployment drives down costs further.

The US competes with China for low cost work, while running huge deficits and cutting benefits. China has the largest surplus, but Germany sells high wage goods, and has the second largest surplus in the world; it even keeps its social democratic benefits largely intact under a "conservative" government!

Whether Germany will continue to do so well as union membership declines, is an open question, but greater union clout still makes a political difference. German firms setting up shop in the US, however, (mostly in the South) keep unions out and enforce work conditions unthinkable in Germany. Also, in the US, Deutsche Bank perpetrated mortgage rip-offs it could never have gotten away with in Germany.

All the American talk of cutting deficits and debts is a diversion. We're a mine of money for predatory capitalists the world over; we're also the center of predatory capital on Wall Street.

In the past 30 years, the US has almost done away with its New Deal legacy; coincidentally, unions have been losing ground since Reagan and regulations were stripped from financial institutions--freeing them to fail so spectacularly in 2007-8.

And who pays? Not the banks, not large corporations: everyone else, but especially our children and anyone dependent on government services: ultimately, anyone who is not wealthy.

America is so like Rome before its fall, when Senators governed in their own interests. They drove the peasants and middle class into serfdom, and monopolized the empire's wealth, laying it open to collapse, and, ironically in retrospect, to piecemeal takeover by Germanic invaders.

May 16, 2011

Osama bin Laden Wasn't Killed?

The answer is probably two-fold: it was the Navy Seals, after all, which provided the muscle for the operation. But probably more importantly, a burial at sea, while it can be scrupulously correct in Islamic ritual--reportedly it was--also disposed of the body without thereby creating a martyr's shrine.

That's important on the Indian subcontinent: veneration of a martyr's grave, that becomes a shrine for a saint, in Islam, or an altar to a local god, in Hinduism, has a long and bloody history. Better, people have no specific place for pilgrimage--except the mansion in Abbotabad; that can't be avoided.

In the fifth century, people speculated that Attila didn't die, because he was buried in a secret grave beneath the river Tisza. All the captives who worked to divert the river, and to dig the grave, were summarily executed. Attila as Told to His Scribes on this site.

We've read or heard stories of Jesus's resurrection, or, in the case of Kazantzakis, succumbing to the temptation not to be crucified, and going on, living his life anonymously, somewhere else. There is also Elizabeth Cunningham's Passion of Mary Magdalen, in which Jesus rises again: Cunningham claims: "Maeve put the erection back into the resurrection."

Wait for it: Osama bin Laden will rise again.

What about the legality of the President ordering the assassination of someone who has publicly declared himself an enemy, and boasts that he's attacked us? It's probably stretching the elastic limits of Presidential authority as Commander in Chief, but unfortunately, there are precedents, at least since Wilson, and certainly since Kennedy. JFK apparently approved plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His own assassination might very well have been blow-back. Lee Harvey Oswald had earlier defected to the USSR and later defended the Cuban Revolution.

The unreal world of government covert action and anti-government terror is a game that supposedly grown people play. Presidents are advised that they must, that it's their responsibility to Protect and Defend, that these super-secret operations are absolutely necessary.

And so, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, acted as judge, jury and Commander of the executioner.

If Obama had ordered bin Laden's capture, instead of murder, bin Laden's trial might have become a cause celebre worldwide, and al Qaeda would have exploited it--to recruit more suicide bombers. Any dispassionate coverage of the trial would have infuriated true believers.

I suspect there is another, simpler reason why bin Laden was killed in the raid: Navy Seals, especially special units like the one which carried out the raid in Abbotabad, are probably trained to kill, not to capture.

Anyway, enough people, including Republican Congressmen, saw the gruesome photos of bin Laden, that we can be sure: he's dead.

May 13, 2011

Crime and Revolution

When you release pressure from a pressure cooker, there's a SWOOF, as air escapes in a rush. Egypt was under authoritarian rule analogous to a pressure cooker. When Mubarak was overthrown, not only human rights workers but also criminals escaped from jails: about two-thirds have been recaptured. However, the police literally don't know what to do, because they were trained for an authoritarian regime and their abuses were exposed (torture and corruption were routine).

Since the US sends billions in aid to Egypt, it's obvious what we should spend it on: re-training the remaining police and training new recruits in democratic procedures (there's a shortage of police; many fled during the Tahrir uprising).

Change causes unforeseen consequences. Unless there is a rational response, there will be an irrational one: reinstitute a dictatorship to re-establish order.

This happened in Russia. The transitional democratic system fell because of terror from the Chechen civil war, and the outrageous corruption of the transition from the Soviet's managed economy to a "free market system." Corruption, fear and Russia's history of powerful rulers, helped create the Putin/Medvedev authoritarian model.

The same thing happened in the late western Roman Empire: chaos (lasting almost a century), led to Diocletian (284-305) creating a totalitarian regime; it limped into the fifth century before it gave up the ghost--to more primitive monarchies first set up by the Goths.

Democracies are messy, as the American experience amply demonstrates, but they are ultimately less fragile; mistakes and disasters call for changes through elections, not complete upheaval. The advantage is that institutions like the police are not destroyed, although they may be reformed, if they have been abusing their power.

It took the French from 1789 to the 1950's, over 150 years, before a stable democratic political system was finally established. Why? The Bourbon regime was disastrous, but the radical revolution overthrowing it was absolute and horrific. Institutions were abolished; new ones started from scratch, while the animosities created by the ensuing regimes took generations to neutralize.

In other words, upheaval, of the wholesale kind, taking place throughout the Middle East, causes many unwelcome changes. It may be a long time before things settle down, but there are ways to promote stability.

Institution building is key. Whether a nation had a poorly functioning police force, or none at all, it needs a force that keeps the peace, is not corrupt, and does not abuse its citizens. Aid to create such institutions, and a civilian-led military, could be much more effective than billions for sophisticated weapons. That's what the US should be doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well, instead of occupying them.

May 12, 2011

Up Against the Wall?

Actually, some people are doing very well, thank you-and they want to keep it that way.

Do they worry about $4+ a gallon gas? Of course not. Do they worry that they can't afford to heat their home in the winter? Why should they? Heating bills are nothing, besides, The real question is: Tahiti or Crete? As for oil, they hope it goes higher--they own Exxon, or maybe StatOil: their dividends would rise even more.

A lot of people if they have substantial commutes and substandard wages, worry about $4 gas. Anyone in the northeast, who owns a home and lives near the edge of their income (most people), will worry about heating costs after a winter like the one we just survived.

Yet some people build huge houses: 40,000 square feet or more, and could care less if they cost a lot to heat. If they're also environmentally minded, they might install a geothermal/solar system, and never concern themselves about fuel costs again.

But the rest of us? I'm lucky to have a ready, sustainable supply of firewood, but I'm 72, so I don't expect to be able to get it myself too many winters longer. A lot of people turn their thermostats far below what's comfortable. And some are just cut off. Our power company was nasty when an old, transferred account was overdue.

And then there are the millions who have lost their homes, or are in danger of doing so: underwater, foreclosed, evicted.

The banksters, however, make out like bandits. They financed mortgages they knew were poor risks, made more so by the supercharged costs, and then sold them, over and over again. Their loans were fraudulent, the economy tumbled when their whole house of cards collapsed--and then Bush, succeeded by Obama, bailed them out.

Trillions for banksters, not enough billions for everyone else. The consequences: huge bonuses on Wall Street, soaring corporate profits, but continuing high unemployment and waves of mortgage defaults. The high joblessness keeps wages down, an advantage for any employer, which is why corporate clients--including virtually all Republican Representatives and Senators and many Democrats as well--scream about deficits and debts, but not about jobs, or middle class homes going into default.

Joblessness, and home foreclosures transfer trillions to the perpetrators of this whole scam, especially banks: joblessness keeps wages down, favoring employers, especially large ones, especially ones fending off unionization. Meanwhile, home foreclosures concentrate wealth in financial institutions.

This slow recovery, if it is a recovery, is what the elite prefer; it's why they press for cutting spending, while cutting their taxes. Profits are up and wages are down, so they have increasing power. Cut Food-stamps, public education, heating subsidies: the wealthy don't need them.

Soon, we'll be like Roman Senators and their serfs, but even now, the wealthy get more, and everyone else tries to make do with less.

May 4, 2011

So, The Wicked Witch is Dead?

Many opposing war in Afghanistan have advocated tactics like the assault on Abbotabad. I have. It was a military maneuver, to be sure, but it was the kind of action that police forces also do: swooping in on helicopters to take a criminal head of a crime family, which is really what Osama was. Further, the intelligence, while more sophisticated than most police forces, was similar to good detective work.

Meanwhile, we've spent over $1.5 trillion on two wars to "destroy" the terrorists, but covert operations and police work have been the most effective. The question therefore arises: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan?

Why don't we boost our Special Operations forces, and our CIA covert ops, use the kind of surveillance that pinpointed bin Laden's hiding place, and withdraw our troops from a fruitless Afghan war? Even Karzai wants us to go, and there are indications that some Taliban are willing to negotiate: they know they can't win, but we can't either.

Our goal in Afghanistan was to "destroy al Qaeda," but most of its operatives are elsewhere, and we got its honcho in Pakistan, not with full-scale military action, but with covert police action.

AQ is "hiding in plain sight" in Pakistan, in Yemen, and probably in other places. Covert action like the assault in Abbotabad makes sense against a movement like the formless, territory-less al Qaeda.

The Taliban is not the same thing: it's confined to Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, and is largely a Pashtun movement, aiming at Pashtun control of Afghanistan, or southern Afghanistan and the western tribal areas in Pakistan. It does not threaten the US--unless we're in Afghanistan.

The problem is: the US military doesn't want to forego an expensive war, or a foothold in central Asia. Further, we have clients there who don't want us to leave: they make billions on us. There's also a pipeline route.

Osama bin Laden has already accomplished a good part of his agenda: to bankrupt the world's superpower, and to terrorize us into doing away with a significant part of our freedoms: a beacon for Muslims as well as other peoples.

Our military in Afghanistan results in many civilian casualties, even if more of them are at the hands of the Taliban. Even our reluctant client, President Karzai, says we should leave. Further, our counter-productive actions drive Afghans into the arms of the Taliban--young men whose family-members are killed in poorly targeted attacks on their compounds, or on mistaken bombing raids, or when fathers are summarily hauled off to prison at Bagram.

But will an Empire withdraw before it's defeated? Osama's assassination would give us the excuse.

May 2, 2011

Jobs, Quantitative Easing and a Capital Strike

The absence of a strong fiscal policy is at the heart of the problem.

Bernanke began the Fed's Quantitative Easing II (QE 2) as a monetary substitute for the stimulus and job creation the Government should have been doing; QE2 will be completed in June. The Fed will have injected $600 billion in new money into the economy, but unemployment is only slightly lower. The more direct effects are: the stock market has been toying with a 13,000 Dow, and corporations have been meeting and beating profit expectations. The flood of money helped drive gold and silver to historic highs, oil to over $113/barrel; food and other commodity prices are soaring.

QE2 may have driven some of these price hikes through speculation, but hiring was only weakly boosted, and with QE2 ending soon, official unemployment is only a shade under 9%.

The Fed could face a capital strike if it attempted more. It's maintaining interest rates at historic lows, and Bernanke claims inflation will remain low, or even go lower. With S&P threatening to downgrade US debt ratings, with the Street clamoring against monetizing the debt, and Paul Ryan chairing the House Budget Committee, the Fed is unlikely to do more.

QE2 could only accomplish so much, anyway. Bernanke implied at its inception that he preferred a rational Government fiscal policy. QE2 was adopted because it was unlikely Obama and House Republicans would be able to reach an agreement to stimulate the economy.

Instead, we face stalemate. Radical Republicans demand the cuts outlined by Congressman Ryan and more. Speaker Boehner already faced difficulty corralling votes for the 2011 budget compromise. Democrats know they'll lose their base if they cave further to Republican demands. What is needed is what Obama and the Democrats didn't have the courage, or votes in the Senate, to push through in 2009-10: a real jobs bill, and a real takeover of the housing mortgage mess.

Will we hang on until 2013? With no jobs program, only the payroll tax stimulus, and housing markets falling further? Would corporations hire more, with falling demand for goods? Would banks resolve their mortgage mess: admit their fraud and losses? Dream on!

A deadlock on the debt could slam us into a Depression, and a likely Republican takeover. They favor putting corporations in control, much like the monopoly of power held by the Senatorial class of the late Roman Empire. Americans would be reduced to surplus labor, competing with low-wage workers worldwide.

Maybe we'll get bread and circuses?

Apr 29, 2011

The Trouble with Royal Weddings

Royal weddings leave me cold, royal gossip does not interest me in the slightest. However, royal weddings, royal this's and royal thats's do play important political roles.

For example, as style-setters, royal weddings promote the "wedding industry," which pushes cookie-cutter weddings that are way too expensive for most young couples, or their usually strapped parents. The extravagance of the royal wedding this Friday will be recreated thousands of times in imitation over the next few years. And Americans, as well as Brits, Canadians and so on, will want to emulate the winsome couple--to the distress of their bank accounts, which are nowhere near as substantial as Prince William's.

The British Royals are very wealthy, very upper-caste, very white and pretty boring--on purpose, now, after Diana. Their lifestyle is not one most people can afford, but people want to emulate it. To me, that's unfortunate. One example of this unconscious emulation are the sweeping lawns in suburbs and exurbs here--no one mowed lawns until they got a gander at the aristocratic piles in Britain, with broad sweeps of what the British called "shaved grass." Those expanses, and the aped expanses here (where a man sits on a $5000 mower and mows for hours), are simply extravagance, lands that could be used for pasture, vegetables or allowed to grow wild. At Buckingham Palace, goes the story, an admiring American tourist asked a gardener, "How do you grow such a beautiful lawn?" The answer: "Oh, it's easy, Sir. Just keep mowing it for 300 years." I should add: English rain probably helps a lot, too: lawns in Britain, maybe, but in Arizona?

The left wing of the Labour Party wanted to abolish the monarchy until recently. The royals, they argued, epitomize the old class system in which a few are extremely wealthy and the rest may even be poor, but are grateful to the few for their spectacle. Monarchy popularizes a retrograde class system.

My daughter got married on April Fools; she and her groom were married at his mother's smallish house, in the back yard--in costume. Family and friends pitched in to carve hors-d'oeuvres or arrange trays. Everyone wore zany costumes: I was a Roman Senator. I've been to many weddings--my wife, as interfaith minister, officiated at many--but this was the most fun and memorable I've seen. The wedding cost about $1,500.

Too bad Darshann and Peter couldn't be models, instead of Kate and William. A lot of young couples would avoid incurring huge debts. And the elites wouldn't be even more emboldened to act like British aristocracy--which modeled itself after Roman Senators.

Apr 26, 2011

The Newsletter Path to Riches

Apparently, this speculation is raising money in $500,000 increments, for the man who is Xxx, a professional, who offers services to companies, as a company on the Over the Counter market; it's not clear that there is any more than one man in the company, but he's raised millions this way.

What kinds of services does this one-man company offer: contract advice with other companies, advising and facilitating offshore contracting, "to lower your costs," technology licensing and acquisitions of other companies, i.e. mergers.

Will Xxx rise tomorrow? One of the more revealing statements I've read on these penny newsletter sites is: "It rose to .01 before it fell back to .001, but it's set to rise even further this time."

What's going on here? I've been dabbling in this field for six months, even investing in some of the weightier "penny stocks" promoted; so far I've only lost a few hundred bucks. None of the stocks promoted have gained a dime; one has lost 77% of its value, another 47%. I did not invest in Xxx, but the second loser was a Chinese stock that collapsed when its CEO was caught fiddling the books. I didn't get the news--about the CEO--until too late.

I also invested in a silver mine, but right now, while silver goes through the roof, the mine shares lost 90 cents!

This is a game. The only people who win are either full-time gamblers (they call themselves day traders), or entrepreneurs who manipulate the market to raise money for themselves--or their companies.

But that's the point, isn't it? They raise money for business enterprises. Small-time investors rush in to strike it rich with the next Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. It's the gamblers who make money on the boobs buying penny stocks to make their fortunes. The gamblers do play a role: they provide incentives to the hungry public, drawing in millions, billions of dollars from small-time investors, who are easily gulled.

But how else do you get rich when the producers of anything tangible, the actual producers, get little more than subsistence? "If the poor don't like being poor, then why don't they get rich?" asked a student in one of my classes. By investing in speculative stocks? It brings money out of the proverbial mattresses, into the hands of entrepreneurs, fiddling CEO's and speculators.

This is Late Capitalism; it's like the 'Late Roman Empire,' where all the gold flowed upward, into the hands of the predatory few.

Apr 21, 2011

Trump and Emperor Maximus

Trump has his special quirks, one being his birther schtick, which may or may not be a genuine concern. At least one commentator points out birtherism's racist undertones, or at least that it could encourage racism. Birtherism feeds the fears of whites who cannot believe we elected an African-American President; they want to believe he's an impostor, regardless of all the data proving his birth in Hawaii. Why? Because he's black?

Bitherism and racism are one thing: what's even scarier, however, is that Trump represents the new breed of brash, political billionaire: he dismisses his closest rival, Mitt Romney, as "a small businessman," and claims that he, Trump, is "much, much bigger than he is." And that, dear America, is why he feels he should be President: he has more money.

Romney's business past may come back to haunt him. He's no small businessman: Bain Capital, the private equity firm he helped found, buys and sells businesses, and not only employs several hundred, but as with most such firms, it has also been in the business of firing hundreds or more of the purchased companies in order to "streamline" them.

This may be a portent of the kind of politics we'll be offered, either in the next few cycles, or for the foreseeable future. Billionaires vs multi-millionaires, these self-funded candidates run in part to protect the interests of their super-rich brethren, who will probably support them with their own money, too.

I would pair Trump with Roman Emperor Maximus (ruled 3 months in 455); he was known as the wealthiest of the Senatorial class; he conspired to assassinate Valentinian III, in part, because the Emperor had seduced his reputedly beautiful wife, but also to gain power for himself. His "rule" was a disaster; it gave the Vandal King, Gaiseric, the pretext to sack Rome. "Emperor" Maximus was torn apart by an enraged Roman mob as the Vandals approached.

The question is: will all the money spent by and for someone like Trump/Romney, seduce Americans?

Or, will people begin to get it: the filthy rich want to keep it all for themselves. Congressman Ryan's budget makes clear what the future could begin to look like with people like Trump or Romney in charge. They'd cut taxes on themselves, the wealthy (Ryan calls them "job creators" even when, like Romney they are job destroyers). Those tax cuts would be paid for by draconian cuts to services (including Medicare and Social Security) and cut tax loopholes that benefit the poor and what remains of the middle class.

In late Imperial Rome, the middle class had two options: seek protection from the wealthy, by becoming serfs, or escaping to the hills as bandits. Is that what we want?

Apr 19, 2011

Stories Win Nations

Parasites control governments everywhere and legally steal from producers, through taxes: governments are intrinsically parasitic. Governments produce nothing; they suck blood out of those who do. If there were no governments, merely security forces to protect property, then free enterprise would truly flourish.

That's why conservatives support tax cuts for the wealthy, and cuts in services for everyone else; they tell each other the above story: it all makes sense. Ayn Rand makes heroes of supposed producers, and villains of anyone who doesn't "produce." Roman Senators thought like that.

The villains are ordinary people, especially those who have the temerity to think they should be paid decently; they support unions because they're greedy and lazy. Roman elites felt that way about slaves. Also, governments unfairly penalize producers by caving into the mob--like weak Roman Emperors.

Unions, of course, are just gangsters, gangs to rip off the honest man's sweat, for which he worked so hard--on his telephone all day! That's why union busting, even with baseball bats and armed guards, is justified.

Paul Ryan is a Randist, apparently. It's likely Ron and Rand Paul are, too. And many tea partiers. Ayn Rand's story (above) doesn't really make sense, but that doesn't matter, it's a framework for the emerging GOP worldview; it makes emotional sense to them.

What doesn't make sense? First, if all but the few are producers, then, workers contribute nothing? What if the mighty entrepreneur hoards his money, pays his workers peanuts, and demands police repression to keep wages down? What if every hero entrepreneur acts likewise, in this perfect Randian world? Who will have the money to buy goods and services? Luxury markets do not a mass-market make. Secondly, if there is no government, who will provide collective goods like roads, rules of the market, standard measures, let alone security for everyone? (Governments do produce quite a lot, actually). Third, would everyone else agree to live in misery because they don't sit behind an Executive desk?

It doesn't matter to radical conservatives whether their arguments make sense. What matters is the story. It's surprising how persuasive it is to people whose interests are diametrically opposed.

The basic problem that progressives face is: they don't have a compelling story, not anymore. Progressives did have a story, a very powerful one, in the 1930's. It has been waning in strength ever since. The Great Recession didn't revive it, nor did Obama. Big business media won't revive it; it's "anti-business."

A spellbinding movie or novel might create a new story, or revive the old one--union solidarity defeats oppressive bosses; slaves rebel against cruel masters (Spartacus lost). Progressives need a story, badly, or we'll plunge headlong into something far worse than Rome's fall in 476.

Apr 14, 2011

Blog Archives 7

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Apr 14, 2011

Obama and Class War

Here's an example of his problem: while the administration considers transferring some Egyptian aid from military to economic programs, "some lawmakers fear that would mean cutting sales of U.S. military hardware." [Just Foreign Policy 4/13]. When there's peace, we can't sell arms. That's one reason why the US sticks its nose in globally: to sell arms. Our adventures are not only investments in future arm sales; they are also driven by the defense industry's insatiable appetite for ever-larger Defense budgets.

The arms dynamic is hard to overcome, as our sudden involvement in Libya demonstrates. Our allies are urging a more active role on the US, after it stepped back, making way for Europeans to lead (and pay the costs). But they want us because our huge Defense budget gives us capabilities no one else can bring to bear--in Libya, or elsewhere.

As a Medicare recipient, I've always felt Medicare should negotiate drug prices, but Bush banned negotiation; pharmaceutical corporations charge Medicare outrageous prices because they can. Obama proposes allowing Medicare to negotiate prices as a deficit-cutting measure, a clever move. His vision to change the way providers are paid makes sense, too. Real deficit-cutters should like both reforms: they would cut the deficit considerably. Medicare was set up to be a financial train-wreck by Bush/Cheney's prescription drug and privatization schemes (Medicare Advantage programs, etc.).

Obama's deficit cutting approach is reassuring; his riposte to Republican Ryan's deficit-cutting budget proposal was pointed. He declared he'd never permit Ryan's proposed voucher-ization of Medicare.

Even more heartening was Obama's recognition that the wealthy have done well while others still suffer, and they owe it to the nation to make a proportionally greater contribution (through tax hikes), to enable necessary services and investments in the future. The tax cuts proposed by Ryan, he noted, would take from those who needed help and give to those who didn't: not the kind of America Obama (or I) believe in.

Did Obama blame Wall Street? No, but his DOJ is simultaneously pursuing mortgage fraud by Goldman, JP Morgan, Washington Mutual and others--even possible criminal prosecution.

Obama claimed his proposal would cut $4 trillion from the debt--as much as Ryan, but with high-end tax increases, not draconian slashes to services and tax cuts for the wealthy.

It's class war part II. Who will prevail: the new Roman Senators, billionaires like the Koch brothers, represented by Republicans, or Obama, now representing ordinary people? It's a classic choice: Obama's way maintains democracy; Ryan's would usher in something comparable to Rome's last years, with Senators dominant and everyone else impoverished and powerless.

Apr 12, 2011

Taxes and Class War

The Republicans' budget guru, Congressman Paul Ryan, wants to cut $6 trillion from government spending in the next ten years--and also cut $4 trillion in taxes to corporations and high-income earners! It becomes more clearly class war when you see his targets for cutting spending: programs that benefit the poor, like education, Medicare and Food Stamps, programs and tax loopholes that benefit the shrinking "middle class," including Medicare, Social Security and mortgage and state income tax deductions. He wants these cuts, and more, to pay for the tax cuts.

The US is a relatively lightly taxed nation, especially for high-income earners and corporations. While conservatives cite the 35% corporate tax rate as the highest in the developed world, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes, and few pay the full 35%, because of all the loopholes for which they've lobbied strenuously. The total tax breaks for corporations has been estimated to cost $660 billion in the next five years. Further, most high-income earners don't pay much of their taxes at the highest rate (cut by W and continued with Obama's reluctant signature in the tax deal last December). CEO's and other wealthy people earn most of their income in capital gains or dividends, taxed at 15%, about half the rate of "earned income." There are hedge fund directors who earn billions a year, and pay only at the 15% rate; they are hardly over-taxed.

We need to solve our deficit and debt problem by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations and by re-configuring our defense, bringing most of our troops home, shrinking our forces, and recognizing that we can't afford to police the world. Those two measures alone would more than solve our deficit and debt problem, if we also allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices as well as streamline its operations, as planned in the Health Care reform act .

We need to change the conversation. Our income tax is hardly progressive, and overall, our tax system takes more from the poor and middle class than it does from the wealthy. Our tax system hasn't yet become as cruelly inequitable as the Roman system in which the wealthy paid almost nothing and everyone else paid oppressively high taxes, or sold themselves into serfdom. But that's the direction in which Republicans like Paul Ryan want to go. Some Democrats are bought off, because billionaires have a lot of money. Some Democrats don't have a clue. And liberals like Feingold have been driven out by just some of the big boys' money, leading all politicians to draw their own conclusions.

Do ordinary people stand a chance?

Apr 8, 2011

Noblesse Oblige

Noblesse Oblige makes sense for the elite, FDR argued, although most of his own class disagreed. His argument, the argument of the intellectuals of the New Deal, makes sense today: unless you moderate the extremes of income, unless you make sure the needy are taken care of and unless you ensure that more and more have the opportunity to make something of themselves, you will either have revolution, or fascism. Democracy will die, or be destroyed.

Of course, in the 1930's it was easy to see the alternatives: the USSR and the 1000-year Reich. Today, the elite feel falsely secure: there is no alternative. Communism is dead and Fascism is invisible. Maybe this is what Capitalism Triumphant looks like.

The Nobel economist, Joseph Stiglitz, points out that when a society becomes as unequal as ours, when 1% rule and gain more and more of its wealth--the US today--there is a loss of community. The elite have less and less in common with the lower classes, and reject any need to help them even when they are in dire economic straits. They cut funds to services, which don't serve the elite, like public libraries, Head Start, even Food Stamps and unemployment insurance. And they cut taxes on themselves. After all, it's their money.

The US has a myth of a classless/middle class, mobile society that never really existed; it's now, by income and wealth, the most class stratified of any developed country. Our politics shows that.

While cutting everything else, the elite support the military. Their children won't serve in it, but they can make money on all our military adventures; it's good for business.

The GOP represents the elite rather faithfully, but a good number of Democrats represent them, too, due to bribes (campaign funds) and/or a common class. So far, there are very few like FDR, even among Democrats.

But FDR's argument is relevant: without real reform--and government helping people in need--by creating jobs, for example--the chances for radical revolution increase exponentially. Revolution could be either of the right or of the left, but the elite ultimately lost even with the right-wing totalitarian dictatorships they favored in the past.

Yet, clearly, the GOP doesn't buy FDR's argument.

Most Democrats bought it long ago, but forgot about it.

Protests may be the only way to get even progressives to remember--and act, despite their Wall Street supporters. Otherwise, we'll end up serfs or slaves to the new Roman Senators--until there is an explosion: a Spartacan uprising, or a radical revolution

Apr 6, 2011

Budget Insanity

If Fox and corporations can spin this, then we have wholly entered into a corporate-run nation, in which only the CEO's and billionaires count--perhaps GOP activists will gain perks like the apparatchiks in the Soviet CP, or the higher ups in Germany's NSDAP. The rest of us just better keep our heads low, and work hard for our diminishing crusts of bread.

Congressman Ryan, the GOP budget boss, proposes draconian cuts to services, eventual privatization of Medicare at the likely expense to future seniors, and then proposes cutting high-end tax rates by a whopping 10%, while closing middle class loopholes like the mortgage deduction.

So, let's be clear about what he's proposing: take from the poor and middle class, who are hurting from this recession. Take from them some of the services that are enabling them to survive, take from them the loopholes that make middle class tax rates affordable, take from the people who are being thrown out of work, losing their homes--or, know they are at risk for one or both. Take from them the assurance that in their old age, their health care will be there for them.

What does this great subtraction buy? The first thing is tax cuts for the rich and corporations (almost half of which avoid paying any taxes). What will that buy? More speculation, not more jobs. The rich are already sitting on trillions of dollars; they are not investing in job creation--except possibly in places like China or Brazil.

A large enough cut in government spending to reduce the size of government, could also buy a renewed recession--unless we're lucky enough to have a real recovery before it takes effect.

Which brings us to the budget impasse on the 2011 budget: Boehner and his cohorts demand huge cuts, but they also demand programmatic cuts, like defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood. The programmatic cuts won't cut the deficit, so their argument for them is disingenuous. But the huge cuts to states, to services, to health care, to programs could be a recessionary strong right fist to the economy, especially since the tax cuts to everyone have only enabled unemployment to be pushed back a little; the elite aren't investing their gains in jobs; they're just expecting their workers to work harder--without unions, of course.

So, Ryan and Boehner, and those behind them, want to shove us on the economic path built by the late Roman Empire, in which a few own virtually everything, and everyone else is a slave or a serf.

It weakened Rome, too.

Mar 30, 2011

Beware Pentagon's Imperial Ambitions!

One requirement of the Taliban, which is willing to negotiate, is that all foreign forces would leave in any final settlement.

Why does Obama countenance such self-serving, aggrandizing behavior by military spokespeople? So, now we're going to have bases and operations in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, after (most of) our troops have "left?"

Does no one in the Pentagon realize that we can't afford to garrison the world? Now we're expanding operations into Libya. While Obama may intend to limit the operation, to step back from US command to US-dominated NATO command of the Libyan intervention, it's likely the Pentagon will push for more money if Qaddafi continues to resist and his military makes mincemeat of the revolutionaries. We'll have to send in "advisors," "trainers," and weapons, of course.

Obama's rationale for intervention makes moral sense up to a point: to protect civilians. The US does have unique capabilities: to blow up Qaddafi's well-armed militias and artillery units, while never touching feet to the ground. Loyalist forces exhibit no compunction at brutalizing and massacring civilians along the way, so, literally, bombing tank units saves civilian lives.

On the other hand, what Undersecretary Flournoy demonstrates, is the Pentagon's insatiable appetite: for more bases, more operations, on into the future. Secretary Gates has made gestures towards cutting the Defense budget, but his underlings make sure that Defense's budget will keep on growing.

A dangerous world is profitable.

So, it is perfectly reasonable to worry that we'll get further drawn into Libya, and that ten years down the road we'll be holding onto bases in that country, even after we "withdraw."

However, something's happening that is cause for guarded optimism: conservative Republicans are beginning to question the unending spending lavished on the military, when they're struggling to find places to cut the Government budget. And conservative/libertarian Republicans are joining with progressive Democrats to question the Libyan adventure.

Why has it been axiomatic until now: cutting budget deficits requires slashing programs that help people who need help, while not touching the lavish Defense budget, which costs more than all other nations' defense budgets combined? Why, also, is there such muted discussion about the other side of the budget deficit: the lowered tax rates for the extremely wealthy, who not only could afford to pay more, but should, since they have gained virtually 100% of the profits from US productivity gains since 2000, and most from the gains accrued since 1980?

Just as in Rome in the 5th Century, it's the military and the super-rich who will bring us down. Maybe we shouldn't let them.

Mar 29, 2011

Political False Advertising

Of course, it's not just Republicans who do this. Back in 1964, I hurried back from Europe after the Army, because I felt I had to vote for LBJ to prevent the fire-breathing Goldwater from committing us to a "quagmire in the Asian jungles." That's what LBJ campaigned against. Once elected, he escalated the Vietnam War! This was despite LBJ's apparent belief (revealed posthumously) that the war was doomed. Luckily for me, I was never re-called. We then went on to elect Nixon, who claimed he had a "secret plan" to stop the war! He didn't.

In the current situation, we have Republican Congress-people, Senators, state legislators and Governors, who, once elected, have proceeded to carry out radical agendas that have nothing to do with creating jobs.

How does legalizing the murder of abortion providers create jobs? South Dakota legislators proposed this. How does direct state abolition and takeover of local municipalities create jobs? Michigan's new governor has proposed this. How does abolishing collective bargaining among public employees create jobs? Wisconsin's Senate passed this late one night, in a rump session; Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey and other states are in the process of passing similar laws.

How does redefining rape to require proof of violence create jobs? Congressional Republicans withdrew this proposal, but still want to pass more stringent anti-abortion laws. How does cutting spending on services for poor people, and for their children (like the cuts to food stamps and head start), create jobs? These are part of a campaign to bash the poor, the unions, and any government institution unpopular with conservatives. All have been promoted or passed in the US House, despite Democratic opposition. None create jobs; they destroy them.

The measure that began this process was extending the tax cut for those earning over $250,000, which passed in the post-election session of the last Congress. If the Republicans hadn't extorted that concession from Obama and Reid, there would be $600 billion more in revenue, reducing the need for budget cuts considerably.

Their fiscal austerity costs jobs; it doesn't create them. Further, the moneyed won't hire because of lower taxes; they will hire when there is demand for their products or services. Even then, they might hire in China or Vietnam, not the US. They're rolling in money, anyway: they've stolen virtually all of America's productivity gains for themselves since the 1980's.

