Get Off This!

Face-to-Face with the NYPD

2011-12-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

Weekend Edition December 16-18, 2011

What They Look Like to a Guinean American

by IBRAHIM DIALLO

“It is far more important to hold accountable the enforcers of the law than the perpetrators because if you don’t, you will have a nation of warlords.
– Mahmood Mamdani.

New York’s Finest (also known as the NYPD) have come under a lot of scrutiny since activists from the Occupy Wall Street Movement took to the streets of New York City on September 17, 2011. From the pepper spraying videos on YouTube to the massive arrests, the brutality of the NYPD has shocked many. However, this only comes as a shock to those who never before had to deal with a police force inspired by a culture of brutality that encourages police officers to instill fear and contempt in those whom they are supposed to serve and protect. From the yellowcab driver, to the street vendor and from the high school students in working class neighborhoods to young men in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, this culture of unprofessionalism, fear and brutality is a daily occurrence. What Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly call the “best police force in the world,” whose mission is to “preserve the peace, reduce fear and provide for a safe environment,” has in fact been the greatest fear factor in many communities.

Under Commissioner Kelly, the policy of “Stop, Question and Frisk” was expanded – giving NYPD officers the authority to stop civilians, question and search them. Officers will then proceed to enter the names of those searched into a database, which they claim is “valuable in helping solve future crimes.” The reason for the stops, you might ask? “Because you fit a description,” as I was told following a search where the officers did not ask me a single question. I will give details of my encounter later.

The “Stop and Frisk” policy has systematically terrorized and humiliated young men of color, especially those living in working class neighborhoods in New York City, from Harlem to Brownsville. The NYPD continues on a daily basis to disrupt the lives of young men of color in this city through what has become an institutionalized approach stemming directly from a culture of brutality, take-no-prisoners and shoot-now-and-ask-questions-later attitude under the false presumption of “crime prevention.” One of the many successes of the Occupy Wall Street movement is in its exposure of this culture of brutality, disrespect and unprofessionalism of New York’s Finest to the general public. Indeed, over the last few months, the world has seen what has long since been the reality of many young men in New York City: the police officer acting with impunity, knowing that they’ll be protected as they brutally assault peaceful civilians.

In response to the media attention that these police altercations with peaceful protestors received, the NYPD aggressively mischaracterized these incidents with mere fabrications. When Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams was thrown to the ground, along with his aide, and handcuffed during the West Indian Day Parade, the NYPD immediately responded that “a crowd formed and an unknown individual punched a police captain on the scene,” suggesting that somehow the councilman had been part of that crowd. We witnessed the same level of denial on behalf of the police when Deputy Inspector Bologna, a repeat offender, indiscriminately pepper sprayed into a crowd of peaceful female protesters. The Department immediately rose to the officer’s defense, claiming rather forcefully that the office did nothing wrong and that the use of pepper spray was “appropriate.” The Deputy Inspector (the “white shirt”) was punished: a loss of ten vacation days.

In NYC, there are endless examples of police brutality. The NYPD has managed to create an environment of fear in many neighborhoods in New York City and they do so with impunity. Commissioner Kelly said that he wants to instill fear in young blacks and Hispanics. In a private meeting, the Commissioner told lawmakers, “the reason we stop and frisk and target the groups that we do is because we want all people who fit that group to feel that anytime they leave their house they can be searched by the police.” Walking down the street in my neighborhood today, I know that this is what I can expect. The nakedness and constant fear that one feels knowing that at any moment a group of police officers, whether in uniform or in plain clothes, can approach you, take your identification and pat you down, is overwhelming.

This reality was brought close to home for me four years ago when I came home for winter break during my first semester in college. I was walking to the subway from my apartment in Brooklyn, when I was approached by two undercover police officers. “Spread your legs and place your hands behind your head,” they shouted, running out of an unmarked police car. I was with my cousin at the time, who simply responded to the command as if it was second nature – this was not his first time. I, on the other hand, was home from my first semester in college and after having just completed a seminar entitled “Debating Human Rights,” I naively thought I should demand the reason for my search and debate with the officers. But before I could utter a word, the officers went ahead and patted both of us down and asked for our IDs. “Can I ask why we are being searched?” I asked. My request went ignored, as we were never given a reason for the search. Before we could even ask for their badge numbers, one of the officers handed me my ID and wished me a “happy birthday.” The experience left me distraught. After consulting with a friend, I decided the next day to call my local precinct to notify them of the incident and file a complaint. I was surprised when the operator informed me that the officers reported the search, claiming that the reason was because my cousin and I “fit a description.”

Human rights organizations, activists and lawmakers and other concerned citizens continue to work tirelessly to bring an end to the constant fear tactics many citizens are submitted to at the hands of the NYPD. They are demanding that some checks and balances be instituted in order to reel in the power of the police, and increase transparency in their interactions with citizens. Legal Aid and the NAACP pleaded with lawmakers to intervene during a City Council Hearing on September 27. Despite the efforts of the Council members, their requests have all been ignored. To be fair, my criticism of the NYPD is not directed at the poorly trained police officers caught up in a corrupt, arrogant and unethical system of criminal injustice.

There are indeed hardworking police officers struggling to just get by. These officers do not set the culture of the NYPD; rather their actions simply reproduce an offensive culture that is shaped from upstairs: a culture which supports, defends and encourages, a police officer to pepper spray, punch and beat peaceful protesters. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which officers can stop and search innocent civilians because they fit a “description,” meaning that they are Black or Latino. There is more to it than the individual actions of any one police officer raping a woman at gun point, or lodging dozens of bullets in the bodies of innocent New Yorkers such as Sean Bell and my fellow countryman Amadou Diallo. There are systemic abuses in the NYPD and it is no surprise to those who live it or have been paying attention.

Ibrahim Diallo is a Guinean-American living in New York City.

Bill Quigley: Time for US Revolution - Fifteen Reasons

2011-07-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

Bill Quigley: Time for US Revolution - Fifteen Reasons

It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached "a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies." It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.

Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?

Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions - nearly 8000 each day - higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.

At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.

Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.

At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.

Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.

There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.

The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.

At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.

The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world's police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?

In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world - much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined.

The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.

The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.

The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.

Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.

Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. "We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing oriented" society to a "person oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

It is time.

Save the Economy, Hike the Deficit!

2011-05-27T14:44:00.000-07:00

May 27 - 29, 2011
Careening Toward a Third Depression

By MIKE WHITNEY
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney05272011.html
How do you light a fire under Congress? How do you get these guys to do what they're paid to do?

We're 5 years into this slump, millions of people have lost their homes and jobs, 44 million people are on food stamps, the economy is in the tank, and congress won't lift a finger to help. What's that all about? You'd think that the revision in GDP and the uptick in unemployment claims would set off alarms on Capitol Hill. But it hasn't. They just shrug it off and move on. What do they care? They get their fat paycheck one way or another, so what difference does it make to them? Besides, if they play their cards right, they'll nab a 6-figure lobbying job as soon as they retire and spend the rest of their lives working on their chip-shot and swilling single-malt at the club with their moneybags friends. Doesn't that piss you off?

Congress just doesn't seem to "get it". They don't understand what people are going through; how maxed out they are. We're in the middle of a Depression and all they want to do is score points playing political circlejerk by stonewalling the debt ceiling or jacking-around with Medicare. Meanwhile, unemployment is on the rise (Initial claims rose to 424,000 on Thursday), GDP is falling (1Q GDP revised to 1.8%), durable goods are down 3.6 percent in April, the market is topping out, business investment is flat, Europe's on the ropes, Japan is in a historic slump, China is overheating, the output gap is as wide as it was 6 quarters ago, bank balance sheets are bleeding red from falling home prices and non-performing loans, and the housing market is crashing.

Did I miss something?

Oh yeah, and the Fed's goofy QE2 program is winding down, which means that the last drop of monetary stimulus will be wrung-out by the end of June. That ought to be good for stocks.

So, excuse me for asking, Mr. Bigshot Congressman, but would you mind lending a hand? A little stimulus would be nice. You know, just enough so we can get a job and feed the kids. And if you're worried about the deficits; don't be. They're not a problem. That's just more GOP scaremongering. Here's how economics professor Bradford DeLong sums it up:

"The biggest problem generated by this right now is that Washington DC's focus on the Dingbat Kabuki theater of the long-run fiscal stability of America is keeping it from taking any effective steps to use government to boost employment and output now. And things aren't helped by the fact that the way the rescue of the banking system was carried out convinced a lot of people that stimulus policies exist to enrich the top 1% of Americans at the expense of everybody else.

This means that our hopes for economic recovery right now rest not on any government boost to aggregate demand--whether through fiscal, monetary, or banking policy--but rather on the natural equilibrium-restoring full-employment achieving market forces of the economy, especially in the labor market.

And so we are in trouble: right now there are no signs that the economy is crawling up back to anything like full employment on its own. ... The economy will grow, but we won't close the gap between actual and potential output. We will not for a long time to come get back to the 62 to 64% of the adult population having jobs that we thought was normal back in the decades of the 2000.

And that is the depressing overall macroeconomic picture. I wish I could paint a better one....("DeLong: The Economic Outlook as of May 2011", Economist's View)

Deficits aren't the problem, they're the solution. The government needs to increase spending to make up for the loss of activity in the private sector, otherwise, we're back in the soup. But, here's the good part; the government can borrow at rates that are lower than ever. Just look at the bond market. The 10-year is stuck at 3.12. That means that money is cheap because no one is borrowing, because, well, because the economy is dead-in-the-water. It's like Treasuries are yelling, "Wake up, you idiots, we're in a Depression!"

Besides, deficit spending isn't always a bad thing anyway. Just ask a guy who's been out of work for 99 weeks how much he cares about deficits. Not much, I'll bet. All he cares about is getting a job and paying the bills. Here's a clip from economist Mark Thoma who explains how deficits can actually rev up the economy:

"When the economy goes into recession, deficit spending through tax cuts or the purchase of goods and services by the government can stop the downward spiral and help to turn the economy back around. Thus, deficits can help us to stabilize the economy. In addition, as the economy improves due to the deficit spending the outlook for businesses also improves, and this can lead to increased investment, an effect known as crowding in. Deficits also allow us to purchase infrastructure and spread the bills across time similar to the way households finance the purchase of a car or house, or the way local governments finance schools with bond issues." (Government Deficits: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Mark Thoma, CBS Moneywatch)

Deficits are just a way of investing in the future, like student loans. You don't hear anyone crybabying about paying for college, do you? No, because it improves their chances for making more money in the future. Sometimes you have to take on a little debt to create better opportunities for yourself. That's just the way it is. It's the same with the economy, the deficits are a bridge to the next credit expansion. But once things are up-and-running and revenues increase, then the government can throttle-back on spending and balance the budget. That's how we've always done it in the past, until we started listening to the Voodoo crackpots, that is. Besides, if we don't increase the deficits now and put people back to work fast, we're going to be stuck in this "underperforming" funk for a very long time. So, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

How did we get to where we are today?

Well, when the financial system crashed, the economy plunged and then reset at a lower level of output. So--while we're no longer in freefall--we're still no where near where we should be. And, guess what, we can't get back to trend when 9% of the workforce (16.5% underemployed) is on the sidelines. We have to put people back to work and get them spending. That's the only way to boost demand and kickstart the economy. Of course, big business doesn't mind the current policy, because more of the profits from productivity go to them during a sluggish recovery. So, they're just fine with the way things are right now. They also like the fact that high unemployment puts more pressure on wages. CEO's love that part.

So, how dire is the situation right now?

Well, consider this: QE2 ends on June 30, right? But according to economist David Rosenberg, there's a "89% correlation between the Fed's balance sheet and the movements in the S&P 500 over the past two years." So when the Fed stops purchasing US Treasuries, then stocks will retreat.

Add that to the fact that the states are cutting costs and laying off state workers at record pace to balance their budgets. That just increases deflationary pressures. When money is drained from the system, activity slows, demand weakens, revenues shrink, deficits bulge, and more people are laid off. It's a vicious circle.

Here's how Paul Krugman breaks it down on his blog this week:

"Last year I warned that we seemed to be heading into the "Third Depression" — by which I meant a prolonged period of economic weakness:

' Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.'.....

And nobody in power cares! (Third Depression Watch, Paul Krugman, New York Times)

And that's what makes this political burlesque on Capitoll Hill so excruciating to watch, because it's such a waste. Peoples lives are being ruined for nothing, just because Congress doesn't have the courage to do the right thing. Do you think they'd hesitate if they had to pony-up for another multi-billion dollar weapons system, or another bailout for Wall Street, or more tax cuts for their tycoon friends? Of course not. The only time congress worries about red ink is when it might help working people. Then they throw a major hissyfit, waving their hands overhead and babbling hysterically about the free market. Give me a break. The world's not going to end. The truth is, the rest of the world WANTS us to borrow more because they want to maintain strong demand for their exports and keep their workers busy. That's why they're willing to lend us money so cheap.

So, why don't we oblige them? Why don't we borrow enough money to whittle down unemployment to 4 or 5% and get back on track? After all, we know that fiscal stimulus works, because the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released another report on Wednesday saying that Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was a booming success.

Here's a clip from the report:

"The economic stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009 raised gross domestic product, created jobs and helped lower the country's unemployment rate this year..... the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed while the U.S. struggled to emerge from a severe recession, would save or create 3.5 million jobs while cutting taxes, investing in roads, bridges and other infrastructure, extending unemployment benefits and expanding aid to states....

The CBO report out Wednesday said the plan increased the number of people employed by between 1.2 million and 3.3 million, and lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.6 and 1.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2011.

The stimulus package also raised gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, by between 1.1% and 3.1% in the same period...." ("CBO Says Stimulus Boosted Growth, Will Add More to Deficit", Wall Street Journal)

Okay, so ARRA boosted growth by roughly 2% and added about 2 million new jobs to the workforce just like the administration predicted. So, that settles it, right? We now have solid proof that the program worked, so what are we waiting for? Congress needs to push through a second round of stimulus, put people back to work and get the economy firing on all 6 cylinders. No more foot dragging.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Guernica / Mike Elk: Major Union Victory for Rite Aid Workers Offers Roadmap for Labor Movement

2011-05-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Guernica / Mike Elk: Major Union Victory for Rite Aid Workers Offers Roadmap for Labor Movement

By Mike Elk
By arrangement with Alternet.Org.

On Sunday, 500 Rite Aid workers at the company’s massive Southwest Distribution Center in Lancaster, California signed a three-year tentative agreement with the management of Rite Aid. The contract was a strong one, providing affordable health care, protections against jobs being outsourced to subcontractors (a common practice in the warehousing industry), job safety requirements, and most stunningly, wage increases in each of the next three years. While many unions are making concessions to keep companies open, the Longshoremen Union was actually able to win a wage increase—an extraordinarily rare feat.

“Helping workers win a union contract today usually requires a long struggle, a comprehensive campaign on the outside and strong leadership and rank and file action on the inside, in order to overcome the vicious anti-union attacks by employers, but victories are still possible as the Rite Aid Campaign shows” says ILWU Spokesman Craig Merrilees. “It takes an incredible amount of perseverance, determination and creativity to win, but we can do it.”

The victory is a testament to the resolve of the workers and organizers—it’s a success five years in the making. It reveals how tough the environment for rehabilitating the labor movement is, but also how it is still possible to win through creative, direct action.
Rite Aid engaged in bad faith bargaining known as “surface bargaining“ for over a year before finally bargaining with workers.

“We’re excited about winning this victory, even if it took longer than it should have” said Carlos “Chico” Rubio, a 10-year warehouse worker who was on the union bargaining committee. Unlike many unions that do win a good contract, the union was quick not to praise the boss for agreeing to a contract, but to point out instead that the process was a long and costly one. Workers decided to first start organizing a union in March of 2006 and hoped to have a new contract within several months, not five years.

Rite Aid management responded with the typical toolbox of anti-union tactics.

They hired a team of expensive union busters to hold anti-union intimidation sessions and captive audience meetings. They threatened to fire workers if they supported the union and even fired two workers for wanting to a join a union. They asked a delay of over 18 months from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on scheduling a vote so that they could have more time to run intimidation sessions to make workers wary of joining a union. Finally after two years of organizing and despite massive anti-union attacks, workers voted to join a union 283 to 261 in an NLRB supervised election in June of 2008.

Then when Rite Aid workers finally won a union election, Rite Aid engaged in bad faith bargaining known as “surface bargaining” for over a year before finally bargaining with workers.