Justice would demand a fair share returned, but monopolists are like the Roman Senators of the Fifth Century, (when Rome fell): they want it all--and they think they've purchased it--with their new governments.

Mar 24, 2011

Libyan Dilemma

So, the mission, lobbied for by some of the revolutionaries and Sarkozy, and reluctantly agreed to by Obama and others, is vague and easily expandable. On the other hand, there is clearly a need to stop the megalomaniac from massacring his own people.

In terms of Obama's assertion of Presidential power, I deplore its arbitrary exercise, but Clinton did it and so did W. At least Obama did it multilaterally and urged the Europeans to lead. That the US has to do the initial heavy lifting demonstrates that we're the only nation stupid enough to invest in so much war-making capability. Worse is that there is no real exit agreed to, and the Libyan opposition seems to be a feckless lot that any professional military would sneer at.

I share Friedman's worry that Libya is no nation, but a collection of tribes that could murder each other for generations--just like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Bahrain. So, will that mean that the US and its European allies will be bogged down in another civil war?

We can't afford it.

What Libya demonstrates most of all, is the danger of a budget and a war machine that's good for little else. Money drives both sides. Qaddafi reportedly didn't invest in his army (he didn't trust it), but in his loyal tribal militias and mercenary forces; he airlifted the latter from operations elsewhere. Money also drives the initial US leadership of the intervention: we have a plethora of the weapon systems needed and the skills to use them, paid for by huge Defense budgets like the approximately $750 billion allocated this year.

Trouble is what the empire buys with all this money. Probably, without international intervention, Qaddafi would have prevailed; he would have unleashed terror on his opponents. Possibly more would die than will die from the intervention. But it's not clear that the intervention will prevent Qaddafi's homicidal repression in large swathes of Libya, unless the intervening powers insert "boots on the ground."

By opposing Qaddafi with weapons, the rebels gave him the advantage. Qaddafi relies on elite militias and mercenaries: only if they defect, would armed revolutionaries gain the advantage. If, like the Egyptian rebels, Libyans continued non-violent resistance, they would have been more morally persuasive than the feckless armed volunteers, who run from tanks and artillery. If Libya were more of a nation, nonviolent protest would have united them as it did in Egypt and Tunisia.

Empires on the way down get sucked into conflicts that bankrupt them. Libya may be another one of these.

Mar 22, 2011

Libya,The Technological Imperative

Even Obama hasn't articulated what he's done in any historical context, like Clinton's attacks on Libya before, in retaliation for a terrorist bombing aided by Qaddafi's government. Only now, Qaddafi massacres his own people.

So, the US was (again) in the lead in a military campaign authorized by the UN, edging a bit into mission creep, and this time it was in part because no one else has the military capability to attack a nation anywhere on the globe. Hold that thought.

The US led in the initial attack, even though Obama and Gates were clearly reluctant to engage in Libya, unless others led, because they didn't want to be involved in a "third war in the middle east," unless they had a lot of cover.

But there is a technological imperative that thrusts the US military (quite willingly, it seems) into the lead of an operation like Libya's. So, we're damned by the huge expenditures we make on defense (offense, really), into being sucked into any mess anywhere on the globe--or at least anywhere in the world where oil might be at stake.

The US spends over 3/4 of a trillion on "Defense," while no one else spends more than about 10% of that (the Chinese), and we consider that 10% worrisome. We can't afford such huge expenditures, as the stupid and vicious budget battles in Congress and the states demonstrate, but only a small minority yet says we have to cut Defense.

Instead of cutting Defense, we cut pre-school and Medicaid, we cut Pell Grants and Family Planning--while restoring tax cuts at an historically low rate for millionaires.

Our huge Defense establishment demands money, but all that money just gets the US into more trouble. We could be sucked into a Libyan civil war, because we were the only ones with the wherewithal to quickly set up a no-fly, no-tank zone (that's apparently what it's become). And we've already spent several hundred million to a billion dollars, just in these brief few days after the initial attack. This is when Congress is tortuously attempting to find $70 to $100 billion of budget cuts.

A conservative site noted that empires fall when they can't help getting sucked into military adventures they can't afford. Actually, it took the Romans centuries of impoverishment caused by those wars, before Rome fell, but history moves very fast these days.

Unlike Rome, though, there are an awful lot of us, both liberal and conservative, who see it coming: the Fall of Rome II.

Mar 16, 2011

Are There More Nukes in Our Future?

The events were explained to a New York Times reporter by someone who is in the business of promoting the nuclear industry. Despite the source, the series of events in Japan make it very clear: humans don't really know what they're doing! Why, in god's name (or names), doesn't everybody go massively into solar, wind, tidal and other renewable power sources? It's obvious, just from the descriptions of what is breaking down--despite massive safety precautions and safety redundancy--that the nuclear people are brewing up a really powerful stew, and they don't have any control--they only think they do--over whether it boils over and makes a terrible mess.

I always wanted my grandchildren to have three heads.

The US gets about 20% of its power from nukes. But nuclear power plants are incredibly capital intensive. The 50's myth of nearly free energy was upended when it became apparent how dangerous nuclear was. So, to build a nuclear power plant will cost billions, usually billions more than first estimated, and a whole security force and apparatus must be maintained to protect it, since it's a terrorist target and threat. Having nuclear power plants festooning the landscape bolsters our security state. After all, they are dangerous, as Japan is demonstrating.

But why should we build more of them?

"The president believes that meeting our energy needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power," said a White House spokesman, Clark Stevens, several days ago, remarks made in light of the ongoing nuclear catastrophes in Japan.

Note, Obama also wants to rely on "clean coal," even though most experts say it's an oxymoron, but then Illinois, from which he now hails, is a big coal-producing state.

It's really all about who has the money. A nuclear power plant requires lots of money, but its investors arrange it so they can mint it, once it's in operation. A utility is a regulated monopoly, and so, there is a guaranteed return on capital negotiated with the regulators. Ten percent might be considered a "fair return," so, 10% of $10 billion is a lot more than 10% of $100 million. Big profits, even if expensive electricity.

Coal companies also have money. So do the gas frackers, who want to come drill in my neighborhood!

We'll destroy the habitable planet we inherited, because of money, and the power it wields. Some of the earth will become radioactively toxic, some of it will be desert, and some will be flooded, poisoned or freakishly frozen. Huge winds will tear down puny human habitations, just like the tsunami. End of Empire? What about end of civilization?

Can't we just stop being so stupid?

Mar 12, 2011

Bastards and Real Bastards

Lying kills more than Qaddafi's bombs, only not so suddenly. The misrepresentation of reality perpetrated on Americans by the MSM will result in a lot more deaths than bombs, from diseases not treated, from air pollution, from unmitigated climate change, from car accidents due to poor road maintenance, even from hunger--so draconian are the cuts justified by these lies. Note: Canada permits no Fox-Canada, because it has a law against lying on air.

The biggest lie is that the deficit is the problem. It isn't; it's a short-term solution and needs to be even larger in the near-term--to overcome lagging demand. The secondary lies are that unions are corrupt, wield monopoly power over governments, and are the cause of the budget deficits that--take a deep breath--caused the recession--which is all Obama's fault, of course. Oh, also: seniors are greedy and Social Security will sink us.

Reality Check: Obama's stimulus did prevent us, and perhaps the world, from falling headlong into another Great Depression, but it was compromised away to death and was much too small to pull us out of recession. What we need now, is more spending for job creation, not draconian cuts. Social Security hasn't contributed to the deficits; its "locked box" has been looted for years by politicians, who borrowed the bonds amassed, and replaced them with IOU's. Now they have to be paid back. Slashing the military, or taxing the few who have ripped off everyone else, could pay off the IOU's: both are responsible for them, after all.

In the ongoing budget battle, Obama does know that the stimulus worked, if not enough, and he knows we need more of it. Yet, right off the bat, he freezes Federal workers' wages, and offers to cut Food Stamps, the program that has expanded exponentially--because people need it to get by.

Obama is a politician. When he saw the election results, he listed rightward--offering concessions like the Food Stamps cuts, because people were angry about spending (due to Fox/Limbaugh lies). But nothing he offers will be drastic enough, unless he accepts the whole GOP agenda. If he does that--

We'll need a new party; we'll nationalize the Wisconsin Movement.

It's either that, or capitulation to our new masters: corporations and billionaires, the epitome of Fifth Century Roman Senators. Less humane than their predecessors, however, corporations and billionaires assume no responsibility for their slaves and serfs, nor for the world they trash.

Mar 11, 2011

Wisconsin As Radical Conservatives See It

Taxes are theft, especially disproportionate (unfair) taxes on anyone who's made something of himself, and never got a hand out. And their money goes to all those good-for-nothings and scumbags who whine that they can't make it on their own.

So, of course Governor Walker cuts taxes on businesses and people with high incomes. He should; he's helping the people who create jobs.

Those liberals and socialists whine about 'inequality;' sure there's inequality: of skill, smarts and sheer hard work. That's why some people do well and others can't seem to get off the government's tit.

Cutting collective bargaining rights for teachers and such, is urgently needed. It'll curb those monopoly powers they've been abusing, demanding those high wages and killer pensions. They're all lefties, too, and the teachers probably would indoctrinate our kids if we didn't watch them like hawks.

That's why we're going bankrupt, these socialist unions are holding governments hostage.

That's the argument.

First of all, among workers of comparable age and education, public employees are paid slightly less on average. Sometimes, their pensions make up some of the difference, but they aren't extravagantly exploiting the people working in the private sector. And they don't hold governments for ransom.

The reason that private sector workers aren't paid more, and don't have good pensions, is not, at all because of the public employee unions. That doesn't even make sense. It's because private sector employers have been more and more aggressive banning unions, so they can pay workers less, and contribute less to their health care and 401(k)'s (preferred by employers to pensions, because they are only present, not future obligations).

While the wealthy do pay more dollars in income taxes than most, those dollars are a smaller proportion of their incomes, so they hurt less. Our tax system, on the whole (including payroll, sales, sin and property taxes) means: the wealthy pay a smaller proportion of their income the higher it gets.

But Wisconsin isn't about money; it's about power. People with money think they should be able to buy what they want with it, including lax regulations in their industry and cheap hard-working workers who don't talk back. They also want Pax Americana everywhere: it protects their overseas ventures and enables high profits from the huge military resulting.

Why do conservatives think people will simply surrender their rights? Because, many already have? The explosion was inevitable: Americans may be gulled, but they haven't been cowed. Yet.

If the Walkers win, contemporary Roman Senators will try to lord it over the serfs, but will Americans let them?

Mar 10, 2011

Serfs Or Citizens?

In Washington, Republicans insisted on cutting taxes on the wealthy, at a cost of $70 billion a year, and simultaneously declared a budget emergency. House Republicans vow to cut $70 billion from programs like Title X aid to women's health, Head Start, public broadcasting, COPS, the police aid program, community development aid, teachers--

Already, in California, high school class sizes will rise to 60 per classroom.

We are eating our young; we are eating ourselves, to feed the fat of the land.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott announced he would cut taxes on corporations by $1.7 billion and would cut education funding by--$1.7 billion!

And now the Wisconsin Rump, the Republicans in the Senate without a quorum (they claim one isn't needed for non-budgetary items), met almost in secret, voted to slash collective bargaining rights for public employees, after recasting the bill to strip it of all budgetary implications!

This is where it gets transparent: the rationale for stripping collective bargaining was to cut the budget deficit. Couldn't be done without it, Walker insisted. Now they've stripped collective bargaining and haven't gotten any closer to balancing the budget. Good job, says Walker.

It isn't about budgets; it isn't about deficits; it's about who gets the money. Republicans, funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers, have been elected by that money to insure that the people with money keep more and more of it out of taxes, while simultaneously looting the government and the nation.

It's been a very sophisticated takeover, of ideas, of communication, of governments, by people who have a lot and want it all. Yes, they are greedy, for money and power. They have taken over the Supreme Court. They have taken over more than half the states governments, they have taken over the US House of Representatives, and they have cowed and corrupted enough of the Democratic majority in the Senate, that we've so far seen from it only limp-wristed "compromise" proposals. Ditto the President.

Finally, though, people are beginning to wake up. Thousands are converging on Madison Wisconsin, day after day. And the same things are happening in states like Indiana, Michigan and Ohio rallying against similar and worse proposals. There have been sympathy rallies all over the nation. Even more encouraging: support for unions and for public employees has risen in the polls, even unionized teachers (approved of by 66%).

Rachel Maddow said: "It's a movement."

It might have to be almost a revolution to stop our contemporary Roman Senators from turning us all into serfs!

Mar 6, 2011

If They Were Really Democrats

There's a class war going on, and instead of siding with the so-called 'middle class', Democrats are saying, "Okay, okay, cut that nasty ol' deficit! Okay, okay, don't tax people with money, we'll sock it to the kids, seniors, poor--and public employees."

The Republicans were voted in on a wave of anger driven by the falsehoods of Foxvestia, and Limbaugh/Pravda, and by the billions from people like the Koch's and the executive class controlling corporations like Goldman Sachs and Exxon.

Democrats can't win the deficit-cutting game. Whatever concessions Democrats make, they are only furthering the agenda of the class that wants to destroy them, and wants to subject the rest of us to their maleficent control. That's what Walker's war on collective bargaining is about.

What Democrats should be doing, if they really are the Party of the People-- their perennial slogan--is fighting loudly for tax increases on the wealthy. The wealthy may have lost a bit in the recession, but they've amassed more wealth in the last two decades than all the rest of the nation combined. The wealthy made off with all but about 10% of US productivity gains since the 1970's: those gains have been prodigious. That's why the top 1% earns as much income as the bottom 95%. Wages and salaries below the top have been nearly flat since the 1970's, yet the size of our economy has doubled.

Why have Democrats caved? The debate is completely one-sided: Republicans say, cut taxes, period, and cut government spending on programs that help people not corporations. Democrats only counter with: let's not cut it that much.

The anger propelling Republican wins has subsided, according to polls: majorities oppose high-handed policies pushed by Wisconsin Governor Walker and other anti-union Republicans.

Democrats should campaign single-mindedly on growing jobs. They should point out: the stimulus worked, but not enough; more is needed: to go from 190,000 new jobs a month to 300-400,000, to get people back to work, to get the economy moving again. Democrats should point out that Republican deficit-cutting policies: gutting programs, laying off workers, will actually increase deficits and cut jobs since they will likely slow growth. They will also impoverish the nation in the future. Democrats should argue that tax-cuts for the wealthy will go mostly to speculation and investments overseas, not more jobs.

Instead, Yeats describes the Democrats: "the best lack all conviction," while their opponents "are full of passionate intensity." "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Democrats shouldn't cave; they should organize, speak smarter and shout louder than Republicans--truth and the issues are on their side, if only they'd champion them.

Mar 2, 2011

Class War!

A clueless friend of mine, referring to the protesting workers in Wisconsin, said, "It's all about greed!"

Class war: it's what the budget battles at state and federal levels are really about. In Wisconsin, Governor Walker cut taxes, taxes for business, therefore for the better-off, greatly increasing the deficit; at the same time he demanded not only cuts to state workers' wages and pensions, but insisted: collective bargaining rights for most public employees had to go.

Governor Walker's excuse is the budget shortfall, a good part of which was caused by his tax cuts--to the wealthy. Meanwhile, police, who Walker exempted from losing their collective bargaining rights, are fraternizing with the protesters; they sang Solidarity Forever in the Capitol rotunda! They know what's at stake.

Fox News demonizes public employees as greedy, but its commentators, like Hannity and O'Reilly are members of AFTRA, a union for performers in radio and TV; I bet their pay is much better than the teachers they trash as greedy.

Even in New York, the most unionized state, the new Democratic governor, Cuomo, talks about getting tough with public employee unions, to extract pay and pension give-backs, while vowing never to raise taxes on the wealthy!

At the Federal level, not only does the Republican majority target cuts against women's and children's health programs--among other programs benefiting the middle class and poor--but Obama, tries to make nice with the budget cutters by offering to slash food stamp funds in half!

Only a small minority in Congress supported amendments to the continuing resolution (in lieu of a budget), cutting Pentagon spending, yet defense accounts for more than half of the Federal budget's discretionary spending. And the deficit has grown because Republicans insisted on maintaining Bush tax cuts, including "for millionaires." Top bracket cuts will cost about $800 billion, and trillions if made permanent. And the wealthy won't spend; they'll save, or buy stocks abroad.

Over 9% of workers are officially unemployed, another 10% are probably discouraged workers, but the media ignore both. Meanwhile, workers still working are likely to be over-worked and underpaid: they aren't represented by unions.

The Republican onslaught on public employee unions could weaken the union movement even further. Republicans know, but many Democrats forget: killing unions would drastically weaken support for Democrats.

It's war on Democrats, who don't have a clue, but more importantly, it's a war on anyone who isn't wealthy, who doesn't own substantial parts of the corporate system; who aren't the people whom Marx labeled capitalists.

Why don't Democrats know what's going on? Why do the Cuomos collaborate? Some Democrats are also capitalists--or want the chance to be.

Wisconsin, et al are all out war, and if Corpolicans win, even Coporocrats lose and we'll be turning onto the road trod by effete Roman Senators; they sold Rome to the Barbarians in 476.

Feb 23, 2011

It's War on Democrats, Er, Unions

Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey: where next will the anti-union campaigns erupt? They are sponsored by radical, not "Tea Party," pro-corporate Republicans.

Wisconsin demonstrates that they're trampling on dangerous ground. In each state, the basic strategy is the same: we're in fiscal crisis so public employee unions must be defanged. It doesn't matter if the unions cave on the financial demands--they already have in Wisconsin--they still have to become, in effect, not unions: they are to be denied collective bargaining rights.

As a former member of the National Writers Union, I can attest: a union without collective bargaining rights doesn't make headway as a union. A perennial NWU-friendly bill to gain those rights for freelancers has never made it out of Congressional Committee.

Scott Walker exempts police and firemen, saying: they're public safety officers. But the exemption is political: they supported his election. However, even those exempted union members are visibly supporting the protest in Madison. They know what's at stake: their rights in the workplace.

Not long ago Americans were polled about whether they'd join a union at work, if they could: a clear majority said they would. Yet, because of the anti-union propaganda by business and business associations, private union employment has declined from a post WWII high of nearly one-third of the labor force, to about 8%. Only public employee unions have gained workers, the largest component of union labor today. Public Employee unions, Rachel Maddow pointed out, are overwhelmingly supportive of Democrats, providing organization, money and numbers.

Is it any wonder that Republicans have painted a great big target on their backs?

In the South, very few private sector workers are unionized, because the states are "right to work," in which union membership is voluntary when you get a job at a union shop. So, why pay dues? Scott Walker's ploy is the first act in bringing "right to work" and no collective bargaining to as many states as possible.

In Indiana, Republicans are proposing to prohibit collective bargaining in construction, as well as taking away rights for public employees. If they can get away with that, pretty soon, unions will have about as much power as the official unions in China! That may be the point: make American labor "competitive" with the Chinese, with corporations in control.

This is why the protests in Wisconsin are so important, and why protests in Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey may soon erupt: Republicans are determined to get their way. They've found a means to please their funders--ranging from billionaires like Koch, to small businesses--while cutting Democrats off at the knees.

Re unions, Scott Walker is as imperious as a Roman Senator towards his slaves, or Qaddafi facing opposition. He will brook no quarter. Workers shouldn't either.

Feb 22, 2011

Qaddafi, King of Kings

Compare Qaddafi to Mubarak and Ben Ali: the latter two look mild by comparison and he's held power for 41 years.

Qaddafi has styled himself as leader of a people's revolution, sequentially a pan-Arabist, a pan-Islamist and finally, a pan-Africanist. He recently crowned himself "King of Kings" at a meeting of African nations; he even tried to sponsor an assembly of Kings, but his Ugandan hosts canceled the meeting as contrary to their constitution!

In his activist heyday, he exported, or supported terrorists or terrorism globally: he's just for revolution, of whatever kind--

Unless its his own people rebelling against him.

Recently, he appeared to go a bit zany with his pseudo-king costumes, but seemed to moderate his politics: he negotiated with the US and the EU, gave up his nuclear weapons program and cooperated with international cases against terrorists he had sponsored.

But, as his current resistance demonstrates, Qaddafi hasn't moderated at all. He defends his own power at all costs. As to costs, he's now using Libya's oil money to fly planeloads of mercenaries from African countries, to mow down his opponents.

A survivor of one massacre in Benghazi said the shooting by Qaddafi's forces was not to drive demonstrators away; "it is meant to kill them." The security forces might have been Libyans of other tribes--it's a tribally divided society--but they were probably "African mercenaries." The just-resigned deputy Ambassador to the UN from Libya pleaded with African states to stop exporting them to kill his countrymen.

Megalomaniacs can drive nations to fiery cataclysms, and Qaddafi appears willing to go that far--"to the last bullet" his son declared.

Qaddafi has, at times, styled himself as a socialist and even an anarchist (but also a monarchist). He recently moved to abolish most government departments and distribute the oil wealth directly to the Libyan people (except for the part he kept for himself and friends, and for contingencies like this, apparently). He also ranted about creating direct democracy and about abolishing the legislature, favoring local tribal councils.

When leaders like Qaddafi or Napoleon speak of "the people," they are only speaking about themselves, and their own divinely or ideologically inspired insights into what 'the people' want. For Qaddafi, rebelling Libyans can't be 'the people;' they must have been suborned by 'foreign powers.'

Libya may become the most radical Arab revolution yet, because of the violence used against it by Qaddafi, but if Qaddafi prevails, using his hired palace guard, the resulting autocracy could be even worse than before.

Qaddafi is as autocratic as the most arbitrary late Roman Emperor; he speaks a radical line, but struts as if he really was King of Kings! His downfall might further open the region to democracy, but not necessarily to American advantage. The US imperial system in the Mideast will be driven further into disarray if Libya finally sheds its mercurial dictator.

Feb 20, 2011

Hypocrisy, Insanity, or Protest?

Egyptians and Tunisians have thrown off their tyrants. They demand all the freedoms a democracy can offer. Libyans, Yemenis and Bahrainis are willing to die for those freedoms.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton lectures the world about America's freedoms. Fine. It's good that we've got the rhetoric right, but what's happening while she's speaking? Ray McGovern, a well-known progressive activist, stands up, and turns his back on her. He's saying something, isn't he? He's protesting the foreign policy she represents, and the wars she promotes. McGovern manifests freedom of speech as Hillary speaks: freedom to protest, too, but he also, inadvertently demonstrates the administration's hypocrisy. Security grabs him right in front of her; he screams. He's bundled off, then beaten.

Maybe, freedom of speech is not getting shot with live ammunition or rubber bullets. It's being arrested for turning your back on the Secretary of State--and then, eventually being sprung by supporters and human rights activists. Oh, I get it. Because we have laws that can be used, sometimes, to defend ordinary citizens, we have freedom and democracy.

It's good we do have those laws, because the powerful are becoming more brazen, regardless of party. It isn't just governments: corporate honchos are flexing their monetary muscles, too. The confrontation in Wisconsin demonstrates the extremes to which the powerful are willing to go: they want to strip union rights from public employees (their lame excuse: cut the state's deficit). Wisconsin brings together both political and corporate elites, since new Governor Scott Walker(R) is a client of the Koch brothers, energy industry billionaires. The Kochs want to destroy unions and government regulations, especially environmental ones.

Most Democrats in power are either hypocrites, like Hillary, or Republican lite, like Obama. In Wisconsin Democrats do know to support the unions--that's obvious. But New York's new Governor, Andrew Cuomo(D), has sounded almost as anti-union as Walker. And Hillary can go on about the virtues of freedoms, and then have McGovern arrested--for a silent protest.

Remember the millions demonstrating against the war in Iraq before we invaded? I was there, but would Bush have listened if we'd occupied Times Square? What if millions came to occupy the National Mall in Washington, or camped outside the White House to protest, what then? Maybe, they'd protest the Afghan war, torture, the security state with its bloated military, the "PATRIOT Act," black prisons and Guantanamo. Maybe, millions would come to protest the skewed political economy: the wealthy getting trillions of taxpayer dollars while the rest of us get laid off, or slashed wages.

Why don't Americans protest like Egyptians? Maybe we have to be reduced to Egyptian wages and unemployment before people will explode. Romans were passive, more concerned with circuses; then, it was too late. Will we sit by, let Fox News' lies wash over us, stay at home and watch TV? Then it, too, will be too late.

Feb 18, 2011

Pakistan Versus the US

Our ally, Pakistan, may stand up to the US, yet. Pakistan's government is deciding whether Raymond Davis has US diplomatic immunity.

The circumstances are suggestive. Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis riding motorcycles, while driving alone in a poor area of Lahore not frequented by foreigners. Davis claimed the cyclists tried to rob him, but he was carrying a loaded Glock, so he shot them. An official US diplomatic vehicle rushing to the rescue, ran over and killed another motorcyclist; then it fled the scene. Davis was arrested.

The US insists Davis holds a diplomatic passport, and therefore is immune from prosecution, but Pakistan imprisoned him, and wants to charge him with a double murder. Another suspicious aspect: while the embassy insists Davis is a "technical and administrative" official, he is also ex-Special Forces.

So, what do you think Raymond C. Davis was doing? He was driving with an armed Glock and "other security gear" in a poor part of Lahore, where he was attacked by three armed motorcyclists. I assume they were armed, since Davis claims they were trying to rob him: the account from the NYT doesn't mention arms, but why else would an official US vehicle attempt rescuing him?

The US insists, and will continue to insist, that "technical and administrative" official, the designation under which Davis was issued his visa, has diplomatic immunity as specified, in that precise language, in the Vienna Convention, which governs diplomatic relations. Our lawyers dot their i's.

But this looks more than suggestive: this looks fishy. The US is protecting with diplomatic immunity what looks like an undercover op, something that's not covered by the Vienna Convention--but probably often practiced by countries with intelligence/covert agencies.

Two principles are at stake: whether the US is lying about Davis and covering up a covert op, and whether Pakistan will stand up to the US.

Pakistan is an extremely nationalistic nation, albeit now a nearly failing nuclear state. Pakistan hasn't surged economically like India, but its geography is crucial--to US hegemony--and we have flooded it with military and development aid. As you might expect, a lot of that money has been pocketed by the powerful; Pakistan is extremely poor, except for the few rich.

Further, the democratic government is very weak and highly unpopular; only the Army is well-organized and fairly functional.

What would a weak, unpopular, ostensibly democratic government do, given that the US is already unpopular in Pakistan? The government might face down the US. It would gain popularity for doing so.

A face down would also demonstrate American helplessness. Talk about "credibility!" The American Empire could be the world's next joke, after Mubarak's defiant speech to the Egyptians--the night before he fled. The Romans lost credibility at the battle of Adrianople; the US could lose it in a Pakistani court.

Feb 17, 2011

Strange (Congressional) Bedfellows

I called my newly elected Tea Party Congressman, today. I was surprised to discover: we share at least one important idea. If you're going to cut the government's budget, look to the Pentagon. "Yes," said his aide, "the Congressman has been thinking defense should be cut."

I would never have heard my former blue-dog Democratic Congress-people, either Scott Murphy or Kirsten Gillibrand, say anything like that. I always got back some mealy-mouthed answer about "supporting the troops."

I can't agree with cutting Head Start, WIC, or the home heating oil winter aid program proposed by the Republicans in the House. I wouldn't be surprised if Congressman Gibson is for all those cuts. And for cuts in Pell Grants, and aid to schools. Krugman called such cuts "eating our seed corn," which seems about right.

But politics is also the art of cultivating strange bedfellows. There is surprising support, apparently, among the new Tea Party Republicans, for cutting the Defense budget in order to cut the deficit. Obama, most Blue Dog Democrats and mainstream Republicans have all waxed eloquent about ruling out cuts from Defense--except for Gates' minimal recommendations: they support "the troops."

It seems rather hard to swallow, considering that Obama is also proposing to slash food stamps in half (from about $80 billion): the proposed Defense Budget is approximately $553 billion, and together with the separate budgets for wars and intelligence, it weighs in at almost $730 billion (nearly 3/4 of a trillion). For many years, the US has spent more money on Defense than all of the rest of the world combined. Are we safe yet? Why not cut Defense, even if you ignore the perennial findings of huge waste and accounting errors in the Pentagon?

Since Bobby Kennedy, there has been a strong anti-war wing in the Democratic Party, and it has become stronger, relatively, in this Congress, because so many blue dogs went down to defeat, while fewer antiwar Democrats lost their seats.

Now they have natural allies, not just in Ron Paul and Rand Paul, but in Congressmen like Gibson, who was elected as a Tea Party deficit hawk. I don't know if the Pauls supported Gibson, but like them, he's considering defense cuts. I hope he gets together with another Hudson Valley Congressman, Maurice Hinchey, the surviving anti-war Congressman in the region.

Amendments to the continuing resolution, proposed by Congressman Nadler and Polis, would cut the Defense budget by "cutting the empire," i.e. bringing home the troops from Afghanistan (budgeting only for the costs of withdrawal), and radically reducing the troops stationed in Europe.

We could begin our peaceful withdrawal from empire before we are defeated or driven bankrupt. Do we really want to follow Rome, Spain, the USSR? Why not emulate the British Empire's withdrawal (sometimes reluctant) from Asia and Africa? It would make more sense than cutting food stamps.

Feb 15, 2011

We Were Dwarves And Now We're Giants

"We were dwarves under Mubarak," said a protester. "Now we are giants." There are moments in history, in the histories of nations and sometimes moments over much of the world, when people feel like that. The day Mubarak was forced to resign, on February 11, 2011, did feel like that, and not just for Egyptians.

I could go on about how Mubarak's fall is a blow against empire, but it really isn't about that. No matter what happens in Egypt, and that's still up in the air, the revolution peacefully accomplished by millions of people against a repressive and rapacious regime is astounding--and inspiring. But it makes me humble, to realize how many people it took, and with what persistence, and against what odds--and with 300+ dead--heroes of the revolution, perhaps.

I don't know if I'd have had the guts to go to Tahrir Square on one of those early days, nor to persist for 18 days; I know I loathe committees and crowds, and yet I hope I would have been there.

What comes afterward is still open to speculation. The army is now, again, in control, as it has been at each turning point in Egypt since it overthrew King Farouk in 1952. Some speculate that Egypt's senior officers might be more inclined to reconstitute the regime without Mubarak and Suleiman, than to institute true democracy. They have too much to lose: luxurious villas, lucrative industries and power.

But in those 18 days, the Army played a sophisticated game. It appears that the conservative high command knew they had to be careful, since they lead a conscript army, whose lower ranks often seemed to sympathize with the protesters. On the other hand, they want to protect their accustomed and expected perks, so there is a tension between the demands of the protesters and the generals' interests.

If I were an Egyptian general, I would have argued not for repression, but for flexibility. I would have said that the Army could give way over Mubarak and then people won't notice that we still have the same system that rewards us so handsomely.

This may be why some say more protests will be necessary, and they're ready to continue to protest in Tahrir Square. They should if the army simply re-establishes its Mubarak era.

However, given the mass turmoil all over the Middle East, it's hard to see the Egyptian Army turning its back on the popular demands. Old guys like General Tantawi may want to, but even the younger generals know they could have a bloody revolution on their hands if they tried to re-establish the status quo.

As for the American role, if it doesn't adapt to the emerging order, its influence in the Middle East will shrink even faster, and there's goes the Empire!

Feb 7, 2011

Palin and the Brothers (Muslim)

Egyptian VP, Suleiman, suggested unspecified "other people" and "an Islamic current" were pushing the young people forward. "It’s not their idea," he said. "It comes from abroad" (NYT 2/6/11). Rashid Mohammed Rashid, a former minister went further. He said of Americans, "There was so much interference. They shouldn’t actually get involved in this."

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin claims that, "...surely they know more than the rest of us know, who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak." (ABC 2/6/11) She doesn't like that very much. 'They' clearly refers to Obama/Clinton/Biden.

So, it looks like a consensus between the Egyptian regime and Palin, that Americans are running the show, behind the scenes--or the Muslim Brotherhood is, but we can't support them, because they're Muslim extremists.

A Muslim extremist is not the same as a fundamentalist. The Saudi regime is fundamentalist, and although extremists have spawned there, the monarchy is fighting them as hard as we are. Apparently, the Brotherhood is more moderate than the Saudis; it does not favor extremism.

The Brotherhood is clearly not behind the revolt in Egypt; it is a participant after the fact, and most of the revolutionary activists in Tahrir Square appear to be young, secular and un-supportive of fundamentalists taking power. The Brotherhood has appeared reluctant to take a prominent role in the uprising, even stating that they won't run candidates in the coming elections, either in September or later. They may end up with some power, since they are the best-organized opposition grouping, but that doesn't mean they'll be in a position to order attacks on Israel, or the Coptic Church.

Mubarak has held on to power so long, by cozening his country and the world with the 'extremist threat' and predicting 'chaos' après moi. Palin still buys it. Now, Mubarak's regime is trying to blame all the unrest on 'foreigners,' and Palin assumes Obama is calling the shots. Both sell paranoia. And they feed on each other. Both promote only one American interest--the sale of more American war toys.

In Tahrir Square, today, Muslims kept guard while Coptic Christians had a service, and Coptic Christians, earlier kept guard while Muslims prayed. Where are those extremists?

It's true that Obama/Hillary/Biden/Wisner are pressing Mubarak and the opposition to follow their script for a "peaceful transition," but neither side is listening. The inchoate, but determined and persistent opposition/revolution wants Mubarak out now, and they have good reasons. Mubarak seems determined to stay, even though he won't run again. By staying, he could control the succession, which is precisely why the protesters want him out now.

But if America isn't in control, then the Emperor has no clothes. That's not a bad thing, but most Americans still assume the opposite, and think conspiracy when events prove otherwise. The right wing battens on this paranoia, as they hasten the American Empire's decline.

Feb 3, 2011

Personal History Collides with Egypt

When Mubarak's supporters attacked Egyptian protesters with sticks and knives, I felt an unwelcome kinship. Most of the pro-government demonstrators are probably goons from the security services; my mother's family was high up in similar institutions in Venezuela when Juan Vicente Gomez was military dictator (1908 to 1935). When Gomez died in 1935 (of natural causes), my Great Uncle Velasco, Governor of Caracas, delayed news of Gomez's death by 24 hours. He needed time to load a gunboat with all his valuables, so he could flee to Costa Rica. My grandfather was not so foresighted. When he was Gomez's governor in Estado Falcon, he invested in land; when Gomez died, he lost it all.

Velasco was known for a particular form of torture, so it's likely that his appointees' main job was regime security. My mother's father, and almost all his brothers, worked for Velasco. My uncles were probably counterparts to the Cairenes deploying the police goons in mufti, today--not the men wielding sticks and knives, or riding horses and camels into Tahrir Square, but the ones who sent them.

My sympathies go out to the anti-government protesters, who defended themselves with stones.

Deploying the pro-government goons would be something Gomez might have done, but Gomez was always careful to tightly control his military. It was not a conscript army. In Egypt it is, dividing the army into elite officers and civilian soldiers.

The chaos and violence precipitated by Mubarak's followers is probably a tactic for bringing the army over to the President's side. The officers revere order, and order is now being visibly disrupted--by the President's men.

There have been extraordinary stories in both Tunisia and Cairo of the demonstrators/protesters policing themselves; there were even TV scenes of young men cleaning up the trash in Tahrir Square. Other stories told of young men protecting neighborhoods from looting, and of the elaborate but self-deputized efforts of the protesters to screen newcomers, preventing them from bringing weapons into Tahrir Square.

And then on Wednesday, the army let in the pro-Mubarak demonstrators with knives, clubs, and even a few guns.

Either the army still feels constrained when faced by security forces, or it prefers a passive role: letting the protesters protest, and letting the counter-protesters into the square--until it tries to separate them with armored cars. Maybe the army sees itself as Egypt's arbitrator.

The people recruited for the pro-Mubarak demonstrations are like the people who worked for my mother's family. Now, in Venezuela, my cousins are united in their disgust for Chavez.

But it was the people who won for Chavez in Venezuela, after he was toppled in a coup. The Egyptian people can win, too; I hope they have better luck in leaders.

Their triumph will mark another important step in the decline of the American Empire.

Feb 1, 2011

Revolution in Egypt

There aren't quite as many people in Tahrir (Liberation) Square as there are particles of snow falling from NY's sky, but the numbers are overwhelming. Al Jazeera estimated that there were at least two million people there on Tuesday (2/1/11), and many were determined to stay the night, insuring ownership of the square.

What is important for Egypt's apparent revolution is that the Army is not blocking it; in fact, it appears to be helping the protesters maintain order. There is an important reason for this, relevant to us: Egypt has a draft, so the army is filled not with professionals, or poverty recruits, as is ours, but with a cross-section of the young men of the nation. Given such a make-up, it would be risky and dangerous for the army to order its soldiers to shoot to kill their fellow Egyptians. The generals could face a general mutiny, something similar helped precipitate the Soviet revolution in Russia.

The question on everyone's mind, from Obama and Hillary to Joe Blow, is what does the likely overthrow of the US's ally of 30 years, President Mubarak, mean for American interests?

First of all, the worst thing the US could do, would be to support Mubarak and drive out the protesters. Second, what the US does short of a misguided intervention is less important; the Egyptian people have clearly made up their minds: Mubarak has to go. What comes next is still up in the air.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been repressed in Egypt since the 1950's, but it seems to be the most organized opposition force. However, the people interviewed in Liberation Square, and in Alexandria, appear to have a more secular bent, so no one knows who will prevail. Further, Mohammed El Baradei, probably an interim figure, is also secular, not an "Islamist."

In any case, Egypt will go in whatever direction it goes, whether through popular pressure or military decision. If the latter, it might be cautiously pro-western. However, if Egypt does have regime change (likely), then there could be a domino effect, and that could affect "our oil." After all, Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, and has been the center of learning in the Middle East for millennia, so the popular overthrow of a pro-western dictator there could have manifold consequences.

One conservative commentator is shrilly warning against $120 oil: even that is possible. It is almost guaranteed, however, that US sponsorship of conservative dictators in the region will no longer insure US regional control.

The Egyptian and Tunisian popular revolutions signal the beginning of the end of the US's current Mideast strategy and tactics. Either, the US adapts to the new facts on the ground, or the popular outpouring will cause a significant weakening of the US Empire. It is one more movement towards a multi-polar world.

Jan 28, 2011

Obama-Vision

Obama has called for cutting the deficit, freezing government salaries, and even, cutting corporate taxes (most large corporations don't pay any), joining a throng of right-wingers, and also the Conservatives who took power in the UK not so long ago. But look what's happening in the UK in the wake of huge cuts to the UK government budget.

"It's not enough just to slam on the spending brakes. Measures that cut spending but killed demand would actually make matters worse," said Sir Richard Lambert, outgoing director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. NYT 01/25/11. In the wake of the Conservative/Lib-Dem budget cuts, the UK suffered a decline in GDP in the fourth quarter, after several rising quarters.

The UK made cuts very much like the ones Rep. Ryan proposed in his Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address. How do you stimulate an economy by cutting the government's budget? Market fundamentalists claim government spending crowds out private spending, so if you cut the government, corporate energy will be "unleashed."

This doesn't make much sense right now. In a boom, excess government spending will crowd out private investment. We are not in a boom. While corporations are realizing fair profits--from overseas sales--and the banks are pocketing huge returns, few are hiring, even when there is increasing demand for their products or services; they are demanding more of their current employees, instead--overtime usually, mandatory unless a union is involved, and at regular, not overtime wages unless a union contract requires otherwise.

That's why we still have over 9.5% unemployment officially; it's estimated to be as high as 19% when discouraged workers and involuntary part-time workers are counted.

At least Obama proposed only a modest freeze to government, and insisted that it should invest in clean energy, etc. He could have made a strong case for the government as employer of last resort to invest in workers, and in addressing our sliding housing crisis, but he didn't: maybe not "centrist" enough.

One of his signature issues is education, which is logical, when talking about the future, but if the US is going to "win" the future, Race to the Top won't do it. Our children are not successfully competing with the rest of the world, but if we are to "win," they have to, not on standardized tests, but in skills and creative thinking: penalizing teachers won't accomplish that. Encouraging good teaching and supporting teachers would have a better chance--in colleges, too.

Obama's proposals, however, won't "win the future." The US must face its decline, withdraw from empire, and focus on its long-term deficits, not only of government, but of infrastructure, education, skills and trade.

That won't happen as long as the elite hold on to the status quo that enriched them. What the US needs is a democratic uprising like the one in Tunisia.

Jan 24, 2011

Anarchy Right and Left

I read a right-wing paean for anarchy in a libertarian newsletter; it was mirrored by a left-wing article expressing disgust--at corporate anarchy!

The pro-anarchist rhapsodizes about how 'mates' helped each other in the Australian floods, volunteering by the thousands--and then the government comes in, hunts for looters, restores law and order, and worst of all, collects taxes: end of paradise, the renewal of theft.

The leftist describes how the corporations are running Washington, and do the same thing--siphon off the people's wealth--with government collusion, bought and paid for.

So, is it the government, or is it corporations?

Conservative anarchists assume that all taxation is theft. Government service, to them, is an oxymoron. Nothing government does has any economic value. They assume that everything should be provided by 'business.' So, private roads and military would be more efficient? Would every road be a toll road?

What anarchists ignore, are the 300 pound gorillas on the loose, all over the world--the global corporations. Wouldn't they mind if corporations ruled everyone's lives without any government oversight, or intervention? Wouldn't they mind the toxic pharmaceuticals, dangerous toys, dangerous roads, dangerous cars, and above all, dangerous banks?

Why do conservatives, more generally, think that less government, or no government is preferable? These aren't the days of Daniel Boone. Now, there are huge, powerful private institutions--as well as a lot of crooks--predators: human and institutional. Will corporations protect you from other corporations? Their only rationale is greater profit. Ultimately, government's motive (in a democracy) is to please enough voters so that its elected leaders get reelected.

The profit motive does make private enterprise efficient, but there are examples of better government-provided outcomes: health care and utilities abroad and in municipalities are only two. But there are many functions that only a government should do: maintain order, maintain means of transportation, i.e. roads, airports, city streets, public health, ensure that the marketplace is not a shark-pit and then, there's also defense. Should we fire the Pentagon and hire Blackwater/Xe?

That I would go for: dismantle the Pentagon, then don't renew Xe's contract. But seriously, there are a lot of issues that the left and right see in tantalizingly parallel ways.

Doesn't everyone get impatient with bureaucracy? But it's both government and corporate, isn't it. The major difference is that government legalese is usually of legible size.

What we're really facing here is the takeover of corporate gangsters, who buy the government, or enough of its members so that they can continue siphoning off Americans' wealth, regardless of the hardship. Raise taxes on the middle class and poor (Sales taxes, real estate taxes) and cut income taxes on the rich, and on the corporations, from which they derive their wealth. License corporations to do everything, and profit handsomely.

I present to you the Selfish Class, the title of a book you'll find by clicking on 'Books.'

Jan 23, 2011

Deficit-mongering Endangers Dollar

If you scream about the deficit, but then don't do anything about it, or pass tax cuts that increase it, you actually endanger the nation more than the deficit, itself. The Republicans are forcing this to happen. They are shortening the time before the world's nations will jettison the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency, because US fiscal policy will lose credibility even faster, while the nation will be mired in non-recovery. However, the dollar is likely to lose its special status, anyway, sooner more likely than later.

What matters is not the government deficit, but the trade deficit: the two are not necessarily related. Deficit spending that enhances US jobs, productivity and creativity would actually cut the trade deficit and delay a move away from the dollar. Deficit spending that simply increases our national debt, like the tax cut for the wealthy, will bring us closer to the time when the US Dollar becomes just another currency; it increases our trade deficit and makes the US poorer.

The dollar losing international reserve status will be a very big deal. It will be a disaster for the US, unless the way has been carefully prepared. What's the likelihood of that?

This is what will happen: the US can no longer so freely borrow on international markets: the Fed can't blithely create money as it is doing now with Quantitative Easing. The bigger problem would be: how do we repay (by far) the largest trade deficit in the world? We won't be able to just print dollars for payment. We'll have to earn Renminbi, or Marks or Rials to buy from those places.

Imports will cost much more. Three-dollar gas will be a faint memory: prices would be comparable to Europe's ($5-7 per gallon now), or much higher.

We also won't be able to continue our military mission to control every corner of the globe. That, to me, would be a positive outcome, both for the US and the world. Who would lend to us at the low interest our bonds now pay? Interest costs to maintain our military could bankrupt us, something that happened not only to the Romans, but also led to the overthrow of the Bourbons, ushering in the French Revolution.

Any dollar-denominated asset would be worth much less outside the US. Americans would have to produce more, at lower cost--through subsistence wages, perhaps, or greater efficiency, or probably both--and import less.

Perhaps, an increasingly impoverished majority would demand Equality, as rebelling masses did on the streets of Paris, but it might come too late. The billionaires may have decamped, with their tons of gold (not dollars), just like Tunisia's Ben Ali!

Loss of reserve status could end the American empire. While temporarily poorer, Americans could end up freer and better off--if they throw out the corporate octopus impoverishing us all.

To tell what you would do: click on "more info" below. and scroll down.

Jan 20, 2011

Denigrating Reason

"We're building a grassroots movement to stand up to the special interests and stand up for middle class consumers," says Al Franken, in response to the FCC approval of the Comcast-NBC merger.

I wonder how that will happen. I have a local activist friend, a county legislator, who continuously tries to get people out for demonstrations, to hold signs, to protest--new Democratic Governor Cuomo's conservative economic policies, for example, when he gives the state of the State at a local college. I went to one or two demos, and was embarrassed by how few people there were. My friend even urged me to speak!

How do you mobilize people who work 10-hour days, and then go home to vege out in front of the TV, or on the computer? How do you mobilize people whose lives are isolated, who get most of their contact through TV, and who, moreover, are increasingly influenced by the corporate media?

People are discouraged from thinking in this USA. It's like Steve, my "Christian" fellow alum, whose reaction about anything is "those left-wing intellectuals--" About the economy: "intellectuals and economists" can say all they want, but "I know: debt is debt." When I expose him to a little Keynesian economics--deficits can be investments, if the money goes to enhance the economy--he dismisses all intellectuals--including me, of course. He knows; he's a self-made man (in California real estate).

His antagonism towards thinking parallels the vociferous right wing Commentariat--Palin, Beck, et al. And look how well the politics of ignorance and anger has done in the last election! People voted for Republicans not for what they stood for, apparently. Polls show high support for all the issues Republicans oppose, like health reform, and aid to the unemployed. People voted for Republicans simply because they weren't in power; they were angry. A man demanded of me, as Election Inspector, to produce a list of incumbents up for re-election (I wasn't allowed to give political information), so he could vote against them. Their party affiliation didn't matter; but his ignorance was staggering. He's the corporate elite's template for the perfect voter: ignorant and unthinking. I saw a Republican election observer take him outside; he told him who to vote for.

We have schools that "teach to the test," and universities increasingly funded by corporations to promote their interests. In public schools, thinking is discouraged in favor of rote learning and discipline. I taught in colleges, none of them prestigious. In all of them a student who could think, or who wanted to think was a precious gift. Ironically, there were more of them in my prison classes.

Inmates knew they were being screwed; everyone else just wanted a B.

Our denigration of reason parallels Rome's in the Empire's last centuries.

Jan 18, 2011

MLK Hangover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan 17, 2011

Serfdom Better than Wage Slavery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan 11, 2011

Heroism, Viciousness and Social Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan 4, 2011

Why Dismantle the US?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan 2, 2011

How to Dismantle the US

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 29, 2011

Roman Senators: 400 AD, 2010-2011 AD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 20, 2011

Tax Cuts a Bad Deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 16, 2011

The Right-wing's Next Target

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do right-wingers want this?

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

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

Dec 14, 2011

Wiki-Revolution II

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 10, 2011

Bloodless Wiki-Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 7, 2011

Come-on to Apocalypse

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

Missives like this come from a conservative publishing group: I recognize the MO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 2, 2011

Obama: Ordinary Politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov 30, 2011

Leaks Spill Empire

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

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

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

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

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

In addition, a constant drain to our balance of payments would be plugged.

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

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

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

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

If people laugh, it's all over.

Nov 27, 2011

Bees and People

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope not.

Nov 23, 2011

Democracy as Distraction

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

It isn't democracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov 17, 2011

Government "Overreach" and Powerless Emperor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov 12, 2011

A Vet Who Wishes There Was No Veteran's Day

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

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

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

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

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

In the 20th century, an upstart settler nation

That styled itself unconsciously on Rome, but sprawled across a new continent,

Became the hero and then the new predator,

Dominant, globe-straddling, ideologically benign in its exploitation and destruction:

we destroyed the village in order to save it, was America's MO

in the third to last of the wars that would bleed its people white

and enrich its wealthy, who can leave the ruin

of the USA--for their homes in pleasant climes

and beautiful places, anywhere in the world but here.

The 21st century will not be American; it might be

Chinese, or Indian, or maybe Brazilian.

Maybe the 21st will be the century of the BRIC

Maybe, finally, it will be a century when Veteran's Day

Is no longer a big deal.

Nov 10, 2011

Plutocracy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov 4, 2011

Government by Default

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nov 3, 2011

Elections and Anger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then Democrats, after campaigning in 2006-8 for Change, were not capable of delivering sufficient positive change, nor, especially, of undoing the economic damage wrought by Republicans and Bush. So, now we get Republicans, aiming to restore the previous, unregulated economy, even though it led to the economic collapse that caused voter anger. There even might be enough spine-challenged Democrats in the Senate to go along.

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

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

Oct 29, 2011

Suicide by Politics

On the one side, we have Democrats saying they're willing to compromise; on the other, we have Republicans insisting they will refuse to do so. We have Democrats, and President Obama, who still think that the most important thing is to govern effectively, and attempt to solve the huge problems the US faces (I'm not saying their "solutions" are brilliant, but at least they're trying). On the other side, we have Republican leader Mitch McConnell, proclaiming their number one goal: to insure Obama fails as President, that he does not win a second term. Does that sound like governing?

If the Republicans win control of the House and/or the Senate, we can look forward to political guerrilla war to be carried out in both chambers. The only support Obama will get from any Republican is for more war and war spending. Or for any policy they push, like extending tax cuts to the wealthy, that would weaken Obama's support among his base.

If Democrats pull out a narrow win, and maintain control of both chambers, they will still be facing a determined, intransigent, and hostile opposition in no mood for compromise, or for coming to terms with the constraints of governing. The Tea Party, and the corporations that back it, have already shown they can punish any compromiser. So, the US will join the ranks of ungovernable nations, in which the powers-that-be are paralyzed. No decisive action, maybe even no budget, may be possible.

Perhaps NATO should send an occupying force to stabilize the country--ah, the US controls NATO!

One chance for governance would be if there were a reduced Democratic majority--many of the "Blue Dogs" would be gone--that realized that compromise was not possible, only governing by strict majority rule would work. The blocking filibuster would have to be jettisoned in the Senate: it could be in its first session of the new Congress.

I confess to donating a little to progressive campaigns, and phone calling for our local Congressman, but I'm not sanguine, not with the 100's of millions spent on negative ads by anonymous corporations against almost all Democrats.

We are facing a Supreme Court-induced coup d'etat by the extremely wealthy, a new gilded age in which the corporate wealthy will determine US policy, just as it did in the 1880's.

Unlike the 1880's, however, the US is not a surging new power, but an aging behemoth, with a dangerous military and a costly empire. Meanwhile, China, India, the EC and Brazil will feel free to take over economically, given US stalemate, or worse, control by global corporations wedded to a wasteful status quo.

This is a different scenario for the fall of American Empire! Elections 2010 could be decisive.

Oct 27, 2011

Foreign $s Promote Global Warming in US

Now, it's official: European corporations, including BP, are contributing funds to US Senate campaigns--for climate change deniers and candidates who vow to block the cap and trade bill. Total contributions: $240,000, more than Koch Industries pursuing the same agenda. So, BP, for example, having polluted our Gulf of Mexico and killed workers in a refinery fire, now wants to buy politicians--so they can do more of the same, with no government interference.

European corporations are meddling in US politics. That they can, has been made possible by the Supreme Court's decision opening the way for corporate money in campaigns, despite Justice Alito shaking his head when Obama asserted that it would: Obama stated that the Citizens United decision opened election campaigns to foreign funds. Clearly, it has.

The list of corporations revealed by Climate Action Network Europe (CANE), are: BP, Arcelor-Mittal (steel), Solvay (chemicals), LaFarge (cement), GDF-Suez (energy), BASF (chemicals), Bayer (pharmaceuticals) and EON (energy). They are concerned about pollution controls: all are large-scale polluters. Europe has been in the forefront combating climate change, and these corporations have been forced to comply with EC regulations to reduce emissions.

Their thinking: if they can help elect climate change deniers and anti-climate change legislators in the US, then the US will do nothing about climate change, and they can argue that Europe shouldn't handicap itself with "burdensome" and "anti-business" regulations, either.

The same process is going on in California, which has an initiative on its ballot to nullify Schwarzenegger's widely acclaimed climate law. Money pours in from everywhere to nullify the law, but from energy companies especially.

It's fascinating to identify the allies of the Tea Party's American "patriots."

It's also fascinating to see that, so far, participants like stridently "patriotic" Fox News, have made no issue of foreign participation in our elections. In fact, it has been widely reported, but not fully substantiated, that many of the millions spent by the Chamber of Commerce and various other Tea Party groups like Rove's American Crossroads, come from foreign corporations.

It can be argued that this is only fair, since the US, and American corporations have spent money in foreign election campaigns for decades. But it is against US election laws, and it should be an issue in this campaign. Do Americans really want foreign corporations to help decide who governs us, and what policies we pursue?

Further, the funding revealed by CANE is "climate sabotage:" it is aimed at stopping any action to combat, or ameliorate climate change. And it is motivated by one thing only: corporate profits.

America is beginning to look, not so much like a declining empire as a Third World country, where all the (foreign and domestic) corporate heavies make the rules and select the players, for their own global profits.

Oct 24, 2011

American Checkers, Persian Chess

Americans play checkers, the Persians play chess. In Middle East intrigue, Americans are outclassed. The Persians have been around for at least 5,000 years. Americans are johnnys-come-lately.

Americans in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq, contend with Iranian influence in the governments they support. Nuri al Maliki, Iraq's PM, has long-established ties with Iran, and has recently worked out a coalition agreement with the Sadrist party, supported by Iran. What is the US to do? Maliki was supposed to be our man, nurtured and financed by the US.

Now, we find out that Hamid Karzai, Afghan President, our client in Kabul, has a chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, who is not only pro-Iranian, but Iran's conduit for illicit cash in the millions of Euros a month. His mission, it seems, is to poison Afghan-American relations.

The plot thickens: Daudzai and his friends were members of Hezb-i-Islami, a brutal, militant Islamist group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who now lives in Iran, but has ties to the Taliban. Iran in the west, like Pakistan in the east, maintains ties and provides aid to the Taliban, as well as the government. The intelligence communities of both neighboring countries vie for influence among the Taliban, the President, and with his opponents in Afghan politics.

While Pakistan is our reluctant, or resistant ally, Iran is our rival for power in the region. Yet, both have interests in furthering Afghan stability as well as their own influence; chaos on their borders might provide opportunities to extend their power, but it also endangers their own governments.

Just as the US blundered into an age-old civil war in Iraq--between Shiite and Sunni--a game in which the Persians were deeply engaged, it has done something similar in Afghanistan. Except, the Afghan game is much more complicated. The civil war between the government we installed, and the Taliban, has been ongoing for generations, between Pathans and the peoples of the northern alliance: largely Tajik and Uzbek. Meanwhile, the nations to Afghanistan's east and west have been vying for power in Afghanistan for hundreds of years.

The British Empire marched into Afghanistan from India, and was routed. The Soviets occupied Afghanistan, but were driven out. Will the US leave more gracefully?

Afghanistan's neighbors use more subtle methods: cash bribes, safe refuges, training, and control through their intelligence services. They will outlast the crude Westerners, who think that power comes from more and better weapons. Effective weapons, as the Vietnamese and Iraqis demonstrated, can be stolen, or cobbled together from the wasteful and over-generous supplies of the invader.

Rome in its decline, abandoned its push east into Parthia: the East was too complicated. The US, also a declining empire, is baffled by the complex intricacies of the region. Which will come first: bankruptcy or defeat? Or will the US withdraw in time?

Oct 22, 2011

Cut Social Security!

The conclusion always is: cut benefits and raise the retirement age. That's how Economists think, apparently. A self-described Economist, said, the way Economists do, that public employees were overpaid (i.e. paid "above the average" for private sector workers) and paid more "generous," hear 'over-generous', pensions. Those "golden years lifestyles" are going to have to change.

And yet, private pensions have become scarcer and scarcer, and remember what happened to retirees' IRA's and 501K's with the stock market crash? This is not progress. The retirement plans of public employees ought to be seen as a model to head for. Are we a humane society, or not? We should find ways to pay for those pensions, and for private pensions as well.

Furthermore, to say public employees earn more is to compare apples to oranges, and the economist knows it: government workers do not work in factories, or in the fields; very few are manual laborers, or work with heavy machinery; and most are more educated than the average.

But still, there is the assumption that benefits must be cut, not that taxes on the rich should be raised.

Why the rich? They have more money than they can spend, and tend to spend more of it abroad, or to speculate with it, thereby fueling asset bubbles. No, their money is not creating jobs. In fact, at the moment, capital is in the business of shedding jobs: when jobs are cut, corporate profits go up. Higher tax rates for the wealthy would create jobs, because they could fund government programs.

Many progressive economists point out something most Americans don't want to hear: Americans pay lower taxes than other developed nations, and the wealthy pay much lower taxes than they do in almost any developed country. Tax havens (i.e. places with even lower taxes) happen to be in poor countries, i.e. in countries with even fewer public services, but with private services westerners buy at low cost--for them, but not for most natives.

It is astounding how little play a mildly progressive politics has in the US. In "liberal" NY State, the highly popular Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, concedes economic policy to conservative positions: cut public sector pay; cut pensions and establish a property tax cap, similar to the one in California. California's tax cap defunded their world-class education system built up even under Reagan. California's experience with the tax cap has been not just an education disaster, but a financial one, too, as their huge deficit demonstrates.

But few dare to propose a "millionaire tax," though the wealthy pay lower tax rates than everyone else; few propose rebating the stock transaction fee: both could yield enough for NY to pay its budget.

We have entered an era, when only the wealthy are allowed to win--the interests of ordinary people are dismissed as "special interests." That kind of society led to Rome's impoverishment and its eventual "fall" in 476. It's happening here.

Oct 20, 2011

Anarchism 2010-style

They don't wear black masks, and they don't trash police cars. They go to rallies and hold up signs against Obamacare, or Guvmint, or claim Obama is a Muslim. Yes, the Tea Party.

It's not as if the Tea Party doesn't have sponsors. Again, it's not like those masked vandals, who eschew money, itself. The Tea Party anarchists, are for dissolving all government, eventually. Just follow their logic--and their sponsors.

Government isn't supposed to be doing all the things it does now, because, well, maybe they can point to mis-interpretations of our 18th Century Constitution, but really they just insist (against a good deal of evidence to the contrary) that government can do nothing right.

Logically, that will eventually extend to the police and the military. In both cases, private corporations are taking over increasing shares of these functions: private prison corporations and Blackwater/Xie come to mind.

So, the new anarchism hands over all power to huge corporations. Governments wither away. If we could do without government, I'd be happy too, but given the size of our population, and the complexity of our society, government functions would be taken over by corporations: not an improvement.

We cannot do without government functions, collective goods, and a whole host of services we just take for granted, like insuring clean, healthy food, reliable weights and measures, information about the economy, about the people in it. Everyone gains when more people are healthy, so public health is necessary: plagues and epidemics are really bad for business.

The Tea Party opposition to "Obamacare," is generated by vast amounts of money from healthcare corporations that want to keep the best parts--like guaranteed new markets (required by the individual mandate)--while jettisoning costly regulations like no pre-existing conditions. It's also opposed by wealthy ideologues like the Koch brothers.

There is a logical path from one to the other, however: it is empowering corporations and disempowering everyone else. In other words, the new anarchism could eventually usher in a world in which Google provides the economic data--it's attempting to, right now, with the price index--and Xie fights unending, profitable wars.

Do you remember Newt Gingrich proposing that Visa could collect taxes much more efficiently than the IRS?

And who would make the decisions? Why, the Senators and Congressmen and Presidents, who are elected by corporate campaign funds, of course. And they'll do the bidding of the corporations, perhaps meeting informally when disagreements do crop up.

People would only be necessary to pay the bills and provide the underpaid muscle and intellect needed for the corporations to make even greater profits. Corporate owners, i.e. the fewer and fewer people who really own them, would have unlimited wealth. And power.

Voila, Anarchism 2010! Just like Rome circa 477, after its "fall," before wandering marauders finish off most of the Romans. By 500, Rome had shrunk to 20-30,000 people (from over 1 million).

Oct 15, 2011

Imperial Water

Water was falling steadily on September 30th, water carried by the prevailing winds all the way from the Gulf of Mexico. It's falling now, too. September's rain reminded me of the tortured history of water between this country and Mexico.

Here, in the Northeast, we usually have an abundance of water, although the "monsoon" we've had broke a six-week drought. But the whole western third of the US has always been deficient in water. The West used to be tagged, on old maps, as 'The Great Western Desert.' This included large parts of California.

Most of the West was also a possession of Mexico, until the Mexican war of 1846-48. The US annexed Texas before the war; after, it took over all the Rocky Mountain and Pacific territories (California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada) when it won the war, which the US fought for blatant territorial aggrandizement. Americans called it "manifest destiny."

Some of the prized possessions of those territories are the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers. The Colorado flows from Wyoming into Mexico, all the way to Mexico's Gulf of California, or it did. Now, there are times when its flow is negligible by the time it gets to Mexico. It's the main source of water for California's Imperial Valley, one of the richest irrigated agricultural regions in the world.

There was a Mexican-American Water Treaty negotiated in 1944. It allocates more water to the US, from the Colorado and the Rio Grande, so Mexico does not receive the water enjoyed by American farmers and city dwellers in places like LA, the Imperial Valley (aptly named), and Arizona. I've seen lush fields of hay (!) in Arizona's deserts, for example.

So, first, the US took a large part of Mexico, and then it took a good deal of its water. That water is used to grow crops Mexico cannot. Then, to add insult to injury, the US negotiated NAFTA so that US subsidized corn could flood Mexico (where corn/maize first appeared more than two thousand years ago). Mexican peons couldn't compete; subsidized imports drove them from their smallholdings.

American corporations not only wanted to export surplus corn, but to establish maquiladoras over the border. So, the flood of cheap workers created by destroying Mexico's small farms was serendipitous.

However, China's lower labor costs made the maquiladoras less competitive. So, Mexico has a large unemployed, rootless labor force. Is it surprising that Mexicans stream across the Rio Grande, or the Arizona desert? Or that drug trafficking has become one of Mexico's principal industries?

Border States have become "hard-assed" about illegal immigration, but imperial bullying brings consequences. The flood of Chicanos into the US is one.

The lack of water is one of its principal causes.

Oct 12, 2011

Robbers (Almost) in Charge

You really do have to wonder, with a Democratic House and Senate--stalemated by a Republican minority--how a bill to retroactively legalize faulty foreclosures could slip through just before Congress went home. It legalized wholesale larceny! It didn't become law, because there was one honest man who could stop it: President Obama refused to sign it, a pocket veto.

And then there's the prospect of quantitative easing (QE2=printing money) by the Fed. Responsible economists agree: the economy needs more stimulus. The stimulus we've had was only enough to keep us from falling off the cliff. To get out of the high unemployment doldrums, a massive amount of money must be spent. There are two ways to do so. One is to invest in the nation, to increase everyone's wealth--green jobs and industry and updated infrastructure: a second fiscal stimulus. However, with political stalemate, it would be DOA in Congress the minute Obama mentioned it.

So, the other option is for the Fed to print money. This will probably stimulate some people in the economy--the bankers, already rolling in dough! QE 2 would create more money to buy up mortgage-backed securities, so that banks would then have money to--loan more money to the hoi polloi to stimulate the economy? Hah! How about gambling on Wall Street and the commodity exchanges, or investing in booming countries elsewhere? The Fed doesn't require the bankers to spend their new money domestically; they can spend it wherever.

That's one reason why a Fed stimulus is much less effective than a government stimulus; it has what economists call significant "leakage," like heating a house that's full of holes. Further, a Fed stimulus would exacerbate inequality, already at its highest level since 1929. The Fed would be giving banks trillions of dollars and saying: get even richer!

Would this 'stimulus' help ordinary folks? If it creates jobs, but fewer would result than you'd expect for the trillions of dollars created. If QE2 succeeded economically, homeowners might be able to stay in their homes; foreclosures might stop. Ultimately, that could create jobs, as the real estate market rebounded, but it would take awhile. How much of the stimulus would ordinary people see? Not much. QE2 could also unleash inflation, although deflation now is the greater danger.

What it really looks like: gangsters are in control. Not Mafia. No, these gangsters aren't so honorable. They're the bankers, investors, corporate leaders and politicians pillaging the nation, driving the American empire into poverty, while reaping windfalls. How else do you explain Congress passing the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, legalizing illegal foreclosures?

How much can one man (Obama) do to stand up to organized crime on such a scale?

The prescient have already abandoned ship for places like Taiwan, or Belize.

Oct 8, 2011

An Awful Anniversary

Ten years ago today the US invaded Afghanistan: it's the longest war in our history, and in some ways, the worst. I think, in terms of outcomes, Afghanistan will rank as the worst, for us, for the Afghans.

The US will not win this war; if the best-case scenario prevails, the US will withdraw in a negotiated settlement (now in the works); the Taliban will re-enter Afghan politics with some caveats, like abjuring violence. They would be a strong presence, but perhaps not dominant, because the Taliban can't win the war, either--unless it goes on for another ten years.

But think of the cost for this minimal settlement! Afghanistan has so far cost us $352.9 billion; over 1000 American combatants killed, over 2,000 foreign troops and perhaps 25,000 Afghan civilians. But war isn't just about people getting killed; it disrupts society, people's lives are ripped apart, their families stressed, or driven to starvation, their homes destroyed, their jobs gone, infrastructure annihilated. War is about some people losing a lot, even if they survive. In Afghanistan, American forces, setting up forward bases, appropriate peasant land and start building. Whether, there are internal politics involved (determining whose land is taken), those people have had their livelihoods, and their whole social identity, taken from them.