“Rite Aid made this process much more difficult on workers and families than it needed to” said ILWU International Vice President Ray Familathe, who helped workers reach their May 1 settlement. Workers though did not give up; they organized a tough and dogged campaign to counter the anti-union efforts of Rite Aid management.

Using a creative campaign Rite Aid workers were able to force management to sit down at the table and bargain with them. Workers started by attending yearly stockholder meetings and opening lines of communications with stockholders and board members. They released detailed reports about how much money the union busting efforts of Rite Aid was costing the company. Workers were able to persuade some stockholders to put pressure on Rite Aid to negotiate a fair and equitable contract.

Likewise, they used their leverage against Rite Aid by expanding the fight across various unions and the country. They formed a coalition of nationwide Rite Aid workers from various unions including UFCW, SEIU, and Teamsters who coordinated their strategy. Workers reached out to powerful community allies with groups like United Students against Sweatshops and Jobs with Justice. They held protests in nearly 50 cities across the country against Rite Aid and promised to apply more heat if Rite Aid didn’t settle the contract dispute in California.

Most importantly, the workers union had a strong presence within the distribution center in Lancaster, California. Workers even engaged in “work to rule,” where they purposely slowed down movement in the distribution center in order to put pressure on the company to settle a contract. Even last year, 75 workers walked off the job for a day in Lancaster, California to protest Rite Aid’s lack of good faith bargaining.

Finally, when negotiations seemed to be breaking down at the last second, they launched a “pinpoint” boycott campaign at two Rite Aid workers at two Rite Aid Stores in San Pedro, California on April 1, 2011. They persuaded hundreds of seniors to switch their prescriptions to other pharmacies. The threat of a larger boycott spreading forced Rite Aid to finally settle the contract a month later.

The feat that the Longshoremen’s Union (ILWU) achieved is a rare one in the labor movement. Nearly half of all union drives result in defeats for workers trying to organize a contract. Less than half of the workers who do get a contract are able to get one within the first year. Often failure to reach a contract in the first year can kill a union all together. Overall, fewer than 1 in 6 organizing drives ever results in a union contract for workers in the workplace.

Many unions have now negotiated card checks agreements, wherein the union agrees to weaker, concessionary contracts ahead of time in exchange for the right to organize a workplace without the type of brutal interference from the employer. While these types of agreements can often result in contracts for workers, they are weak contracts—the type of contracts that ultimately the employer wants. It gives all the power to the boss in terms of what type of contract to give workers and very little to the workers. The ILWU campaign at Rite Aid shows that it is still possible for unions to win good first contracts.

Copyright 2011 Mike Elk
________________________________________________________________________

By arrangement with Alternet.Org.

Mike Elk is a third-generation union organizer who writes for Campaign for America’s Future.

Guernica / Joshua Holland: Did Osama bin Laden Win the “War on Terror”?

2011-05-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Guernica / Joshua Holland: Did Osama bin Laden Win the “War on Terror”?

By Joshua Holland
By arrangement with AlterNet.Org.

We now have conflicting accounts of Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of a U.S. special forces team in a tony Pakistani suburb this week.

President Obama, in his address to the nation Sunday night, painted a picture of a perfectly clean, morally unambiguous operation: he said the U.S. was prepared to take the terror leader alive, but a major firefight ensued and, after trying to use his wife as a human shield, bin Laden went down with guns blazing.

The White House “revised” several key details of the raid in the following days. Bin Laden wasn’t armed after all (he still “resisted,” officials say, although it’s unclear how one resists a heavily armed special forces team without a weapon), and he didn’t use a human shield. One official told CNN that there were no armed guards at the compound, another told Reuters that the Navy Seals team had been ordered to kill rather than capture bin Laden and NBC News reported that nobody fired a shot at the SEALs. Bin Laden’s daughter, who was present during the raid, said that U.S. forces first captured their quarry alive and then executed him.

We don’t know what happened that night. But we should at least acknowledge that there were any number of reasons why dumping bin Laden’s corpse in the ocean would have been seen as far less problematic than taking him alive. What, exactly, would they have done with him? The International Criminal Court can only consider cases committed after 2001, and trying him in a domestic court with its evidentiary procedures was never an option. He could have been tried by military commission, but that process hasn’t been widely accepted as legitimate.

On the margins, there has been some debate about the morality—and legality—of such a “kill team” operation, but most Americans, understandably, couldn’t care less. Even if we did assassinate him, so what? Bin Laden was a mass murderer, the bastard got his just rewards, and the U.S. government proved it could still accomplish a major national goal. The country got closure for the attacks of 9/11, and perhaps could now begin to wind down its “war on terror.”

That discussion has overlooked an important question, however. Setting aside the moral and legal implications, and our visceral, emotional satisfaction at seeing an outlaw shot down, would the decision to kill rather than capture him have been in the best interests of the U.S. and the international fight against terrorism?
Martyrdom has always been a powerful inspiration for others. I certainly don’t blame Americans for rejoicing in the news of bin Laden’s death, but we may have given him the exact ending he would have wanted.

I would argue that it would not have been—that, in fact, the reverse would hold true. Osama bin Laden is widely seen to have become a figurehead without direct operational command of the organization he founded. His importance, at this point in time, was largely symbolic. He served as an inspiration for extremists around the globe. Had he a choice in the matter, I have no doubt that he would have wanted nothing more than to die in a hail of gunfire by foreign troops in a predominantly Muslim country, a martyr to his cause, rather than rot away in a military prison, aging poorly and providing living proof that the world’s most prominent terrorist—a figure who had been elevated to an existential threat—was ultimately impotent in the face of the world’s greatest super-power.

Martyrdom has always been a powerful inspiration for others. I certainly don’t blame Americans for rejoicing in the news of bin Laden’s death, but we may have given him the exact ending he would have wanted, and, in doing so, we may have inspired others to follow his path to a “glorious” expiration.

This, again, is entirely speculative so long as the details of the raid remain obscure. But it mirrors another argument that is not so: that Osama bin Laden’s attacks provoked the U.S. into a disastrous over-reaction—drawing it into an unwinnable and often hellish ground-war in Afghanistan and ultimately costing us thousands of American lives, trillions of dollars in national wealth, an enormous amount of international prestige and, more importantly, influence over global affairs.

That argument was ably sketched out this week by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, based on an interview he conducted with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the Director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. As Klein put it, Gartenstein-Ross thinks bin Laden “had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against.” His goal was not some fantasy about establishing a worldwide caliphate or imposing “Sharia law” on Greenwich Village; having seen the Soviet Union decline in large part by bankrupting itself in an arms race with the U.S., with a huge assist from the Mujahadeen fighting them in Afghanistan, his objective was to wage economic war against the United States by drawing it into a similar conflict.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Gartenstein-Ross noted that “the Soviet Union didn’t just withdraw from Afghanistan in ignominious defeat, but the Soviet empire itself collapsed soon thereafter, in late 1991.”

Thus, bin Laden thought that he hadn’t just bested one of the world’s superpowers on
the battlefield, but had actually played an important role in its demise. It is indisputable
that the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did not directly collapse the Soviet Union;
the most persuasive connection that can be drawn between that war and the Soviet
empire’s dissolution is through the costs imposed by the conflict.

“The campaign [against the Soviets] taught bin Laden a lot,” wrote Klein:

For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re
beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they'll
bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s
plan for the United States, too.

Did it work? Well, that depends on how you look at it. The U.S. economy is far more resilient than the Soviet economy of the 1980s, and we haven’t gone anywhere, so in that sense it did not. But prior to the attacks, the Congressional Budget Office projected that we’d see budget surpluses throughout the decade. We face a large deficit now, in large part, because of Bush’s decision to declare a “war” on terrorism—and to wage conventional wars against Afghanistan and Iraq—and then pass the first war-time tax cuts in the history of the Republic.
It would be a mistake to link the so-called “Arab Spring” directly to the decline of American influence in the Middle East, but it would be equally shortsighted to dismiss it as a contributing factor.

I would take the analysis a step further. The decision to go to “war” against a tactic also brought with it significant restrictions on our civil liberties; no longer could we credibly claim to be a beacon of freedom that the world ought to emulate.

Finally, we have to consider some geopolitics. University of Chicago scholar Robert Pape, one of the world’s foremost experts on suicide terrorism, argues that all such acts have a common goal: to induce Democracies to withdrawal from lands they occupy (either directly or by proxy). The decision to declare “war” on terrorism—and a couple of nation-states—led directly to the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, as well as the scandals surrounding Abu Ghraib, the CIA’s secret detention facilities, extraordinary renditions, Guantanamo Bay, and all the rest. And all of those things resulted in a very significant decline in the United States’ global prestige, and our ability to influence global events.

Since its founding, al Qaeda has had two big, fat targets aside from the United States: the Saudi and Egyptian governments. Ten years after 9/11, the regime of Hosni Mubarak is gone, and last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli officials were “urging Washington to make it clear that the U.S. would intervene in Saudi Arabia should the survival of that government be threatened.” It would be a mistake to link the so-called “Arab Spring” directly to the decline of American influence in the Middle East, but it would be equally shortsighted to dismiss it as a contributing factor.

Perhaps this argument gives bin Laden too much credit. But terrorism is ultimately a tactic used by marginal extremist groups against far more powerful enemies. Bin Laden couldn’t have known that we’d invade Iraq, but the idea that the United States under George W. Bush would react to acts of terror with acts of war against at least Afghanistan was not terribly difficult to predict. And the ruinous results of that reaction are apparent. We’re still around, and it’s likely that we have now killed or captured every single human being who was operationally involved in the attacks of 9/11, so perhaps it was a draw. But a superpower spending trillions to fight with a handful of terrorists to a draw may have been the best outcome for which bin Laden realistically could have hoped.

This is important to understand for one reason. As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross noted, “bin Laden’s strategic ideas for beating a superpower…have permeated his organization, and are widely shared by al Qaeda’s affiliates.” Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his ideology remains, and we continue to hemorrhage blood and treasure in a futile conflict into which the “terror mastermind” may well have drawn us. It’s time that we stop doing what international terrorists want us to do.

Copyright 2011 Joshua Holland ________________________________________________________________________

This essay originally appeared at AlterNet.Org.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America

Guernica / Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

2011-05-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Guernica / Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death
May 6, 2011

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

By Noam Chomsky

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

Copyright 2011 Noam Chomsky
________________________________________________________________________

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He is the author of numerous best-selling political works. His latest books are a new edition of Power and Terror, The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove), a collection of his writings on politics and on language from the 1950s to the present, Gaza in Crisis, with Ilan Pappé, and Hopes and Prospects, also available as an audiobook.

To read more blog entries from Noam Chomsky click HERE . Read Guernica’s interview with Noam Chomsky here.

What The Internet Is Hiding From You

2011-05-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

What The Internet Is Hiding From You

TED's own Eli Pariser telling you what you're not seeing on the web.

Drug Laws, Prisons and the Economy

2011-05-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth, accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, despite having just five percent of the world’s population.

America currently holds over two million in prisons with double that number under supervision of parole and probation, according to federal government figures.

Mass incarceration consumes over $50-billion annually across America – money far better spent on creating jobs and improving education.

Under federal law persons with drug convictions are permanently barred from receiving financial aid for education, food stamps, welfare and publicly funded housing.

Only drug convictions trigger these exclusions under federal law. Violent bank robbers, white-collar criminals like Wall Street scam artists who steal billions, and even murderers who’ve done their time do not face the post-release deprivations slapped on those with drug convictions on their records, including those imprisoned for simple possession, and not major drug sales.

Jury Awards $82,000 To Oregon Woman Arrested For Asking Police for a Business Card

2011-04-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

A Multnomah County jury awarded a 33-year-old woman $82,000 Thursday, saying they wanted to send Portland police a message: Hand over a business card the next time a citizen asks for one.

Several jurors who spoke to The Oregonian after the verdict in Multnomah County Circuit Court said police weren’t dealing with an urgent or dangerous situation on the evening of Feb. 13, 2009 — when Shei’Meka Newmann questioned what she thought was an unnecessarily rough arrest of a fellow MAX rider. It would have taken only a few seconds for an officer to hand Newmann a card, jurors said.

“I think that police need to be reminded that it’s part of their job to de-escalate and defuse situations,” said juror Chris Bolles. Instead, jurors say police overreacted to Newmann’s queries.

From the Oregonian

Police beating of Las Vegas man caught on tape - News - ReviewJournal.com

2011-04-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

Police beating of Las Vegas man caught on tape - News - ReviewJournal.com

Theft of the Commons

2011-02-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

A deceptive term like "austerity program" which makes us feel like sacrifice must be shared equally even when the problem was and is always caused by the private sector, must be ignored by the majority of low and mid-income citizens and "theft of the commons" inserted in its place. The term was recently (ab)used by the compromised Democratic Governor Jerry Brown in regards to his "slash and burn" budget proposal. So much for a party of the people/labor, eh?

Just like in Oregon, corporations who want to make profits in CA should be advised that they will have to pay their fair share in taxes. If this leads to corporations leaving the state, we can rest assured that there are many, many smaller companies ready to pony up for a shot at our citizen/consumers. The same increased tax rate should hold for the extremely wealthy who desire to live here. This would EASILY solve CA's budget problem without starving more women and children.

Palestinian cabinet resigns - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

Palestinian cabinet resigns - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Army urges protesters to end strikes - Politics - Egypt - Ahram Online

2011-02-14T07:08:00.000-08:00

Army urges protesters to end strikes - Politics - Egypt - Ahram Online

Armchair Dispatch From A Sympathizer With The Egyption Revolution

2011-02-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

The word from the ground in Cairo following Mubarak's address to the nation is a bit confused. Early reports today held that the military was making coordinated moves for a transition of power, leading the street to believe that Mubarak had seen the light and was about to abdicate. Spirits were high all day with the opposition groups convinced that the army was on their side, which would make peaceful change much easier. After the president's speech, however, which was the very picture of entitled, arrogant power, the street is absolutely enraged, leading some to predict violent overthrow is deliberately being provoked in order to justify a violent state clampdown in return. There is talk of a march on the nearest military base to insist that the army declare their unity with the people.
Labor across the nation has been on strike for 5 days, virtually shutting down the entire economy. The demands are very clear and simple - Mubarak is out and Suleiman will not be accepted, his having had a large hand in the US "extraordinary rendition" program which essentially outsourced illegal torture tactics for prisoner interrogations. The president seems to be quite out of touch, telling the youth to "go home".
Who allowed this speech to occur? If, in fact, the military sides with the opposition groups, wouldn't they have prevented this state-sponsored and clueless address? To this viewer, it appears that the street may lose patience and make some ill-advised moves if their chosen leadership doesn't strongly make the case for continued coordinated organization.

Interview with anti-government protester at Tahir Square

2011-02-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

Obama Reneges on Key Agreement with Immigration Advocates

2010-10-05T18:33:00.001-07:00

ICE Mutiny?

By STEWART J. LAWRENCE

One of the key provisions of the Obama administration's tough new immigration enforcement strategy is coming under fire again. The program, known as "Secure Communities," allows federal immigration authorities to obtain the fingerprints of any illegal alien booked in the nation's jails, and to have that alien detained for deportation. It's already resulted in an unprecedented number of deportations - some 400,000 in 2009 alone - with an equal number expected this year. And when the program's finally extended nationwide in 2013 – it's currently active in about 30 states, but in only a third of the nation's jails - the annual rate could reach 700,000 or more.

Immigration activists -- furious with the Obama administration for laying the groundwork for what amounts to a mass deportation program -- thought they'd extracted an agreement from the White House and from the Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, to scale back Secure Communities in two ways. First, to refocus the program on hard-core felony offenders, rather than low-level misdemeanor cases, and second, to allow local jurisdictions like San Francisco – still officially a "sanctuary" city - to completely opt out of participating in the program if their citizens objected.

In addition, lobbying by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), chief sponsor of the DREAM Act that would legalize as many as 2 million illegal alien youth, had apparently secured a personal guarantee from President Obama that prospective DREAM beneficiaries would not be processed for deportation until the full Congress had had a chance to vote on his long-stalled bill. Obama, in fact, publicly endorsed DREAM in his first-ever speech on immigration policy at American University last July. It is also strongly supported by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other senior Democrats who recently tried to force a floor vote on the bill, to no avail.