In Turkey, people like that did our dirty laundry (I was in the Army, there, in 1962).

But to the brass, ten years isn't so momentous. They have already leaked hints they expect to be in Afghanistan until 2020, or later. From Woodward's reporting--how the military boxed Obama in on Afghanistan--it looks as if, for the military, continuous war is what they aim for; and they'll work to get it. Either we fight in Afghanistan, or we'll have to find another war. It's not that hard, with media outlets like Fox News and WaPo.

For the military brass, war, war all the time, is a good thing. Promotions come faster, budgets keep growing, their power increases, and they have an easier time keeping the troops happy--as long as not too many are being killed. Easier in wartime? We have a professional military. During wars, all of them fare better than in peacetime in terms of pay and benefits. Of course, during war, those below the rank of colonel can get shot at, or blown up, or forced to endure inferior living conditions. But even privates now get balanced meals and hot showers most of the time.

It's why the poor enlist: a steady, if somewhat risky, job. Like Roman Legionnaires.

But civilians pay the bills: between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

Actually, we borrow it from the Chinese!

Oct 6, 2011

Risk a Catastrophe?

"Oh, it will never happen!"

They all say that, about the possibility of one as a consequence of what they do--they being all of us. Whether it's a cat hunting mice and braving the threat of coyotes--they eat cats--or JP Morgan buying derivatives of uncertain value, or BP drilling offshore, or MAL Zrt, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, stockpiling the sludge byproduct from producing aluminum from bauxite.

In each case, after many times when disaster did not strike, after many times when disaster was possible, but did not happen, after many times when "experts" said it couldn't happen, it struck and struck hard, in the last two cases with huge environmental damage.

When will we learn?

There is a difference between the chances for profit and the chances for disaster. Some call this asymmetrical risk. You can risk profit, and if you lose, you lose your money; if you win, you gain money. But there are other risks, like those environmental disasters. The costs are borne by a much larger number than capital investors. In the case of the Hungarian sludge disaster, which just happened, not only did people die--of alkaline burns--whole areas of Hungary will have to be dug up, the soil replaced, towns have been abandoned, and in rivers like the Raba, most of the life in them may have been killed. And the sludge may reach the Danube.

Who pays for all that? The offending corporation should, their investors impoverished if necessary, but you know that won't happen. BP has been assessed damages for its Gulf oil disaster, and for its earlier refinery disaster, as well--peanuts compared to its profits--but it isn't paying the cost of restoring the Gulf to its pre-blowout condition. It won't be. So, everybody else is: the fishermen whose livelihoods have been lost, for example, the hotel owners and workers, whose businesses have been destroyed, and so on.

In most capitalist enterprise, in fact, there are huge asymmetrical risks, some of which we are only beginning to be aware, like the possible links between earthquakes and mining or deep drilling--huge spaces are evacuated underground, in both cases: there could be consequences. Again: who pays?

Our market system is engaged in the most asymmetrical risk of all: profit in the short run for the risk in the long run of a climate so destabilized that most of the human population won't survive.

Who pays?

At least, when the Roman Empire fell in the west, the whole planet was not affected: only Western Europe and western North Africa. When our industrial system poisons itself, the whole planet will suffer; it already is.

But the climate change deniers, beloved of "conservatives" and the tea party, and funded by corporations, want us to take on that risk--so that Exxon, Peabody Energy and General Electric can earn even greater profits than they do right now.

Are humans rational?

Oct 3, 2011

Full Spectrum Dominance

is what the Pentagon insists on maintaining--globally! Dominance: on Land, Air, Sea and Space. Among professional American military, the "long war" is an assumption, not just a consensus. Talk about Global Empire!

American Generals don't think much about economics. America is "the greatest nation on earth," so it can afford endless war everywhere. For the Generals, Admirals, Colonels, Majors, Captains etc., it's a great deal. Back home, we may have to scrimp, or worry about losing jobs, or homes, but the more wars there are, the better for the officers and NCO's. Defense industries depend on it and profit handsomely, too. So what, if the rest of America has to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it!

Defense spending is the largest "discretionary" item in the US budget, always, war or no war. And since WWII, it has always gone up. Why?

Have dangers escalated? No. With the end of the Cold War, the Soviets, the only power that could annihilate large parts of the US, collapsed; it re-emerged as resource-rich Russia, with only regional ambitions. The Chinese were briefly our enemies, during the Korean War, but they also have only regional ambitions, and never had the Soviet's capability of destroying the US.

Media commentators express alarm that a growing and prosperous China is building up its military, but its budget is about one-tenth of ours, even though it is the second richest nation, and the one with the most money to squander: we have huge trade deficits, they have huge surpluses.

So, why does DOD's budget go up every year? Why are we still in Iraq, although we're supposedly no longer fighting, and in Afghanistan, building huge bases, although we're supposed to be "starting" withdrawal next summer?

Excerpts from Woodward's Obama's War indicate that it really isn't his war. It's Petraeus's, and the other Generals'. Obama insisted on an exit date, and Petraeus, and company, have been chipping away at that ever since: if the military has anything to say (unfortunately, it has the loudest voice), we'll be fighting in Afghanistan until at least 2020. And we'll find other enemies, too, even if only a few hundred "extremists" here and there.

In the 1930's, Japan had the trappings of democracy, but it was controlled by the military, using the charisma of the Emperor to rally the nation. Tojo, a General, became Prime Minister during WWII. The victorious allies hanged him. He could be Petraeus's model.

Look for Petraeus to run for President in 2012. If he wins, he'll lead the nation like Tojo, who was probably responsible for the Pearl Harbor bombing--and Japan's subsequent defeat.

The military was also dominant in the late Roman Empire. That didn't do Romans much good against their enemies, the "Barbarians," however--even when they hired Barbarians to protect Rome against other Barbarians: See page: The Fall of Rome.

Oct 1, 2011

Coup in Ecuador, in US?

Will Obama say 'No!' to Ecuador's generals? A coup is unfolding at this moment. In April last year, Obama said "I am absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments," in the hemisphere. That was at an OAS meeting. However, in June last year, his State Department didn't condemn the coup in Honduras, so it went forward. The ousted elected President could not return, and the subsequent election was carefully controlled by the pro-business coup leaders.

Is this how big business will get rid of the surge of social democracy in Latin America? One coup at a time. My family in Venezuela would be happy at the prospect, but even there, Chavez has significantly reduced inequality; he's still popular.

Simultaneously, corporations are trying to buy US elections: funding groups like Rove's Crossroads, pumping millions into the tea party, or like the Koch brothers, directly funding tea party insurgents and radical conservative Republicans.

There is a common theme to these corporate-friendly actions: corporations and their owners want to eliminate regulations. They want to be able to pollute, without having to pay costs they impose on society. They want to gamble with free taxpayer money; they want to terrorize illegal aliens--and employees, more generally--so workers are desperate enough to work for near-subsistence wages. They also want to be free to ship jobs and processes overseas without having to pay the costs of their leaving. They even want to continue tax subsidies for doing so!

In places like Ecuador and Honduras, they want governments they can buy, not ones that try to serve their peoples' interests. As my Venezuelan uncle enjoyed pointing out: it's much more difficult to buy off a democratic government--the executive, the legislators, the judges--than a dictatorship, where you deal with one guy, or a small group.

Corporate interests, or pro-corporate conservatives have already gained electoral power in Britain, Canada, Germany and France. African and Asian countries are venues for conflict, over resources, not religion. China and India are major players, while Japan stagnates.

What also seems to be emerging is a bent toward authoritarianism. You see it in Russia and China. Developing countries emulate China. It isn't the "Communism" that's imitated: it's the authoritarian politics and the hybrid command/market economics China invented.

You see the same authoritarian leanings even in the US, even with Obama; he's continued Bush's Security State, and has barely held the military at bay on Afghanistan.

What will happen if the radical conservatives win? More severe economic crises yet, and even greater immiseration of most of the people: it makes them docile workers. Dictators would, too.

The few would be on their way to achieving the kind of dominance held by Roman Senators just before Rome's fall in 476.

Sept 28, 2010, This Age of Lunacy

$25.99 x 9,500=$246,905. Pretty good for a book that's just been published: that's the figure the publisher should take in from the Defense Department, which has bought all available copies of the first edition--to destroy them! The book: Operation Dark Heart, by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.

As Col. Shaffer remarked: it's "ludicrous"--in this digital age--to think that the Defense Department, by buying 9500 copies, is going to eliminate all copies with questionable, supposedly classified information. The second printing does have many redactions, in some cases whole paragraphs, but meanwhile: at least one seller on eBay, claiming to have a first-edition printing, is asking nearly $2,000 for it. And you know, from Col. Shaffer's remark, that there are probably un-redacted copies flying around the Internet.

Oh, not to worry! DOD has money to burn, even if everyone else has to deal with slashed budgets. After all, after the Republicans get over their snit re Don't Ask Don't Tell, they'll probably want to raise the Defense Budget, and insure that we never withdraw from anywhere.

Of course, they'll complain that the government's deficit is going through the roof. Then, they'll say we've got to cut Social Security benefits--which are paid for through the payroll tax and the trust fund. Defense is paid through general revenue. And they'll say we've got to stop any stimulus spending, and any welfare spending: let the unemployed go jump off bridges! Let the poor (now on Medicaid) get sick and die!

So, we have 9.6% official unemployment, which is probably 17% when "discouraged workers" and involuntary part-time workers are counted. The right-wing seems to be saying: we can do nothing; we should be doing nothing. What's extraordinary is that their candidates still lead in the polls, especially, when Republicans insist that even the millionaires and billionaires should get tax cuts--and declare: everyone's taxes will rise unless the billionaires get tax cuts, too!

The best part is: we'll borrow the money from the Chinese, to make up for the shortfall of $700 billion that millionaires and billionaires will use to invest in--"emerging markets," i.e. countries like China, which is "where the growth is."

Chinese workers are only beginning to organize to demand better wages and working conditions. Americans? We're watching football, or reality shows, or worrying whether Lindsey Lohan will really stop drinking. Whadda we know about what's going on?

In besieged ancient Cirta, the Roman governor feared that closing the coliseum's games would drive citizens to riot. So, they continued, even as the Vandals broke through the city's walls. Vandals killed or enslaved virtually all of Cirta's Roman citizens.

We have our own age of lunacy, but it does have ancient parallels.

Sept 20, 2010, A Global Disease?

It's not just the US that's going crazy. We have Tea Party extremists and anti-immigrant nastiness, but now even Sweden, moderate, neutral, social democratic, has elected an anti-immigrant party to parliament. There are strong anti-immigrant parties in Holland, Denmark and Norway, and similar parties in Central and Eastern Europe. France not only has the National Front, but President Sarkozy's Roma removals pander to anti-immigrant anger.

The Middle East is in turmoil, driven by extremist actions of fewer than 5000 militants leveraging millions.

China's phenomenal growth drives changes globally. Mexicans and Central Americans stream northward, not an invasion, but a flood of desperate people, choosing between privation--exacerbated by American trade policy--and a better life that can be won with hard work. They generate anger in America.

The tea party movement expresses anger, frustration and fear. It taps into the zeitgeist. Our lives are changing, and for ordinary Americans they are not getting better. The Tea Party movement exhibits the extremism of a majority fearful of losing dominance: "We want our country back!" they scream. The KKK was a response to similar changes in the Civil War's aftermath. Then and now, elites used white anxiety to blame victims and ignore the perp--the elites. It isn't just the imminent specter of a majority of minorities; that's only what drives tea party fury. The movement expresses the economic frustrations of the non-elite: it shouldn't be ignored or dismissed.

Progressives should harness that anger. The economic takeover engineered by corporate elites, rationalized by "conservative" think tanks, its funders now funding tea party extremism, is the real reason why wages have stagnated, not just this year, but since the 1970's. Productivity since has increased almost exponentially, but through the Reagan counter-revolution and after, the tiny, wealthy elite at the top has captured its rewards.

That's why unions have been savaged; that's why "free" trade has exported our manufacturing base and jobs; that's why the "recovery" isn't creating jobs now; it's cheaper and safer to drive your fearful workers harder--or export operations to China or Poland.

No wonder people are angry!

Don't sneer at Sharron Angle or Christine O'Donnell. Democrats need to counter with emotional content of their own. Rational argument may support the Democrats' case, but doesn't convince angry people. What could: emotional appeals. Against the greedy, who demand an extension of high income tax cuts: block them and demand taxing Wall Street's rip-offs; unveil a big jobs program, a 21st century WPA; campaign against unfair employers for workers' rights; and promote fair trade that protects America and its workers.

Economic issues can cut close to peoples' jugulars.

Are progressives so afraid of feelings?

In the 1930's, nations went two ways: following Nazi rant, or FDR's democratic alternative. Both made emotional appeals.

Which will it be?

Sept 17, 2010, Small Business's #1 Worry?

A survey of small businessmen by the National Federation of Independent Business found: it's not taxes, and it's not credit. It's no customers.

So, the political dialogue about taxes or credit is less relevant to them than anything that would increase demand, like accelerating job creation. So, here are Democrats saying middle income tax cuts ought to be preserved, and Republicans insisting tax cuts for the wealthy not only must be maintained, but made permanent--at a cost of $700-800 billion to the debt--because, they insist some are small business proprietors--though few are). In addition, Democrats (with one Republican) have just passed similar bills in House and Senate, providing tax cuts and extended loans to small businesses: to spur hiring. But they probably won't have much effect.

What no one, either in the administration, or in either party, or either chamber, seems to get is this: people need jobs; business needs employed people; but businesses aren't employing them. So, what's the problem? Has government never acted as temporary employer of last resort before?

There are many areas where government could meet huge needs. The unemployed don't have to have jobs digging holes and filling them. We no longer allow heavy manual labor--we have machines for that, which costs more money and skills--but we could use clean up crews, teachers assistants, parking meter attendants, construction workers to repair and rebuild, and so on. Local governments could manage local projects.

If people are so concerned about illegal immigration, then they should go to work bringing in harvests, following crops northward; maybe the Feds could subsidize citizen workers.

The point is: what's holding up the recovery is a lack of jobs. Apparently, tinkering with loans, credits and taxes is not enough. Of course it isn't. Why would a business invest in higher output, by hiring more workers, or buying more machinery, when demand for the good or service they're trying to sell is so feeble and uncertain?

What are people thinking? The best and the brightest are pretty stupid.

When no one else creates jobs, government should be the employer of last resort. It can be. There are many things of lasting value that were built by the WPA, like the mural scenes in Post Offices, and the forest windbreaks planted by the CCC in the Great Plains; they stopped the dustbowl storms.

Yes, there would be a temporary hike to the deficit, but if there are no jobs, deficits will march off into the future--no jobs mean no taxes paid, and welfare or basic survival costs to pay for--or the costs of a repressive police state to keep down the growing, angry underclass, for whom there are no jobs.

The latter sounds a bit like the late Roman Empire: the wealthy got wealthier and enslaved everyone else, until the whole system collapsed in the face of the barbarians.

Sept 15, 2010, Man Threatens to Blow Up NY

When Paladino, endorsed by the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin, wins the Republican gubernatorial nomination in liberal New York State, this is definitely a national trend.

What's Carl Paladino for? He'd cut Medicaid by $20 billion, cut taxes by 10%, and state government spending by 20%. To deal with the looming deficits Governor Paterson has been warning against? He also calls for giving the new governor (if it's him) authoritarian powers to carry out his program.

Good luck on that. The State legislature, regardless of party control, will not give up its powers, especially since Paladino will have to run against almost all elected legislators. Not surprisingly, as a multimillionaire businessman, Paladino also calls for slashing regulations on business. Real revolutionary! Let the frackers drill, and ruin our water supply forever!

Paladino's signature slogan is "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The issue upon which he gained most traction up to the primary was his opposition to the so-called "Ground-zero Mosque." More strident than Lazio, his Republican opponent, he also pointed an accusing finger at Democrat Cuomo's support for the right of Muslims to build there. He'd use eminent domain to seize the site (two long blocks from "ground zero") to prevent Muslim developers from building their community center--in respect for our warriors fighting for our freedom overseas, etc.

He's been caught sending racist jokes and porn to colleagues via email, but his defenders say that it's "political correctness" that has to go. On his website he points out that the last NY governor from Buffalo (Grover Cleveland) became US President: he has "higher" ambitions.

What is it about Carl Paladino that energizes conservative voters? He's willing to say almost anything; he's been running for office for several cycles, but has been unbesmirched by the far-reaching scandals of the NY legislature: he's never held public office. He was opposed by most Republican leaders, and got only 8% of the vote in the party convention, so he's the ultimate outsider. But he brandished striking rhetoric, like promising to "take a baseball bat to Albany," to break up entrenched politicos. Further, he does have some valid points: New Yorkers pay almost the highest taxes in the nation--especially property taxes--its legislature is dysfunctional and its government is one of the most bureaucratized.

But it's also got Wall Street: neither Paladino, nor Cuomo are willing to talk about taxing its huge profits, nor about taxing multimillionaires like him more fairly.

Paladino is the ultimate Roman Senator: he owes his appeal to his own money (he outspent Lazio 3 to 2), his "white-hot rhetoric" and perhaps to his class arrogance; he wrote of turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients would be taught hygiene!

If New Yorkers elect him (anything's possible), State politics will be even more strident, confrontational and disastrous.

Sept 10, 2010, Man Threatens to Blow Up World

Man threatens to blow up the world, but backs down because he's wangled a stint on TV--that's all he wanted, anyway: attention.

That's a bit like "Doctor" Terry Jones agreeing not to burn those qur'ans, after: General Petraeus and the President mouthed off about it; Gates, Secretary of Defense, called him; a local Imam spoke to him about interceding with the "Ground Zero Mosque" organizer and all the channels were covering him as hot news.

So, this Terry Jones is a Doctor (presumably of Divinity), from an unaccredited school where he bought his degree online, preaches in a run-down church to about 50 parishioners and sells used furniture on ebay. He apparently doesn't hear what he doesn't want to: that the Imam had arranged an appointment with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is central to the disputed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan (it's not at Ground Zero), but had agreed to nothing, apparently not even the meeting.

This is how you gain notoriety. This nonentity is suddenly known round the world. And you know what, there will be more Terry Jones's. It's a way to become famous, almost instantaneously. We used to have famous outlaws--bank robbers, murderers--and now?

Note: outlaws would now be called criminals: notice the difference a word makes.

How do you get a book noticed? The same way: by doing or saying or writing something outrageous, or perhaps revealing state secrets--but just a little, like Anthony Shaffer. Shaffer's Afghan memoir, Operation Dark Heart, threatens security, some claim: Army reviewers didn't, but Defense Intelligence Agency reviewers did. Shaffer worked with DIA.

So how is Shaffer's book being noticed? He's in the news, because the Defense Department is going to buy up all 10,000 copies of his first edition, so that objectionable passages can be deleted. A good use for Pentagon money!

However, some review copies have--escaped!

Will Shaffer have a bestseller on his hands? The next printing will be considerably more than 10,000, I'm sure. And maybe, once the revised edition arrives, some reviewer will release the redacted passages to Wikileaks.

Some people achieve fame through luck and talent, others through stupidity, incompetence, or sheer nastiness.

Do you know the old-fashioned way to become famous? Come from a lofty family, think well of yourself, and play by the rules. A more modern variation is: get a good education, meet the right people, and work deals.

Fifth Century Rome was old-fashioned--until it collapsed. Senators' sons followed Senators; the right people knew the right people and spent a lot of money; new ideas were distrusted and literary style was most important. Meanwhile, the western Empire slipped out of their hands, and into the control of the Germanic tribes.

Some Germanic tribal leaders were a bit like Sarah Palin!

Sept 9, 2010, Playing Cynical Politics

Politicians play politics as naturally as the Pope says Mass, but there is a difference between above-board and cynical politics. Now, both sides are playing both.

In above-board politics, a politician will push for what he's really for, whether it's tax-cuts or new taxes, more oil-drilling in the Gulf, or stopping it cold.

The dialog on tax cuts is fairly straightforward: the Republicans are for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, since they have enriched their primary constituency (and campaign funders), the very wealthy. The increase in holdings of the top 1% of income classes, and even the top 0.1% since Bush cut taxes is phenomenal.

Obama is also straightforward when he opposes the extension of tax-cuts for the wealthy: an extension would cost $700 billion in the next ten years; he needs those funds to bring down the deficits; extending tax cuts would raise them. The wealthy are sitting on their riches, not investing in jobs, so losing those tax cuts shouldn't hurt job growth.

But Republicans are also against anything Obama proposes, including tax breaks they have championed for years for corporations. Why? Cynical politics. They are against any policy proposed by Obama, or Congressional Democrats. It doesn't matter if they were for precisely that policy beforehand: if he's for it, they're against it. This is true of Obama's healthcare, too. Most of the elements of the new law are similar to Massachusetts' health care law, signed by Republican Governor Mitt Romney--who now advocates repealing the national legislation!

Up until now, it looked as if Obama was trying to promote compromise, by incorporating Republican elements (as in the health care bill) to gain bipartisan support, but now he's playing cynical politics, too. His economic proposals are not really short-term stimulus programs: they are dares. Making the R&D tax credit permanent, would not generate many new jobs, although Obama claims it would, but it does call the Republicans' bluff.

Obama is about to call for a two-year corporate investment tax credit allowing 100% write offs on investments in plant and equipment. The R&D proposal would cost over $100 billion, the write offs could cost $300 billion.

But why would corporations invest in plant and equipment, when there is lagging demand for goods and services? So, they can lay off more workers, perhaps. Neither proposal would generate many jobs, but Republicans have advocated for both, yet will block both; they don't want Democrats to get the credit: (cynical politics).

Then, Obama could highlight their obstructionism and say; Republicans even block their own proposals to stimulate the economy. This is cynical politics: would Obama propose tax credits, if he thought they would pass?

Meanwhile, businesses squeeze profits from fewer workers and don't hire, while nearly 20% of the workforce isn't working.

Which cynical politics will work best?

Sept 6, 2010, Labor Day!

Back to work tomorrow, the summer officially over, the political campaign to begin in earnest. You mean, all those Tea Party protests weren't a political campaign?

Labor Day is supposed to celebrate workers. As Garrison Keiler remarked, everywhere else workers are celebrated on May Day. Everywhere else they must be Commies! Everywhere else in developed countries labor unions account for more than 7% of the private workforce, and corporations would love to gain the kind of rights they have here. Union-busting firms probably began here; they'll probably spread elsewhere.

And then, there's the unemployed: near 10% makes those with jobs afraid to ask for anything.

The American model is no longer the well-paid middle class worker belonging to a union. Time and a half for overtime or weekends is a distant memory for most of us. Forty-hour weeks are something that seems to have disappeared, too, for the majority. Either the boss demands that you work extra hours or weekends for the same pay, or if you're salaried, for no extra pay at all.

Unions created the weekend, and that still exists, although for millions it doesn't. A friend of mine lost his $60,000 a year programming job and after the maximum unemployment all he's been able to get is an $8.50/hour job in which he works a rotating schedule, off sometimes on the weekend, sometimes Friday and Saturday, sometimes Sunday and Monday, etc..

My son goes to work daily at about 9, but doesn't get off work until 7 or 8. His partner works even longer hours. Both are salaried, so, they earn no extra for long hours.

This seems to be the new American model. It may also be why employers aren't hiring much; they can squeeze more and more work out of their current employees with little additional cost. It's also, why they enthusiastically fight unions, and why there are fewer and fewer unionized workers. Employers call it worker "flexibility."

Capital has won; Labor has lost. With the Citizens United court decision, the preponderance of capital over labor can only increase, because corporations can buy Congress, the Executive and the courts: their funds are almost unlimited, anyone else's are extremely limited. Democracy and the shiny worker model first enunciated by Henry Ford--workers paid well enough to buy his cars--is dying fast.

Americans already work longer hours, get less vacation, and fewer benefits than virtually any other developed country. Are we on course to become like Third World countries? American workers aren't competing with Germans and Japanese, but with the Chinese! We'll be competing against India and Brazil, too.

Empire? Yeah. We'll pay for that, but not to hire American workers, and not to pay them decently, either.

The future America will be corporate imperial fascism--until the corporations bankrupt us, or take over the world.

Sept 4, 2010, The Rich and 'Other People'

"The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving." So wrote Robert Reich on Thursday (NYT: 09/02/10).

In economic terms, this might be true, if the rich actually earn more money, but even if they do, more money might not be what motivates them. Consider David Koch, who is worth $17.5 billion. What's a few more billion, especially since his billions continue to grow, even if the unemployment rate remains at almost 10%, and the economy is mired in a stall?

Koch is funding Tea party candidates to drive the Republican Party far to the right, and the amount of money he's spending is astonishing. He isn't motivated to earn even more in a more egalitarian society. He's driven by a non-economic motive: power. He and his brother, Charles, have been funding right-wing "think-tanks" for almost a generation, but now they see their political chance: they've got boots on the ground.

What do the Koch's and other right-wingers want? They want to be able to push everyone else around; they want to control the government, rather than pay the multi-million dollar fines (for pollution) that the EPA has levied on the Koch's; they want to undo unionization; they want to reduce even seniors to servitude, by abolishing Social Security and Medicare.

It's a class thing. David went to Deerfield Academy and MIT. He knows that 'other people' just aren't of his high quality. After all, he started rich and has gotten much richer. Being part of a growing, vital economy, growing with it, that's not part of his persona; that would include all those (shudder) 'other people.'

The Roman Senators did something similar in the Fifth Century. They cornered all the gold and land, refusing to pay taxes that would have maintained the Roman roads, or funded defense against the Barbarians. They also reduced everyone else to serfdom. The only escape for peasants and the middle class from having everything taken from them by the impoverished state was for someone to protect them. Senators only protected them if they became their serfs or slaves.

Roman Senators would have been wealthier--and safer from the Barbarians--if they had paid taxes, and contributed towards other peoples' prosperity. But to do so, they would have lost their privileges and power.

They did lose them anyway, when the Barbarians took over in 476.

So, it's not economic rationalism that drives the money behind the right-wing movement, just as it isn't rational for its followers; for the latter it's emotional, even cathartic. For people like the Koch's, it's restoring their class to the driver's seat--where it belongs, you see.

Then, they can rip off the whole country, and no one will say boo. Hell, as our imperial adventures demonstrate, they can rip off the whole world!

Sept 1, 2010, America's Legacy in Iraq

So, we've removed all but 50,000 of our troops from Iraq. That's the good news. The bad news: it's not over. The American legacy in Iraq is a shaky Shiite government. Nothing is resolved.

About the only improvement over Saddam Hussein, is that there is no dictator enforcing arbitrary power. Instead, there are warring factions, a caretaker government because of the dissension, bombings--more Iraqis are being killed now, than were killed by, or under Saddam Hussein--corruption and war-profiteering, and still less than half the services, like electricity and water, available during Saddam's despotic rule. The US destroyed Iraq's utilities in the first phase of the war but it never adequately rebuilt them.

American servicemen and women served extraordinarily well, given the awful conditions. But we should also remember: Americans were ordered to kill civilians, encouraged to humiliate and torture Iraqi prisoners, and did both.

I was struck by the TV commentariat's treatment of President Obama's speech, either deriding his remarks on the economic effects of the war, or completely ignoring them. Yet we have squandered almost a trillion dollars, lost 4,400 American lives, ruined the lives of 100,000's more through injuries, especially psychological ones, killed 100,000's of Iraqis, displaced millions--and what have we bought for all this?

The American oil companies are in a minority among the firms who won contracts to "service" Iraqi oil fields, so Americans didn't even get the oil. We didn't create a functioning democracy; we didn't create a prosperous, safe Iraq. There is also no guarantee that the Iraqi government will be our friend. The political consequence of America's temporary dominance is the empowerment of the Shiite majority, but its leaders are very closely tied to our greatest competitor in the Mideast: Iran.

Further, in Iraq, majority rule does not mean democracy: it could mean majority tyranny. Iraq's leaders don't seem to understand that a minority should participate, and have rights. They didn't learn politics from Americans; they learned from the Baath Party, which dominated on behalf of the Sunnis, the minority favored by Saddam and Iraqi governments before him. The US invasion enabled a revolution favoring Iran's mullahs.

Obama restated his commitment to the Afghan war, but our effect upon Afghanistan, may be even worse than in Iraq. Afghanistan's government is more corrupt and dysfunctional; we can't avoid civilian casualties and resulting anger. We drive Afghans into the arms of the Taliban and strengthen al Qaeda--no matter how many leaders we kill with drones. Al Qaeda has already spread to Pakistan, a nuclear state, as well as Somalia and Yemen. US popular anger at all Muslims (expressed in the "ground zero mosque" controversy) will simply strengthen both even further.

Perhaps, Muslim extremists are comparable to Rome's barbarians, but we will bankrupt ourselves before they could ever take over--as the barbarians did in 476.

Aug 28, 2010, The Fall of the Republic

The US is beginning to lose the ability to govern itself. States are going close to bankrupt, because politicians can't raise taxes. The Federal government has passed some reforms, but it's too early to say whether the major compromises purchased by "producer" interests, render those reforms nugatory. Most real action appears stymied, because the opposition is no longer "loyal," it is obstructionist.

The Federal government can borrow, but it's borrowing even more than it's spending on the Empire (wars, bases all over the world, fancy and over-priced materiel), but it's not borrowing from its own people. It's borrowing from foreigners (China, oil exporters, Germany).

If, as seems likely, the huge influx of corporate cash into the mid-term elections elects "free market" fundamentalists into a legislative majority in at least one house, or a stronger blocking minority, then the current Congress will actually seem functional in comparison to what we'll face in 2011.

In order for government to work, a majority ought to be able to govern. When a small minority can block (the power to put a "hold" on any piece of legislation empowers a minority of one), and 41% can effectively control the Senate, you don't have a democracy, and you don't have an effective government.

In a previous post, I mentioned a Canadian who was unable to explain to his son why the American government didn't work. In most "representative democracies," there is accountability, because the majority creates policy. In parliamentary systems, that majority also forms the government. In the US, no one is accountable. The Democrats aren't accountable, because they can't form policy if the minority objects. The President isn't accountable, because he can't overpower the minority. The minority isn't accountable, because it isn't the government.

The only accountability appears to be to the large-scale funders of campaigns and lobbies. Since they are large-scale because they have lots of money (now completely unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision), their interests heavily tilt towards: favoring wealth, favoring already powerful institutions, and favoring the status quo from which they have profited so lavishly.

That leaves out the people, especially those who need help and protection. It also leaves out meaningful responses to real problems: climate change, military expenditures, unsustainable wars and unemployment; it opposes the interests and welfare of the majority.

One example: cut Social Security and Medicare, and/or privatize both, in order to sustain our imperial expenditures--and to enable "Finance" to prey on the elderly, too.

Something like this happened with the Roman Empire: the majority was relegated to the dole; a tiny minority cornered all the wealth. If this happens now, it won't take 400 years for the system to collapse.

Aug 23, 2010, The Politics of Diversion

What's amazing is how well it works, especially when people are desperate and angry for completely different reasons. Diversion means, that you, as political opinion-maker, invent something to rile the boobs, so that they don't blame you when you steal them blind.

It worked in the segregated South: just keep those N--s down and we'll be all right--me on my plantation, you in your shack. It worked with Commies; it worked with gays; it worked with Latinos. And now it works with Muslims. Diversion is like three-card Monte, where the player hides the high card in plain sight, and draws the bettor with his diversionary hand.

Don't pay any attention to losing your unemployment: scream and shout about those Mooslim terrorists. Don't even think that my vote against extending unemployment insurance had anything to do with you: just gotta stop those Mooslims. Lost your house? Rail at those Mooslims, not at me, although I voted to protect the banks--against you.

This uproar about the Muslim-sponsored community center, two blocks away and invisible from the still-unfinished "Ground Zero" site, jostling a strip club on the same block, this is diversionary politics at its most pernicious. Republicans like Newt Gingrich, and blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, blat vicious idiocy about Muslims, while these same "patriots" urge American troops to "win the hearts and minds" of--Muslims!--in Afghanistan, Iraq and the whole Middle East.

Do these people have a brain in their heads? What they have is an extraordinary amount of short-sighted political opportunism. Do they not think about consequences? What happens if they win the elections and want to promote their dirty little wars? They'll find they've made them inordinately worse and more dangerous for Americans.

Of course, Osama bin Laden is going to take advantage. He gets well-publicized "proof" that the US is conducting a crusade against Islam. All Muslims, even Muslim-Americans, he'll helpfully point out, should join al Qaeda and strike a blow against the anti-Muslim American Empire. Even American leaders, like Minority Leader Boehner, bray full-throated against Islam. And those who claimed they are Islam's friends, stand silent, or writhe in ambiguous retreat.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole manufactured controversy is the spinelessness of people who know better, especially Obama. After an eloquent defense of freedom of worship, before Muslims celebrating Eid at the White House, Obama backed away from defending the Muslim community center. Senate leader, Reid, whimpered that maybe it should be built someplace else.

The only way to combat this political fraud is to hammer real issues: jobs and the economy, and reveal what these gangsters voted for: greater misery, and inaction--and keeping taxes low for the wealthy.