But now it appears that the administration has reneged on key parts of its deal with pro-immigration activists. Why? Largely because career Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials who are heavily invested in the agency's expanding enforcement empire are refusing to go along. These officials don't want to suspend deportation proceedings against selected classes of immigrants, like the DREAM kids, or even to refocus the program narrowly on "criminal" aliens - no matter what the ICE leadership says. And because of their near-revolt, it appears that senior ICE officials have reversed themselves, and will require that all local jurisdictions participate in Secure Communities, whether they actually want to or not.

News of the internal ICE revolt first came to light in an article published in the Washington Post on August 27, based on investigative reporting by journalist Andrew Beck. Beck found that the center of resistance to Obama policy was from middle level field managers, ICE attorneys and the ICE employee union. The conflict is as old as the agency itself, which for years when it was known as the Immigration and naturalization Service, or INS, frequently found itself torn between directives from the political appointees named to lead the agency, and its career personnel. But because Congress and the country are unusually divided on basic immigration policy issues, the internal conflicts have become especially fierce.

And dissenting career ICE personnel, like federal bureaucrats elsewhere, are known to share information with sympathetic members of Congress to get their point across – and to try to forestall the policies that they object to. That's probably how GOP conservatives obtained a series of internal ICE memos earlier this year that revealed that the Obama administration was reviewing options for how it might use executive authority to legalize selected classes of illegal aliens, circumventing the need for a possible vote by Congress. That prospect – dubbed an "executive amnesty" by critics – has infuriated GOP leaders, and has even caused senior Republicans like Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who otherwise support immigration reform, to break ranks with the White House.

The main options review memo, which was prepared by ICE's chief of policy, Denise Vanson, an Obama appointee, makes for interesting reading. The memo, entitled "Administrative Options to Comprehensive Immigration Reform," reviews a handful of ways that Obama could decide to re-classify prospective deportation cases, including the granting of "temporary protected status" (TPS) or "deferred enforced departure" (DED) to some or even all of the 11 million illegal aliens currently in the US. In addition to focusing on a specific class of aliens like the DREAM kids, the memo discusses the possibility that all illegal aliens present in the country since 1996 – in other words, those with at least 15 years of residency – could be granted "deferred" status.

The memo warns, though, that any attempt to utilize TPS or DED to legalize all 11 million aliens would likely cause enormous and unacceptable public controversy. Anonymous ICE officials who have since commented on the Vanson memo say that Obama has no intention of using TPS or DED to conduct a sweeping amnesty. But despite repeated urgings by Sen. Charles Grassley and other Republican critics, White House officials have steadfastly refused to rule out more selective use of TPS or DED, should Congress fail to pass a legalization bill. No such timetable for doing so has been discussed, however, and it appears that Obama wants to use the threat more as leverage to bring GOP leaders to the table – at least eventually.

It's still unclear whether Napolitano herself change her mind about the opt-out or whether, as appears more likely senior ICE officials are seeking to circumvent her authority, and indeed, by discussing their position off the record, are engaged in what amounts to a bureaucraticmutiny. Immigration advocates were counting on the "opt out" clause as a way or organizing local citizens to pressure their county and city governments to refuse to go along with the program until a legalization bill was passed. In addition to San Francisco, Washington, DC and several other localities have already voted formally not to participate.

But at least one senior ICE official - possibly John Morton, the ICE chief – has made clear to reporters there's nothing dissenting county and local government can actually do to stop Secure Communities. Once the fingerprints of arrested suspects are forwarded to the FBI, to check for outstanding warrants, and past criminal history, the FBI has an agreement to send the same fingerprints to ICE to verify legal status. As I have reported here previously, it doesn't matter whether the suspects are guilty of a crime, let alone a major one. Once ICE gets their fingerprints, and verifies that the suspect is in the country illegally, it asks local officials to detain the suspect for deportation. Under current US law, local officials are obligated to comply.

Immigration activists are reviewing whether it might be possible to administratively sever the link between the FBI and ICE that allows the two agencies to verify the status of arrestees without the compliance of local elected officials, and without the fingerprints being sent to ICE from local jails, which was the established procedure. But ICE and FBI already collaborate in the identification and arrest of fugitive aliens as well as criminal alien smuggling gangs. It might take a special executive order, but in an election year, with Obama already under fire for going "soft" on his own crackdown, and amid fears of an "executive amnesty," the president is unlikely to pursue such an option.

In the final analysis, all of these simmering policy disputes and bureaucratic battles are only a morbid symptom the current federal deadlock on immigration reform. Officially, Obama says he favors a third way between "mass deportation" and "mass amnesty." But mass amnesty is virtually impossible to push through Congress in the current climate, which will only get worse after November. Most of the likely incoming GOP members of the House and Senate are already on record opposing even a partial amnesty like DREAM. Which means all we're left with – failing high-risk executive action, or a different legislative compromise formula, which has yet to emerge – is the current de facto policy of mass deportation.

Stewart J. Lawrence is a Washington, DC-based immigration policy specialist. He can be reached at stewartlawrence81147@gmail.com.

Fallout From the Mesherle Verdict

2010-09-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

More Arrests, New Charges

By JESSE STRAUSS

http://www.counterpunch.org/strauss09212010.html

Approximately seventeen people have been charged over the past three weeks with crimes related to the protests against former BART cop Johannes Mehserle's involuntary manslaughter verdict on July 8th. Some of those recently charged were arrested that night, while others have been identified by police in photos, and have been newly arrested. The latest set of arraignments on Monday morning saw three Oaklanders charged with Unlawful Assembly, Remaining at the Scene of a Riot, and Rioting. They are set to reappear in court within the next month.

Five people arrested on July 8th remain in the Santa Rita County Jail, and at least three who were arrested last week remain incarcerated. Accordingto the Oakland 100 Support Committee, one of the earlier arrestees was held for over 30 days before charges were filed against him. He now faces a slew of charges which include failure to disperse, although, again according to the Oakland 100 Support Committee, he was arrested before the order to disperse was given.

Art Jackson, who spent 45 days in jail after being arrested on the night of the protests has been charged with crimes related to the looting of the Footlocker shoe store on Broadway Avenue by 14th Street. In a recent statement, Jackson explained that he did not commit any of the crimes he is being charged with. Among those charges are second degree burglary, petty theft with a prior, and receiving stolen property.

Soon after the protests, the Oakland Police Department issues a press release explaining that some of the people arrested were taking "advantage of a chaotic situation by looting Oakland businesses." While to some extent this appears true, Rachel Lederman and Walter Riley of the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild make it very clear that it was the police forces themselves who made the situation chaotic.

In a statement condemning the police action on that evening, Lederman said that "The aggressive use of police formations, baton beatings and indiscriminate arrests were unnecessary and violated people's constitutional right to protest. To make things even worse, OPD violated state law by jailing people for long periods of time who had been arrested for very minor offenses."

Long time community activist and NLG member Riley agreed that in the protests, which in some cases turned into legal violations, the police, fully clad in riot gear, were not keeping the peace. Soon after the protests he said, "The police were provocative and seemed determined to instigate violence, which of course, served their police contract negotiations with Oakland at a time when they are facing layoffs of 80 officers." He added, "The police helped to perpetuate a narrative of violence by allowing a small number of people to vandalize businesses when they could have stopped it."

On the other hand, however, at a press conference on the day following the verdict, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums made a statement praising the OPD for restraining itself and respecting the civil rights of community members. The number of people charged with crimes relating to the protests against Mehserle's verdict continues to increase, apparently in relation to responses the police have gotten to a press release pressing community members to "Please take a moment to review the images [on their website] and help us identfy individuals who looted Oakland businesses"—spelling error and all.

The Oakland 100 Support Committee is calling for support from the community to help in the defense of the people who were arrested during those protests. A list of court dates and locations as well as a way to donate to support court and lawyer fees are available on their website.

Jesse Strauss is an independent journalist, born and raised in Oakland,
Reach him at jstrauss (at) riseup.net.

Pete
Belief is the death of intelligence--Robert Anton Wilson

Autumn of the Driveler

2010-09-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

CounterPunch Diary

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09172010.html

Some world leaders mature as they head into the sunset: Jimmy Carter often makes more sense in his eighties than he did as president nearly four decades ago. Others spare the world their midnight thoughts, not always voluntarily. Ronald Reagan succumbed to Alzheimers; Ariel Sharon is still animate, albeit effectively dead to the world. Alas, Fidel Castro just broke an arm and a kneecap when he tripped on that fateful concrete step six years ago. Would that he had bitten off his tongue and thus spared his erstwhile admirers, myself included, the sound of this once great revolutionary plunging into kookdom.

If President Raúl Castro wants to defend Cuba's record on human rights, all he needs to do point to the fact that his brother has not been deposed from his formal position as First Secretary of the Communist Party, and carted off to an isolation ward in the Casa de Dementes, Havana's psychiatric hospital. Instead he has unstinted access to the state radio and the newspaper Granma.

In both of these media Castro, now 84, has spouted a steady stream of drivel.

Memorable among these forays intonutdom was his outburst of conspiracism on the sixth anniversary of the Trade Center/Pentagon attacks with the whole slab of nonsense read out by a Cuban television presenter.

Castro claimed that the Pentagon was hit by a rocket, not a plane, because no traces were found of its passengers. "Only a projectile could have created the geometrically round orifice created by the alleged airplane," according to Fidel. "We were deceived as well as the rest of the planet's inhabitants." All nonsense of course. There were remains of the passengers on the plane that hit the Pentagon, in the form of teeth and other bits traced through DNA. Hundreds of people saw the plane -- people who know the difference between a plane and a cruise missile. The wreckage of the plane was hauled out from the site.

It's logical that maximum leaders like Castro are conspiracists by disposition. Since they are control freaks, the random and the accidental are alien to their frame of reference. If it happened, it happened for a reason. And if a bad thing happened, it was very probably a conspiracy.

More recently, in early August of this year Castro touted to his audience in Cuba and across the world his sympathy with one of the standard mantras of nutdom, which is the belief that the world is run by the Bilderberg Club.

The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article on August 18, spread across three of the eight pages of the Communist Party newspaper Granma, quoting in extenso from the Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin's 'The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,' (2006) alleging the Bilderbergers control everything, which must mean that they pack a lot in to the three-day session the Club holds each year as its sole public activity. Of course they probably skype each other a lot too and rot out their brains plotting and planning on their cell phones.

Followers of the Alex Jones (Radio) Show, a sanctuary of conspiracism, no doubt remember Estulin's claim in 2007 that he had "received information from sources inside the U.S. intelligence community which suggests that people from the highest levels of the U.S. government are considering an assassination attempt against Congressman Ron Paul because they are threatened by his burgeoning popularity." The bits of Estulin's book reverently quoted by Castro, who called Estulin honest and well informed, retread some of the doctrines of Lyndon LaRouche, one of the most lurid conspiracists in political history, (though I do have affectionate memories of LaRouche's claim in 1984 in a ad running on the CBS network that former vice president Walter Mondale, then running against Ronald Reagan for the Oval Office, was an "agent of influence" of the Soviet Intelligence services. At the time LaRouchies were in close contact with the Reagan White House.)

On the evidence of his quotes from Estulin, Castro is much taken by Estulin's view that members of the Marxist Frankfurt School such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who fled to the US from the Nazis before World War Two, had been recruited by the Rockefellers to popularize rock music to "control the masses" by seducing them from the fight for civil rights and social justice. According to Estulin, reverently quoted by Castro, 'The man charged with ensuring that the Americans liked the Beatles was Walter Lippmann himself.'

So Fidel Castro believes that the Beatles were invented by the Rockefellers, and that Walter Lippmann, the pundit who drafted President Wilson's Fourteen Points in 1918, crowned his literary/political career in 1968 by sending John Lennon the lyrics for "Revolution", with its demobilizing message: "You say you want a revolution /Well, you know /We all want to change the world /… But when you talk about destruction /Don't you know that you can count me out." (In fact I seem to remember that Lennon actually wrote the song as an answer to my friends Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, who as members of New Left Review and the Fourth International had suggested to Lennon that the Beatles pony up some dough to finance the revolutionary cause.)

And now Castro's latest outing into political asininity has been to give an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg, of the Atlantic, allowing the man Castro cordially describes as "a great journalist" to cite Castro as saying that the Cuban economic model has been a disaster.

Goldberg is an appalling journalist, whose most notable achievement was to run an enormous piece in the New Yorker in the run-up to the attack on Iraq in 2003, which was one of the most effective exercises in disinformation designed to stoke up the Congress and public opinion in favor of the war. The piece was billed as containing disclosures of "Saddam Hussein's possible ties to al Qaeda."

This was at a moment when the FBI and CIA had just shot down the war party's claim of a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the 9/11 attacks. Goldberg saved the day for the Bush crowd. At the core of his rambling, 16,000-word article was an interview in the Kurdish-held Iraqi town of Sulaimaniya with Mohammed Mansour Shahab, who offered the eager Goldberg a wealth of detail about his activities as a link between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqis, shuttling arms and other equipment.

The piece was gratefully seized upon by the Administration as proof of The Link. The coup de grâce to Goldberg's credibility came on February 9, 2003 in the London Observer, administered by Jason Burke, its chief reporter. Burke visited the same prison in Sulaimaniya, talked to Shahab and established beyond doubt that Goldberg's great source is a clumsy liar, not even knowing the physical appearance of Kandahar, whither he had claimed to have journeyed to deal with bin Laden; and confecting his fantasies in the hope of a shorter prison sentence. Needless to say, Burke's demolition was not picked up in the U.S. press, nor has the New Yorker ever apologized for Goldberg's story, certainly as pernicious as anything offered by Judy Miller in the New York Times.

Since Castro has been sounding tremendous alarums about a possible attack on Iran, it's bizarre to find him lofting Goldberg, a former member of the Israeli Defense Force, to the journalistic pantheon and taking pains to paint his fellow 9/11 conspiracist, president Ahmadinejad of Iran, as an anti-Semite.

Some on the left see Castro's deprecating remarks about the failure of the Cuban economic model as part of a tactical maneuver to help his brother institute the "reforms" that will see somewhere between half a million and million Cubans lose their jobs. I see it as a spectacularly foolish misjudgement by Castro, who told Goldberg "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" and later said he was misinterpreted and that he meant the exact opposite, which is obvious nonsense.

Then Castro took Goldberg to – of all disgusting things – a dolphin exhibition. Lock the old fool up I say, free the dolphins and turn the exhibition into a theme park for all the CIA's efforts to kill Castro, including booby-trapping a coral reef. The ironies of history: the CIA failed, and here's Castro taking up the task, methodically assassinating his reputation, week after week.

Glenn Beck Channels Lunatic, Disassociated Rage Into a Quasi-Movement...

2010-09-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

By Wallace C. Turbeville, NewDeal 2.0
http://www.alternet.org/story/148126/

A little over a week ago we were treated to Glenn Beck's quasi-religious extravaganza on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. I have had a gnawing sense that there was some greater meaning to this event, despite the absence of any apparent substance in the messages delivered.

Then it hit me: I recalled that, in a 2009 New York Times interview, Glenn Beck compared himself with Howard Beale, the character portrayed magnificently by Peter Finch in the 1976 film "Network." The metamorphosis of Beck into a self-proclaimed prophet of an ideologically conservative God suddenly made complete sense.

In Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay, Beale was a newscaster who suffered a psychological break when informed that he was to be fired because of low ratings. He wandered into the studio wearing his pajamas, drenched from walking in a thunderstorm, and delivered the famous speech urging viewers to throw open their windows and scream, "I'm as mad as hell, and I am not going to take it any more." Of course, the viewers complied en masse and Beale was given his own show that featured his lunatic rants. Ratings soared.

Before his famous exhortation, Beale recounted a list of problems plaguing society and admitted that he was totally clueless as to any solutions. Chayefsky was unsympathetic with Beale's audience. He brilliantly described the mass insanity of a public willing to follow a prophet with no inkling of a way to address problems, based only lunatic, disassociated anger. Chayefsky intended that "mad" be read as having both of its meanings. He was appalled by the public's self-indulgent eagerness to transform the immediate gratification of a primal scream into a social movement.

It is instructive to recall how Beale met his end. Network management found it necessary to restrain Beale when his rants put corporate strategy at risk. In redirecting Beale, they inadvertently reattached his mind, however tenuously, with rationality. Beale started speaking (quite eloquently) about the dehumanization of society, advising his viewers to make the best of the situation because the trend was irreversible. Ratings plummeted, not because the public disagreed, but because they became bored. As the film's narrator put it, "No one particularly cared to hear that his life was utterly valueless." The amoral head of programming, Diana Christensen, arranged to have Beale gunned down on live TV by the Ecumenical Liberation Army (they also had a prime time reality show, "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour"). That final show was a great success for the Network, if not for Beale.

Glenn Beck proves that Paddy Chayefsky's observations of American society in the 1970's are just as valid today.

I have often wondered whether Beck is a lunatic, exploited by Fox News and deserving of our sympathy. After all, he suffers from macular dystrophy, an inability to focus vision on the real world. (Chayefsky would have loved the irony.) But I now believe that he is sane (and I suppose deserving of no sympathy). He understands that disassociated anger is cathartic for today's public. Nonsensical conspiracy theories and baseless ridicule are entertaining fillers, but his real stock-in-trade is the public's rage at a "system" that must have betrayed them because their dreams have not been fulfilled. People are angry because they feel powerless to change conditions that they dislike. They cannot even describe what the problem is because no leader has articulated it. A rational explanation would at least mitigate the rage by calming anxieties. But no progressive leader has the courage to try it, and it is not in the conservatives' interest to do so. You might say that the public's experience is dehumanizing (but if you did, you would bore the audience).

The facts suggest that Beck is more Diana Christensen than Howard Beale. Like her, he understands that news, in the sense of events and public policies, cannot contend with entertainment in a world dominated by fear and uncertainty. He has simply chosen to be his own prophet. His claim to be a mouthpiece of God appears cynically calculated to complete the construction of a modern-day equivalent of Chayefsky's Network. As Max Schumacher, the only principled character in the film said of Christensen: "You are television incarnate, Diana [read, Glenn] — indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality."

This is all far more important than Glenn Beck. I believe that this disassociated rage has been an important characteristic of American society for at least 40 years. It is a product of the self-important and self-indulgent baby boomers (like me), who have always been susceptible to the message that they should hold on to their own money rather than sharing it, in the form of taxes, in pursuit of the greater good. The anger and cynicism, initially directed at the "system," was eventually turned on the government. The only leader whose message resonated in this era was Ronald Reagan — "Government cannot solve the problem; it is the problem."

Ideological conservatism has ruled the day for 40 years. The genius of the New Deal, in retreat throughout this period, was not ideology. It was the pragmatic observation that the only way to achieve long-term prosperity is for the government to draw the weak and less wealthy into participation in the economy. Left to their own devices, the strong and wealthy will rationally act in their own short-term interests. Only government can act in the collective long-term interest. The unbridled free enterprise and deregulation advocated by conservative ideologues can make a few people wealthy in the short-run, but it is unsustainable because middle- and lower- income families will inevitably be left behind.

What has been missing is a progressive leader willing to risk telling the public the truth. The middle- and lower-classes have been getting poorer. The quality of their employment in good times has deteriorated; and progressively, in each downturn, unemployment persists for longer and longer periods after the economy improves. As high school and college graduation rates have stagnated, the American dream of boundless opportunity has withered away, even for their children. Even the apparent success of the wealthiest is unsustainable unless increasing income disparity is reversed.

What an opportunity for progressives to redirect this anger toward conservative ideologies that have decimated the American Dream! For Mr. Obama, the path to a transformational presidency was, and hopefully still is, to channel this energy into an all-out effort to restore balance to the economy.

Chayefsky also created a character, Arthur Jensen, who was the head of the Network. Assuming his best voice-of-God tone, he tried to convince Beale to proclaim a utopian world view in which businesses roamed free of government interference, his "corporate cosmology." When Beale nervously asked why he should be the chosen prophet for this new world order, Jensen answered: "Because you are on the television, you dummy." Glenn Beck needs to be reminded that Arthur Jensen was not God; he was just a character in a movie.

Wallace C. Turbeville is the former CEO of VMAC LLC and a former Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co. He is Visiting Scholar at the Roosevelt Institute.

SUPREME COURT RULING ALLOWS CORPORATIONS TO LEGALLY BRIBE JUDGES

2010-09-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

William K. Black, Naked Capitalism - The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allows businesses to make unlimited political contributions to judges and politicians. When judges are elected, the need for these contributions inherently turns judges into politicians. Sympathetic judges are corrupt businesses' most valuable allies. Corporations and their senior officials can commit civil or criminal wrongs with impunity if their case is assigned to a friendly judge. The Robber Barons often had judges on their payrolls. Judges can serve a corporation as both a shield and a sword. They can declare statutes and regulations unlawful. They can issue favorable decisions when corporations sue their critics, which can intimidate, tie up, or even bankrupt the critics.

The fact that corporations are "investing" so heavily in getting pro-business judges elected demonstrates that their CEOs believe that the election of friendly judges will increase their incomes and decrease the risk that they will ever be sanctioned.

The Heart of Corporate Darkness

2010-09-12T16:23:00.001-07:00

By STEPHEN MARTIN, Counterpunch

'Mistah Kurtz, he dead'
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

It really is so very difficult to attempt to understand what is going on in the World today, though perhaps the point as made by Karl Marx; that the priority is not to understand the World but to change it is valid - and we certainly live in time of change - sense of 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundi'?

This small article seeks to examine what amounts to Political horror; that horror which is Corporatism become synonymous with 'Ecocide', and describable as 'Heart of Darkness'.

These small quarters write as a 'Prole', sense of George Orwell's abbreviation of 'Proletariat'; and it is certainly the case that Orwell had a sublime consciousness. His concept of 'Inner Party, Outer Party and Prole' holds approximate sense of Gini Co-efficient today in most parts of the Western World - as does his vision of 'Geopolitical Power Block' as 'supra National'; sense of 'Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania', express prescience?

The Proletariat, and indeed the 'Lumpenproletariat' or 'Proletariat in rags', are growing in number daily in the Western World given the shrinkage of the middle classes under the onslaught of Economic Depression - and are increasingly liable to be viewed as 'superfluous' accordant the growth of power of 'Inner Party' as 'Masters of the Universe' or '?bermenschen'?

'Population Control' is a euphemism as can be employed by 'Philanthropists' who see themselves as '?bermenschen', and to whom 'Genocide' concerning the elimination of 'Prole' as '?ntermenschen' is but only a further step along the Corporate line in an Orthodoxy demanding seeing others as less worthy of Life - and as to be so 'constrained'?

So it goes.

It is a questionable proposition that the engineering of an Economic Depression constitutes Population Control?

The horror!

These small quarters write expressive of a psychophysical consciousness which is reflective of a neurophysiological integration, involving an 'anamnesis' as put by Socrates, and within context of a 'Paradigm' as would be determined by Empiricism. It is ultimately through Empiricism that Corporatism as an Orthodoxy has been spawned, much along the lines of 'Dialectic' as enumerated by Marx concerning relationship to means of Production determined by Science as a fruit of Empiricism - as it is also through same Empiricism as paradigm Corporate that a mere Prole is not 'meant' to use words such as 'psychophysical' or 'neurophysiological' - as Orwell in his concept of 'Newspeak' acknowledged?

The point being made is that the 'Heart of Darkness' is not only 'out there' in Cartesian sense of particular best laid scheme being played with 'matter', but is also 'in here' sense of best laid scheme being played with 'mind'?

The point is also that the 'Inner Party' as Stateless Bastards imposing Orthodoxy for gain 'Utilitarian' have a variety of ways of 'grinding' Man down through the imposition of illusion directed at destroying Hope; or at the very least rendering it capable of being described as 'audacious'?

Asking the 'right questions' in a Panopticon comes with the risk of being 'unintelligible' or labelled 'derogatory' - such the control as they who would have wrong questions asked have attained – never mind the truth that 'hope springs eternal in the human breast' as Pope stated?

The pragmatism of the Corporatist Age in which we currently 'live' will surely be viewed in the future as being 'Dark' as Lichtenberg proposed; and in such illumination the Horror of the Age as illusion imposed will necessarily be faced and recognised for the denial it was?

'Grundrisse' as outlines critique of Political Economy is Marx's prescience concerning the inevitable effects of concentration of wealth as a polarisation of power- and the degeneration of Capitalist Democracy to Corporatism?

That 'History is written by the 'Victorious' was illustrated through alternative interpretation expressing a transcendence of such 'paradigm' by Howard Zinn - as an iconoclast concerning Orthodox American History?

For as there are certain Men as cannot be 'ground down' sense of Illegitimum non carborundum, and who retainthe right to have own opinions, idiosyncratic or offensive as they may be, but whose consciousness constitutes the attempt at 'CounterPunch' against Corporatist illusion in the denial of denial; so there is orthodox propaganda founded in a cynical pragmatic of the materialism which Corporatism has come to represent at the level of hegemony?

Squeezed out to the margins through technologically enhanced Hegemony of Orthodoxy; the narrative of those as are able to refuse reduction to the cynicism of pragmatism and deny imprisonment within the paradigm of illusion yet remains a vital sign of 'Political Life on the Planet' -though there exists an ongoing effort to render such not only 'illegitimate' but 'unintelligible'? Corporatism 'works' by means of invisible restraint as of 'unwritten rule' concerning what is palatable, what is acceptable, what will be 'rewarded' - and in the final analysis what is comprehensible?

As Orwell put sublimely in 1984:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

For we all exist in a 'cage' do we not, such as 'Yellow Submarine' as song sung of represents 'imprisonment' of sensibilities, and for some such a 'tubular cage' is more constraining, and not just in the singularity of 'One Dimensional Man', as Marcuse put, but also by way of multiplicity; as in the context of 'Realpolitik' the imperative exists of division, as of by way of the Roman maxim which has rationale of 'conquering', by way of illusion become as between 'Republican' or 'Democrat' concerning the power of 'Inner Party' - and as there can be 'cages within a cage'?

The Corporatist Orthodoxy demands a uniformity which has the inevitable developmental line of marginalising Humanity through abrogation of Life as denial of Truth in the propagation of Death - as the acceptance of Lie as an unconsciousness; as in 'no need to think'?

The tragedy of such Darkness' as would be even at 'Noon' sense of Koestler, is that such cage will become ever more confining but yet would be 'unseen' under the illusion which is expressive of 'power of mind over mind'.

The tragedy of America contemporaneous is of the Darkness of a Panopticon, such as the Heart of Corporatism would 'pump up the volume' to point of incapacitating level; as in where Man cannot hear himself or herself think – and so gives up the ghost' concerning the imperative of consciousness?

Concerning Politics as 'moral economics', there is a Manichean aspect; given the acknowledgement of 'morality'?

These small quarters seeing the trend contemporaneous in Western World as being primarily evil, as evident in the infliction of sufferance epitomised by Corporatism.

At present these small quarters can only speak as a 'mushroom' kept in a particular darkness the intent of power of mind over mind. In such darkness there exists as 'foodstuff' a certain kind of 'shit' which defines the demanded illusion of 'geopolitical power block'. The unity of such power block is expressed in the currency, or money which is believed in, and controlled as of the exercise of a hidden taxation - to the 'wetting of the beak' in Mafia parlance by the 'Inner Party' as International Financier?

That 'The Heart of Corporate Darkness' is to be found within a 'Continuity of Memoranda' relating to identifiable horrors is the proposition of this small article.

In mind here is the 'Ford Pinto Memo' as real and demonstrable - and a Memorandum as must exist somewhere concerning the 'Gulf of Mexico', which summates the mechanics of deliberation concerning disaster as a series of pragmatic calculations within an obscene and warped Orthodoxy, realised in the denial of Life?

Increasingly mere 'Proles' such as these small quarters are being 'asked' to 'suspend disbelief' in the face of a crafted illusion which is wreaking 'havoc!', given 'unleashing' of the Corporatist 'Dogs of War'; where 'War', as in the multiplicity concerning context of restraint apropos 'cage' above, is a polymorphous horror: ranging from a wrought Economic Depression with its 'collateral damage' of millions impoverished, to the abuse of military force against Nation with its 'collateral damage' of millions killed, to the destruction of Ecosystem with its 'collateral damage' of millions of lives lost - as considered across a wondrous diversity of species.

America, Iraq and the Gulf of Mexico exemplify respectively.

The horror!, the horror!, the horror!

Yet the manifold forms of Warfare as 'Racket' are not just for Mind, they are ultimately for Soul, such the 'what it is all about' concerning the pump of the Heart of Darkness - as every beat of dark bastard heart leads to further sufferance reflecting breakdown of 'Life'; which in the case of America means making a mockery, to point of tragedy, of the best Political Constitution which the World has yet seen, through the destruction of 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' evident through impoverishment of the Citizenry - and the diversion, under Orthodoxy, of precious resources to a Military Industrial Complex which projects 'Empire' fearful to point of 'shock and awe' under such pitifully perverse illusion as the imposition of Democracy by force in an Irony far from sublime as the grubby racket it represents by way of expropriation?

The horror!

Americans need not look far to see what such horror as irony means; for every American Citizen reliant on Food Stamp to survive, every American Citizen under threat of foreclosure and homelessness, every American Citizen living in fear of losing livelihood, is a testimony to the Obscenity of the Orthodoxy of Corporatism which would continue to propagate cruel illusion denying the horror of such actuality?

Welcome to the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave' - such the 'Doublethink'?

It is not without meaning that the last two published articles by these small quarters this exemplary Journal of Democracy have ended with one particular extract from the Political Constitution of the United States of America as an understanding of what Corporatism represents way of what it can deny - and what is held to be self evident.

For what is held as self evident these small quarters is the destruction of America by an enemy within as would be unseen; the takeover of power to issue money as a 'permit' being as a fatal blow to Democracy, as cannot be hidden despite the truly expensive efforts of Corporatist illusion to deny what is become so clear as it is so tragic, - and given awareness of the concept of 'opportunity cost'?

It is become inevitable, such the Dialectic as reflecting the mechanics of deliberation as can be epitomised in a Memorandum; and as continuity demands consideration of Memoranda, that in America today there is a tragedy of homelessness, a tragedy of businesses closing, a tragedy of immiseration through impoverishment as unemployment and dependency upon food stamp represents; a tragedy which is of the 'cages within cage' of Corporatism - given the prevalence of fear, almost Universal such context as the beat of a 'Heart of Darkness' inevitably pumps out sufferance form of the destruction of Constitution by way of a Panopticon condemned to destroy Truth?

The horror!

It is a tragedy as would be unseen, unmentionable to the pathological state of 'mind' become dominant which is as Corporatism representing the 'ascendancy' of an Orthodoxy through which an Oligarchic Collective 'survives', as within such 'Gutenbergian Galaxy' become digitised, as per McLuhan, such medium contains a message indeed, and it is fearful as it arises from 'Darkness' - as of 'enough never being enough', such the greed as driven maniacal as abrogative of Humanity - or as Satanic as would destroy the Joy which the 'Gift of Life' represents?

'Less than Zero' such the 'Luciferian Burn' as the avoidable death of People in a Ford Pinto become magnified in the avoidable death of Life in the Gulf of Mexico as vehicle of the 'buy in' to illusion - form of trust extended or as permit granted? It is a tragedy of continuity as in a denouement expressive of the degeneration of 'Citizenry' and 'Democracy' by a 'Coterie' as constitutes Oligarchic Collective; it is a tragedy of the slow but sure strangulation of the breath of Life to the point beyond whimper whence last gasp of despair concerning materialism exists; at the end of the 'day' sense of the termination of the period of sunlight direct, such tragedy is of 'cide' can be summative; as in the ascending scale of obscenity represented by, 'sui, ethno, geno, eco' to such suffix.

Rather than 'side' as within humane context of debate as prefix of 'for' or 'against', the ubiquity of 'cide' as a suffix context of inhumane Warfare is a tragedy of expropriation, arrogation and abrogation, such the sadness that mere Corporatism can eliminate Democracy in the marginalisation of Humanity to point of 'hollow man' become dominant - such the 'patter of rat's feet over broken glass'. -T.S. Eliot was in his own way above and beyond the mechanics of deliberation?

Corporatism is a tragedy because it is unnecessary; because it is an avoidable abrogation of potentiality, because as simply put in colloquial vernacular: 'it don't have to be this way'?

The challenge for Corporatism is to sustain and perpetuate a life denying illusion which calls into ever greater question the ability of Man to refuse to believe the evidence of his or her own eyes. The dynamic or dialectic is of the suspension of disbelief given a growing disparity between the illusion as would be imposed, and the day to day reality for the ever growing Majority as truly suffer 'impoverishment Utilitarian'. Orwell saw within such challenge a form of illusion he described as 'Doublethink', encapsulated within the slogans:

'War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, andIgnorance is Strength.'