Except for Mayor Bloomberg, "the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity--What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Aug 20, 2010, People Don't Matter

That appears to be the predominant political economy of our day. Our unemployment rate remains high, and in fact may be much higher than the 9.5% cited by our government, but still, the movers and shakers (M's&S's) are debating how to cut the deficit.

First of all, now is not the time to cut deficits through austerity, because deficits can actually rise if unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures continue to rise. Austerity could contribute to higher unemployment, etc. and therefore not only lower tax revenues but also raise costs (more people looking for help).

The only way to cut government expenditures without a negative impact on jobs, housing and small business, would be to bring troops home from foreign parts, closing down foreign operations, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of the bases in 140 plus countries.

The M's&S's don't consider cutting our imperial adventures, however. What they are doing is: being niggardly about unemployment extensions, food stamps (Congress just cut next year's appropriation, despite a surge in applicants), and even tax credits for small business. What they are talking about are cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while Republicans are nearly unanimous about extending the Bush tax cuts, including those that have made the wealthy so much wealthier.

The argument they make about the latter: lower taxes will stimulate investment, is belied by lagging investment now, with those same low tax rates. Elites are sitting on their money, or paying $100+ million for Picassos, not investing in jobs. Investors will also invest in Brazil, or Russia, places where they'll get more of a return, until growth is restored here. Here, they'll park it in Treasuries, or gold.

Our unemployment rate may be twice as high as the 9.5% rate, when those without jobs for more than a year are included. Yet, all the (supposedly) liberal administration and Democratic Congress can do is add a little money here and there to keep things from getting dramatically worse. The Republicans' push for deficit cutting would make things worse, not better, but since Americans are unhappy with Democrats' half-measures, it looks increasingly likely that we'll go that route.

People don't matter, but corporate profits do. Big banks are now doing very well, and big corporations have found ways to squeeze profits out of job-cutting and foreign operations, so, they will resist taxes on the wealthy and government stimulus programs, and spend 100's of millions on campaigns to promote their positions.

The only hope would be if people see through the corporate agenda. Instead, millions worry about a Muslim community center two blocks from "Ground Zero!"

The global takeover by the extremely wealthy is proceeding. They are much like the Senators of Fifth Century Rome. Only an aroused populace can stop this.

Aug 18, 2010, A Democratic Protest: Three Die

I own land in a remote part of the country, and make my living by farming it. I produce wheat and sometimes opium poppy. I've lived on the land all my life; it's been in the family for generations, just like our neighbors on both sides: they have lived on their land for generations.

Foreign soldiers come. They have lots of guns. They camp out on our land, our neighbors', too; we're too afraid to say anything. We don't want to go to the rebels, because we've thought the new talk about 'democracy' and 'freedom' sounds good. When the rebels controlled, they didn't talk about things like that. They terrified us.

These foreign soldiers say they are protecting us from the rebels. But in a few days, they bring in more soldiers, and then big machines that tear up our precious soil to make big buildings they bring in pieces; they begin to put these together.

But they never asked if they could buy our land! We would have told them we don't want to sell; it is our mother. We have lived on it for generations; she has fed us all that time. They didn't even offer money.

We talk to our neighbors, and they talk to theirs, and pretty soon, someone says: "Let's protest; you can do that in democracies. These foreigners say they are bringing democracy, so we can do this."

We march to what used to be our land, and there are a lot of people, maybe several hundred, marching with us. We surround the people putting up the buildings and torturing our earth. Our neighbor, who speaks some of their language, says to them, "We protest! You are taking our land! We did not give it to you! We want it back!"

We close in on the builders and soldiers. I can't see much of the soldiers' faces because of their helmets. They look very large, and then one of them points his big weapon at us.

But they are for democracy! We are peacefully demonstrating, the way we should in a democracy! I tell our people this, and everyone agrees. So, we don't back away.

Suddenly, bullets and fire explode from one and then another of the soldiers' weapons. My friend falls down. Then the neighbor who speaks some of their language! We turn to run and my son, ahead of me, a fine, strong boy of twelve, he falls, too! I pick him up, but he's dead!

These foreigners are as bad as the rebels! Maybe worse. Maybe the rebels are right: keep the foreigners out. The rebels say they have learned their lesson; they will not govern as they did before.

I am not sure about this, but maybe I'll help them, anyway: to avenge my son.

A re-creation of a recent event in Afghanistan: three people died, one a 12-year old boy.

Aug 15, 2010, The G-20 and Secret Police

I'm writing from Kitchener, Ontario. I was talking to a Canadian about how our government system (doesn't) work: he was amazed.

Ontario, was where the G-10 met. People are disturbed by what happened. The Liberal provincial government instituted secret police powers during the meeting, enabling the police to round up anyone they thought might make trouble--pre-emptive detention. Hundreds were imprisoned, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Apparently, almost anyone with a Quebec license plate was suspect.

There is much feeling here, especially in Montreal, that the G-20 has usurped the functions of the UN, and is little more than a conspiracy of the Great Powers to control the world, economically, militarily and politically. Montrealers have a point. As they see it, the powers were meeting to agree to cut services everywhere, in the face of the "Great Recession," and to protect the wealthy and large corporations, which have rebounded from the 2007-2008 debacle, while leaving most people behind (with large and rising unemployment). Obama was virtually alone in arguing for the need for more stimulus, so that the largest economies could generate the employment needed to escape from the recession. He didn't come away with much.

So, back to the G-20 meeting: remember the clips of burning police cruisers? The provincial police abandoned scores of police vehicles on the streets. Another Ontarian remarked: they never abandon police cruisers. This was a set up, so the crazies could come and trash them, the media could get pictures of the destruction, and people could be persuaded that the police crack-down was necessary. Some are convinced that the crazies were either police saboteurs, or were encouraged by them.

Increasingly, it does look like a general consensus among world elites: let unemployment stay high; work your workers harder, don't hire, invest in laborsaving technology, instead. In addition, cut taxes on the wealthy, or, in the case of the US: keep them low, with the Bush tax-cuts.

There is one fly in their ointment, in the US, which brings us back to the crazy American system of government. Even if Tea Party Republicans gain seats, they won't be able to extend the Bush tax cuts: that would take 60 votes in the Senate--unless we let the Democrats sign on.

If the tax cuts expire, there will be a revenue bonanza. What progressives need to do is use that as leverage--for stimulus programs.

In the US, we have the makings of a true class struggle: the very rich against everyone else; tax cuts for people who already have enough--and refuse to invest in jobs--or money for jobs and a true greening of America. But in order for this to happen, a majority of Democratic Senators needs to realize: they could be popular heroes, if they only took a chance.

Otherwise, the Selfish Class has won: worldwide.

Aug 10, 2010, The Budget War and the War War

Paul Krugman decries the deficit hysteria, but even he doesn't make much of the connection between our turning off the streetlights (literally) and the Wars, and/or "Defense."

How much do we spend on Defense every week? Between $26-27 billion. What do we get for it? Two horrendous wars that are going nowhere, and over eight hundred bases abroad in nearly 140 countries. Probably half that money is going out of the country, and most of the rest supports industries that are working on what are effectively cost-plus contracts to produce things that will kill, or enable people to kill, many people.

Employment in civilian sectors costs half as much per worker as defense industries. If the same money were spent on infrastructure, or on human services like teaching, twice as many could be employed. So, a good part of the unemployment problem could be solved if defense spending were radically cut and the savings spent on domestic needs. Further, more of the money would stay in the US.

When we have to turn off streetlights, cut back on police, gut local school staffs, we are, as Krugman points out, screeching in reverse. Our nation will be the poorer for all these austerities.

Growing debt could conceivably become a problem at some point, although right now, US government bonds still sell easily at extremely low interest rates. So, as Krugman--and I in my earlier blog--have pointed out, now is not the time to be worrying about high deficits; we need to really stimulate the economy, not just stabilize it and say the job is done.

But, the huge amount of money going to defense could finance real domestic needs. If the world needs a policeman, let the world community step up; why should the US alone? Further, our world policeman role has had few positive effects in the last 50 years. We caused the Middle East and East Asian conflagrations by our interventions to install the Shah in Iran, to create Islamist opponents to leftist Afghans, and to buttress a corrupt regime in Vietnam.

Everyone (except a few large corporations) would have been a lot better off if we had kept our hands to ourselves. We meddle virtually everywhere, and create enemies even in Europe because of it.

So, the best way to stimulate the economy and answer the howls of the deficit hawks at the same time is to withdraw, not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from most of those 850 odd bases all over the world, and to stop equipping our military with high-priced toys that make them think they can overawe the world.

Looking at history, however, the above seems unlikely. It certainly didn't happen in Rome--until it was forced on her by defeats. That will happen to us, unless we withdraw on our own terms. Now.

Aug 5, 2010, Who is Barry Soetaro

Birthers may sound crazy, when they rant about "Barry Soetaro," but it isn't just crazy; their rants have a deep political purpose.

The name was supposedly used by Barack Obama to claim a scholarship for foreign students at Occidental College. The claim is a fake, the story a fake and the only thing true about it is that Obama's Indonesian step-father had the surname Soetaro. Obama attended Occidental, not as a foreign student, but under his real name. He didn't receive (or apply for) a scholarship for foreign students. Furthermore, no Indonesian students received scholarships there during the time in question.

Yet, on conservative websites, posters refer to Barry Soetaro as if the story were accomplished fact. Both conservatives and liberals believe crank stories about their opponents. There was much paranoia among liberals about Bush setting up "concentration camps," to round up opponents, and recently, conservatives have come up with the same paranoid story--except it's Obama not Bush and conservatives not liberals who would be targets.

But birthers go beyond this. Facts don't matter: their main task is to deny any legitimacy Obama's administration has as an elected government. If they can persuade enough people that Obama is an alien, born in Kenya (or Indonesia), or that he acquired Indonesian citizenship, then to all these people he is no longer the legitimate, elected President of the United States, since only "natural born" American citizens are eligible to hold the office.

What is at stake is the legitimacy of the US Government.

So, what is legitimacy, and why is it important? Legitimacy is the right to rule. Ordinarily, elected officials gain legitimacy through legal election. Bush gained his through a decision of the US Supreme Court, since he won fewer votes than Gore, and might not have carried Florida's deciding electoral votes without the court's intervention. Because of that, the opposition questioned his legitimacy, but Gore's acceptance of Bush's election made the question moot.

Many wars have been fought over legitimacy. The Wars of the Roses in Britain were over that issue, and many of the civil wars fought in the Roman Empire were battles for legitimacy. The importance of the Queen in the UK is that she ensures legitimacy for the British government.

So, what birthers are really trying to do is to persuade Americans that their government is illegitimate. Given past history, this could be particularly dangerous. Since the courts have thrown out birther suits as without merit, dedicated birthers can conclude that the court system is against them, too.

So, if they can't win power through elections, the only recourse for them might be what Tea Partier Sharron Angle calls "second amendment solutions," in other words, armed rebellion. One of the political factors that destroyed the Roman Empire was more than a century of civil war--over legitimacy.

It could happen here.

Aug 4, 2010, To the Barricades!

Unemployment is painfully high, huge numbers are unemployed long-term, and Congress struggles mightily just to pass an extension of unemployment benefits? "Conservative" Democrats (heartless perhaps) and almost all Republicans voted against. Why? Fear of the deficit.

It's large, but mostly because of the recession, two wars and the hungry military. So-called conservatives say they can't help the unemployed, because it will increase the deficit. But they say Congress should pass tax cut extensions for the wealthy--even though that would increase the debt many billions more than minimal unemployment aid.

Aid to the unemployed, means that people can stay in their homes or apartments, can eat regular meals, can minimally get by, and can look for jobs. That money is nearly all spent in the economy, just on survival. It not only keeps people surviving, it also keeps businesses alive, those providing the necessary goods and services for them.

To get the economy out of its demand trap--too little demand, too much supply--you need to pump up demand by the buyer of last resort: the government can either spend directly, or put money in people's pockets.

However, if taxes for the wealthy are cut, not only does that radically increase the deficit, it has only a weak effect on demand, and little on investment. Here's why: the wealthy spend only some of their money, and less in the United States, since they consume more imports, and travel more. They don't need to spend all the money; they can save it. But does that spark investment? Businesses invest when they foresee demand for their product or service, not because rich people have idle cash. Idle cash fuels speculation, as it did until 2007, and would if the economy continues in the doldrums with high unemployment.

The fear of growing deficits and rising interest on the debt and inflation are misplaced. Lowered interest rates boost growth, but they can go no lower; there is real danger of deflation, not inflation. Further, money spent to put people back to work is the best investment this nation could make.

In addition, there is a push to cut entitlements in order to balance the budget, even though the same "deficit hawks" are promoting lower taxes for the wealthy, and continuation of the war effort--or even escalation. They can all make money on a war with Iran. But doesn't entitlement mean you earned it?

The unemployed and long-term jobless, they don't matter. Just write them off. The stock market's doing fine, profits are up.

Just as in fifth century Rome, the political elite (represented by a 41% controlling minority of the Senate), control the empire with their money. Who said the US was a democracy?

We need a real, (hopefully bloodless) revolution in which the people reclaim their power. Everything will get worse, unless that happens.

Jul 31, 2010, Deflation Looms

My realtor tells me my mother's house is losing 1% of its value every month. That's not because it's falling down; we've spent almost $200,000 to renovate it. It's not because the neighborhood is going downhill, either. The land around it is held by people whose deeds, or zoning, restrict them to one house only, and across the road land is preserved through a conservation easement, allowing no additional houses.

No, the price is going down because there are too many houses and too little money--in the local housing market. And what's happening here is happening elsewhere even more dramatically. That's why so many homeowners are "underwater," and walking away from their homes. Many of them can't find jobs, so, foreclosures are increasing and a record number of people have been forced from their homes.

Foreclosures build downward pressure on house prices: banks try to unload the houses they're stuck with.

There are short-term fixes, such as renegotiating mortgages, or allowing defaulting owners to rent in the interim: both would reduce the number of under-priced houses flooding the market, but the first isn't working--many don't have jobs, or have declining earnings--and the second has hardly been tried.

Falling prices might be a good thing for someone with money, but the reason for it is: most people have too little: it's called price deflation.

Price deflation can be self-reinforcing, i.e. can trigger a downward spiral. Lower prices mean businesses make less in profits. A home-builder, for example, will have to lay off his workers, because he can't sell the houses he builds, or has to sell them at cost, or less. He's losing money, so he lays off workers, or goes out of business, which increases unemployment, so fewer, still, have money. That drives prices even lower.

Even some inflation hawks on the Fed Board of Governors are warning of deflation danger. The Fed sets a goal of moderate inflation (2-3%), which keeps the economy moving, but deflation could stop the economy dead in its tracks. It happened in Japan in their "lost decade," it happened in the Great Depression and it could happen now.

It happened in the last two centuries of the Roman Empire, too, and was a major contributor to its fall. There it happened because the wealthy, accumulated almost all the wealth, hoarded gold and evaded taxes. Here, sharp traders threaten speculation against government borrowing, borrowing needed to stimulate world economies.

The financial industry is like those Roman Senators hoarding gold. Since more demand is needed, and since interest rates are basically zero, the Fed could create more money, buying up treasuries, to curb deflation. More focused would be a government stimulus targeted on creating jobs in the public investments we need.

The latter isn't likely in this corrosive political climate, but the former could be rendered worse than useless if big banks still prefer gambling to loans.

Jul 27, 2010, War Absurdity

What would happen if Obama said, 'Okay, I get it,' and insists on winding down the Afghan war as quickly as possible? The right wing would be predictably outraged. However, the large majority of the electorate, according to polls, feels the war wasn't justified, or worth fighting. Could the right-wing media machine whip up enough rage to convert majority anti-war sentiment to pro war?

Almost everyone, after slogging through Wikileaks' released war documents, has already pointed out the absurdity of the Afghan war. It's the hopelessness of the enterprise that comes through, the sheer complicated, mindless destruction on all sides. The Taliban is horrible, the Afghan government is corrupt, incompetent and almost as brutal; the US and NATO are efficient killing-machines, even when policy dictates restraint to protect civilians.

And then, there is Pakistan and its ISI, often labeled "Pakistan's CIA." The ISI is Pakistan's CIA, FBI and military Intel units all rolled into one: it's closely linked to Pakistan's army. The ISI, in these released documents, has been openly implicated in supporting elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Neither a revelation, nor a confirmation, it just makes public what the US military thinks: that its ally, Pakistan, is playing both sides. Many experts on the Af-Pak war have said so for a long time.

This may be changing, because now Pakistanis realize: the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, and its allies work together. Both of the latter have attacked the Pakistani Army and the government as its enemy. The army has waged all out war against parts of the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier--but it has not attacked others. Why?

Elements within the ISI have been Taliban patrons ever since the US abandoned Afghanistan in the 1980's. They see factions within it as useful tools in their contest with vastly larger and wealthier India. A friendly Afghanistan would protect Pakistan's rear. They may be right: their strategy may pay off, when the US leaves.

It's not a question of 'if' the US will leave, but whether it will begin to leave in 2011 as Obama promises, and whether this 'beginning' will amount to really getting out, or not. The sheer, numbing reality of this stupid, awful war, as illustrated in the Wikileaks documents, argues that any sane person would begin leaving now, not a year from now.

What will be illuminating is Obama's response, and of those on the fence in Congress (more or less pro-war Democrats). Excepting Ron Paul, all Republicans are dead-set against withdrawal, but then few of them seem rational, anyway.

My bet? The military will say withdrawal isn't practical, and Obama will be afraid to oppose them, leading us towards the kind of bankruptcy that ended in the fall of the Roman Empire in 476.

Jul 23, 2010, Tax Cuts For the Wealthy!

That seems to be the refrain of conservatives, Republicans and Tea Party activists: they advocate making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Yet, at the same time, they rail about the admittedly huge government debt. Making the tax cuts permanent, would, it's estimated, increase government debt in the next ten years by well over $2 trillion. And Boehner, the House Republican leader, actually said the tax cuts don't have to be paid for!

Republicans are attempting to gain political traction with the "all debt is bad" crowd, while also currying favor with wealthy fundraisers, and indulging in the you-can-get-it-for-nothing thinking that created the disastrous 2007-8 collapse.

Cutting taxes has stimulated the economy, and increased revenue in some limited situations. It worked with JFK's tax-cuts, because tax rates were very high then (they are very low now), and their reduction made money available for consumption and therefore created incentives for investment (from the added spending boosting demand). They didn't work so well from Reagan through Bush II, because wages did not keep pace, consumption was based on adding to private debt; foregone taxes benefited the wealthy, who saw "investment" opportunities in financial speculation, or foreign production. So, the famous Bush tax cuts doubled the US debt, and led to speculative excess that caused the collapse.

Obama's stimulus spending has almost doubled the debt again, but without the stimulus we'd be calling this a Great Depression, not a Great Recession. Maintaining tax-cuts for the wealthy would create greater deficits, but would not stimulate the economy. Why? Banks and individuals are sitting on hoards of cash already, rather than investing, because there is little demand for new production: investment in the face of low or shrinking demand is usually considered foolhardy.

Conservatives have an ideological rationale for high-end tax-cuts: encouraging investment and cutting down the size of government. The former works in limited instances, but won't now. As for the latter, when in power conservatives have increased government size, while still cutting taxes--hence creating structural deficits, i.e. deficits in good times.

A deficit in bad times is a natural outgrowth of need--people need support and can't pay taxes when unemployed--and partially counters the decline in demand: it is an investment for better times. A deficit during a boom is like living high on your credit card.

Tax cuts to the wealthy, now, would inflate speculation, but would not increase consumption enough to stimulate growth. They would balloon the deficit even further. They might also, finally, drive the world away from the dollar as world reserve currency: Americans would have demonstrated their financial recklessness once again. (The US caused the global downturn by encouraging out of control speculation).

Flight from the Dollar could end the American Empire as we know it.

Jul 20, 2010, US Empire Pushes String

How do you push a string? How do you make a nation govern itself effectively, when its history of governance up until now has been tribal, feudal and by self-selected warlords?

Tomes cram libraries on development, development finance, development economics, and political development. Most should be pulped. What we don't know about development could fill many more libraries.

There are many success stories, nations like China, Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and many more, but there are no notable formulas. China has used government directed markets and state promoted industrialization, but it had a very strong, effective political system before its recent successes. India has a lively, if sometimes chaotic, political system: its economic development has been more a mixture of political direction and foreign investment.

Nations like Afghanistan or Somalia or, most egregiously, the Congo, don't have the luxury of established, effective political systems.

Well-meaning Americans and Europeans try to help these nations learn to govern themselves. In the case of Afghanistan, they are doing so while also fighting a persistent insurrection/revolution on behalf of its largely dysfunctional government.

Some of the development success stories, including Vietnam, tell how revolutionary movements, anti-western, or anti-American, created the necessary political foundation for development in their countries: imposed governments did not.

From the era of colonialism until now, western, or "developed" nations have attempted to impose their kinds of governance on "less-developed" nations, sometimes for their own national interest, sometimes for more altruistic reasons. Western-style "democracies" flourished in Europe and Japan after WWII, because there had been long-established and effective governments before the war.

But consider the case of China: the allies supported a weak, corrupt authoritarian government (Chiang-kai Shek), and attempted to counter a revolutionary movement; our attempts failed. The Communist government lurched from famine, to war, to succession crises, but it also established a political system so strong that it could mobilize nearly a billion Chinese to kill off the flies in their nation--mostly by hand! That government still governs, and by adopting western-style economics, has become wildly successful.

Ours is really a post-imperial world waiting to happen: the US can only maintain its world-straddling military by borrowing from China. Yet, it can't create civil societies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia no matter how many troops it stations in those nations. All it can do is exacerbate tensions, which favors forces of destruction, like al Qaeda.

Yet, the military has gained enough control of American policy that it continues to expand, regardless of economic distress faced at home, or lack of success abroad.

Our foreign policy goals are wildly unrealistic: you can't push a string. Continuing our military-foreign policy abroad will not create international stability; it will only impoverish and bankrupt us.

We have a choice: a vibrant nation without an empire, or a broken nation still attempting to hold onto one.

Jul 16, 2010, The Politics of (Class) Resentment

The Right does resentment really well. They teach their constituents, and fence-sitters, too, that the other side is treacherous, or under-handed, unfair and taking advantage of them, in essence, taking away their American Way of Life. But they don't target the people who are doing this; they target: illegal aliens, unions, big government, regulation. While most people resent bankers and Wall Street, the Right protects them, yet attacks Democrats in Congress for supporting them. It certainly doesn't talk about inequality, or the extravagant salaries and bonuses of the financial elite. Now, it advocates tax-cuts for them!

The left doesn't do resentment well. Yet, a true left-wing populist could use the politics of resentment to good effect. Obama is no populist, nor a true lefty, but he has the potential for populism--in the run-up to the 2012 election--if he sees the electoral potential.

At this point in Roosevelt's first term, his major jobs creation program was the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which looked like Fascist central control of the private economy; it was a failure, and unanimously ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Come the election in 1936, and Roosevelt found his populist calling, campaigning against "the economic royalists of our time."

Can you imagine Obama reaching that point?

But even FDR couldn't persuade Congress to allocate enough money to truly finance a recovery. Only patriotic fervor for war did that.

I wonder what is different now, than it was in 1935. The media was less concentrated, but there were many right-wing media outlets condemning Roosevelt as a Socialist or a Communist at every turn. People of means referred to FDR as "that man in the White House." Obama is that man from Kenya, and--the epithets are legion.

Could a left-wing populist shove Obama aside? If Obama were challenged from the left, he might respond--much the way Roosevelt did, in 1936.

Someone on the left needs to exploit the politics of resentment: resentment of those Wall Street "fat-cats," first of all. They were bailed out, but help themselves to more; resentment of the subsidies oil and coal companies receive, while Americans can't get jobs or unemployment insurance; resentment of huge disparities in salaries between top executives and workers; resentment of the way they are taxed: class resentment.

While people may disagree on abortion or gay marriage, immigration, or the financial overhaul, almost all of them hate Wall Street. For good reason: Wall Street siphons off an increasing share of US wealth for no discernible benefit--except to itself.

Resentment is a negative word, a negative focus, but it has a visceral appeal, and one that could lead to a positive outcome: a more egalitarian and prosperous society.

But to get there, the Left needs to be as cynical as the Right. Is that possible?

The best lack all conviction, While the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Jul 13, 2010, Pearl Harbor, Afghanistan and Tea Parties

A film version of Pearl Harbor reminded me of how the Japanese military in 1941 controlled Japan. At the same time, on the other side of the globe, the Nazis preached hate, and attacked with their apparently invincible war machine. Americans didn't want to see what was coming: it took us over two years to wake up. Both systems depended on conquest; the US was at peace.

Now, the whole world system is upside down. It is the US, which makes war everywhere, has a military that dominates the nation, and spends more on "defense" than all other nations combined. It is also one of many nations in which hate and xenophobia are on the rise: both the Tea Party and anti-immigrant rage. In addition, we have one, two, many Goebbels: Beck, Fox, Limbaugh, etc., and a host of large corporations willing to spend billions to buy elections for corporate sympathizers-- "corp-symps."

They may all come together. The right-wing Tea Partiers support the dominant military against any civilian threat, and can blame all our troubles on "terrorists" and illegal aliens--mostly Hispanic, or Arab: America's equivalent of the Nazi's Jews. Other scapegoats, or targets, can also be marshaled to draw in homophobic right wing Christians, or?

So, in the US now, we have: a military just barely contained by civilian leadership, and the rise of a political movement, which in its use of propaganda and racism, looks eerily like the Nazis. So far, neither Sarah, nor anyone else has been as successful as Hitler at whipping up militant fervor. But then Hitler took awhile, too (more than 10 years--1921-1933).

It's hard not to see Obama and Congress as the ineffectual Weimar Republic, which could not withstand the Nazis' popular mobilization and intimidation. Passive Germans, lying propagandists and charisma defeated Weimar. Could it happen here?

In Japan, the military took over the government behind the scenes. No one could withstand its power; Tojo was a military dictator controlling a civilian administration.

If radicals gain control of the Republican Party, and then the government, a short-lived march to greater imperial conquest could doom this country either to defeat, like Germany or Japan, or more likely to impoverishment and bankruptcy--possibly both.

The result could look like the declining Roman Empire of the Fifth Century: and no wealthy will reach into their pockets to fund our survival, any more than the Roman Senators did in 476.

The US will not prosper if the Zanies gain power, but some people will: corporate leaders, wealthy owners of capital, a small political elite. The same was true of Nazi Germany--and of the later Roman Empire. Ordinary people will have a choice: join the military and/or the movement, or be increasingly impoverished.

We need to take the corporations, the military and the Tea Party seriously: together they are a threat to Democracy.

Jul 7, 2010, Heat and Idiocies

It's high 90's; the humidity is climbing. We try to shelter in our cooler houses, go to air-conditioned movies, or are almost thankful we're at work in air-conditioned offices.

It's hot here in the northeast.

Do people ever consider the plight of people in places like Baghdad? There, the temperatures soar into the 120's and 130's, and, in the city, where you'd expect air-conditioning, most people consider themselves lucky if they get a few hours of electricity.

Why? Before the US invasion, Baghdad had power outages, but electricity was generally available. The US, back in 2002, was going to make things better for the Iraqis, by driving out Saddam Hussein. We drove him out; his own people executed him. Meanwhile, Baghdad suffers heat we can hardly imagine. It has no air-conditioning, because when we invaded, we destroyed their power plants. Many billions of dollars later, many power plants have not been successfully repaired, nor the distribution system.

Meanwhile, American troops in their big bases have air-conditioning, hot and cold running water, all the amenities. Probably, in most forward operating bases, Americans enjoy air-conditioning and hot showers.

But the Iraqis do not.

The story is probably similar in Afghanistan, except that there was less to destroy, so Afghans may be less worse off after our invasion than the Iraqis.

What have our invasions accomplished? In Iraq, we got rid of a bad guy, who had been a CIA client, and we also killed a lot of people, destroyed a lot. We so totally destabilized the society that we had to stop a civil war. It could break out again once we leave.

In Afghanistan, we drove the Taliban from power, restored education for girls in a very few places, and put in place an ineffectual government that is one of the most corrupt on the planet. We also killed (and continue to kill) many Afghans, both combatants and non-combatants. But we failed to destroy the Taliban. Despite its unpopularity, Afghan majorities now believe it will return to power in some form; they also want the US and NATO to leave, because we're repeating Vietnam: destroying villages "in order to save them."

Which Afghans want us to stay? The ones who have grown fat on US contracts, or US-funded bribes, are maintained in power by our military, or are allied with those who are: a small minority.

Why do we stay--in either place?

Is it because our military craves large budgets and opportunities for promotion? Is it because defense contractors sell larger and larger contracts?

Meanwhile, the long-term unemployed can't get jobs, and the Senate refuses to extend their benefits--because of budget deficits. The largest discretionary budget item is Defense: $680,000,000-1,300,000,000. (Social Security/Medicare is larger, but self-funded and not discretionary).

Our best plan for a stimulus would be: cut bases worldwide and get out of both wars; spend the money at home.

Jul 2, 2010, When Government is Small Enough

We've heard a lot about the conservatives' drive to cut government spending, and functions. Famously Grover Norquist said that his aim was to make government small enough that he could "drown it in a bathtub."

In other words, the ideal was no government at all. It's an interesting idea, especially since we see examples of it in various places around the world.

Somalia, for example. In Somalia, there is a government, but its writ is extremely limited even in the capital city of Mogadishu. Nevertheless, the US and the UN are supporting it--even though it has been caught using child soldiers in its national army. But there is virtually no security, except in some of the rebel-held areas, where strict, extremely brutal "sharia" law is arbitrarily enforced. If someone is starving, and he grabs a loaf of bread, having no money--there is no viable currency--he could have a hand and foot hacked off by al Shabaab, a fundamentalist insurgent group.

So, if you travel in Somalia, you need at least a couple of bodyguards, armed (at least) with AK47's. If you want to send a letter out of the country, you're out of luck. If you're near one of the local businessmen-warlords, who has a local private mail service, you might be able to send a letter within parts of Somalia.

If you want to send your children to school, in most of the country you'll just have to forget about it. One of the reasons for Somali piracy is that there is no security for the nation's fishing areas, so the international fishing industry has moved in, and the Somalis make a living by commandeering unprotected shipping. It's become a big business.

Nations without governance for large parts of their territories are vulnerable to freelance armies like the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), which bills itself as a rebellion to replace Uganda's government with a Christian theocracy, but ranges over four nations, killing, raping, looting, and recruiting boys to fight and girls as sex slaves. The LRA reminds me of the worst aspects of medieval freelance armies: it really isn't interested in holding territory, simply in maintaining (and enriching) itself. It has ranged free for years, because northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo have large territories without government control. The LRA is like Attila's Huns.

The Congo has also been vulnerable, especially its eastern territories, to the same kind of freelance armies (a lot of them): government hardly functions there. Africa (and other ungoverned parts of the world) are like the period during and after the fall of Rome in Europe, when barbarian hordes roamed free, ripped off whatever they could carry, killed any resisters, recruited malcontents and kept on moving. That era has been labeled "the Dark Ages."

They illustrate what No government looks like. Is that what Grover wants?

Jul 2, 2010, Gulf of Mexico: ONLY Oil Wells

Gee, why don't we just write off the Gulf of Mexico as anything but an oil production site? Why stop drilling?

We've already committed ecocide there. Dead zones all over the place as oil and gas escape at huge volumes from BP's blowout. They'll continue to spread and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Even if the first relief well succeeds in tapping into the blown-out well, there is still the possibility that BP won't be able to plug it, and we won't even know if that's a success until August--if more hurricanes don't disrupt the process until after the hurricane season (June-November).

So, we should simply write off the whole non-oil Gulf Coast economy. Just open the whole Gulf to extensive oil drilling, and who cares if there are more blow outs? America needs the oil. Isn't that what Republicans, tea-partiers and others are saying? We can't have a moratorium! Oil drillers' jobs will be lost.

Since we've already screwed the Gulf, we might as well just continue doing it. Shrimpers, et al, aren't going to recover for years, so expand the oil patch and hire them as oil drillers.

We should not, under any circumstances, sanction those poor oil companies: they have so much on their plates, and if we look cross-eyed at them, why they might go and despoil the Nigerian delta, instead.

Oh. They already have.

Well, all the more reason why all oil-drilling regulations and limitations should be removed. We're competing with Nigeria, but we want the oil in our backyard. Who cares if a little bit is spilled?

Is anyone calculating the effects of the trillions of cubic feet of methane being released by the blowout? Will it accelerate global warming? But then there is no such thing. One of my favorite right-wing bloggers warns that the criminal conspirators who control the world--including Obama's White House, of course--have decided that they haven't been able to sell global warming, so they'll try to persuade everyone that the real danger is Global Cooling!

Now, if it's global cooling, then the oil spew disaster is no disaster, at all: it helps solve the problem. It releases huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere, thereby helping to hold in the precious heat this planet is in danger of losing. And polluting industries, cars, etc. all help stave off the imminent ice age.

Now that we've solved that problem, let's move on to the financial system: obviously, there should be no regulation of those poor banks. Who knows how much profits Goldman would lose!

Right-wingers unite! You have nothing to lose but your tenuous grip on reality! Somalia is our new model: no government at all.

Jun 29, 2010, Ron Paul: Anti-war, Anti-Fed

I knew Ron Paul was a rare conservative Republican against the war in Afghanistan: outspokenly against. I had seen him in the Presidential debates, and he had seemed too old, and too obsessive about a lot of more quirky issues: I didn't take him seriously.