The motivation for adoption of life denying illusion is as simple as the biological 'rationale' for the diversity of parasitical life; it is material gain and the occupation of a comfortable niche with minimal expenditure of effort and provision of return. It is 'survival' as an imperative experienced as 'superseding' the need to speak up, sense of as Neimöller wrote - for all those who give up the right to 'speak up' experience an inevitable execution through joining the 'chorus' of a Moritaten, or 'Ballad of Death' concerning 'consciousness'?

If humble parasites such as leeches could speak and dream, such would tell of Corporatism as a 'rise' above mere hematophagy and the feed upon lifeblood of an individual host; such would tell of money and power and corruption, and control and manipulation towards the end of ever greater expropriation from a greater diversity - as of all other life become as 'host'?

Such a horror of the Necrotrophy as has destroyed the American Dream?

The Ford Pinto Memorandum is a testimony to the mechanics of deliberation which epitomises Corporatism as Orthodoxy. ' It is 'Life', Jim, and just as we have come to know it'' more the horror, such as a 'Trek amongst the Stars' it is not; but closer to the scatological ravings of perverse degenerates such as coprophagiacs become as Hegemony; such the 'existence' for Man when lunatics take over an asylum. Because the reduction of any life to mere dollars and cents in concept of 'worth' is obscene, and reflects a level of perversity to which the sadness of Coprophagia as a state of perverse degeneracy could represent 'improvement'?

The irony being that Corporatists exist on the premise of People 'eating' the shit of Propaganda; sense of illusion being swallowed as Orthodoxy accepted - and evidence of Man as has own eyes denied?

The Ford Pinto Memorandum concerned Corporate product as designed, built, marketed and branded which had a design flaw which meant an increased risk of the product bursting in to flames in a collision. Given recognition of this flaw, some sad bastard of Corporatist Orthodoxy sat down and ran calculations of contingency within margins of levels of confidence, ultimately expressed in levels of 'bottom line' of dollars and cents reaching a conclusion in terms of 'EMV' or 'Expected Monetary Value' concerning 'recall and replace' or 'recompense for fatality/injury' as part of a 'decision tree'. The answer being as History demonstrates, such the discovery of what 'life' can mean in a paradigm of Obscene Orthodoxy.

Every person burned to death - or lucky enough to escape with 'degree of burn' - in such a product of Corporatism contributed to a profit as would be maximised under costs minimised - so the Orthodoxy goes.

The hypothetical 'Gulf of Mexico Memorandum' posits a development of the above horrific obscenity, written by an even sadder bastard than the author of the Ford Pinto Memorandum.

Why sadder?

Because the calculations concerning the ongoing tragedy of 'Deepwater Horizon' would have to reflect an even greater 'incorporation' of diversity of life denied, evidenced in bigger figures concerning dollars and cents, such the scale of obscenity as 'Homicide' can be represented as 'mere' when it comes to 'Ecocide'; such the failure, such the Denial. We are not just talking of children as passengers or drivers as parents burned alive as the Ford Pinto Memorandum 'incorporated'; we are talking of the diversity of species encompassed by an ecosystem 'incorporated' as a cost, sense of dollars and cents, and as can determine the choice between a number of courses of action -where 'denial' is the inevitable outcome of obscene Orthodoxy.

The hypothetical Gulf of Mexico Memorandum represents the 'Big League' of Corporatist Orthodoxy; commensurate with resonance of the illusion as to 'Where has all the money gone?' realising Genocide in an Economic Depression as disastrous illusion become 'Where has all the Oil gone? in an Environmental Catastrophe of Ecocide as illusion would seek to deny – such the 'Too big to fail' premise as the illusion of Corporatism demands the inevitable imposition of sufferance and denial, variant only the prefix of the 'cide', such the obscenity.

But yet the failure of Corporatist Orthodoxy is all too evident, sense of the loss of life, sense of the magnification of expenditure of resources gone in to the support of illusion, sense of the Depression being as denial of Life - and of the Joy which it is as a wondrous gift.

The horror!

To reiterate a point made in a recent article by these small quarters, the drill of Corporatism as an Orthodoxy died in the Gulf of Mexico, and that is not tragic, but long overdue. What is truly tragic is the horror of the sacrifice it has taken to bring about the death of such Orthodoxy as an assassin of consciousness; for it is a sacrifice which many lives, and not just of Man, have yet to 'enumerate' - sense of acknowledgement of Truth as the absence of denial?

Citizens as People of America, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, are beginning to open their eyes to what this current 'evolutionary trajectory' represents - as they are beginning to see the illusion of Corporatism for what it represents as the denial of Life?

At a pragmatic level given sense of horror reflected in ability to hypothesize, concerning the continuity as of 'Memoranda', what this means for Orthodoxy is that People have to be eliminated – and for People read Citizenry; read Majority; read 'Prole'?

To parallel of a journey to the Heart of Darkness, way of the river of the Mississippi rather than the Congo as in Conrad's Novella, and as in a Memorandum as somewhere exists as parallels 'Ford Pinto Memorandum':

'The Gulf of Mexico. It Dead'

-How such horror expressive of an Obscene Orthodoxy such as Corporatism has come to prevail in a Nation which has a Constitution enshrining:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

is a right question, as 'they', sense of Inner Party, would have not asked – as they indeed would not have the consequences of such truths as above find meaning in 'Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'?

As a fact becoming increasingly self evident, such the horror of the pump of the Heart of Corporate Darkness.

The horror! The horror!

-Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is available here, superb example of consciousness concerning horror still unfolding as 'slow violence' of Orthodoxy revealed concerning the Gulf of Mexico is to be found here.

Stephen Martin can be reached at: stephenmarti@yahoo.com

Pete
Belief is the death of intelligence--Robert Anton Wilson

Dear Tea Partiers, Let's Get Mad Together

2010-09-09T13:33:00.001-07:00

Disturbing Truths About Our Government
By PAUL BUCHHEIT, COUNTERPUNCH

Not because the government does too much. But because it's done too little.

Consider a few disturbing truths:
-- We cry 'socialism!' at the mention of higher taxes, but we allow a
businessman to make enough money to pay the salaries of every police
officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in the city of Chicago.

-- The richest 1% had a big slice of the American income pie in 1980.
Since that time, they've cut a second piece of the same size for
themselves, and then a THIRD piece! Three times as much in 25 years. They
got this extra pie not from being good hard-working little boys, but from
tax cuts and deregulation.

-- As Howard Zinn argued, low-income people go to jail for thefts of a few
hundred dollars. The people who take BILLIONS from society by calling
their income "carried interest" instead of income are considered shrewd
capitalists.

-- And how about corporations, the driving force of a 'revitalized'
economy? Right now the 500 largest non-financial corporations are sitting
on $1.8 trillion in cash instead of investing in people. And they're not
paying much in taxes. The portion of federal revenue derived from
corporate income tax decreased from 33% in the 1950s to 12% in 2005.
Companies have saved billions by moving their headquarters to tax havens
such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. Business-backers claim that the
U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates among OECD countries, but
the U.S. is actually the fourth lowest among OECD countries in the
collection of corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP.

Tea Partiers, we should get mad together at government, because they've
done too little to correct these injustices. It is not in their own best
interests to raise taxes on the rich.

And we should get mad together at the mainstream media for not reporting
on the abuses of the small percentage of very wealthy people who make it
so hard on the rest of us.

Paul Buchheit teaches in the School for New Learning at DePaul University.

--
Pete
Belief is the death of intelligence--Robert Anton Wilson

History According to Beck and Palin

2010-09-08T18:01:00.001-07:00

The Myth of the Founding Fathers

By TOM TURNIPSEED

Led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Tea Party worshippers of the Founding
Fathers want to return to the "good ol' days" of 1787, when most
African-Americans were slaves, many poor whites were indentured servants,
and women couldn't vote. At the time the Founding Fathers wrote the
Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Native Americans were being
slaughtered for their land, and Mexicans who were indigenous to the
Southwest and the West coast of what became the United States were
included in the genocide.

None of the ancestors of the African American, Native American, or Latino
speakers addressing the mostly white Tea Partiers at the Lincoln Memorial
on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech
would have been among the Founding Fathers. No women, Jews, Muslims, poor
people or non-land owners were numbered amongst the Founders who were rich
white men.

Conservatives have trouble seeking sensible solutions to our present-day
problems of poverty, violence, and perpetual war that make rich folks
richer while poor people suffer and weapons makers and war profiteers make
big bucks while killing and injuring innumerable innocent people. The
problems are caused by big moneyed interests with the help of simple
minded sycophants like Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers. Their
answer is to look backward to the wealthy Founding Fathers for guidance.
The Tea Partiers believe the mythologized Founding Fathers are more
intelligent and moral than anyone today except maybe radical right-wingers
like Beck and Palin.

While hosting the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio
show and the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel, Beck has been promoting
conspiracy theories and delivering incoherent diatribes against socialists
and environmentalists. Beck has called President Obama a Marxist,
communist, and socialist who is taking America down the road to fascism.
He has accused Obama of being a racist with a "hatred for whites", and
alleged that the Obama Presidency is like evil gorillas, endangering
humankind and compared Obama's America to "the Planet of the Apes". He
said that Al Gore wants to create a new "Hitler youth" because he promotes
environmental awareness among young people. Beck doesn't believe in global
warming, but loves guns and militarism.

In Washington Beck did not mention Obama or Gore, but rather, assumed the
role of an evangelist, presenting a religious theme of "Faith, Hope and
Charity" which was a lame attempt to mask his worship of Mammon, the God
of big business. Beck's big show "just happened" to be at the Lincoln
Memorial where Martin Luther King II made his iconic speech 47 years ago
to the day. Beck said he was totally unaware it was the anniversary of
King's address when he scheduled his event and he believes the Lord led
him to schedule the event at that time and place. He also boasted that the
right wing rally had "reclaimed the civil rights movement." Beck said he
heard the voice of God while addressing his flock, a symptom
characteristic of schizophrenia. He and his far right friend and probable
Republican Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly mentioned King's
legacy, as giant screens carried King's image and brief excerpts of his
1963 address. Earlier this year Beck denounced King as a "radical
socialist" and questioned why a national holiday had been named in his
honor. Beck was born in a Roman Catholic family, but converted to
Mormonism. He says he "found the Lord" who saved him from his alcohol and
drug addiction and his channeling the voice of God sounds like the faith
required in a 12 steps effort to stay on the wagon.

In his rambling speech Beck gave several quotes from the Declaration of
Independence, recited the Gettysburg Address, invoked trite clichés of
Americana and read bible verses. Palin said she was the mother of a
"combat vet" and led a chant of "USA, USA, USA."

In the past other extremist populist movements in America also wrapped
themselves in the cross and the flag, but espoused some social and
economic policies that appealed to the common man. Father Charles Coughlin
and Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith were demagogic leaders in the depression days
of the 1930s, who at least talked about the dangers of capitalism, with
Coughlin advocating a guaranteed annual wage and nationalization of some
industries and Smith calling for income limits for the wealthy and old age
pensions for everyone.

When he announced the rally, Beck promised to present a plan which would
provide "specific policies and action steps" to found "a new national
movement to restore our great country." Instead, in his speech on
Saturday, he said he decided to not reveal the plan, because of a
conversation he had with God. Rather than explaining his plan "to restore
our great country", Beck said that people should turn to the Lord by
praying on their knees and leaving their doors open so their children
could see them doing so. Could it be that the billionaires and corporate
entities who fund the tea party movement nixed the plan that might help
poor and working class people at their expense?

Beck, Palin and their fellow Tea Partiers worship the rich white men and
moneyed interests who fund their movement and their politics. Their gods
are 21st century manifestations of the rich white men who were the
Founding Fathers.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC.
His blog is http://tomandjudyonablog.blogspot.com

--
Pete
Belief is the death of intelligence--Robert Anton Wilson

The Prison State

2010-08-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Lock 'Em Up
By MICHAEL YATES
Sometimes events conspire to make you think that things are worse than you
imagined. On August 3, Marilyn Buck died. Marilyn was a fighter in the
struggle for racial justice and against the most virulent pestilence in
the world—United States imperialism. Unlike most of us, she put her money
where her mouth was and her life on the line. It is easy now to forget
that the agents of repression—the police, the FBI, the courts, the
government itself—consciously and actively targeted those who were active
in and led the civil rights and Vietnam war resistance movements. They
infiltrated and acted as provocateurs in movement organizations; they
arrested innocent people; they enacted and enforced draconian laws; they
illegally tapped phones and spied on any and all persons suspected of
"subversive" activity; and they tortured and murdered those who they
deemed to be the most dangerous radicals.

Whites like Marilyn who militantly supported black liberation were high on
the list of suspects. She was arrested in 1973 for buying (legal) arms
under a false name. She was sentenced to ten years in prison, and during a
furlough to consult with her lawyers in 1977, she went underground. She
was arrested again in 1983, accused of multiple crimes—aiding the prison
break of Asata Shakur, planning and participating in several bombings of
public facilities, and taking part in the infamous Brinks robbery of 1981
in which a guard and two policemen were killed. She was convicted and
sentenced to eighty years in prison.

While incarcerated, Marilyn earned college degrees, became a poet and
writer of distinction, mentored many prisoners, fought for the rights of
those behind bars, and continued as an activist in the battles that
defined her before her imprisonment. Finally scheduled for parole, she
discovered that she had cancer. Treatment failed and she died at home,
having been released a few weeks early because of her failing health. She
was sixty-two years old.

This bare bones sketch hardly does justice to her life or what she endured
in prison. In an interview published in Monthly Review in 2001, here is
how answer to a question about how prison time had affected her personally:
Imagine yourself in a relationship with an abuser who controls your every
move, keeps you locked in the house. There's the ever-present threat of
violence or further repression if you don't toe the line. I think that's a
fairly good analogy of what happens. And imagine being there for fifteen
years.

To be punished, to be absolutely controlled, whether it's about buttoning
your shirt; how you have a scarf on your head; how long or how baggy your
pants are—all of those things are under scrutiny. It's hard to give a
clinical picture of what they do, because how do you know, when you're the
target, or the victim, what that does to you? But theres a difference
between being a target and being a victim.

Like most prisoners, she was not allowed to attend her mother's funeral.

From the same interview:

My mother died about six weeks ago. She became ill in September, so I went

through a phase of real guilt that I wasn't there. And real sorrow and

real anger. I think I've looked at the guilt a little more. I just

couldn't be there. But the sorrow of not being able to hold my mother's

little bird hand by the time she was starving to death from the cancer …

just breaks my heart. And there's nothing I can do about it.

I could intellectualize it. I could have been on a ship halfway around the

world, and we got stuck in the trade winds and couldn't get there in time.

But I'm an extreme realist and understand who I am as a political

prisoner. I knew that I would not be allowed to go to her bedside, nor to

her funeral. That was just the reality. She died on a Sunday. And she was

buried on my birthday. So it's just all very hard.

I talked to my mother every week I could. And she came to visit me once a

year. It was hard for her to get here. My mom was seventy-four She had to

drive a long way and go through all the emotional turmoil that you can't

avoid when you see somebody you can't do anything for. So I had to look at

her anger, too.

In a certain way, I want to be able to lie on the floor and bang my heels

and cry and scream, but that just hurts my heels…So what can I say? I'm

having a hard time. I'm having a very, very hard time. I…you know, it's

grief. But it's grief under dire conditions. I'll always miss my mother.

A few days after Marilyn Buck's death, I received the current print
edition of the CounterPunch newsletter. In it there is an astonishing
article by journalist JoAnn Wypijewski. The title is "Defending the
700,000 Most Despised People in America," and it describes efforts by the
mothers of accused and prosecuted sex offenders to get our draconian sex
offender laws changed.

JoAnn interviews several mothers, and their stories of what has been done
to their sons are heartrending. A typical scenario unfolds like this.
Local cops troll internet chat rooms posing as young girls and boys. An
adult, usually a young man, says he is looking for female friendship. The
cop then does everything possible to seduce the man into coming to his or
her house, presumably for sex. If the young man resists, the decoy uses
explicitly sexual language to entice him. If he succumbs and goes to the
house, vice cops are waiting. What follows then is a nightmare of arrest,
sensationalist stories in local—and sometimes national— media (fed to them
by ambitious district attorneys), expensive and often corrupt lawyers,
extreme family and financial stress, a plea bargain, probation and
counseling (paid for by the young man or his family), community service, a
lifetime as a registered sex offender, and the most invasive and
incredible set of rules and regulations, which must be obeyed to the
letter under threat of more or less permanent probation or prison. These
include regular breathalizer, urine, and lie detector tests, for which the
"offender" must pay. All for an absolutely victimless "crime." After a
mother tells Wypijewski that her son must have a "safety plan," approved
by the probation officer before going anywhere, there is this exchange:

JW: So, say, I will be brought to the appointment by an adult in a car and

if a child comes in I'll run down to the parking lot and sit in the car

until the kid is gone?

D: That kind of thing.

S: You have no idea how inhumane. Tell her about that test, D.; what's it

called – plasmo-something?

JW: Plesmograph?

D: You go into a room with an examiner. They hook your penis up to a

monitor. They show you pictures of women in different states of dress, and

they monitor the flow of blood in your penis. My son's test came back as

"inconclusive." It didn't show that he had any sexual deviance, but it

didn't show that he didn't either. So the recommendation was that he go to

therapy to learn to manage his sexual deviance, and to learn the patterns

of his sexual deviance.

There are even court-imposed fines for the "victims" of the sex offender,
despite the fact that there were no victims.

I was interested to note that one of the states singled out in the article
as having especially harsh laws is Colorado, where we have lived. Here
decades of right-wing religious fervor and vicious radio talk show
jockeying have borne fruit for those hoping for a police state before they
die.

Not long after I read JoAnn's essay, we went to the huge Goodwill store on
West Burnside Street in Portland, Oregon to buy a few things for cooking
in our apartment. Portlanders love their many thrift shops, and, like this
one, they're always crowded. Karen was looking for pans and saw a young
man holding a small plate and looking on the shelves next to her. She said
to him, "There's a lot of stuff here." He said that he was looking for a
plate but could only afford one. Karen suggested that he get something
larger, since a large plate could do what a small one could and more. She
asked about a glass, and he said that he had a plastic cup. Karen said
that it would be nicer to drink from a real glass. When it was evident
that he had little money, Karen gave him enough to cover the plate and a
glass. He thanked her and went to the checkout counter. A few minutes
later, we took our items to the same counter and found ourselves behind
him. He had a few items on the counter and a voucher for thirty dollars to
pay for them, plus the two dollars he got from Karen. He had calculated
closely and had just enough money. When the clerk couldn't figure out
whether to take the cash first or the voucher, we spent a few minutes
talking to the young man. He had just gotten out of prison and was staying
at a halfway house for ninety days. The $30 was the state's "start a new
life fund." It didn't go very far. He said that he was going to school to
become a chef, and the state was going to pay. We gave him $20, as much
encouragement as we could, and wished him luck. The clerk finally rang him
up. He opened his backpack and tried to get his new possessions into it.
As he rearranged his pack, we saw a package of cheese and some other food
items he had bought for his supper.

While were talking, a man joined the line behind me. He looked a little
more street-worn than our new friend. He had been listening in on our
conversation, and he asked me, "Did that guy say he just got out of
prison?" "Yes," I said. "What did he do? I've spent a lot of time in
prison. He doesn't look like someone whose been there." I said that I
hadn't asked him and that maybe you couldn't always tell if someone had
been in jail. He then began to complain about his shoulder. He showed me a
lump on his collarbone. It looked broken, and I told him he should
consider going to an emergency room, he said that he owed hospitals too
much money already. "At least, put your arm in a sling," I said. He
wrapped a shirt around his neck and arm and said, "Yeah, that helps." He
began to fumble with the items he was buying , mostly clothes. Then he got
out his $30 voucher. I offered him some money, but he said he didn't need
any. I stuffed some bills in his gym bag and said, "Take this anyway."

7.3 million adults in the United States are incarcerated, on parole, or on
probation. A 2009 Pew Charitable trusts report fleshes out the details of
this horrifying number tells us that:

–One in 31 adults in America is in prison or jail, or on probation or

parole. Twenty-five years ago, the rate was 1 in 77.

–Overall, two-thirds of offenders are in the community, not behind bars. 1

in 45 adults is on probation or parole and 1 in 100 is in prison or jail.

The proportion of offenders behind bars versus in the community has

changed very little over the past 25 years, despite the addition of 1.1

million prison beds.

–Correctional control rates are highly concentrated by race and geography:

1 in 11 black adults (9.2 percent) versus 1 in 27 Hispanic adults (3.7

percent) and 1 in 45 white adults (2.2 percent); 1 in 18 men (5.5 percent)

versus 1 in 89 women (1.1 percent). The rates can be extremely high in

certain neighborhoods. In one block-group of Detroit's East Side, for

example, 1 in 7 adult men (14.3 percent) is under correctional control.

–Georgia, where 1 in 13 adults is behind bars or under community

supervision, leads the top five states that also include Idaho, Texas,

Massachusetts, Ohio and the District of Columbia.

Without a doubt, most of those enmeshed in the (in)justice system are not
dangers to society and would not have been in it at all in a society that
wasn't so racist and so shot through with every kind of social and
economic inequality. Unfortunately, whatever the reasons why so many men
and women have been denied their freedom, once the numbers began to rise
dramatically, constituencies came into being—lawyers, police, probation
officers, prison guards and staff, drug and alcohol rehabilitation
counselors, sex offender counselors, vendors of all sorts, clerks and
other clerical support staff, court officers, judges, community service
employers—that have a strong stake in milking the new cash cow. Given that
inequality will continue to increase, that good jobs will be ever harder
to find, that towns and cities will be strapped for funds into the
indefinite future, that social unrest is likely to rise, that racism is
not abating, don't look for the criminal (in)justice system to shrink
anytime soon.

Michael D. Yates is Associate Editor of Monthly Review. His most recent
book is In and Out of the Working Class. He encourages correspondence and
can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com.

So when's that stimulus gonna stimulate, huh?

2010-08-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

CounterPunch Diary
America Enters a New Time

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08132010.html

I went to get my hair cut the other day in the town of Fortuna and waited ten minutes when the elderly barber finished buzz-cutting a young Mexican American. After the young man had exited under his thin skullcap of black stubble, Don the barber sighed and said, “That’s the third boy I’ve cut today who’s headed into the Marines. They all say the same thing. “There’s no work around here and I’ve got a family to support.” When I tell them to hold off, they say the same thing: “Too late. I’ve signed up.”

This is Humboldt county, northern California, where the marijuana boom is in its final paroxysms, with people flocking from around the world to get a piece of the action, just like they did in the Gold Rush. One of the many places selling bags of good soil to marijuana growers ($10 a bag, 8 bags to each marijuana plant, grown in a 100 foot x 30 foot plastic greenhouse, $25,000 or so) had a $300,000 day lately. So there’s more money here than most places across America, where the situation is truly desperate.

Profits are up 41 percent since Obama’s election; yet half of American workers have suffered a job loss or a cut in hours or wages over the past 30 months. They’re saying around 28 million people either have no job or one that doesn’t yield them enough money to get through the week. On Friday, August 13, the Bureau of Labor Statistic noted on its home page that “Employers initiated 1,851 mass layoff events in the second quarter of 2010 that resulted in the separation of 338,064 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

Millions are plummeting into total destitution, having reached the end of their 99-weeks of unemployment benefits. Their only option then is the soup line at a church and getting on he waiting list for a shelter. The nearest big city north of me is Portland, Oregon, adjacent to the CounterPunch co-editor bunker in Oregon City of Jeffrey St Clair. The downtown area in Portland is filled with homeless people, napping on steps, bedding down on cardboard in doorways. Jeffrey kayaks frequently down the Willamette and can see colonies of the destitute all along the river bank, from the shipyards to Willamette Falls, sleeping under thin plastic and grey skies.

California agriculture and much of the construction industry depends on undocumented workers coming across the border from Mexico – minimum cost $1000 – for an 8-day walk through the Arizona desert. Since building is in a terminal slump, many Mexicans would like to head back home till times improve, but nowadays it’s so tough to come back across, that they daren’t risk it. Hence the paradox: trying to lock “illegals” out means locking them in. Frank Bardacke who lives in the farm town of Watsonville, a couple of hours south of San Francisco, recently described amid an important piece in our newsletter a bank robbery by one young, desperate immigrant.

“Several months ago," Frank writes, “Jario took his father’s pickup truck, drove 20 miles to the upscale tourist playpen Carmel By the Sea, and walked into the local branch of the Bank of America. He waited in line to see a teller, and, when his turn came, he pretended to have a gun under his shirt and quietly demanded that the teller give him her cash. As she was passing out the money, he apologized for frightening her; meanwhile, she was hiding a GPS device among the bills.

“He left the bank, his crime apparently unnoticed, and returned to the truck for the drive home. On the way, he got confused and took a wrong turn through Monterey before he got back on the right road home. Twenty police cars from four different police jurisdictions followed the GPS signal and stopped him 45 minutes after he left the bank. He immediately confessed, explaining that he needed the money to help his dad pay the family mortgage. When his case came to trial, the DA pressed for two years in State Prison. The judge decided that six months in the county jail and five years probation would be enough.”

In Texas or anywhere in the South the fellow would probably have got 25 years. But in desperate times one can expect people to do desperate, stupid things, and this decent judge showed compassion and understanding. One can’t say the same for many Americans, starting with the Republicans in Congress who’ve been happily voting for a cut-off in benefits for the jobless, while simultaneously engaging in the politically insane enterprise of repealing the 14th Amendment, no longer making it a constitutional provision that those “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Do the Republicans want to cede Texas and Florida permanently to the Democrats?

Conspicuous good works are always a feature of Depression, the rich zealous to purchase moral insurance. Some billionaires, led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have been pledging that they will earmark not less than 50 per cent of their personal wealth for charity. But since whatever they give away is tax deductible, so revenues to Uncle Sam will drop.

The rich don’t get to be rich by being the nicest guys in the shark tank. As Carl Ginsburg recently remarked in a fine piece on this site, “In its fledgling years, profits on Bill Gates’ software were reportedly 70 per cent annually. Another way to gauge Gates’s billions is by catching a glimpse of the multitudes of students priced out of the computer market – thanks in part to that Great Giver’s expensive software – lined up daily at community college libraries for some free access to computers, each machine an expression of Gates’ creative commitment to profit in the +40 percent range – a gift Gates gave himself that keeps on giving. As Gates told Fortune: ‘The diversity of American giving is part of its beauty.’”

We can probably expect more laid-off workers going postal, as David Rosen discussed here on our site last week On August 3, at seven am, Omar Thornton showed up for a disciplinary hearing at the Hartford Distributors, a Budweiser distribution warehouse in Manchester, Connecticut. Thornton had been caught on video pinching some beer. They asked him whether he wanted to be fired, or just quit. Thornton pulled out a handgun and killed seven fellow employees before shooting himself dead. Before he loosed off his last shot into his head, Thornton, a black man, called a friend on his cellphone and said he’s taken care of some racists who’d been giving him a hard time. Unemployment means fear and fear nourishes racism, all the more because we have a black president. Racism is drifting across America like mustard gas in the trenches in World War One.

And, final token of hard times, we have Bonnie and Clyde on the run. In their latest guise the duo consists of John McCluskey and his cousin and fiancee, Casslyn Welch, who’s no Faye Dunaway. She threw some wire cutters over the fence of her man’s Arizona prison. Cops suspect them of killing a couple of retirees, then stealing their truck and heading north up to the Canadian line through Glacier National Park. That’s the last sanctuary in America of Ursus horribilis, the American grizzly. Behind them the cops, ahead the bears. It could be the first movie of a new time.

Jail time for video-taping police

2010-07-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

by Michael Billy, Helium

On May 24 Brian D. Kelly of Carlisle, Pennsylvania was arrested for violating a state wiretapping law. Kelly, 18, videotaped police officers during a routine traffic stop. His camera was immediately confiscated and he was taken to jail. He spent 26 hours in county prison until his mother posted her house as collateral for his $2,500 bail.

What act was Mr. Kelly perpetrating which the great state of Pennsylvania saw as wiretapping?

Well, it turns out that there is an obscure state law that bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone's oral conversation without their consent. The arrest apparently relates to the sound that Kelly's camera picked up, not the video.

Some people would claim that ignorance of the law is no excuse', but I would have to whole-heartedly disagree. How could someone possibly know that it is illegal to record an on-duty officer while on public property? It is not a law that one would assume exists based on common sense, such as murder or theft.

The only way that Kelly could have possibly known about this law would be if he actually read it. But lets be realistic, it could not honestly be expected that every citizen reads the tomes of laws that are passed, on state, local, and federal levels, every year, a process which would likely take an entire lifetime.

Kelly said that if he knew about this law before the incident occurred he would not have recorded the officers. What he does not seem to understand is that this is a law that does not make any sense and is blatantly unconstitutional. And bad laws, quite frankly, are meant to be broken.

Let me remind you of the text of the fourth amendment. It reads, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" The word unreasonable allows for some gray area, but I am sure that most people (a jury of our peers, perhaps) would agree that it was unreasonable for the police to take his camera.

The only crime' Kelly is guilty of is recording the officers doing their jobs, an act that should never be illegal in a free society. Is it not our duty as citizens to make sure that the police and all other government employees for that matter are doing their jobs properly? If not, then whose responsibility is it? And who watches them?

This law is an enemy of Liberty and needs to be repealed. It may have been passed with good intentions, i.e. prevention of blackmail, but we all know how to pave the road to hell. Only Police Officers and others who seek to abuse their powers truly benefit from laws like this one.

Realize this: Any protest that ever takes place in Pennsylvania can not legally be recorded by bystanders. This allows the police, who can potentially abuse their power, to confiscate the cameras of anyone who records them, essentially eliminating evidence of any possible wrong doing.

We are losing civil liberties in this country everyday and I don't know about you but I'm getting sick and tired of it.

If you still do not believe that the country we live in resembles a police state, I have a simple question for you: What will it take for you to open your eyes?

Yesterday they stole away habeas corpus. Today we can not record the police. Tomorrow they remove our right to a trial by jury. Then they take away our guns. What will we have then? Only a hollow shell of the republic that our Founders once envisioned.

Racism Implodes Tea Party

2010-07-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

Can the NAACP Rise to the Challenge?
By GREG MOSES, COUNTERPUNCH

Man what a short weekend. On Thursday the Tea Party was setting up a bigger tent. By Sunday their center pole was cracked in half. Suddenly we live in a country where the NAACP is on the rise, again.

Naturally the racist framing of the past month was drawn and squared by Rush Limbaugh who charged that the President had only his race to offer as the reason for his political success. Limbaugh forgets how much the Obama factor was empowered by a widespread social yearning to get out of the frame that Limbaugh, Fox News, and Bush had locked us into. Perhaps Obama's Black heritage lent some credibility to the hope that he could lead us out of that cave instead of right back into its depths.

Limbaugh's ability to profit commercially from racism as "entertainment value" probably had some mentoring influence upon Mark Williams. When NAACP President Benjamin Jealous dared the Tea Party to repudiate its racism, Williams decided to try a little minstrel style mockery which, come to think of it, pretty much connects Williams to the commercial history of American radio as well. The main mistake Williams made according to the culture code of contemporary social reality is that he forgot to go into show biz before he acted out.

Williams is guilty of what up North people call "stupid" racism, because right up until he put on his blackface the Tea Party had been playing its racism "smart". Of course, nobody should be taken in by the Tea Party's rehab. Their economic model is practically racist as was the Reaganomics upon which it is built.

Now is the time for the NAACP to step into the opportunity that it created and offer some workable disaster relief plan that even the President can't evade. It's been at least a decade since we've seen any real vision with half a chance of winning anything but a ballot count on election day. And of course odds could be better this time around.

Progressives have pretty much stranded themselves in the shallow waters of the Democratic Party, exactly where the ballast of the NAACP is lodged. Just as we can't afford to be fooled by the Tea Party's vapid denials of racism, neither can we afford to believe that the NAACP has this week made a significant dent in the racist structure of the economic crisis or the racist paralysis that prevents all progressive advance.

Whether or how much progressives can afford to waste on another round of Congressional balloteering is a dandy question. But it would be too cynical to bet the movement on the iron weight of the system's internal contradictions crashing.

Yes, that crash is upon us. And as it continues to thunder down, the NAACP could stake ground for that other tent city, the one where those of us who have never trusted the Tea Party can gather for some badly needed refreshment.

Greg Moses is editor of TexasWorker.org and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.

The Fall of Obama...

2010-07-18T19:01:00.001-07:00

Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch

It is not Obama's fault that for 30 years America's policy – under Reagan,
both Bushes and Bill Clinton – has been to export jobs permanently to the
Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer
here, in the homeland, and never will be. They're in China, Taiwan,
Vietnam, India, Indonesia.