But when he rose to debate the war in Afghanistan this year, he was oddly elegant. He did ramble a bit, but his argument made a lot of sense. Two points stand out: first, the reason we're in these wars is because it's too easy to go to war. The War Powers Act gave the President 90 days of war before Congress could say boo. By then, it becomes an accomplished fact: how can you withdraw and let the x number of soldiers killed, "die in vain?" So, it's hard, once engaged, to get out of a war, as demonstrated by both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paul's other main point was that by fighting these wars against Muslims, we are fulfilling Osama bin Laden's strategy for winning the region and driving out the US and the West--using the anger we generate among Muslims to recruit support, while bankrupting us.

Ron Paul is predictably critical of the financial reform bill, but he reveals why housing the Consumer Finance watchdog agency in the Fed is not just a convenience: it will be dependent for a budget not from Congress, but from the Fed, itself. It will be controlled by it.

Paul would like to abolish the Fed and fiat money, for gold, which makes him a bit of a kook among most economists, conservative or liberal. However, he's co-sponsoring, with liberal Democrat, Kucinich, a bill that would require the Fed to be audited, a proposal that makes sense.

Paul's opposition to the Afghan war connects with his opposition to the Fed: fiat money finances wars for Republicans and "unlimited welfare" for Democrats, he says, because the Fed can just keep issuing money, indebting us all. He's not entirely wrong about the debt part, but too many Democrats are willing to finance wars, as well, and "welfare" is pretty meager, compared to the money we lavish on wars.'

Paul made the same point I've made on this site: empires bankrupt themselves over wars. The Romans, after their peak, had a long and painful decline, because they could no longer pay for the Empire's continuous wars. They lost territory, losing revenue and the loot from conquest. The Empire consumed more than it produced. Sound familiar?

The western Empire fell because it was so bankrupt it couldn't even pay the palace guard: so, they overthrew the Emperor, and stole what remained of his assets.

It is a valid question, though: how long can the Fed create money for wars and consumption, and persuade the rest of the world that "the dollar is sound?"

Jun 25, 2010, Mechanics That Are Beyond Us

We think we should be able to drill oil, mine coal, or tap natural gas wherever we find it, no matter how difficult the conditions. The technology for surface mining of coal--used in mountaintop removal--is fairly simple, if drastic environmentally. Oil drilling in deep sea, however, must use highly sophisticated technology.

Up until the Gulf disaster, the industry assumed that the redundant safety devices would prevent blow-outs. But they were using the technology at greater and greater depths, both of water and of earth beneath it. Deepwater Horizon is far from the deepest well, however.

They had four devices, each of which, alone, was supposed to prevent a blow-out. The first was a cement plug just above the tapped oil, the second, a similar plug several thousand feet below the sea floor (the oil is 13000' below it). The third was the blow-out preventer, which was supposed to be able to shut off the pipe, and the fourth was a shear in the preventer, that would snap off the pipe and clamp it shut.

All of those safety devices failed. It's argued that a second shear, often installed in a blow-out preventer as back-up, might have worked. It might have.

But, blind faith in a blind shear isn't just blind; it's hubris. Perhaps the technology, as sophisticated as it seems, isn't yet up to the task. Considering that an offshore well like Deepwater Horizon can commit ecocide on a huge scale, we can't settle for 9 out of ten, or 99 out of 100. We have to be absolutely sure that there will be no accidents, or that we can clean up any accident, regardless of size, before any environmental damage.

Or, build solar panels and wind turbines like mad.

I predict we won't do either. After all, well-drillers need jobs.

The Roman Empire contributed to the desertification of North Africa (it had been its granary), because it needed food for its huge population; it deforested the Mediterranean because it had to keep its baths good and hot. Wasteful patterns, once established, are hard to change. It's likely that Rome's ecological wastefulness contributed substantially to its impoverishment. The good counselors of Ephesus pointed out the danger of stripping the hills of trees, but the city's port became silted up anyway: probably, contractors to the baths had to keep cutting wood, until it was gone. And then Romans did the same thing in Rome and Ravenna.

Will we now poison the whole world in our inability to leave oil and coal behind, and use renewable, non-polluting energy?

The oil companies--and the coal companies--need their profits; the drillers and miners need their jobs. The companies are politically well connected. What do you think is the most likely outcome?

How can we change it?

Scream bloody murder--of the Earth. It's that serious!

Jun 22, 2010, Can Governments Represent Us?

The assumption of the right-wing in the US is that government can't work, that it does nothing positive, and that any expansion of government power is simply a "power-grab." They claim governments produce nothing. Yet, census workers, for example, determine who populates the country: information highly valued by corporations.

The assumption of the left-wing is that government can work for good, but that it's dominated by an elite, which works not for the common good, but for the moneyed interests.

In the late Roman Empire, both assumptions were correct. Imperial government was woefully ineffective in deterring crime, violence and barbarian takeovers, but was more effective in representing the interests of the moneyed elite, the Senatorial class. The governments of late imperial Rome look an awful lot like the vision of right wing luminaries like Grover Norquist: they couldn't do squat, except tax the poor and protect the wealthy until the barbarians took over, first in outlying provinces, and finally in Rome in 476.

The assumption of the right-wing is that any time Obama reaches for an effective response to a problem--like controlling health care costs, or forcing BP to set aside $20 billion for damages in the Gulf--he is grabbing dictatorial powers.

The assumption of the left-wing is that Obama is too cozy with corporate powers, and too timid with its protectors.

Yet, there are a few Republicans, like Senator Susan Collins, who might accept compromise. Obama should not be so willing to compromise basic principles for a few legislators' votes, however.

The basic disagreement, is whether government can do anything positive, or whether, as Reagan popularized, "government is the problem." The brouhaha over Rep. Barton's apology to BP, illustrates this division. It's also instructive: the Republican leadership knew his apology didn't look good, so they forced Barton to retract, but Barton was critical of BP when Republicans controlled Congress.

Why did he change his mind? The rightward tilt of the GOP from Tea Party successes may be one reason: all the TP stars either anticipated his position, or tried to outdo it.

But, if government action is no solution, then people are powerless against corporate power. BP's recklessness could be replicated many times over, and no one could stop them. From the corporate point of view, there would be no reason to spend money on safety, if there were no mandates insuring their competitors would also spend money on it. Corporate leaders are legally mandated to maximize shareholder profits, not to protect "the people."

Only governments can represent common interests. They lose power if they consistently don't--even in dictatorships. It's to most people's interests, therefore, that governments become more effective, not less. It's a continual struggle to insure that a government represents the common interest, but no other institution can.

Jun 17, 2010, We Shoulda Elected Hillary!

At least she would have been in-your-face. She wouldn't have pussy-footed with BP. I was against Hillary, because she stood for more of the same and she was a hawk, who never saw a war she didn't like.

But what has Obama become? A hawk, even if he talks about beginning withdrawal from Afghanistan next year (don't hold your breath). He's following Bush's policy in Iraq, keeping 50,000 American troops there indefinitely. Would Hillary already be invading Iran? I doubt it.

But on the BP oil disaster, wouldn't she have been more forthcoming and sooner, with a detailed plan for what to do from here?

McCain would have been far worse. Republicans protect the oil companies. House Republican Leader Boehner actually said taxpayers should pick up the tab for the Gulf oil cleanup, not BP!

What did Obama propose? His best moment in his oval office address was when he said he would demand BP set aside all the necessary resources to pay for damages, and that the escrow account should be controlled by an independent entity. Even then, he cited no figure (they've now agreed to $20 billion). He also should have endorsed the initiatives to repeal or raise limits on oil company liabilities from the current paltry $75 million passed in the W administration.

Obama didn't propose much else substantive. Instead, he pledged to clean up the mess--no details on how--and an "effort" to promote alternative forms of energy. He spoke about a campaign, a war-effort, but no specifics.

In other words, except for the escrow account, Obama dealt in broad generalities, despite any number of legislative initiatives he could have promoted. He also continues to entertain the fantasy: if he "reaches across the aisle," he'll gain bipartisan backing for some, unspecified, initiative that will set us on the road to alternative energy independence. When have Republicans given any indication that they would work with the administration, except on promoting the "Defense" budget?

Perhaps he didn't endorse Kerry-Lieberman on climate change and energy, because it's not a very good bill: it gives away way too much. But if he doesn't really like Kerry-Lieberman (not clear), he also didn't offer any alternative, any guidance for what he would support and work for--except that he would oppose inaction.

How do you oppose a negative? Hillary would have laid out a detailed plan.

An 81-year old friend, a Democrat, said despairingly, "We're going down!"

Every time, I hope, this is it: Obama will finally seize the moment, and lead the way as he did so brilliantly in his campaign, it's mostly words; he acts as if someone is holding a gun to his head. Possible? Palace guards killed Valentinian III (455), deposed Emperor after Emperor afterwards, and overthrew the Roman Empire in 476.

Corporations hold a big gun. I'm afraid my older friend is right: We're going down!

Jun 15, 2010, The Dirty Bargain

The Greeks didn't sign onto it: now their debt has been driven to junk bond status.

The closer you get to Wall Street, or the City of London, the more likely you are to see the bargain in action.

In 1933, FDR closed the banks. When they reopened, government had created rules that maintained financial stability until the 1970's. The result: financial crises were negligible and under control.

Beginning in the 70's, there was a sustained and successful attack against those rules, culminating in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which had kept taxpayer-insured money separate from investment banking speculation. Since the 70's, we've had a series of financial crises, culminating in the 2007-8 collapse. That's no coincidence.

Unfortunately, neither W, nor Obama "took over" the banks. They revived the banks with trillions of government dollars. Now, banks are so strong they can weaken, or stymie any thoroughgoing financial reform: there will be no Glass-Steagall, and banks will be too big to fail. Governments will have to bail them out when risk-taking gets them in trouble.

In addition, the elites are able to control enough of the information people depend upon, that they have changed the conversation: it's no longer recovery, and jobs, but solvency and cutbacks. Deficit reductions and cutbacks don't come at the expense of the banksters who got us into this mess, but at the expense of the victims: the people thrown out of work, or working 60 hour weeks just to pay the bills.

And it isn't just the banksters. It's the elites generally. Health reform comes at the expense of the insured, who will see their premiums soar, even though the reform will hand providers a whole new government-subsidized market.

What are some of the elements of this "bargain?" When decision-makers propose raising a stock-transfer tax, their government's bonds will be besieged. When politicians suggest raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for the needed recovery, capital flees the country.

Have you noticed that huge amounts of capital have washed up in the US? Despite Obama's stimulus, with a deficit and debt rivaling that of Greece in GDP terms, US Treasury rates are still extremely low. There has been no need to raise rates to find buyers. That's because formerly liberal leaders like Obama and Cuomo have bowed to the bargain: no new taxes on the wealthy. Republicans would never raise those taxes in the first place.

The "tea party movement" is a political expression of the media power of capital. People who are hurting--the financial system robbed them blind--are persuaded that big Government did it.

The Tea Party is Wall Street's insurance, but if a genuinely progressive movement gained power, we'd face a capital strike like the one that brought down Greece.

The financial/corporate elites, the selfish class I've written about on this site, now rule most of the world: through extortion.

Jun 10, 2010, All We Knew is Wrong!

In the 1950s, our knowledge of how the world works was so advanced: my father knew he had the best diet imaginable when he ate eggs and bacon for breakfast and steak well-marbled for dinner. He died of his second stroke at age 60. My mother bottle-fed me: formula was so scientifically advanced. Nursing was primitive.

In the 1950's, we knew we lived in a new era in which there were unlimited sources of cheap energy. Oil gushed out of the ground (not the bottom of the sea); soft coal was so cheap it was better for heating your house than wood; nuclear power would soon give us unlimited energy so cheap we'd hardly have to pay for it.

We knew in the 1950's that swamps were just a waste of land and should be drained, so we could use them: nature was messy. That included the Everglades, and the channels of the Mississippi: we drained, channeled and controlled them, because we knew how to improve on nature.

Government authorities told uranium miners, citizens living downwind from nuclear testing, and nuclear weapon workers that the low doses of radiation they received were harmless, maybe even beneficial. Everybody trusted the government.

We knew that forest fires were always bad, so all over the nation we suppressed them (building up tinder for worse fires later).

We knew that predators like wolves could subvert our scientific agriculture, so we hunted them down. We were just beginning to learn to use antibiotics on meat animals. We applied DDT to the crops we ate and the front lawns where children played. We held all pests at bay.

Lead was added to gasoline, so that our bigger and better cars wouldn't knock; no one thought about all the lead spewing from them.

We built 1,000's of nuclear weapons because the USSR was trying to catch up. We did wonder about a world that could be destroyed instantaneously, but we just did "duck and cover" drills in school.

We didn't need chemical weapons, so we sent them to the bottom of the sea: we knew they'd do no harm there.

We lobotomized people for emotional problems. We were so, so advanced. We knew so much.

And now we know that if we take the right "precautions," we can still drill for oil, even at the bottom of the sea! At least, that's what Congress and the Pres and BP keep telling us.

Often, conventional wisdom is not wise. It only prevails because it is conventional, but everything we thought we knew was wrong!

Now, conventional wisdom could kill--most of us. Let's see: if climate change makes large parts of Earth inhospitable to agriculture through drought and extreme weather, and we poison the seas, what's left?

We won't have to worry about an "American Empire," or even "America."

Jun 8, 2010, Israel is Always Right

I've been having a "dialogue" with an old friend of mine, who accepts everything the Israeli government claims, about the flotilla assault, the Gaza blockade, etc.

He accused me of never having to worry about my personal security, while many of his Jewish forebears were wiped out in the Holocaust. That's why he knows: you've got to be "realistic." War is war. International law is rarely honored, and besides, some Turkish so-called peace activists were actually militants. One of those killed had a black belt in Tae Kwondo: he was a deadly weapon--until the IDF shot him.

Personal safety? I pointed out that my son had been working on Times Square until only months before the attempted suicide bombing. I forgot to mention that he'd also been within 20 blocks of ground zero on 911, so I did perceive threats to me and mine.

But why were the militants--the 911 bombers, the Times Square bomber--eager to volunteer? Why are Americans and Europeans volunteering? There is a perceived grievance that al Qaeda exploits: Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. What Israel does in Gaza and the West Bank does affect our security.

That's why, I told him, Israel's occupation, its siege of Gaza, and its Bantustan-like control over the West Bank was going to blow up in Israel's face. America won't (can't afford to) indefinitely support Israel, especially when it is a real obstacle to peace and a liability to the US.

Would Israel survive without US support? Probably, but cut loose, it would have a terrifying potential to become a rogue nuclear-armed state. Israel has been urging the US to attack Iran for years. If Israel attacked, instead, it could draw the US into a new war, along with the rest of the Middle East.

Yet, only Israel believes strongly that Iran is not only developing nuclear weapons, but would use them to destroy Israel. Israel has an estimated 200 nuclear war-heads, more than enough to obliterate Iran if it were foolhardy enough to attempt attack, but a nuke or two would protect Iran from Israel--or the US. It's not clear, from nuclear negotiations and available intelligence, whether Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons, or only medical nuclear isotopes (concentrated to 38% vs 99%) and bluster. It pays politically.

There is bluster and threats on all sides.

How do people get so paranoid? For my friend, war-is-hell and the Holocaust justify whatever Israel does. What Israel did in 1947-8 and since, justifies many Muslim militants, and so it goes. There are a lot of paranoid people in the world. Paranoia can become self-fulfilling, especially if two or more play the same game.

They're playing it all over the world.

The US qua empire is no longer able to stop these games, even when it's a participant: we have an emerging Post-American World. When the US buys into the games, it makes the world increasingly unsafe for everyone.

Jun 5, 2010, A Progressive for NY?

A friend of mine announced he was running for Governor of NY. He's not Andrew Cuomo. He's Joel Tyner, a Democratic County Legislator, running until a progressive with more credibility steps forward.

Joel has no money and Andrew Cuomo is highly popular, but, as Joel said in his speech, "I don't want to have to tell you, 'I told you so,' a couple of years from now."

Andrew Cuomo represents a disturbing trend among Democrats, and it's hard to say whether it's tactically or ideologically driven. Socially, Cuomo is somewhat progressive, proposing independent redistricting, ethics reforms and marriage equality.

It's obvious New York State needs reform. It still hasn't passed a budget (due March 31st!); it underwent a Republican "coup" in the Senate, then a Democratic counter-coup; it has seen the former Republican Majority Leader convicted of graft, a Democratic Senator, one of the two coup leaders, convicted of slashing his girlfriend; the AG is suing the other for "looting." In addition, the state faces growing budget deficits (between $8.2 and $9.2 billion).

So, admittedly, the state is in dire need of better fiscal management, and ethics reform. But this is the state with Wall Street. Wall Street made over $61 billion in profits last year, paying out bonuses of $20 billion in cash!

But Cuomo has pledged "no new income taxes on the wealthy," "capping state spending" and "freezing state employee salaries." Worst of all, Cuomo calls for a property tax cap, despite the horrendous 20+ year experience of a property tax cap in California (Prop 13), where California's services have had to be slashed repeatedly--yet California is in worse fiscal shape than New York!

Joel Tyner points to an initiative by Assemblyman Kevin Cahill as a better solution for property taxes (NY's are nearly the highest in the country): Cahill would fund counties and schools with a version of what New York City already has: progressive local income taxes.

Tyner also points to the stock transfer tax, collected since 1915, but rebated to Wall Street for the last 30 years: a quarter of it would collect $4 billion a year, and would reduce incentives for wild stock speculation.

Taxes on millionaires' income were 15.5% until the early 70's; they now pay 9%. The middle classes pay 11% in local taxes, the wealthy 8%; income inequality has risen, so, raising millionaire's taxes is justified, would reduce inequality, and since Wall Street is in such bad odor, it could be popular. It would also fund the deficit.

Cuomo, however, is pandering to Wall Street and the "Tea Party," (the Selfish Class, like the one that brought down Rome). Other Democrats are, too.

Why? Are they all afraid of Fox and Limbaugh?

Joel offers a progressive alternative, but has no money. Yet, Democratic timidity could strand us in a real Depression: you don't get out of recessions by cutting jobs and expenditures.

We need an FDR, not a Democratic Hoover.

Jun 1, 2010, A Crucial Moment for The Empire

One of many reports on the Israeli siege of the Gaza-bound flotilla of Turkish and other peace activists, ended with Hamas's pitiful, defiant response: they shot a rocket into Israel--it harmed no one.

On the other hand, the Israelis did assault a ship, in international waters. Why were they surprised that those on board resisted? Why should the members of this flotilla, set up to challenge Israel's 3-year blockade of Gaza, not resist when soldiers suddenly rappelled down from helicopters? The IDF were carrying guns, and demanding control of the ship. They assumed the peace activists were unarmed. What surprised them: a few had knives, grabbed metal pipes, or took pistols from the invaders, to drive them off.

So, the Israelis, unprepared for physical resistance to their superior military force, responded with "disproportionate" violence: estimates range from 10 to 19 flotilla members killed, one IDF man shot, apparently with a pistol taken from him or another Israeli soldier. Most of those killed were Turks: Turkey was the unofficial sponsor of the flotilla, but also, until recently, Israel's reliable Muslim ally. No longer.

Israel doesn't even offer apologies. It justifies itself by saying that it was merely enforcing its Gaza blockade, and that the flotilla could have been terrorists, or, if they were allowed to land, that others, terrorists would follow. If this were any other country, not only would there be international condemnation, but it would be enforceable by the UN Security Council. The US would sign on, but this is Israel.

My bet: Israel will get away with this latest outrage because, Democrat or Republican, Bush or Obama, Israel is the third rail of US international policy: you can't touch it. The Israelis know this. AIPAC, and the right-wing media will trumpet Israel's story: that Israeli soldiers "had to" kill 10-19, because activists threatened them with "weapons." But their assault was on an unarmed vessel in international waters: a blatant violation of international law.

The assault did demonstrate, however, that the Gaza blockade, more than three years old, is indefensible. It has imprisoned, impoverished and nearly starved the whole population of Gaza. Most of the international community now decries Israel's actions; its assault on the flotilla, underscores the outrage of its Gaza blockade.

However, for any US President, especially a Democrat, to take a strong stand against Israel, Obama will need iron-clad proof of Israeli culpability. Why? The importance of Middle East oil to American hegemony underscores Israel's central role as our "faithful" ally there. It's also why BP was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico: to find non-Middle East sources of oil, no matter how costly. It will be costly, indeed!

The big question: will Obama finally take a stand against Israeli arrogance? If not, will this be the moment when US influence in the Middle East takes a dive? American credibility everywhere hangs in the balance.

May 26, 2010, Tax Madness

Any suggestion of raising taxes meets howls of resistance, not just from tea partiers in these dark times: states are going bust. Yet, Wall Street financiers pay themselves even fancier bonuses than they did last year, bonuses made possible by taxpayer money.

Financial firms oppose taxing hedge fund managers' income at the rates working people pay. The parallels are striking with the Roman Empire at the tail end of its history. Go to Taxes (http://www.roman-empire-america-now.com/taxes.html) on this website. Roman wealthy didn't pay taxes, and hedge fund traders, some making as much as $1 billion a year, are taxed at a flat 15% rate, while most of us pay between 20% and 39%.

Hedge fund managers have also been part of the Wall Street lobbying onslaught to prevent financial reforms. They scream that regulation will cost profits, when it was their ruthless pursuit of fast profits that nearly destroyed the whole world economy!

NY's Governor Paterson, formerly liberal, has summarily rejected a "billionaire's tax," despite the huge state deficit he's desperately trying to close. And he and the US Congress, refuse to consider a stock transfer tax, a cent or two per share traded, despite the fact that the tax would not only raise very needed revenue (a state tax might make up NY's deficit), it would also discourage the kind of hyper-speculation that led to the near financial collapse.

Wall Street is practically apoplectic at the idea of either tax, and yet, they almost drove us off a financial cliff, and cost the US 15 million jobs it will take many years to replace. Both taxes would discourage the kind of antics that led to the collapse--and raise revenue where it is most needed to continue an economic recovery--for a state budget that otherwise requires drastic cutbacks, laying off even more jobs.

Liberals are scared shitless advocating for any tax, even if they know it would be good policy. Why? Because the right-wing media have whipped up a frenzy about raising any taxes, and Republicans have jumped enthusiastically on board.

The furthest Democrats in Washington dare go, is to let the Bush tax cuts lapse. Republicans scream, that's a tax increase! It is, but only for taxpayers earning over $250,000 a year. I'd be very comfortable on half of that: most people will never come close to it.

Does nobody remember? In the Eisenhower years, top tax brackets paid over 90% above a cutoff, but the 1950's were booming, and we weren't fighting two wars. Historically, more highly graduated tax rates correlate with higher growth as well as with greater economic equality, despite conservative economic theory to the contrary.

The hype about "raising" taxes is madness; raising rates on the higher brackets would reduce US inequality (worst among developed nations)--and restore the economy. Will that happen? Only if liberals find some cojones.

May 18, 2010, Assyria?

I thought this website was supposed to be about the parallels of the US and Roman Empires, but sometimes there are historical parallels that make more sense than the Roman.

It's beginning to look, to me, as if the US isn't going to go the way of Rome, slowly diminishing, losing power, replaced by a less civilized elite.

The US is heading towards a fantastic blowout, unless it stops, looks around, and does things very differently. By this I mean, the Assyrian parallel, a short-lived, colorful and brutal empire.

But, unlike the Assyrians--more like the Romans--we face no new rival empire which will defeat us militarily. We face ourselves, our own hubris, that led Americans to think they could create and maintain a Pax Americana even more extensive and powerful (and almost as self-serving) as the Pax Romana.

And don't worry about those Terrorists, only about our own imposed terror, both on many other nations and upon ourselves.

If the US leaves foreign parts, our apparent enemies will leave us alone: they will be too preoccupied with trying to control their own devastated countries (Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen for starters).

If their values are horrible, it's still not America's responsibility--or within her ability--to prevent them: the US does not control the world, never did and never could.

We'd be a lot better off if we stopped trying the impossible, stopped placating the military-industrial complex and brought our troops home from almost all of our international military bases and the formal and informal wars we're waging.

Just think, Tea Baggers: if we weren't an empire, we could lower taxes! We could relax our VIGILANCE; and a vote-getter among teabaggers, I'm sure: we could more easily balance the budget, still pay out full value of Social Security/Medicare, and spend our taxes on making life better and more productive right here in our own country.

The rest of the world might be sad to see us go because of import/export sales lost. On the other hand, they might more readily emulate us if we weren't "permanent" top dogs anymore.

May 18, 2010, Politics, Economy: Does Anything Work?

The bank bailout and stimulus package worked--up to a point. While the former did rescue the banks, and the latter spared us the depths of the Great Depression, neither has "fixed" the economy.

The big banks made money, but mostly on speculation with the cheap (almost free) Fed/bailout money, but they haven't been lending enough to genuinely rescue the economy. In fact, there is a real danger that bank speculation could trigger a worse financial collapse, unless Congress passes laws empowering government to regulate the whole financial industry. Because of widespread American distrust of government, however, and because of intense bank lobbying, re-regulation of the finance industry is difficult to get through Congress (banks were much more regulated before the wave of deregulation that began with Carter and Reagan, and continued through Clinton and Bush).

Further, the stimulus was too little. While some millions of jobs were saved, and something less than that were created, the number of jobs lost, and the number of jobs needed is far larger, so the stimulus limited the damage, but didn't go far enough. The stimulus also saved the housing market from collapse: it is slowly recovering, but many are still losing their homes to foreclosure, many of those due to job losses, many others because house values plummeted and mortgage holders were left "underwater," owing more than their houses were worth.

No wonder people are unhappy and grasp for "solutions," like the Tea Party movement. Ironically, the solutions offered: abolishing the Fed, going back to the gold standard, free marketeering, abolishing regulations already in place, would make things worse.

The gold standard would drastically reduce the money supply, which would destroy more jobs; further deregulation would permit more speculation by the banks, which may be why the tea party is so well-funded, but it would further reduce the money available for job creation. And budget-balancing would subtract still more.

The real problem (Dollars and Sense: May-June, 2010), is that the whole global trading and financial system is seriously out of whack: the dollar no longer works as the world's reserve currency, which requires the US as importer of last resort, a high dollar, imports of goods, exports of dollars and the destruction of US manufacturing. This creates huge trade deficits, consumer debt, high finance and high unemployment.

What is needed: regulate finance and reduce its importance, revive manufacturing (especially to combat climate change), an active government in the economy, a low dollar, not a high one, and a new international reserve unit to replace the dollar.

This might end America's imperial hegemony, but we've already gotten to where we can't afford it; it has destroyed the US economy. The jobs we most succeed in creating, wreak destruction world-wide. We'd be much better off as "just another country." Otherwise, we might end like the Assyrian Empire: brilliant, brutal and short.

May 13, 2010, Deficits You Can Hate or Love

There has been an almost unending stream of propaganda and false news about the horrendous deficits the US and now the EC are facing. Britons just tossed out its Labour government partly because of the hype about its deficit. The EC just went through a process for bailing out Greece (and potentially other nations) because of its large deficit. Right-wing media thumps out a drumbeat about the deficit in the US, and may win control of Congress in November, if people don't realize all the holes in their argument.

They argue that families can't borrow their way out of trouble, so the nation can't either. But families do borrow: when they take out loans to finish college or undergo training, for example. Both cases will enhance their ability to pay back the loan. On the other hand, to borrow in order to maintain a lifestyle beyond their income is unsustainable, whether it's to buy a house they can't afford, or to go out to dinner five days a week.

The same is true of governments. Greece's debt was unsustainable, because it was supporting a lifestyle, was not enriching the nation, and was not being paid for by the people with money: the wealthy, who avoid taxes.

The deficits in the US, insofar as they are paying for jobs protected, or jobs created, are investments in the future, and enable the recipients, and others downstream to pay back the money with interest as taxes they would not otherwise have been able to pay. Deficit spending to fund alternative energy, or highway construction and repair, are also investments in the future. They do not impoverish the nation: they enrich it.

On the other hand, deficits spent on wars that do not involve national survival, but instead are for imperial expansion (Iraq, Afghanistan), are like borrowing so that you can eat out every day of the week: the nation is impoverished by them in the long run.

US debt, while large in absolute numbers, is smaller, relative to the size of the economy (GDP) than most developed nations. But the deficit and debt hide both productive investment and wasteful consumption. The two ought to be separated and the latter should be cut to the bone, the former boosted to truly stimulate the economy.

The deficit we should be most concerned about is not mentioned much: it is the trade deficit. We buy more abroad than we sell abroad, in part because large corporations export jobs. That international debt comes back as speculation, boosting the stock market artificially; it does not employ more than the few thousands on Wall Street, but it impoverishes the nation.

So, cut war spending, boost job creation and stop outsourcing jobs. Then deficits become investments and the nation will become wealthier, instead of the Empire going bankrupt.

May 12, 2010, Russian Roulette on the Gulf

Some people have likened the oil mess in the gulf to a "gusher." Since any 'leak' at 5000 feet down is going to be under tremendous pressure, and near freezing temperatures, it's a bit like opening a bottle of champagne, except no one is celebrating, and we don't know how big that bottle could be--and it's definitely not champagne.

In fact, our whole vocabulary for describing what has happened with the oil well explosion has so far proven inadequate. It's not a 'spill', and it's not a 'leak'; it could be a 'gusher', or it could be something else. The gulf oil catastrophe is not a spill, because spill implies a container that tips a bit, and slops a bit over the side. It's not a leak, because leaks imply a bit oozing out, but not the amount in question: more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day are flooding out of these holes in the ocean floor and have been now for 22 days, for a likely total of at least four and a half million barrels of oil!

Offshore drillers grumble and moan about new regulations this catastrophe will cause; the Obama administration holds off on new oil leases and talks about new regulations and administrative restructuring to prevent a re-occurrence. Some coastal state Senators propose reinstituting some kind of ban on offshore drilling, while others, and their conservative competitors, continue to promote offshore drilling as a way to "wean" ourselves from foreign oil.

Another way to look at this, however, is that the risks are just too high. That explosion in the Gulf may have been like opening a tap on an oil reserve that could poison not just marshes, crab and shrimp beds and beaches in the Gulf, but the whole world's ocean ecosystem: it's all connected, after all, by the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current.

I hope BP, et al, can plug the holes, stop the gusher, but how many times must we risk global catastrophe before we stop? If you think of that exploded oil well as blowing the cap on an underwater sea of oil, under 5000 feet of pressure, then to do this again and again, even with all the safeguards in the world, is like playing Russian roulette not just with the future of humanity, but with the future of most life on this planet. The costs are just too high.

If we don't want to go the way not of the Roman Empire but of the dinosaurs, we need to take this as a wake up call: build renewable energy sources now through a crash program that would make the Marshall Plan and even our WWII mobilization look like peanuts.

Drilling offshore as a "transitional" program is just plain crazy! We have to get off fossil fuels

May 10, 2010, The Afghan War and US Politics

Karzai, Afghan President, wants to open negotiations with the Taliban, even with Mullah Omar.

Until now, the administration has said that it has to stay in Afghanistan and beat up the Taliban before we (or Afghans) can talk. Yet, Obama insists he will start removing troops next year. Either we are fighting for the Afghans or we're fighting against them: a majority of Afghans want peace talks, according to the latest polls.

Karzai is visiting Washington this week. In fact, a good part of his cabinet has come with him.

Last I checked, a majority of Americans felt that Afghanistan was not a fight worth fighting (about 52%). Further, the latest attempted NY bombing came out of Pakistan, not Afghanistan. The precipitating factor in that attack probably was Obama's intensified drone war in Pakistan.

Obama has had trouble maintaining his popularity in the face of right-wing media attacks, and a signal to the elected government of Afghanistan to go ahead and negotiate, might drive the right wing crazy. However, despite Fox's attempt to spin it as "weakness," peace negotiations would be popular.

It wouldn't be popular with the generals. McChrystal might hate it, and Gates might have to hold his nose (or resign, not a bad thing). But Obama should consider: Democrats, in the run up to the Congressional elections could run on: a recovering economy and negotiations leading to withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Democrats could also push the Feingold-Kaufman amendment (again), to facilitate breaking up the big banks. Then they could run on: Peace, recovery and fixing Wall Street. Let the Republicans run against all that!

In any case, now is a golden opportunity to seize the populist initiative temporarily lost to the Tea Party crowd, by coming down on the side of peace in Afghanistan.

Why not? If the administration continues to lean on Karzai to forego top-level negotiations, then we should all know who is really in control here: it isn't Obama, and it isn't the Democratic majority in Congress, either. It's the Imperial caucus: the generals, the defense industry fattening on the wars, and the right wing media machine that hypes them.

Think about it, President Obama! You won election by being against the war in Iraq, and polls show a majority of Americans against the Afghan war. Your support has slipped with your base, partly because of that war. Your support among independents has slipped because of the emotional attacks on "government takeovers" by the right-wing media.

Yet, you can legitimately claim you saved the economy through your actions. What you and Democrats can't claim, yet, is that you have brought peace. Your base will be lukewarm until you can.

Tell Karzai, "Okay. Negotiate." Then hype it and see your poll numbers surge. And the chances for Democrats in the Fall would improve as well.

So, is it Empire, or electing a Democratic Congress?