No stimulus program, giving money to cement contractors to fix potholes
along the federal interstate highway system, is going to bring those jobs
back. Highly trained tool and die workers, the aristocrats of the
manufacturing sector, are flipping hamburgers – at best – for $7.50 an
hour because U.S. corporations sent their jobs to Guangzhou, with the
approval of politicians flush with the money of the "free trade" lobby.

It is not Obama's fault that across 30 years more and more money has
floated up to the apex of the social pyramid till America is heading back
to where it was in the 1880s, a nation of tramps and millionaires. It's
not his fault that every tax break, every regulation, every judicial
decision tilts toward business and the rich. That was the neoliberal
America conjured into malign vitality back in the mid 1970s.

But it is Obama's fault that he did not understand this, that always, from
the getgo, he flattered Americans with paeans to their greatness, without
adequate warning of the political and corporate corruption destroying
America and the resistance he would face if he really fought against the
prevailing arrangements that were destroying America. He offered them a
free and easy pass to a better future, and now they see that the promise
was empty.

It's Obama's fault, too, that, as a communicator, he cannot rally and
inspire the nation from its fears. From his earliest years he has schooled
himself not to be excitable, not to be an angry black man who would be
alarming to his white friends at Harvard and his later corporate patrons.
Self-control was his passport to the guardians of the system, who were
desperate to find a symbolic leader to restore America's credibility in
the world after the disasters of the Bush era. He is too cool.

So, now Americans in increasing numbers have lost confidence in him. For
the first time in the polls negative assessments outnumber the positive.
He no longer commands trust. His support is drifting down to 40 per cent.
The straddle that allowed him to flatter corporate chieftains at the same
time as blue-collar workers now seems like the most vapid opportunism. The
casual campaign pledge to wipe out al-Quaida in Afghanistan is now being
cashed out in a disastrous campaign viewed with dismay by a majority of
Americans.
--

A POLITICAL WARNING FOR OBAMA

2010-06-16T01:58:00.001-07:00

As we have noted, Barack Obama is part of the first generation of black
ivies, black politicians who got elected thanks to passing white exams
rather than crossing white police lines. Others include Corey Booker,
Deval Patrick and DC mayor Adrian Fenty. The first two are doing well
politically, but Fenty, who won every precinct in his first mayoral
election and exudes, even more than Obama, an unappealing narcissism, is
suffering one of the great political come-downs of recent history, as this
story describes. Remember: a high percentage of the boos are coming from
black voters.

Nikita Stewart Washington Post - Adrian M. Fenty wasn't even at the
Academies at Anacostia graduation ceremony in the District on Friday, but
when the mayor's name was mentioned, an unmistakable chorus arose: "Boo!"
many in the crowd shouted. This Story

Almost simultaneously, across town, where Fenty was attending a funeral
for go-go great Anthony "Little Benny" Harley, his attempts to deliver
condolences were nearly drowned out by a similar din. The taunts were so
thunderous that Pastor Deron Cloud had to grab the microphone to calm the
crowd at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

"This is not the place," Cloud said, to no avail.

The chorus heard 'round some parts of the District is one of vocal
dissatisfaction for the 39-year-old Fenty. It's a far cry from the summer
of 2006, when drivers honked excitedly whenever they saw him campaigning
for mayor. Then, residents were as tickled to see the young candidate come
to their doors as if a celebrity had dropped by with a sweepstakes prize.

Now, Fenty is in a contentious battle with D.C. Council Chairman Vincent
C. Gray, his chief rival for mayor, in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary.
Supporters say that the criticism and boos are unfair, particularly
because city services get high marks, students' test scores are rising,
and new libraries, schools and recreation centers have opened citywide. . .

Outside the gathering at the law school, Ivan Lee Robinson, 66, sat in the
shade with a group of friends. But he was alone with his Fenty sticker and
Fenty sign.

"I'm the only one voting for him," the LeDroit Park resident said in jest
but in a serious tone. "The man is good. . . . He did a pretty good job
with the snow."

A friend asked: "Did you see him get out and shovel anything?"

In the citywide Democratic straw poll taken at the event, Gray garnered
703 votes to Fenty's 190 votes. Former television reporter Leo Alexander,
also a candidate for mayor, received 75 votes.

In the past year and a half, Fenty has developed a reputation for
arrogance, a lack of transparency, and a failure to work with council
members and constituencies. He delayed giving council members tickets to
suites at Verizon Center and Nationals Park. He would not disclose his
whereabouts when he went out of town, drawing criticism when he missed
several memorial services and funerals for victims of last year's Metro
Red Line crash.

There has also been unrest in some parts of the District about Schools
Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, whose blunt style has rubbed many the wrong
way.

A week ago, some Dunbar High School graduates and their parents booed
Fenty, who was the main speaker at the school's graduation. They wanted
Gray, a Dunbar alumnus who offered remarks to the graduating class, to
deliver the keynote address.

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

The People's Party?

2010-06-12T16:02:00.001-07:00

Sam Smith - The present and former Democratic presidents of the United
States actively challenged the major labor union-backed candidate for US
Senator from Arkansas. And then they bragged about it when their own
candidate won. A senior White House official told Politico's Ben Smith,
"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the
toilet on a pointless exercise,"

Not too long ago, this would have been - for a Democratic official - a
criminal offense. But the contemporary Democratic Party's list of periodic
targets includes not only labor unions but school teachers (Race to the
Top), seniors (the assault on Medicare and Social Security), the middle
class (saving banks but not soon-to be-foreclosed homes), the young
(jailed for minor drug offenses and sent, sometimes repeatedly, to fight
in useless wars) and civil liberties (wiretapping and other constitutional
attacks).

In short, it is fair to say that the Democratic Party now treats as foes,
or with contempt, many of the very constituencies that led to its periods
of greatness.

What goes around comes around

2010-06-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

Via Counterpunch

One of the greatest bailouts in history came in 1953, when the Eisenhower
administration authorized a CIA-backed coup in Iran. The Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company, owned by the British government, had been expropriated and
nationalized in 1951 by unanimous vote of Iran's parliament. The '53
coup evicted prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq and installed Shah Reza
Pahlevi, the creature of the West's oil companies , with full tyrannical
powers. The AIOC got back 40 per cent of its old concession and became an
internationally owned consortium, renamed… British Petroleum.

There are plenty of American ingredients in the company, with such BP
acquisitions and mergers down the years as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco and
Arco,. No matter, it's "British Petroleum" now in the minds of Americans
and the company is the designated fall guy – a role it richly deserves
since, as Jeanne Pascal, a former lawyer for the US Environmental
Protection Agency, recently put it, "They are a recurring environmental
criminal and they do not follow US health, safety and environmental
policy."

No mercy.

Footnote: A CounterPuncher writes to me: "BP is indeed a conscience-less
company, possibly even more so than the rest. My father who was an
eye-surgeon was appointed by the Shah government and A.I.O.C.
(Anglo-Iranian Oil Co, later renamed BP) to teach Persian doctors to
battle trachoma in South Persia (Abadan). I remember the many instances of
utterly callous behavior from A.I.O.C. officials towards heavy accidents
in the huge refinery there affecting Persian workers, the neglect of
normal safety procedures and even the disgust about A.O.I.C.'s working
methods expressed by the Dutch director of Shell at whose house we were
staying for some time on Mount Demawand near Teheran."

Cop Busts into Hospital ICU Unit Pretending to be a Terrorist

2010-06-03T00:19:00.001-07:00

This post originally appeared on Hullabaloo.

What is going on in this country? Do people think we are living in a
damned movie?

How's this for an ill-conceived emergency preparedness drill? An off-duty
cop pretending to be a terrorist stormed into a hospital intensive care
unit brandishing a handgun, which he pointed at nurses while herding them
down a corridor and into a room.

There, after harrowing moments, he explained that the whole caper was a
training exercise.

The staff at St. Rose Dominican Hospitals-Siena Campus, where the incident
took place Monday morning, found the exercise more traumatizing than
instructive.

Hospital employees would have been justified in fearing for their lives.

Just last year, Henderson police shot and killed an armed, hostile man in
the emergency room. So it would make sense that security and emergency
preparedness have been a focus at the hospital.

But in Monday's incident, which occurred in a unit that houses the
hospital's sickest patients, nurses, patients and their families did not
know it was a drill, said Renee Ruiz, organizer of the California Nurses
Association, which represents staff at the hospital.

I guess it's a good thing Glenn Reynolds and the boyz haven't had their
way or all the armed nurses and critically ill patients would have opened
fire on this off duty cop. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

I just don't get this mentality. Yes, there are dangers in this world. And
we all need to be vigilant against crazy people armed with easy-to-obtain
guns. But somehow or another with this puerile Jack Bauer obsession,
common sense about violence has gone out the window and everybody's acting
like we're living in the wild west — except that even the wild west wasn't
this kind of stupid free-for-all. (Wyatt Earp was first made famous as a
lawman who confiscated cowboys' guns on their way into town.)

Sadly, I'm beginning to think all this craziness is the natural result of
emotionally stunted conservatives having a mid-life crisis. They pretended
to be adults their whole lives, but never actually grew up. So now we have
a whole bunch of frustrated, middle aged adolescents running things with
no sense of morality or limits.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Why a Criminal Case Against Goldman Sachs Matters and Why Charges Could Stick

2010-05-04T23:55:00.001-07:00

What Was Fab's Job Description

By PAM MARTENS

Goldman Sachs used to be the firm that pursued top government posts; now
government is in hot pursuit of it, and not in a good way. The SEC has
charged the firm and an employee, Fabrice Tourre, with securities fraud
and the Justice Department has commenced a criminal investigation,
according to news reports.

Change appears to be swallowing Goldman Sachs. It began quietly moving
out of its storied and staid headquarters at 85 Broad last Fall to flashy
new multi-billion dollar digs at 200 West Street, including a 54,000
square foot gym (roughly the size of 20 homes for average Americans; those
who can still afford one after the Wall Street pillage). And after the
release of internal emails by the SEC and Senate, Goldman looks more like
a sleazy boiler room pump and dump operation in drag than an investment
bank (in drag as a bank holding company). Comedy talk show hosts are
having a field day (Jon Stewart calls them "those f*!*!ing guys") and
Goldmanfreude (pleasure in watching Goldman shamed for the pain it
inflicted on others) is in full swing.

It all sounds eerily familiar to the wealth transfer maneuver by Goldman
Sachs Trading Company in the asset bubble of 1928. The Trading Company
was a closed end fund (called a trust in those days) that Goldman Sachs
created and offered to the public at $104 a share, stuffed with conflicted
investments while paying Goldman a hefty management fee, only to end up a
few years after the 1929 crash trading at a buck and change. On May 20,
1932, Walter Sachs, President of the Goldman Sachs Trading Company, was
grilled by the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. The implication
was the same as the current round of Senate hearings: Goldman royally
fleeced its customers to line its own pockets.

Security lawyers who watched the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations grill Goldman Sachs employees on April 27, 2010 hopefully
were more eagle-eyed than investment guru Warren Buffet, who is now
echoing the same refrain as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, that the firm has
done nothing wrong and is being unfairly pummeled. Never mind that Mr.
Buffet has $5 bilsky invested in Goldman on which he is earning 10
percent. (Goldman employees like to refer to $1 billion in their emails as
a bilsky when bored of characterizing what they're selling to clients as
crap or sh---y deals.)

The first Goldman Sachs panel to line up before Senator Carl Levin's
subcommittee on April 27 consisted of Daniel Sparks, Joshua Birnbaum,
Michael Swenson and Fabrice Tourre. Mr. Sparks headed the Mortgage
Department and supervised the other three who worked in the Structured
Product Group at the time the SEC has alleged the securities fraud
occurred.

To hear these four tell it, their jobs included trading for Goldman's
benefit (proprietary trading), originating investment products, selling
the products to customers once they were created (distribution), and, in
Mr. Tourre's case, even speaking with the rating agency that would
transform these subprime bets into AAA derivatives. And how did they sum
up all of this as a job description? They testified, under oath I might
add, that they were "market-makers." In a sane world, a market maker is
an entity that matches buyers with sellers and profits from capturing a
portion of the spread (bid and ask) on the buy and sell price of
securities.

To a lay jury, this might fly as legitimate conduct; something akin to a
short order cook who shops for the groceries, whips up the omelets, throws
a little parsley garnish on the plates, serves the diners, and tallies up
his P&L at the end of the day. If he overbought on ground beef, he might
have to have three days of specials like Shepherd's Pie, Hungarian
Goulash, and Spaghetti with Meat Sauce to "flatten" his position and "get
closer to home." Nothing criminal going on here; just good ole American
know-how and innovative workouts.

The major problem with this analogy, and most others in defense of
Goldman, is that the short order cook wasn't trying to pass off E. coli
beef for prime rib. Another problem for Goldman is that embedded in the
heart of every securities law is the principle that the customer must be
treated honestly and fairly and any mechanism or device to deceive,
manipulate or defraud is patently illegal. Remember, securities laws grew
out of the ingrained Wall Street corruption exposed in two years of Senate
hearings in 1932 and 1933.

It is difficult to see how one can be engaging in proprietary trading for
the benefit of the firm at one moment, acting in an agent capacity for the
benefit of the customer the next moment, and creating investment products
designed to fail on a latte break. Sparks, Birnbaum and Swenson all had
principal licenses to engage in investment banking activities like
underwriting as well as the Series 7 license to trade securities. Mr.
Tourre had only the Series 7 and Series 63 licenses to trade securities.
He had no principal license according to his regulatory file available
online. That could be a big legal issue for Goldman as a firm, for Mr.
Sparks who supervised him, and for the controlled-demolition investment
product he assisted in creating without a principal license. Failure to
supervise is one of the first areas security lawyers review in assessing a
firm's liability.

According to the SEC complaint, Mr. Tourre knowingly assisted in creating
and then peddled an investment product designed to fail that had been
handpicked for that purpose by a hedge fund manager to facilitate his
profiting from a short position. (John Paulson, the hedge fund manager,
made approximately $1 billion while those on the other side of the trade
lost about $1 billion while never being advised of the hedge fund
manager's role.) According to the Senate, Goldman was itself shorting
(betting on subprime derivative products to fail) while actively promoting
these products to clients. The Senate hearings raised a practice and
pattern of deceit by Goldman against its own clients. And let's not
forget that the approximately $12.9 billion of taxpayer bailout funds that
went in the front door of AIG and came out the backdoor into Goldman's
coffers was a result of Goldman's well-placed subprime bets offloaded onto
AIG.

Clearly, Goldman's defense is being structured around the idea that
anything goes if you call yourself a market maker. That seems like a
fairly lame defense when your shareholders have lost $20 billion in market
cap despite your top tier law firms playing hardball and the Oracle of
Omaha waving pompoms. (This Buffet gesture is reminiscent of Prince
Alwaleed bin Talal cheering on Citigroup as its share price plummeted to
earth along with tens of billions of off balance sheet debt derivatives.
He also owned a boatload of the stock.)

My advice to Goldman is to throw yourself on your sword. Come clean on
everything and clean house. Put a modest gym in the basement of your new
digs and donate the 54,000 square foot space to charities for the
struggling folks you ripped off in their pensions and 401(k)s. And maybe
it's time to apologize for what you did in 1928 and 1929 as well.

Then have a sit down with Warren Buffett and start co-authoring OpEds on
why the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment banks from insured mom
and pop funds at commercial banks must be restored. If you have any
trouble finding an argument for this, just lay all those recently
disclosed internal emails end to end and observe the narcissistic,
sociopathic culture you've created out of the uber-testosterone Wharton
School boys.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security
position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She
writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached
at pamk741@aol.com

The Subprime Conspiracy

2010-05-04T00:22:00.001-07:00

Was There a Plan to Blow Up the Economy?

By MIKE WHITNEY
Many people now believe that the financial crisis was not an accident.
They think that the Bush administration and the Fed knew what Wall Street
was up to and provided their support. This isn't as far fetched as it
sounds. As we will show, it's clear that Bush, Greenspan and many other
high-ranking officials understood the problem with subprime mortgages and
knew that a huge asset bubble was emerging that threatened the economy.
But while the housing bubble was more than just an innocent mistake, it
doesn't rise to the level of "conspiracy" which Webster defines as "a
secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act."
It's actually worse than that, because bubblemaking is the dominant
policy, and it's used to overcome structural problems in capitalism
itself, mainly stagnation.