May 7, 2010, An Anniversary We Should Learn From

What Dien Bien Phu meant, and what it means today.

The French air fortress established there to interdict supplies coming to the Vietminh through Laos, fell on May 7, 1954, after a protracted battle. It was a terrible defeat for the French, and not only mobilized the Vietnamese, but empowered those in France, who had campaigned to end the Indochina war.

The French withdrew from all of Indochina within a year, and although the US attempted to take up the slack in South Vietnam, well, we know the outcome. The significance of Dien Bien Phu is similar to the battle of Adrianople, in which Germanic (barbarian) cavalry overran the Roman army, and captured the ruling Emperor in 378. Colonial empires continued after 1954, and (in the American variant) do to this day, and the Roman Empire lasted for another 98 years in the West, after Adrianople. But both battles demonstrated that new powers were in the ascendancy, and the old were in retreat.

We still are.

In 476, a whole new order, less civilized, less technologically advanced, but more warlike, took formal control of all of Western Europe. After 1954, the French, British, Dutch, Belgians and Portuguese were slowly driven out of their "possessions," and the US attempted to take their place--in Vietnam, especially, and also, tragically, in the Middle East, in Iran.

Afghanistan could create another Dien Bien Phu, if we don't recognize that 'non-western' peoples will control their own fates, even if they have to overcome the incredible barbarism of some of their leaders, like Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Omar.

We may not like what the Taliban stands for--extreme male chauvinism, brutality, fundamentalist Islam--but even if many Afghans hate the Taliban, they are a significant native force in their nation. The NATO and US forces are foreign. We are invaders, perhaps attempting to create a more humane Afghan society, but the inescapable fact is: we are foreigners. Many Afghans, even those who vehemently oppose the Taliban, fear that the US really wants to control their country, which resisted Imperial rule during the whole colonial era. Tragically, they may be at least partially right. American leaders want a "friendly" Afghanistan, meaning one that will bend to American interests.

The US cannot control the world, any more than the French could control Indochina, or the Romans could continue to control all of Europe.

It is because of America's attempt to maintain--and even expand--world hegemony (creating a new Africom, for example), that draws extremists to attack us as in 9/11, and as in the recent Times Square attempt.

The colonial era died at Dien Bien Phu. US imperialism has been attempting to ignore that ever since.

May 4, 2010, Arizona, Global Warming And 2 Billion Headed North

What does immigration have to do with US foreign policy?

Why do illegal immigrants have a moral right to work in this country?

The Arizona law is outrageous, but not entirely so. Its justification is ineffective enforcement of immigration laws by the Feds, which in turn is due to the insupportable nature of the laws themselves.

Immigration, especially of the illegal variety, is caused by US imperial policies. With NAFTA, CAFTA and "anti-Communist," "anti-terrorist" or drug war policies, the US is hugely involved in destroying jobs in other countries.

When the US insists that large US agribusiness can export subsidized corn to Mexico, for example, it causes massive displacement of campesinos from their farms. This displacement was intended to create cheap labor for the maquiladoras near the border, but not enough jobs were created. The excess jobless have nowhere to go but el Norte.

When the US helped local elites stave off or drive out democratic governments in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and most recently, Honduras, something very similar occurred: the repressed and displaced have nowhere to go but el Norte.

When the US wages wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen, it creates huge disruption--and large numbers of refugees. The only reason we don't see more of them is distance.

When the US and other "advanced" nations do too little and too late to address climate change, disproportionately caused by us, but disproportionally affecting less developed nations, we will see even more massive dislocation of populations. If the monsoon rains fail because of climate change (there is good reason to expect this will happen) then large parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, south China and Africa will be unable to support their huge populations.

Where will these "climate refugees" go? Two billion people or more could be headed north, to Europe, Canada, Russia and the US. And the reason would be the failure of the above "developed" nations to come up with a climate change treaty that would alleviate or reverse climate change: climate change they largely caused with two centuries of industrial development!

If climate change was largely caused by us (and Europe), and if its worst effects are felt in places like India and Bolivia, doesn't that make us morally responsible?

This is why the poor, developing nations demand "reparations:" to alleviate the effects of runaway climate change, and to respond to it, despite their own poverty--exacerbated by developed nation policies (led by the US and its corporate elites).

We should stop fooling ourselves: our imperial meddling creates illegal immigration. Two billion more could surge north, because of our inability to deal adequately with climate change. It would be like the Age of Migrations, which brought down the Roman Empire.

The corporations, which profit so handsomely from our imperial policies, should be taxed to fund developing nations' reparations.

May 1, 2010, May-day, May-day!

It's the first of May, and oil is spewing out of more than one hole at the bottom of the ocean, a manmade disaster that will only get worse--and still Obama insists that we should expand offshore drilling!

At least the Democratic Senators from Florida and New Jersey are sponsoring a bill to prevent test drilling off both the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, the areas opened up for exploration by the President.

Here in the Hudson Valley, I'm close to the land, and I know the climate is getting screwed. We hold a 'bringing in the May' celebration of May eve each year. One of our rituals involves bringing in locally blooming flowers and blossoming boughs. Each year until now, we've brought in loads of forsythia, shadblow, wild apple, quince and daffodils. This year there were some daffodils, but most had passed; there was one apple tree still with blossoms, no quince and no forsythia, except with flowers already dried up. Until now, the height of the apple blossoms (this is still apple orchard country), was mid-May, when the dogwood also blossoms. This year, most of our flowering boughs were dogwood, not quite past. Further, the maples have mostly leafed out already, something that isn't supposed to happen for another two to three weeks!

It's a beautiful Spring, but knowing how much the climate has changed does put a damper on our appreciation of the season's beauty. And now, on May 1st, it's going to be in the 80's! The temperature might not set a record, but it's warmer than it used to be.

We've had two manmade disasters in the last two weeks: the mine explosion and the undersea well explosion. We should sit up and take notice. One involves coal, the other oil. Fossil fuels: the same fuels that are doing most of the damage to our climate.

The oil companies will continue to pour millions into lobbying and campaign funds, the coal companies likewise. It seems as if they're even paying off the President if he can say with a straight face that "safeguards" will somehow insure against future disasters, or that "clean coal technology" will be effective in combating the global warming effects of burning coal.

So, it's up to us. First of all, we need to insist: no offshore drilling, period and no new coal-fired power plants.

We, individually, can use significantly less energy and burn less oil and coal (or none at all), but government action is needed to ramp up alternative sources, especially wind and solar and to support electric cars.

Obama's resolve to continue with offshore oil-drilling is not promising. Nor is the Kerry-Leiberman-Graham climate bill, even if Graham returns as co-sponsor. Our political system seems incapable of making rational policy.

Soon, we'll celebrate Spring in February--with a couple billion climate refugees.

Maybe the Empire will fall first.

Apr 29, 2010, Far-Left Socialist--Obama!

Ralph Reed's Faith & Freedom Coalition sent me a "survey" to "To Stop President Obama's Far-Left Socialist Agenda for America." FFC announced that it was sending this out to five million "American taxpayers," to send a message, and to raise money. Their goal: $30 million.

The first two questions (on how Obama is doing his job, and what you perceive his ideology to be) might seem fairly standard, except that the second question's answers range from conservative to communist to fascist.

Then the "survey" gets down to its main business. Before question 3 there is an "issue summary" that creates an "issue" almost out of whole cloth: claiming Obama wants to impose a "fairness doctrine" on right-wing talk radio in order to shut it down. The question is then asked (Question 3), whether the respondent thinks Obama will succeed in shutting down Beck, Limbaugh, et al.

The next issue summary states that Obama is as hostile to anyone questioning his agenda as Soviet leaders, and that he marshaled "union thugs" to beat up opponents at Town Hall meetings on health care! Where does this stuff come from? So Question 4 asks: Do you think President Obama respects free speech, or did union thugs act on their own "without any coordination with the Obama political machine?"

After question 6, there is another "issue summary." It states as fact that Obama and Congressional Democrats are "determined" to "loosen up" the border with Mexico, to enroll millions of Mexicans as new citizens as fast as possible, "so as to increase their voter base and cement their hold on political power." The question: how concerned are you about this "development?"

This is Ralph Reed's latest vehicle for raising money from right-wing know-nothings, as well as propaganda--of the Goebbels variety: repeat big lies often enough: people will take them as truth.

Reed turns ("Anti-American Communist Dictator") Chavez's joke about "Comrade Obama" to the left even of Fidel Castro into a serious issue ("issue summary"): do you think Obama is an ally of theirs? How much danger do you think "liberty" faces with Obama's Socialist agenda: More serious than World War II? More serious than the threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War? More serious than the Civil War? Respondent can check more than one.

Question 12 asks the respondent to pledge to vote in the Congressional election and to bring three friends. Question 13 asks for his email address!

And then he is supposed to send his "emergency freedom-saving donation," to the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Americans actually think like this!

Most Romans did in the fifth century, because of Imperial propaganda at least as blatant. If the US really goes in this direction, if this kind of Right-wing wins, then I fear for any reality-based politics at all.

Then we can really have an Emperor!

Jan 14, 2010, Haiti and the Devil

Haiti's earthquake, declared Pat Robertson, was a result of its people's pact with the Devil, back when Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, a Voudun, led a slave rebellion in 1791 that grew into the successful 1804 revolution against the French slave-owners! What he was really denouncing was Voudun, what we call Voodoo.

Pat Robertson has come out with insane declamations before--like 9-11 caused by the prevalence of the "homosexual lifestyle." He thinks he's an Old Testament prophet, so, he should inveigh against all manner of "wickedness," including, apparently, rebellion against slavery! Slavery worse than our South. How racist! And he's still popular among right-wing "Christians."

His citation of the devil recalls the thinking prevalent in the early 5th century, when the Roman Church marshaled finger bones, clavicles, whatever, of supposed martyrs, in order to defend the Empire against barbarian hordes.

The Church didn't stop the barbarians: far from it. Later on, it supported the Franks, barbarians who had converted to Catholicism. The finger bones hadn't worked.

The fifth century was the beginning of the Dark Ages. It was the beginning of the dominance of the Medieval, magical thinking Pat Robertson exemplifies and others mimic. It has been marshaled by the religious right wing's fight against same-sex marriage. Its latest triumph was in New Jersey, using similar tactics to the earlier defeat in New York: money to spread fear and misinformation about the "gay lifestyle." Or menace.

I hope it's not the wave of the future.

Actually, if there was a devil's curse on Haiti, it was imperialism, white devils. The French didn't take the loss of their most profitable colony lying down. Not only did Napoleon send unsuccessful expeditions to re-take it, but King Charles X, in 1825 mounted a large naval armada to re-conquer Haiti. President Boyer had to buy him off with reparations (indemnifying France for the profits from slavery the French had lost!). The total was 150 million francs, a huge sum in those days.

Expeditions by British, Germans, French and Americans, and even occupations (the US from 1915-1934), also stole wealth from the Haitian part of the island, often directly from the government's vaults.

The poverty that resulted, built the shoddy buildings that fell about people's ears in the earthquake. It has been building ever since the French were forced to leave their most prosperous colony in the 1790's. The poverty isn't because of a black devil's curse, or the fecklessness of the hard-working population; it's because imperialists saw Haiti as an easy prey. American corporations still do.

Think of Haiti as the victim of imperialism. Like many other places on earth, it will be a lot better off when all the empires fall.

Apr 28, 2010, Professional Military=Empire

Nixon's stroke of genius militarized our foreign policy: he abolished the draft. Sounds like a paradox, but it actually makes sense. The common wisdom is that democracies are not warlike. Yet, the US is the most warlike country in the world, although Americans think we're so peaceful. Now, that's a paradox that Nixon's stroke of genius created.

Instead of the draft, we have a professional army. This is no peacetime army like the one we had before WWII; this is a full-time army, with almost continuous wars, even if far from the "homeland."

Because it's a professional army, opposition to the wars is not visceral, the way it was during Vietnam, Korea and before WWII. "Our boys," (and "girls") don't have to go over there. The only ones who go are those who choose to enlist, which means people disproportionately poor, without other prospects, or from "military families," mostly Southern, or from minorities. Endless leftish commentaries have pointed this out, of course.

So, opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is muted: people aren't afraid that they, or their children, are going to have to go. Opposition is much more theoretical. The money we spend on these wars is only a part (a large part) of the taxes we pay, and we may object to that, but "our boys and girls" are not on the line.

We may object to the senselessness of the war, the needless killing, and the hopelessness of the enterprise, but we have a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize. So, if he can't get us out of Afghanistan, well, maybe we just should be there. His strategy sounds sort of plausible, but only if you accept certain premises.

For example: al Qaeda can't be allowed to set up camps in Afghanistan, from which they could train to attack us. So, we have to control Afghanistan--but we don't. I pointed out April 5th that the effectiveness of the "drone war" has demonstrated that al Qaeda wouldn't dare set up open camps in Afghanistan: we could cream them with drones. Furthermore, the Taliban wouldn't let them; they wouldn't want us to have a pretext to attack them. Ergo, we don't have to stay in Afghanistan, at all.

Furthermore, even Karzai wants to negotiate with the top Taliban, but the US says 'No.' Isn't Karzai the (more or less) elected President? And we're there to bolster Afghan government institutions? And defend them from the Taliban. Karzai has even made preparations for a loya jirga, the national assembly of elders that has venerable political legitimacy. He had wanted the Taliban to attend. So far, the US has said "No."

Do you get it yet? We have a professional military, courtesy of Nixon. Like the Roman legions, it MUST have wars--and bases in most countries in the world. We the People just get to pay--and deprive ourselves of services--until the US is bankrupted by its wars.

Apr 24, 2010, The Long Counter-Revolution

I missed the signs, going back to the Rehnquist court. Like most people left of center, I railed against the pro-business bias of many court decisions by the US Supreme Court.

But even Rehnquist held that corporations were artificial entities, not corporate "persons" with the rights and privileges of citizens. With the Roberts' Court decision, Citizens United v FEC, that personhood has now been enshrined in the supreme law of the land, no matter how flawed, transparently political and shattering of all precedent that decision was. It was authored by "Justices" who had claimed in their confirmation hearings that they would be bound by precedent, and would not "legislate from the bench." In Citizen's United, that's exactly what they did, more brazenly, more outrageously than any liberal Justices (like Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren and William O. Douglas), who were accused over the years of creating law not out of precedent, but out of their personal biases.

It was a judicial coup, and has the potential to wipe out any populist impulse or movement. It was possibly a direct response to Obama's apparently populist movement and electoral victory.

In "The Rise of The Corporate Court" by People For The American Way, the authors point out: resources available to corporations to influence elections are at a scale never before encountered by our already corrupted "democracy." Exxon collected about $1 million in its PAC for the 2008 election, abiding by campaign finance laws before the Citizen's United case. However, it amassed $85 billion in profits that year. With all limits on direct corporate spending thrown under the bus, it could now easily spend 10% of its profits--$8.5 billion--to elect the officeholders it wants. $8.5 billion is more than the 2008 campaign expenditures of Obama, McCain, plus all senate and congressional candidates and all state legislative candidates combined. Yet, Exxon is just one corporation!

Back in the 1890's, people joked about the Senator "from Standard Oil," or "JP Morgan." It won't be a joke!

What's worse, there are corporations like Goldman-Sachs, setting up some clients to fail so that Goldman--and other clients--can profit. They can use those profits to protect themselves politically! Three point three billion dollars profit just last quarter.

The real question is: how can ordinary citizens reclaim their democracy? There is a movement to ban corporate personhood by amending the Constitution, but the amendment process is much more difficult than passing healthcare in the Senate: required are two-thirds majorities in both House and Senate, and then passage by three-fourths of the states.

Citizens United is the culmination of a long-running counter-revolution. Corporations (and their principal owners) have become the Roman Senators, the honestiores, of our time. The rest of us are being reduced to humiliores.

Even before Rome's downfall, the humiliores had descended into serfdom.

Apr 20, 2010, Retrospective: Earth Day

It's so beautiful out! But, Spring is a month early.

There was a radio show detailing some of the alternatives scientists have begun to discuss because no political solutions appear possible. The alternatives: bio-engineering to "cool" the earth, to counteract dangerous climate change.

There was some hope, when Obama was elected, that he would reverse US opposition to action to slow climate change. After all, the US was global polluter par none until last year (when China surpassed us). Also, the case that global warming is happening and that humans are largely causing it keeps on getting stronger, despite DC's "snowmageddon."

Further, that we are getting nearer and nearer to major climate tipping points. We may already have surpassed some: for example, massive releases of methane as Arctic permafrost thaws (methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 as an agent promoting global warming). All the predictions of even two years ago have proven too low; the high range forecasts (faster global warming) appear to be the low-range of what has already occurred.

Yet, the meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, in which the US was supposed to lead the world in a global response, was an abject failure. It was in large part because Obama offered only the limp-wristed cap and trade and low-ball cut to emissions that has apparently foundered in the stalemated US Congress. Republicans and corporate Democrats reject even that inadequate response.

So, what to do? Bio-engineering? Will the US unilaterally spray the atmosphere with various additives to make clouds more opaque, or to reduce ocean reflectivity, or…?

If not the US, then who? Russia? China?

Put this way, perhaps you can see the problem: if we can't agree on reducing CO2 emissions, how on earth are humans going to agree on something that is still highly speculative, that might cool the earth, but might just screw up the climate even more?

Parenthetically, the scientist on the above-mentioned radio show let drop that 2 billion people depend on the monsoon rains in South and Southeast Asia. What would they do if the US unilaterally sprayed clouds and the result was that the monsoon rains failed? They'd have to leave, or starve! Two billion desperate people. Oh, and they have nuclear weapons: we're talking about India, Pakistan and southern China.

No wonder US intelligence rated the threat from global warming/climate change as greater than al Qaeda!

Perhaps humans are incapable of cooperating globally. Instead, oil and coal (and other) interests must safeguard profits: they have a lot of money to buy policy-makers: vested interests always do.

Perhaps this will be the epitaph of global civilization: vested interests trumped common sense.

We still have time to redeem Earth Day 2010, but not much time. Forget about the American Empire. We can't replace Ephesus with Constantinople as the Romans did. Some humans may survive, but it might be in caves.

Apr 15, 2010, Angry, not Just Tea Partiers

People are angry, and have good reason to be. But right-wing commentators and media like Fox are successfully diverting their ire. Meanwhile, would-be reformers find little support for substantive reform in policy areas in which there are substantial vested interests.

Health reform had to be limited to get past insurance company and provider interests, hence no "public option," and no negotiated Pharma prices.

Financial reform has to pass muster with banks, which are again riding roughshod over the economy: posting huge gambling profits, foreclosing on homeowners and ignoring mortgage re-negotiation programs, instituting new credit card fees, borrowing from the Fed at virtually no cost, and using the money to speculate, instead of loaning to businesses.

Republicans make the false claim that finance reform proposals will perpetuate public bailouts, so any reform must be killed. Meanwhile, Democrats are too craven to re-establish the needed boundaries between depositors and gamblers (like the repealed Glass-Steagall law), or to create a consumer protection agency that isn't answerable to the bankers first.

Why? Because banks and bankers have bought the GOP and enough of the Democrats to forestall meaningful reform.

Tea Party activists are angry, and others, too, but instead of venting their ire against the corporations exporting their jobs for profits, or against bankers, or AIG, they rant against "socialistic" Obama, Muslim, foreigner, against illegal aliens and against "those people" who don't pay income taxes (they pay as much in other taxes).

Noam Chomsky noted the similarities between the violent rhetoric of right-wing Americans and the Nazis before Hitler's takeover, and pointed out that the Nazis had only negligible support two years before they took control (through a democratic election).

The Weimar Republic was democratic, moderate and ineffectual; its reformers were pusillanimous. Nazis boasted they knew what to do. Germany's largest corporations supported them. The fascist system Nazis instituted, merged the power of the state with that of big business. The military in Nazi Germany was fused with both. Is that where we're headed?

Can moderate, centrist, half-reforms mollify enough of the people, stabilize the economy, prevent dangerous climate change, establish peace and maintain democracy? Given the violent response of the crazies, the power of the status quo institutions, and the military's interest in pursuing "the long war," it doesn't seem likely.

I take the Tea Party seriously. They may have all the facts wrong, they may be as ignorant as Sarah Palin, but they have energy. Faced with right-wing populists like Father Coughlin, FDR campaigned against "the economic royalists of our time." He won big for reform in 1936.

Our democracy needs an FDR, or Obama to become one, if it is to survive. Otherwise, we'll face the twilight of empire, like Diocletian's, more totalitarian than Hitler's, but declining nonetheless--before climate change destroys civilization as we know it.

Apr 13, 2010, Trained to Kill

An Afghan bystander asked plaintively, after US troops shot up a bus in Kandahar, "Why didn't they shoot out the tires? Why did they shoot the people?"

It's a good question.

When I was in Basic Training back in 1961 (Yes, the Dark Ages), our cry as we lunged at stuffed dummies with our bayonets was: "Kill, Kilo, Kill!" It was Kilo Company, you see.

Since 1961, since the Vietnam war, and then the wars since (quite a few), American soldiers (and marines) have been trained to be more and more lethal killers, it seems. With their weaponry, American troops are probably the most deadly military on Earth.

But in wars of counterinsurgency, killing is counterproductive most of the time. As both military and civilian leaders keep on saying, the American mission in Afghanistan is to win over the people to the established Afghan governing institutions. Killing ten civilians here and 5 there, is not going to win their hearts; shooting pregnant women and then gouging the bullets out of their bodies to hide their crime isn't cool, either: it's going to drive Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

With the Joker we foisted on them (Karzai), what other choice do they have? We prevented them from naming a stable head of state (their former King), which was the Afghans' first choice in the loya jirga, the one in which they finally were persuaded/pressured (by our Ambassador) to pick Karzai, instead.

Yet, it seems clear, from sources like the Wikileaks video of a helicopter gunner, and this report of the bus killing (four or five dead and 30 wounded?) that American soldiers may be there to win hearts and minds, or to "clear, hold and build," but what they seem to be trained to do best is to kill lots of people--very quickly.

Don't get me wrong: American servicemen and women aren't evil. Most of them probably think and hope they're doing good. And many try hard. But the military-industrial-security complex is evil; it drives people to do evil, whether they know it or not.

When I was stationed in Turkey (1962-3), I worked and bunked with fellow Traffic Analysts, and drank with them, too, occasionally. I liked them, and they all meant well. But the common opinion they held of the local Turks was appalling: dirty "abies," who will always cheat you, or kill you if you so much as look at their women.

I doubt that American soldiers in Afghanistan are as well disposed towards the locals as my friends were. After all, none of the Turks were trying to kill us.

We don't belong there; we end up killing civilians--and being killed. Afghanistan could bury the American Empire as it buried the Soviets in the 1980's; it could weaken us as decisively as Goths debilitated Romans when they beat Emperor Galen at Adrianople in 378, beginning Rome's slide into oblivion.

Apr 9, 2010, US Empire, Inc.

My previous blog dealt with a video released by Wikileaks. The importance of a service like wikileaks has been underscored by the denials of Pentagon and pro-defense bloggers about the meaning of the Iraq helicopter video. Wikileaks' crucial role has also been demonstrated by the recent Appeals Court decision that the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce net neutrality.

Comcast, AT&T and Verizon all claim that net neutrality will not fairly recompense them for their services, that they need to be able to charge more for high band-width users, in order to adequately invest in continued improvements in the Internet.

Gee, 80% profits (for Comcast) aren't enough?

What really is at issue is: who controls the Internet. The FCC has been like the cop in the patrol car; nobody controls where you go, but you have to abide by the speed limits. In the case of the Internet, the FCC was attempting to insure that everyone had equal access.

The companies want control. Their spokespeople claim they wouldn't charge more except for high-bandwidth users, but if there is no cop on the beat, why wouldn't they charge more? After all, a corporation's officers are legally required to maximize profit.

So, if there is premium access, then those not paying the higher fees will end up getting lower quality (lower cost) services, or they could be blocked unless they pay more.

Providers could also block users if their content promotes ideas or policies that could threaten their bottom line. This brings us back to Wikileaks: the Iraq video would not be in the interest of any corporation which makes profits from our war efforts, since it has profoundly anti-war implications. With no cop on the beat, it could have been blocked.

The same might be said for certain candidates: anti-corporate positions could therefore become even more difficult to bring to public attention. Not only would they be handicapped by receiving no corporate money now that corporations can spend unlimited money directly on elections, but in addition, the carriers could block meaningful access to a campaign.

There are two ways out: one is for the FCC to find another way to regulate the Internet to insure net neutrality: it's exploring its options. The other is to pass net neutrality laws in Congress, but the opposition of the large cable providers meshes with anti-regulatory zeal, largely Republican, though other corporations, like Google and Yahoo might encourage pro-regulation Congress-people if they push back.

The Appeals Court decision is like the second of a one-two punch, the first being the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have free speech rights as "corporate persons."

This looks like a silent corporate coup. Forget about Democrats and Republicans: corporations are gaining control--unless we stop them. Goodbye democracy, goodbye the United States. Hello US Empire, Inc. Is Augustus waiting in the wings? Is her name Sarah Palin?

Apr 7, 2010, Just Looking for Targets in Baghdad

The helicopter gunner was "looking for targets." What he saw was 8 men gathering on the ground, so they became targets. He justified shooting because two of them were carrying something. He decided they had weapons, although in fact they were carrying cameras. Almost all the men were killed in one burst of his machine gun. One struggled to rise on an elbow, the gunner watched. A van came to "gather the bodies," so he shot up the van.

The man in the van had come to rescue the injured, and had two children with him on the way to a tutor. The man he tried to rescue, the photojournalist's assistant, was killed; the children were seriously injured.

There is only one reason why this video was shown on the Internet: Wikileaks leaked it. The photojournalists were a two-man Reuters team, both killed, the photographer's body actually run over by an investigating US Bradley vehicle, his assistant killed when the helicopter returned to shoot up the van; the gunner chuckled when he saw the Bradley run over the body!

Reuters had tried to find out what had happened to their photojournalists and had filed an FOIA for the video; the military claimed there had been a firefight and the helicopter gunner had followed the "rules of engagement." You could see there was no fight; the men were relaxed, paying no attention to the helicopter overhead. This was casual murder, carried out as just another daily patrol, "looking for targets."

The Military refused to release the video. Now we can see why. From the video, we can see, vividly, that the military are out of control and can go on murder sprees with impunity. Reuters had "followed procedures" in trying to find out what had happened to their team; the military stonewalled and insisted on a lie. Only an illegal leak, "conveyed" to Wikileaks, revealed what really happened.

This is how Americans really fought the war in Baghdad (the video was shot in 2007), and probably how they are fighting it in Afghanistan now. Why would any Iraqi, or Afghan, want American military in their country if this is how they operate? This was, after all, simply a daily patrol "looking for targets."

Helicopters fly over me daily. If people here were shot like this, I'd get a cannon and start shooting at them the minute I saw them!

It's likely that the stories told Congress, and even the President, but certainly the media, are similar distortions and lies. The military aren't fighting for freedom; they're terrorizing the people they were sent to "liberate."

This is proof, if proof were needed, that the American military sow terror. We need to stop the terrorists--our troops. They need to come home.

Dismantle the Empire!

Apr 5, 2010, Drone War Explodes Afghan War Rationale

The drone war in Pakistan appears successful, in the sense that it has the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda on the run in North and South Waziristan. They've had to jettison ATV's for travel on public buses in ones and twos, they can't have large training exercises; AQ operatives have dug themselves into mountainsides, and "camps" are no longer available: Taliban, etc. have to find shelter in local people's homes, often using coercion--not a good position for an insurgency. Their tribal hosts are only being pragmatic: hosting foreigners, especially (the Arabs), could risk their families to drone attacks. Even sleeping in pine forests is no longer safe: drones patrol in pairs 24/7.

Now, note this: officially, Pakistan has not approved of American drones commanding their skies, but they're tolerated. While the drones do take off from Pakistani airfields, they are controlled remotely from places like a base near Denver, Colorado.

When all else is going badly in Afghanistan, what is the ultimate rationale for staying there: to prevent the Taliban from returning and setting up an al Qaeda haven with training camps.

Even though parts of the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain allied with al Qaeda, is it realistic to assume that they would allow Qaeda training camps in a "new" Taliban Afghanistan (i.e. if the worst came to fruition and the Taliban regained dominance in its government)?

First of all, the strongest Taliban faction has taken the nationalist position of denouncing all foreign influence; they pointedly included al Qaeda. In addition, however, all the insurgents are experiencing the reality that there are no refuges in this age of drone warfare.

Would a newly resurgent Taliban be so stupid as to admit al Qaeda camps on its sovereign soil, either openly or covertly, after such an experience? With the aerial surveillance the US has now, there would be no hiding place. The US would be able to intensify its drone attacks on any Afghan camps, since Afghanistan has no air force to speak of, and would be unlikely to afford one. American drones could continue to use Pakistani airfields, or airfields in other nearby "allied" countries.

The point is: the very success of the drone war demonstrates that we could easily destroy any large-scale terror establishments. So, where is the rationale to continue fighting in Afghanistan? Even President Karzai, whom we have supported with billions of dollars and 100,000 troops, has denounced the troops and has often said that the US is in Afghanistan to control it.

We could prove him wrong and withdraw, but threaten drones to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a "terrorist haven."

We won't because of the money our war-makers, civilian and military continue to reap from imperial war. Ultimately, imperial wars like Afghanistan won't maintain the empire: they will bankrupt it.

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Mar 31, 2010, Afghan President's Brother

"If they let Ahmed Wali (Karzai) stay in power, it means they are not serious about governance," said a diplomat in Kabul. [New York Times: 3/31/10]

The Afghan President's brother reportedly controls almost everything in Kandahar, the southern Afghan province that the US is poised to "clear and hold" with a large influx of troops: US, NATO and Afghan.

Ahmed Wali is the most important businessman in the area, and he has used his connection to the President well. He seizes land the Americans want to use--so they have to lease it from him; he controls armed groups that patrol the city; he pays off the Taliban to protect his lands and shipments. While the Taliban controls behind the scenes, Ahmed Wali insures that his businesses flourish. He stole the election in Kandahar for his brother. He even, reportedly, launders drug money for the Taliban, as well as for himself.

The greatest reason for the Afghan government's inability to combat the Taliban is that Afghans perceive it as irretrievably corrupt, reportedly one of the most corrupt governments in the world.

Ahmed Wali is Exhibit A.

As American troops assemble to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar, many independent advisors, from NGO's to NATO, probably including US diplomats, have urged that Ahmed Wali must go--if the US is serious about "holding," i.e. bringing in an Afghan government that wins the loyalty of the people.

But Ahmed Wali is the President's brother. He also, reportedly, has been useful to the CIA. He's one of those manipulators of power, who are able to land on their feet, regardless of who holds the whip. Ahmed Wali is going to stay.

Earlier, after the assault on Marjah, in Helmand province, McClatchy reported that the "returning" Afghan government (the governor had hardly ever set foot in Marjah) was universally despised and distrusted as corrupt.

So, this is a pattern. The US is not "serious about governance."

What does this say about the vaunted "counter-insurgency" strategy, which supposedly aims to put effective government in place to counter the insurgency, to attract Afghans' loyalty?

Despite Obama's hurried, secret visit to Karzai, when he reportedly lectured Karzai on getting rid of corruption, that's not going to happen.

The US can win all the battles--while accidentally killing more civilians--but this is no way to beat an insurgency. All we are doing is spending lives (Afghan and American) and money ($1 million per soldier/marine per year), boosting the earnings of defense contractors and making some parts of Afghanistan safe--for Chinese investment--temporarily.

The US lost Vietnam, despite winning all the battles, because its client government was hopeless: the Vietminh/Vietcong offered a better alternative.

Karzai thumbs his nose at the US, even inviting Iran's Ahmadinejad to dinner to spite us.

Afghanistan is "déjà-vue all over again." The only question is: when will the empire collapse?

Mar 29, 2010, Man the Gambler

Some of the most densely populated places on earth are either close to, or even below sea-level, and the seas are rising.

Many people cluster in places they know are high risk: of earthquake, flood, or volcanic eruption. These places happen to be some of the most fertile in the world, like the Nile Delta, and the Tigris and Euphrates in the ancient world, places like Java and the deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh, or of the Mississippi delta in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Why do they have high populations? They are highly fertile, the basis for Empires like Egypt and Sumer. Adaptable humans are gamblers. Every farmer or peasant bets their crops will flourish; they don't always. A Javanese farmer can expect bumper crops because of benign climate and rich soil, but he might be ruined by a volcanic eruption. So, he cultivates crops, right up the slope of Mount Lurus, or any of the 33 other volcanoes on the island, and if it erupts, he could be wiped out. If not, for this season, he's golden.

Women are probably less gamblers than enablers. Their first priority is to protect their children by ensuring that a man supports them. If he insists that their land on the volcano is the best, they aren't going to demand that the family move--until it's too late.

Romans took another kind of gamble, when forests were cut down for Roman baths with the bet that nothing would change: as I describe on my Ephesus page, everything did: Ephesus, Rome's Asian capital before Constantinople, has been a ruin for two thousand years.

Which leads us to dangerous climate change (a label preferable to 'global warming'): aren't the deniers, like EXXON, Senator Inhofe and Rush, gambling with all our lives? They're gambling that dangerous climate change isn't going to happen, even though all the know-it-alls say it is. Everyone who denies climate change, or our part in it, is gambling that it just ain't so.

What happens to people who lose their gamble?

In places like Java or Bangladesh, farms, even farmers get burned out or washed away. Some who gambled don't survive .

In the case of dangerous climate change, we may all lose, eventually. However, the people who suffer first, are those least at fault, in poor, under-developed countries. Therefore, high stakes gamblers can keep on gambling, denying and "winning" through short-term "investments." Yet, even the winners lose if warming is unchecked, if we pass tipping points like the arctic tundra melting to release huge methane deposits.

Can't we gamble that preventative measures could work; instead of gambling that they aren't needed?

Mar 26, 2010, Throw Bricks

Throw bricks through their windows! Get rid of them!

Violence as a political tool is used in third world, or so-called developing countries; hatred, as well, as events like the Ruanda genocide demonstrate. Both were also used in "developed" states: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the USSR.

But in democracies, politics is supposed to be more civilized. Representatives are supposed to represent our interests. Politics is supposed to be rational, debate is supposed to be about policy. It's also, inevitably, about emotion, but it's supposed to be kept civil enough that you don't have riots and revolutions.

When "mainstream" political parties condone violent action, the march towards totalitarianism has quickened. If Republicans condone violence and egg on extremist rhetoric, they are preparing the way for autocracy.

The violence is incited--has been for years--by right-wing talk radio, by the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, and violent language has escalated since Obama's election.

So have extremist right wing groups; their numbers have proliferated by almost a third since 2008. But extremist groups don't expect to gain control of the nation through elections: Republicans hope to.

Note: many "tea partiers" reject the GOP almost as bitterly as they oppose Democrats; a Third Party movement is gestating.

Republicans seem to reject rational discourse, however. The health care legislation is similar to Romney-care in Massachusetts and a Heritage Foundation-Republican-backed proposal; it has no public insurer (the poorly labeled "public option," which sounded too much like "public bathroom"). Yet, Republican Senators and Congressmen rant about a "government takeover"--except for those who rail against "socialism." Since the bill creates a (subsidized) market of 31 million new customers for private insurance companies, it's the Republican kind of socialism--for corporations, which is what they extended throughout government during W's reign; they call it "privatization."

Since the legislation isn't theirs, it's okay for Republicans to encourage others to threaten their opponents with hate mail, death threats, insults, racial or sexual slurs--but if someone actually shoots a Congressman, or Senator, or the President, then Republicans will be like the boy who taunts a bully into pummeling someone, and then whines, "it's not my fault!"

The violent turn in right-wing politics ought to stiffen spines. When anti-choice Congressman Stupak receives death threats for voting for health care, others should realize: they'll need the courage of their convictions, or they should quit politics.

If spines collapse, instead, I wouldn't hold much hope for even a civil plutocracy, let alone democracy: the US could become a failed state.

The political parallel to Rome here is the fall of the Republic, replaced by Emperor Augustus. But don't expect American hegemony to last 500 years: we can't afford it.

Mar 24, 2010, Big (Good) USA?

Americans assume we're doing good abroad. After all, the US is the only country that aided its defeated enemies and prostrate allies (after WWII) to return them to prosperity and democracy.

Since Vietnam, or, arguably, Korea, the American record has been mixed, but that hasn't altered the predominant American mythology: Americans go abroad to do good.

We're in Afghanistan to wrest it--for the Afghans--from Islamic extremist fanatics. We went into Iraq to save it from the tyrannous dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and to bring Iraq democratic politics--although, of course in both cases, we were also defending America from the threat they posed to us: two small countries halfway around the world, separated from us by seas and oceans, as well as other lands.

Hah! What about oil and oil pipelines?

Romans had a similar ideology. Romans believed they were doing good in the world. In Italy, they were unifying the peninsula; in Greece, they were bringing peace and order; in Asia and Europe, they were bringing order and law, and ultimately, civilization and Christianity.

Both Rome and America would boast the old Quaker saying about its most prosperous citizens: "They did well by doing good."

Romans--of the better sort--believed this. They believed it, even though they were wealthy beyond their contemporaries imagining (and right up there with our contemporaries). They became wealthy by grabbing lands Romans had conquered, and accumulating hundreds, even thousands of slaves, captured in Roman wars of conquest. The Senators of the western empire, in its decline, owned huge estates from Egypt to northern Gaul. Some of them had estates along the whole range: they could supply themselves with northern crops and tropical fruits simultaneously.

Now we have billionaires. While not all of them are American (the wealthiest is Mexican), it is the American system of war, and corporate monopoly, which makes them possible.

What most Americans don't realize is that our wars make a few very rich, but they impoverish the many. The Bush family made their fortune in wars going back to WWI. The Obamas didn't, but there are probably a lot of people in Obama's administration, and more of those advising him about "National Defense," who have become wealthy from war.

Furthermore, while the National Security Industrial complex makes a few very rich, it depends on high unemployment and low wages to recruit "the troops." Conveniently, defense contracts generate less than half the jobs civilian government contracts create for the same money, which means, in a finite budget: war dis-employs millions.

Wars also enable a few--our global elite--to rip off large parts of the rest of the world. That's how empires work.

Big bad America is a (declining) Empire.

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Mar 22, 2010, Words Have Power

"How's that hopey changey thing working out for ya?" asked Sarah Palin.

Hope and Change were two of Obama's most important slogans, but they lacked substance. While "health care reform" or "health insurance reform" are more substantive, they don't lend themselves to sloganeering.

Democrats have a problem, including Obama, conveying their agenda in non-wonkish terms. It would have been so much more easily sold, and understood, if Democrats had campaigned for Medicare for All, rather than health insurance reform. If Medicare for All was too radical for Congressional Democrats (according to polls, it isn't for most people), they should at least have tried to come up with something less opaque and colorless than "Health Insurance Reform."

"Global warming," was easily ridiculed when Washington DC was blanketed in feet of snow (an effect of global warming). I propose a better tag: Bad Climate Change. Cap and Trade? Forgeddaboutit. How about: Stop Bad Climate Change? The tag would make it obvious: we have to do whatever we can to avert as much of the bad effects as possible.

What does 'bad' climate change do, that climate change does not? It adds a value charge, which is what Democrats, and Progressives more generally, have been so bad at conveying: there are values here that we all share. Unless we are awaiting the end of the world, aka the Rapture, we want to continue to live on this bountiful planet.

Another example: when Obama came into office, people were looking for him to proclaim something like The New New Deal. What did we get instead: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the stimulus! It could have been Rebuilding a Better America Act, or even A New Way Forward.

When it comes to the finance industry: everybody outside it loves to hate it, and with good reason. A bill to stop bad practices, to discourage risky behavior and to prevent bankers from ripping off everyone else, is what we need. It could be called Making Bankers Honest Act, which could be wildly popular, despite all the bank money ranged against it. Instead, we have Financial Regulatory Reform. Bank money will be flung against it anyway, but it will be a lot harder to rally troops to counteract those millions of dollars.

Screw bipartisanship! If Obama is going to push through real change, he'll have to do what he did with health care. Politically it would work better if he could package it to sell, like Stop Bad Climate Change. Otherwise:

The best lack all convictionAnd the worst are filled with passionate intensity--

Just listen to John Boehner on health care!

Mar 16, 2010, 1600 Homes on Palestinian Land

"This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth

Biden was responding to the announcement, made while he was meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, that 1600 new homes would be built in Greater Jerusalem, on land previously claimed by Palestinians. Was 1600 chosen as an echo of the White House's address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

The announcement seemed pointed, but whether it was or not, the problem is the same: the US must de-link itself from Israel's occupation, if it is to be a credible force in the Middle East.

There has been a call to boycott all companies and products associated with the occupation. These should include: Sabra Hummus, but also Motorola, ITT, Terex, Caterpillar, GE, Roadstone Cement, United Technologies and Oshkosh trucks, because of their active role through lucrative contracts, in support of the Israeli occupation. That is something individual Americans can do.

The US administration should go a lot further: it should threaten to withhold military aid, which goes a long way towards supporting the Israel Defense Force, and economic aid, as well. We shouldn't be picky: not just aid that enables the West Bank Settlements, but all aid.

Are the Israelis thumbing their noses at Biden/Obama because they think Democrats are vulnerable? Democrats could lose crucial Jewish support in the upcoming elections, but if Obama put it in terms of Israeli policy "endangering our troops," a muscular policy might actually gain more votes than it would lose. "He's finally showing some balls!" people would say.

What is crucial to understand, however, is that the right-wing Israeli government is not interested in negotiating with Palestinians. Netanyahu wants to establish "facts on the ground" that can't be reversed, that make a two state solution impossible.

Frankly, I don't think it's possible now, because of all the encroachments, settlements and segregated roads. But that means that Palestinians must be integrated into greater Israel. They cannot forever be treated the way blacks were treated in Apartheid South Africa. They have to have rights, votes, and freedom of movement. They must have access to whatever Israelis do, especially opportunities to flourish. Since Israeli right-wing governments have made a two-state solution impossible, Israel will have to live with the consequences, which may, someday soon, mean an Arab majority in Greater Israel.

To continue supporting Israel in its oppressive Palestinian policy justifies al Qaeda in its terror attacks, the Taliban in its nationalism, even Ahmadinejad in his pursuit of regional hegemony.

If the US is to have any influence in the Middle East, it has to assert its interests now. If that's too hard, then we should get out of the empire business.

Mar 16, 2010, China and the US Dollar

China has a lot of them, more all the time; they keep rolling up surpluses, while we roll up deficits. Even in the Great Recession, China is raking in money, although there have been some US trade improvements: we are buying less, due to the recession.

China has a lot of advantages for trade: a hard-working, low-paid, workforce that rarely dares disrupt business with strikes or labor protests. Chinese labor is highly skilled, especially considering how recently China became an industrial power. And China's sheer numbers gives it a tremendous advantage.

But China has a heavy thumb on the scales--almost literally. The renminbi or yuan, the Chinese official currency, has been artificially undervalued for decades. The money measurement of Chinese export prices is skewed downward by that thumb. Chinese goods cost less than they should, because of currency manipulation, giving China a 20-40% competitive advantage over American goods--or German, or French--in our own markets.

The effect of this undervaluation doesn't stop with the huge US trade deficit. It has global repercussions. China is sucking up more and more money from all over the world, not just the US. When China insists on undervaluing its currency, it destabilizes the whole world economy. It's possible that the unbalanced trade/currency relations between China and the US, provided conditions for the 2008 financial collapse.

There is also the global effect of all that money going to a country that spends too little. Chinese savings rates are now an unbelievable 55%. So, money is withdrawn from the international economy and put into US Treasury bills. China doesn't buy imports with its money; it buys resources, mines, oil fields, real estate. It also induces corporations to build factories in China, because that's the only effective way for non-Chinese to crack the China market.

Now, China is facing inflationary pressure, despite a managed economy, while the rest of the world is flirting with deflation; recovery is held back by this huge trade imbalance.

Nobel Economist Krugman advocates a 25% surcharge on Chinese imports as a temporary measure to force China to revalue. He points out: we have China over a barrel. The Fed could minimize the impact if China sold large amounts of its dollar holdings in protest; the dollar would fall (not collapse), which would make the US more competitive. A declining dollar would also devalue China's remaining dollar assets.

Only Obama could do this. It would be an appropriate assertion of American power, and it could help the whole global economy.

I can hear the screams now! What, devaluing the mighty greenback?

Devaluation would be a powerful development and jobs policy, not a loss of prestige. It's way overdue.

Devaluation would also increase pressure to wind up our costly empire: it would cost more. I don't think that would be a bad thing.

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Mar 12, 2010, Taxes, A Republican Alternative?

Taxes: when all is said and done, it boils down to who pays and who benefits.

Look at the Bush tax cuts; they cut taxes primarily for the top income earners, and caused the largest budget deficits ever recorded--until the Great Recession, as it's now called.

What did we get for those tax cuts? Unbridled speculation, or increasing debt? Both, actually.

Because of Rubin-Clinton-Greenspan, the banks were unleashed. Because of the tax cuts to the wealthy, there were piles of loose capital available for speculation. Because of the previous 30 years of deregulation, union-busting, tax flattening and shredding safety nets, those without loose capital were so hard-pressed to maintain the "American Lifestyle" that they went into debt. And then some of the speculators had a bright idea: speculate with all that extra debt: bundle it, slice it and resell it (the "derivatives" that nearly brought down the western world--they may still).

Obama's budget-tax policy trims around the edges: allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse for those with high incomes, cutting middle class taxes just a bit and adding some modest progressive credits.

What does a "conservative" Republican have to offer? Congressman Ryan of Wisconsin has offered a Republican alternative tax plan. It has been called radical, and it is; it's definitely not conservative. It would start with making the Bush tax cuts permanent, but would go much further. It would abolish the estate tax and the corporate income tax, privatize Medicare and Medicaid (replacing them with vouchers), reduce and partially privatize Social Security, eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends, and eliminate the income exclusion of employer-provided health insurance--to force health insurance into the "free" market.

To make up (some) of the difference, Congressman Ryan would add an 8.5% "Business Consumption" tax: a value-added, or sales tax.

The effects would be radical. "It’s difficult to design a tax plan that will lose $2 trillion over a decade even while requiring 90% of taxpayers to pay more," said the analysts of Citizens for Tax Justice about this plan. It does this by shifting much taxation to the sales tax, while eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit and other poverty reduction credits. Since poor people spend more than their income on consumption, they will be taxed more than 8.5% of their income. In fact, only those earning more than $127,384 would pay less in taxes. Those earning more than $480,700 (the top 1%) would save 15% on their taxes, or $211,314. Those earning $20,053-33,117 would pay $2,032 more (7.7%) and the lowest income group would pay $1,605 more (12.3%).

Just what we need! It's the selfish class raising its head again, and the effects could be even more disastrous than they were between 2000 and 2008: debt, excess capital, declining consumption, rising inequality and speculation.

Give the Republicans power and they'll make the Senators of the Late Roman Empire look like pikers!

Mar 10, 2010, The Filibuster as Empire Buster

Progressive Democratic Senators Bennet, Harkin and others are promoting a bill to reform the filibuster.

However, important Democrats, like Dianne Feinstein, are against it, and the Republicans are obviously against it: they control the Senate's business with 41% of the votes. That's a pretty good trick, when you think about it.

Republicans have used more filibusters in Congress since 2006, than have ever been used before; they're using them to block virtually all legislation, except Defense bills, rendering elections meaningless and government ungovernable.

So, it's easy to understand why no Republican Senators will vote for filibuster reform. But why won't Democrats like Senator Feinstein and fellow caucus member Senator Lieberman vote for reform or abolition. Lieberman did once endorse getting rid of the filibuster, but that was years ago--before he became a pivotal vote. That should be a clue right there.

There is a reason why even a reform of the filibuster (let alone it's abolition) is unlikely.

Senators are there for the power; that's what makes them tick. With the filibuster, all of them, every single one, has much more power than they would with simple majority rule and no power to block.

With the filibuster, Ben Nelson can hold up the nation for his state alone, and so can Lieberman, and so can Jim Bunning. Each, then, gains enormous power--negative--but useful to gain things like the Medicaid in Nebraska deal.

So, why would any power-mad Senator want to give that up?

That's the point: power. And each Senator thinks that if he retains that power for himself, he'll be better placed for re-election, regardless of what happens to the government or his party. Think of all the things he can do for his state, which could insure his re-election (he/she hopes), if he retains that power.

Instead of being a faceless member of the majority, Ben Nelson wheels and deals for his state. Instead of being a retiring and faceless member of the minority, Jim Bunning becomes a national byword.

Maybe not all Senators are motivated solely by power. Maybe some genuinely believe they are doing good for their state and The People, but at the same time, their egos are being massaged, and probably their bank accounts, too.

Also, it may be true that the filibuster could be eliminated by a majority vote (50, plus Biden), but the Senate, as an institution, is very conservative. Also, the abolition of the filibuster might be met by more Republican obstruction: they could refuse to agree to a legislative calendar, thereby blocking all business.

Democrats threatened that in 2005, when Republicans proposed abolishing the filibuster with the "nuclear option." Still, it's too bad the Republicans didn't go through with it.

The Roman Senate led to the downfall of Rome, literally. If the US Senate cannot reform, or legislate, it could be instrumental in the downfall of the American empire, as well.

A State that does not govern, does not survive.

Mar 8, 2010, What If Nothing Works?

What if the Democrats pass healthcare reform and we find that the back room deals have made it meaningless?

What if Iraq explodes into renewed civil war, and the US stands powerless to stop it? Our guy Maliki was the one who signed on to banning Sunni and secular candidates.

What if Iran announces it will build a bomb, and enough companies and countries are willing to buck or veto sanctions that Iran can't be stopped?

What if Obama and Democrats are unable to re-stimulate job growth, and we are stuck at near 10% unemployment?

What if the Republicans are unwilling to cooperate, and unwilling to lead if and when they regain power in Congress?

What if Afghanistan after Marjah is simply more of the same: a corrupt government takes over in daylight, and the Taliban comes back in at night?

Does President Obama lie awake wondering what to do about all these problems?

Last night, as I imitated Harry Reid, it occurred to me: why did Democrats elect such a wimp as their Senate leader? With his soft-high voice, who would ever listen to him; who would ever change their vote hearing his limp-wristed entreaties?

I yearn for a Senate leader like LBJ. He could twist arms, make deals, and carry out a Democratic agenda even in the face of a (moderate) Republican President. And then ram through civil rights legislation and Medicare when he was President.

Unfortunately, Harry Reid symbolizes Congressional Democrats, so it's no wonder that Congress is held in contempt by huge majorities of Americans. On the one side: timorous Democrats, afraid even to vote for what they believe in--think of Harry's soft high voice. On the other: Republicans who refuse to compromise and insist on playing victim to the big bad Democrats: think of John Boehner, whose voice is made for accusation and flippant denial.

Polarization is worse now than it was when Obama first started to campaign against it. The US Congress will drive the US into "failed state" status, unless it mends its ways, unless party discipline overcomes petty ambition and un-petty corruption.

Ironically, the peace president faces bipartisan support only on the wars. So long as Obama plays the generals' game, he'll get enough Republican votes to offset liberal, anti-war Democrats. No wonder he resists calls by Kucinich and Feingold to buck this rare consensus by adopting time-certain withdrawal plans for Afghanistan!

The US as failed state, except as bully-boy for global corporations. That is what it looks like--and the emerging nations will take over, like the Barbarians. They'll do business with whomever, ignoring global warming--they didn't cause it--until we--and they--are burned to a cinder.

It doesn't have to be this way. All that's needed is a little courage to act like commonsense human beings facing perennial disasters, instead of grasping idiots

Feb 27, 2010, Predator Banksters

There has been outsized brouhaha about Goldman's and other bankster bonuses--made possible by Fed and bailout (taxpayer) money. There has also been some attention paid to the kind of "investments" that have bloated Goldman and JP Morgan profits: huge bets using the Fed's free money.

Now, it turns out that those same kinds of bets are behind a lot of the continuing instability in international financial markets. Greece is an especially egregious example.

It is likely that the Greek government has been feckless, and its public employee unions have been unreasonable. It is also true that Greece is in the exact same position as California, New York, and many other American states: it can't create its own money, so it can't do what the US Federal government can do: issue money to cover shortfalls (and more). Its currency, the Euro, is controlled by the limited government in Brussels, itself steered economically by its two largest players: Germany and France. Both major countries are understandably reluctant to follow even easier money policy than they already have: in Germany's case, its Mark meltdown in the 1920's and '30's makes it doubly wary.

However, there is something else going on, and it has to do with the banks, or rather the banksters. An article from the New York Times, 2/25/10 pinpoints the problem: Credit Default Swaps (CDS).

"As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again."

That is, CDS's raise interest rates that Greece (and Portugal, Spain, Ireland, etc.) will have to pay to fund their obligations. That will make their budget-balancing task harder, and the misery of the ordinary man/woman in the street that much greater: governments will have to lay off millions in order to pay off their debts, and will have to curtail the public services that have raised their nations' standards of living.

But Wall Street doesn't mind. Why? Because, its traders can make huge profits on the backs of Greek (and other nations') misery.

Wall Street did the same thing to Lehman and to AIG, and its traders are probably sharpening their knives for Portugal, Spain and so on.

This is only one more reason why financial regulation is imperative: banks will only return to the civilized world, and abandon their rapacity, when deposits and Fed/FDIC guarantees are stripped from their speculative arms, when the wall between depository and speculative institutions set up by Glass-Steagall is re-established and when CDS's (and other "exotic" financial instruments) are regulated.

If the banksters succeed in defeating reform, they will eventually succeed in bringing down the whole financial system, something they almost succeeded in doing in 2007-8.

And then?

Feb 17, 2010, Cut The Deficit?

An overwhelming majority of small businessmen polled in northern New York, said that their greatest concern was the government's growing deficit. They said the government needed to cut expenditures, not increase them. It should also (somehow, not specified) encourage business. Analogies were drawn between a household and the government; one couldn't live beyond one's means as a family; nor could government, they insisted.

It's as if Keynes never existed!

A healthy portion of the deficit is from automatic stabilizers, like payouts for unemployment; the more unemployed, the more payments. Two benefits flow from this: people are not thrown into utter misery, and they still buy things, thereby sustaining some demand for goods and services. Without unemployment insurance, food stamps and other support payments, the Great Recession could easily have become the Second Great Depression.

How do you stimulate business when there is too little demand in the economy for whatever reason--in this case because of financial collapse? Do you cut government expenditures?

How, logically, would this help? If consumers aren't buying and businesses aren't selling--or buying materials, etc., how does cutting government expenditures solve this problem? Doesn't it make more sense that if government bought things (highway paving, bridge materials, labor), it might stimulate business, even if it meant a short-term increase in the government deficit?

Governments are not households; that's a false analogy. Households can't create money, or destroy it; governments can and do. Furthermore, if one household saves money, it is being thrifty, but if everyone saves money, if nobody spends, everyone becomes poorer. This is called 'the paradox of thrift.' It's what happened in Japan for the Lost (two) Decade(s): savings rates were too high. Business floundered.

It could happen in the US, and will, if there is no further stimulus and real jobs bill, or, if the only growth in the national budget is for "Defense." Defense spending is a poor stimulus. Not only does it use large amounts of capital for each job, it spends much of it abroad--"stimulating" Okinawa, for example, or Afghanistan. Also, it doesn't make the nation more productive, except at killing.

And yet, no politician would dare suggest cuts to "defense," the largest discretionary item in the budget.

Obama pretends he's listening: he's cutting discretionary spending in about 1/8 of government--for 2011--and yet he knows that what the nation needs is more stimulus. The government should spend more, not less, until we're in a solid recovery and unemployment is steadily receding. If there were no more stimulus to promote business, or prevent state and local government lay offs, then demand would fall and we'd be right back where we started: it's called a "double-dip" recession. That happened in 1937, and in the Third Century.

In Rome, that double-dip went on for hundreds of years.

Feb 16, 2010, The Marjah Model

The Afghan offensive, despite attempts to safeguard civilians, is still an offensive in what we have proclaimed to be a war. In wars, lots of people get hurt, or worse. No matter how 'careful' or not an invader may try to be, he is still an invader. He is still causing local people to be killed, even if they're blown to bits by a mine their own people set.

Obama's Afghan war might end well, but only if Obama uses a temporary success (if there is one) to begin negotiating with the Taliban leadership. The Afghan government has already indicated that there is a way to do this (by calling a loya jirga to which the Taliban are invited). The Karzai government has promoted the idea of negotiations; NATO allies are receptive. There have been "feelers," and "signals" that even Mullah Omar is willing to talk. The Pakistanis have also offered to mediate with the Haqqani network, as long as they're assured of continued (renewed?) influence in Afghanistan. And now the Pakistanis and the CIA captured the "number two" leader, who favors negotiation.

There is only one important player who is still too skeptical to embrace negotiations: the Obama administration, or the American military.

This is shortsighted, especially in political terms. If Obama wants to re-elect Democrats, and gain re-election, tangible movement towards getting out of Afghanistan would be a tremendous boost. Obama should engage in the necessary diplomacy to assure an honorable withdrawal (ignoring the screams from the crazy Right).

At the same time, he and Congress should direct huge resources to stimulating job growth (again, ignoring the idiots shouting "Socialism!"). He should also bring the banks to heel. Obama and the Democrats in Congress must present voters with tangible progress on the economic and military fronts. Then Republicans wouldn't have a case--they offer no real alternative. Saying 'No' to everything does not solve, or even respond to what most people perceive as huge problems--joblessness, unstable, untamed banks, two wars, climate change and manufactured fear.

Marjah models what Obama needs to do domestically: impose as little pain as necessary, but not shrink from the probability that some will oppose whatever he does. Bipartisanship is dead: Republicans won't compromise when obstruction wins them votes. Obama and Democrats, especially Senators, should press on, using the Reconciliation process when necessary. Obama needs to use recess appointments, too, to neutralize Senatorial "holds."

Obama must be flexible, tough and unequivocal. What are the chances from a "centrist," who specialized in "bringing people together?"

Either, a progressive, activist government begins to solve our problems, or we'll be faced with stalemate--Obama will be replaced by a reactionary like Sarah Palin--and the Empire will self-destruct a la 476.

Feb 11, 2010, Declare War: Win Election

Republicans and Tea Partiers are outraged that Khalid Sheik Mohammed would be tried in a civilian court. Saying he would be a danger, and we'd be "giving" him rights we had fought for is ludicrous.

The Bush administration prosecuted about 300 terrorists in civilian courts. Further, courts for over a generation have safeguarded whatever "secrets" the state may have used in order to gain conviction. In addition, the Supreme Court found the military commissions unconstitutional; their reconstitution has been difficult.

Those 300 terrorists were dealt with more harshly in the courts than the terrorists who went through military commissions, from which some were released to places like Yemen!

The tea party conspiracists, at the same time, seem to believe that the Obama administration is setting up machinery to make mass incarcerations of tea partiers. The same rumors went the rounds during Bush II--about concentration camps under construction for leftists--now the right has paranoia, instead, and is paranoid about Northcom, the US command set up in the US for domestic disasters--like hurricanes and earthquakes!

Health care reform, these same crazies say, is a conspiracy for a government takeover, even though Obama, Pelosi and Reid have cut smelly deals with almost, but not all, of the corporate participants in the health care industry (Pharma, the AMA, hospitals). I wish it were a government takeover; instead, it creates a new, subsidized market for health insurance companies!

The right-wing lunacy has a megaphone far outweighing any shouting on the left: corporate media are perfectly happy to help bring down an administration that is even slightly anti-corporate. That's why we've heard a lot more about Tea Party and Republican outrage than about the outrage on the left: on Afghanistan, Guantanamo, health care compromises, Obama's unwillingness to investigate past war crimes, his continued use of extraordinary "wartime" powers.

So, now we have the "41st" vote held by Brown, who closely aligns himself with the lunatics! Krugman in an op-ed in the NY Times, concluded, "We are doomed!"

If the party of No prevails in the 2010 elections, we will be; it offers no real solutions and is not interested in governing, only in posturing in order to win power. On the other hand, the Democrats still have no spine: Schumer caved on the KSM trial, for example.

Sarah Palin, in effect, recommends that Obama "declare war" on Iran, if he wants to win re-election--against her or other Republicans. Perhaps she's suggesting that Republicans use that threat as their campaign theme?

Given the GOP's lack of ideas, and unwillingness to deal with any real problem, this pronouncement of hers may prove prescient: look for it as the Republican meme in 2012.

Is this the Empire's death rattle? It sure looks like it: instability, ungovernability, overreach and bankruptcy.

Feb 9, 2010, Nuclear "Ambitions?" Iran?

I'm being treated with radiation (I have an early cancer), and the radiation comes from highly concentrated uranium (about 20%), used to create treatment isotopes.

You have heard of Iran's nuclear "ambitions:" it's been bruited all over the news since Ahmadinejad announced Iran would begin further enriching some uranium--to 19.7%. Iran is a member of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty), is inspected by the IAEA, and openly declared what it was doing.

The announcement does not remotely imply that Iran is determined to develop a bomb. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to above 95%; medical grade is enriched to 19.7%. To reach 95%, Iran would have to build huge complexes--visible from the air.

Radioactive isotopes are used to treat cancer. Iran buys isotopes from abroad, but why shouldn't it produce its own? Japan and South Korea do, Brazil does, Argentina did; none of these are nuclear powers. It's true that all the nuclear powers (including Israel) also produce radioactive isotopes with enriched uranium, but there is a faulty logic to the assumption that this latest action proves that Iran is bound and determined to produce the Bomb.

It does nothing of the kind: granted that all possessors of nuclear weapons produce radioactive isotopes, but not all producers of radioactive isotopes are nuclear powers.

What is telling, however, is that Clinton and Obama are using this non-issue to jab at Iran's leadership and make them sweat (through "targeted sanctions"). It is also telling that China doesn't want to go along with sanctions: she needs Iranian oil, but she also doesn't see Iran as a threat.

Who does? Israel for years has been trying to drum up support for bombing Iran's nuclear plants. The US, even under Bush, had to restrain her. It's the primary reason why Iran has begun to put its nuclear facilities underground.

Why does Ahmadinejad and his government appear so intransigent?

I would be too, if I were abiding by the rules, wanted to modernize my country and was told 'No, No' by the international community. No nation under IAEA's inspection regime has surreptitiously become a nuclear power. We'd know if Iran were really trying to produce nuclear bombs: it would kick out the inspectors first--before it tried.

The other reason for intransigence is that it plays well domestically in Iran: it's not about an effort to build nuclear bombs. Ahmadinejad is posing for his nationalist constituency.

Why does the US push for sanctions, then? Perhaps the most important reasons are: to restrain Israel (see, we're doing something!) and to appear tough back home: if you can scare people, they'll support you! They'll also support huge defense budgets: no one will talk about cutting those now.

Iran, a poor nation of 70 million, is threatening the American Colossus?

Get real.

Feb 8, 2010, Political Instability?

Nations painted "politically unstable," make investors wary; they hire ex-CIA for expert assessments. 'Developing' countries have faced this difficulty repeatedly.

The talk in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, was of political instability--in the US. The movers and shakers may be onto something, although it might better be termed political stalemate.

The United States faces huge economic problems, and those problems, now worldwide, spread from America. China is stimulating its economy and so are European nations. Governments are acting; their people are not stopping them.

In the US they are. First, Obama's stimulus was too small and poorly targeted, because of the compromises and deals he made to move it through Congress. So, unemployment is over 10%, instead of the 8% he promised. A logical response would be a second, better-targeted stimulus, but conservatives are screaming that even the first should be cancelled. If it were, unemployment would surge, probably past 12%, and we'd plunge into a renewed Depression.

Second, the deficit has escalated; Republicans and tea partiers say government spending must be cut--across the board--except (of course) for Defense. If it were, we'd be in for a "double-dip" recession, not a limp recovery.

Third, Obama's legislative initiatives (health care, financial reform, cap and trade), aimed at rectifying problems that led to this crisis, appear to be dead in the water.

Yet, Obama was elected by a respectable landslide a little over a year ago, and was wildly popular at his inauguration. Furthermore, he brought with him a huge majority to both houses of Congress.

Scott Brown's upset win in Massachusetts, "the bluest state," has blocked whatever momentum there was for Obama's reforms. In polls, generic Republicans beat Democrats easily--only one year after that landslide. So, Democratic legislators are afraid to act.

If Democrats do nothing, they will lose. What alternatives do Republicans offer? The extensively tried and failed "free market" and tax cut policies (for the rich) that drove the world into this hole.

And then there is the Tea Party movement. People in it blame both parties, but offer about the same Republican stale beer, except that the beer is laced with anti-bank, anti-government populism.

Meanwhile "progressive" Democrats rebel against Obama's compromises, withhold votes on the Senate healthcare bill and cap and trade, while other Democrats mutter about losing Wall Street campaign funding--if they pass financial reform. Exacerbating this, the Supremes just rewrote the political rules: corporations can now dominate even more.

If the Republican 'No' party gains Congressional control--then what? Will Obama compromise to return to reward-the-rich, laissez-faire policy? Or would he block it?

We'll face either stalemate, or the ruinous return to Selfish Class control. Only assertive reform will undo this downward spiral.

Feb 6, 2010, We Don't Want Yer (Foriegn) Money!

My wife, Elizabeth Cunningham, is trying to sell books ( The Passion of Mary Magdalen) and her CD ( MaevenSong ) across borders as well as nationally. But her local bank, Rhinebeck Savings, can't even handle a Canadian postal money-order in US dollars! Canada is only 5-hours drive from there.

We go to Canada often, both on business and to visit our daughter. Have you tried to change Canadian Dollars into US in this country? In Canada, you can change either way at the border, and in many banks; in the US, I found one gas station, where they took Canadian, because they had enough Canadian customers from 5 miles across the border. But no banks will change Canadian (Pound Sterling, Euros, whatever), unless you go to a major city, and often only if they have a foreign currency department.

Guess we don't want their money. We spend enough abroad; you'd think we'd welcome imports of foreign cash to pay for it: foreigners buying American, even if only $l2 dollars at a time.

Ever have trouble changing dollars abroad? I haven't, except 40 years ago in India, when I had to make a special arrangement between an American bank in Delhi and Bank of India in the small city where I was doing research. Back then, BoI still used huge leather ledgers to record each transaction; each had to be cosigned by the clerk, his manager, and the bank president--carried from one to the other by the bank "peon." It feels as if American banks haven't pro