The whole idea of a conspiracy diverts attention from what really
happened. It conjures up a comical vision of top-hat business tycoons
gathered in a smoke-filled room stealthily mapping out the country's
future. It ignores the fact, that the main stakeholders don't need to
convene a meeting to know what they want. They already know what they
want; they want a process that helps them to maintain profitability even
while the "real" economy remains stuck in the mud. Historian Robert
Brenner has written extensively on this topic and dispels the mistaken
view that the economy is "fundamentally strong". (in the words of former
Treasury secretary Henry Paulson) Here's Brenner :

"The current crisis is more serious than the worst previous recession of
the postwar period, between 1979 and 1982, and could conceivably come to
rival the Great Depression, though there is no way of really knowing.
Economic forecasters have underestimated how bad it is because they have
over-estimated the strength of the real economy and failed to take into
account the extent of its dependence upon a buildup of debt that relied on
asset price bubbles.
"In the U.S., during the recent business cycle of the years 2001-2007, GDP
growth was by far the slowest of the postwar epoch. There was no increase
in private sector employment. The increase in plants and equipment was
about a third of the previous, a postwar low. Real wages were basically
flat. There was no increase in median family income for the first time
since World War II. Economic growth was driven entirely by personal
consumption and residential investment, made possible by easy credit and
rising house prices. Economic performance was weak, even despite the
enormous stimulus from the housing bubble and the Bush administration's
huge federal deficits. Housing by itself accounted for almost one-third of
the growth of GDP and close to half of the increase in employment in the
years 2001-2005. It was, therefore, to be expected that when the housing
bubble burst, consumption and residential investment would fall, and the
economy would plunge. " ("Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the
Heart of the Crisis", Robert P. Brenner speaks with Jeong Seong-jin, Asia
Pacific Journal)

What Brenner describes is an economy \that--despite unfunded tax cuts,
massive military spending and gigantic asset bubbles--can barely produce
positive growth. The pervasive lethargy of mature capitalist economies
poses huge challenges for industry bosses who are judged solely on their
ability to boost quarterly profits. Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein and JPM's
Jamie Dimon could care less about economic theory, what they're interested
in is making money; how to deploy their capital in a way that maximizes
return on investment. "Profits", that's it. And that's much more
difficult in a world that's beset by overcapacity and flagging demand.

The world doesn't need more widgets or widget-makers. The only way to
ensure profitability is to invent an alternate system altogether, a new
universe of financial exotica (CDOs, MBSs, CDSs) that operates independent
of the sluggish real economy. Financialization provides that opportunity.
It allows the main players to pump-up the leverage, minimize
capital-outlay, inflate asset prices, and skim off record profits even
while the real economy endures severe stagnation.

Financialization provides a path to wealth creation, which is why the
sector's portion of total corporate profits is now nearly 40 per cent.
It's a way to bypass the pervasive inertia of the production-oriented
economy. The Fed's role in this new paradigm is to create a hospitable
environment (low interest rates) for bubble-making so the upward transfer
of wealth can continue without interruption. Bubblemaking is policy.
As we've pointed out in earlier articles, scores of people knew what was
going on during the subprime fiasco. But it's worth a quick review,
because Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner, and others have
been defending themselves saying, "Who could have known?".

The FBI knew ("In September 2004, the FBI began publicly warning that
there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud, and it predicted that it would
produce an economic crisis, if it were not dealt with.") The FDIC knew. (
In testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, FDIC chairman
Sheila Bair confirmed that she not only warned the Fed of what was going
on in 2001, but cited particular regulations (HOEPA) under which the Fed
could stop the "unfair, abusive and deceptive practices" by the banks.)
Also Fitch ratings knew, and even Alan Greenspan's good friend and former
Fed governor Ed Gramlich knew. (Gramlich personally warned Greenspan of
the surge in predatory lending that was apparent as early as 2000. Here's
a bit of what Gramlich said in the Wall Street Journal:

"I would have liked the Fed to be a leader" in cracking down on predatory
lending, Mr. Gramlich, now a scholar at the Urban Institute, said in an
interview this past week. Knowing it would be controversial with Mr.
Greenspan, whose deregulatory philosophy is well known, Mr. Gramlich
broached it to him personally rather than take it to the full board. "He
was opposed to it, so I didn't really pursue it," says Mr. Gramlich. (Wall
Street Journal)

So, Greenspan knew, too. And, according to Elizabeth MacDonald in an
article titled "Housing Red flags Ignored":

"One of the nation's biggest mortgage industry players repeatedly warned
the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other bank
regulators during the housing bubble that the U.S. faced an imminent
housing crash....But bank regulators not only ignored the group's
warnings, top Fed officials also went on the airwaves to say the economy
was "building on a sturdy foundation" and a housing crash was "unlikely."

So, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America [MICA] also knew. And,
here's a clip from the Washington Post by former New York governor Eliot
Spitzer who accused Bush of being a 'partner in crime' in the subprime
fiasco. Spitzer says that the OCC launched "an unprecedented assault on
state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general just to make
sure the looting would continue without interruption. Here's an except
from Spitzer's article:

"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis....the OCC
promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their
own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal
government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50
state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents,
actively fought the new rules. (Washington Post)

So, the Fed knew, the Treasury knew, the FBI knew, the OCC knew, the FDIC
knew, Bush knew, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America knew, Fitch
ratings knew, all the states Attorneys General knew, and thousands, of
traders, lenders, ratings agency executives, bankers, hedge fund managers,
private equity bosses, regulators knew. Everyone knew, except the unlucky
people who were victimized in the biggest looting operation of all time.
Once again, looking for conspiracy, just diverts attention from the nature
of the crime itself. Here's a statement from former regulator and white
collar criminologist William K. Black which helps to clarify the point:

"Fraudulent lenders produce exceptional short-term 'profits' through a
four-part strategy: extreme growth (Ponzi), lending to uncreditworthy
borrowers, extreme leverage, and minimal loss reserves. These exceptional
'profits' defeat regulatory restrictions and turn private market
discipline perverse. The profits also allow the CEO to convert firm assets
for personal benefit through seemingly normal compensation mechanisms. The
short-term profits cause stock options to appreciate. Fraudulent CEOs
following this strategy are guaranteed extraordinary income while
minimizing risks of detection and prosecution." (William K. Black,
"Epidemics of'Control Fraud' Lead to Recurrent, Intensifying Bubbles
andCrises", University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law).

Black's definition of "control fraud" comes very close to describing what
really took place during the subprime mortgage frenzy. The investment
banks and other financial institutions bulked up on garbage loans and
complex securities backed by dodgy mortgages so they could increase
leverage and rake off large bonuses for themselves. Clearly, they knew the
underlying collateral was junk, just as they knew that eventually the
market would crash and millions of people would suffer.

But, while it's true that Greenspan and Wall Street knew how the
bubble-game was played; they had no intention of blowing up the whole
system. They simply wanted to inflate the bubble, make their profits, and
get out before the inevitable crash. But, then something went wrong. When
Lehman collapsed, the entire financial system suffered a major heart
attack. All of the so-called "experts" models turned out to be wrong.
Here's what happened: Before to the meltdown, the depository "regulated"
banks got their funding through the repo market by exchanging collateral
(mainly mortgage-backed securities) for short-term loans with the
so-called "shadow banks" (investment banks, hedge funds, insurers) But
after Lehman defaulted, the funding stream was severely impaired because
the prices on mortgage-backed securities kept falling. When the
bank-funding system went on the fritz, stocks went into a nosedive
sending panicky investors fleeing for the exits. As unbelievable as it
sounds, no one saw this coming.

The reason that no one anticipated a run on the shadow banking system is
because the basic architecture of the financial markets has changed
dramatically in the last decade due to deregulation. The fundamental
structure is different and the traditional stopgaps have been removed.
That's why no one knew what to do during the panic. The general assumption
was that there would be a one-to-one relationship between defaulting
subprime mortgages and defaulting mortgage-backed securities (MBS). That
turned out to be a grave miscalculation. The subprimes were only failing
at roughly 8 percent rate when the whole secondary market collapsed.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill explained it best using a clever
analogy. He said, "It's like you have 8 bottles of water and just one of
them has arsenic in it. It becomes impossible to sell any of the other
bottles because no one knows which one contains the poison."

And that's exactly what happened. The market for structured debt crashed,
stocks began to plummet, and the Fed had to step in to save the system.
Unfortunately, that same deeply-flawed system is being rebuilt brick by
brick without any substantive changes.. The Fed and Treasury support this
effort, because--as agents of the banks--they are willing to sacrifice
their own credibility to defend the primary profit-generating instruments
of the industry leaders. (Goldman, JPM, etc) That means that Bernanke and
Geithner will go to the mat to oppose any additional regulation on
derivatives, securitization and off-balance sheet operations, the same
lethal devices that triggered the financial crisis.

So, there was no conspiracy to blow up the financial system, but there is
an implicit understanding that the Fed will serve the interests of Wall
Street by facilitating asset bubbles through "accommodative" monetary
policy and by opposing regulation. It's just "business as usual", but it's
far more damaging than any conspiracy, because it ensures that the economy
will continue to stagnate, that inequality will continue to grow, and that
the gigantic upward transfer of wealth will continue without pause.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at
fergiewhitney@msn.com
--

$18,000 per arrestee won in historic lawsuit--filing info

2010-04-28T10:51:00.001-07:00

About the IAC | Donate | IAC Books & Resources | Contact Us

Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.?

$14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests

$18,000 to each arrestee – IF you file before May 17, 2010!

Spread the Word!

Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. It was held on in front of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington , D.C. The march was called to take place on April 15, the day before militant actions to oppose the criminal policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were meeting in that city; thousands of youth took part in those protests.

The IAC rally demanded freedom for all political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. It sought to draw the attention of the international media -- which was gathering to hear the bankers and financiers at the IMF/World Bank meeting -- to the millions of prisoners held captive in U.S. dungeons.

The IAC aimed to deepen class consciousness and to link a militant current of new activists to solidarity with the most oppressed African-American, Latino/a and Native American prisoners. Although the demonstration was a legally permitted protest, the public focus on the institutionalized racism of the prison system itself presented a major and intolerable challenge to the state's repressive apparatus.

After the rally ended at the Department of (In)justice, the march proceeded to the IMF building. Suddenly, and without warning or an order to disperse, the Washington , D.C. , police closed the streets and arrested 700 protesters, along with some members of the media and passersby. Many arrestees were held for 18 to 24 hours in police buses and holding cells, painfully handcuffed wrist-to-ankle in cramped positions.

There was widespread media coverage of the police sweep and massive arrests of demonstrators as they marched to the IMF building.

The IAC was determined to expose the pre-emptive and disruptive attacks on a legal demonstration and to publicize the massive illegal arrests. The organization was not going to allow the flagrant violation of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly to go unchallenged.

IAC activists painstakingly gathered the names and detailed depositions of many of the arrestees. They provided this information, along with extensive video footage, and hundreds of photographs, to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund attorneys, who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of those arrested.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund diligently persevered and successfully sued the District of Columbia and won the largest class-action settlement of protester claims in U.S. history, totaling nearly $14 million. It insures that each class member can file a claim to receive $18,000 in financial compensation, that the arrests will be expunged, and that all arrestees who join in the settlement will receive a court order declaring their arrest null and void.

Several lead plaintiffs in this case have already pledged to donate their funds from the settlement to the IAC to continue its 19-year legacy of organizing against war, racism and corporate bailouts, and for jobs and human needs.

How to file a claim

Those who can file a claim are "all persons who were detained and arrested on April 15, 2000 near the area of 20th Street, NW and I and K Streets, Washington D.C. , in connection with the protest against the Prison Industrial Complex during the IMF/World Bank demonstrations."

The funds will be distributed through a Class Administrator; the toll-free number is 1-877-567-4780. Claim forms can be downloaded at www.BeckerSettlement.com. Mail them to: Becker v. District of Columbia Administrator, c/o Gilardi & Co. LLC, P.O. Box 8060 , San Rafael , CA 94912-8060 . The deadline for filing all claims for financial compensation is May 17.

Those who filed forms to be included in the lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund are not automatically included in this settlement. Each individual arrested must file a new Proof of Claim Form and mail it to the Class Administrator at the above address before May 17. This is the only way to receive the $18,000 settlement. Otherwise, unclaimed funds will revert to the government.

The IAC wants to help insure that all individuals who were arrested on April 15, 2000, in Washington , D.C. , receive their fair share of the settlement. The IAC has set up a special phone number -- 347-828-3430 -- and email address -- April2000arrest@iacenter.org -- to directly answer your questions and to help you file your claim form. The IAC encourages calls and emails concerning this urgent matter.

Also, contact information, comments and questions for the IAC about the lawsuit or how to file a claim can also be posted at www.iacenter.org/iacsuit

The IAC wants to help confirm that everyone who is entitled to a financial settlement receives the allocated funds over the next two years. So, please keep the IAC informed about the status of your claim.

Even for those who have filed their claim forms and are confident that they are part of the settlement, let the IAC know. IAC organizers will return all calls and emails inquiring about the lawsuit settlement. Please forward this email to your friends, other activists or anyone who could be a claimant.

About the IAC | Donate | IAC Books & Resources | Contact Us

Thinking 'Bout Boycotting the "Xenophobe State"?

2010-04-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

HERE ARE SOME MAJOR Arizona corporations if you have an inclination to do
a little boycotting:

Apollo Group (University of Phoenix). Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

Cold Stone Creamery. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Discount Tire Company. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Go Daddy. Headquarters: Scottsdale, Arizona

Mesa Air Group (Mesa Airlines, Go!, Freedom Airlines). Headquarters:
Phoenix, Arizona

P. F. Chang's China Bistro. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

Pet Smart. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

U-Haul. Headquarters: Phoenix, Arizona

US Airways. Headquarters: Tempe, Arizona

Head of Goldman Sachs claims "Social Purpose"

2010-04-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907681.ece
JOHN ARLIDGE, TIMES, UK - Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured
office block in lower Manhattan, doesn't look like a place to stop and
stare, and that's just the way the people who work there like it. The men
and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street
black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private.
They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past,
well, nothing, really. There's no name plate on the building, no sign on
the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn't saying who
works there. There's a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad
Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it. . .

Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs. . . . . Here,
politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more
robust terms - "robber barons", "economic vandals", "vulture capitalists".
. . . It's even worse in the US. There, Rolling Stone magazine ran a story
that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face
of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that
smells like money. . .

Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman
first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly,
decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That's
how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems
possible - even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the
universe - I find myself walking past the security guard who held up
Michael Moore and into the building with no name.

"Aha! You catch us plotting in real time," says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking
away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington
the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman's chairman and chief executive,
is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermes tie with little red bicycles
on it. In his hand, he's carrying one of those cups of coffee that look
bigger than the human stomach. . .

He starts with a little humility. He understands that "people are pissed
off, mad, and bent out of shape" at bankers' actions. Goldman played its
part in the meltdown that almost destroyed the global financial system.
It, like most other banks, lent too much money, made its first quarterly
loss for more than a decade last year and ended up taking bail-out cash
from Washington. "I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,"
he says. But then, he slowly begins to argue the case for modern banking.
"We're very important," he says, abandoning self-flagellation. "We help
companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow
create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more
growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle." To drive home his point,
he makes a remarkably bold claim. "We have a social purpose.". . .

THE MOST DANGEROUS MEMBER OF THE WALL STREET MOB: PETER PETERSON

2010-04-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

Sam Smith, Progressive Review

Greed, theft, fraud, lies and fiscal manipulation are par for the course
for today's Wall Street mobsters, but Peter G. Peterson does them one
better: he has used his excessive financial gains to try to ruin the lives
of millions of American through the imposition of rightwing theories of
budgeting and slashing Social Security. It's not just that his ideas are
bad, it's that much of the media - such as the Washington Post and Charlie
Rose - regularly suck up to him and that his capos have infiltrated the
top levels of the Obama administration. So don't be too distracted by the
more colorful scoundrels, it's the respeciable looking ones like Peterson
who may really do you in.

DEAN BAKER, GUARDIAN - The latest round of attacks on Social Security and
Medicare are especially pernicious because they come at a time when the
baby boom cohorts have just seen much of their wealth disappear due to the
collapse of the housing bubble and the stock market plunge. Tens of
millions of baby boomers who thought they were well-prepared for
retirement two years ago, now find themselves with little or no home
equity and very little left in their retirement funds. As a result, they
will be almost totally dependent on Social Security and Medicare.

The attacks are made even worse by the fact that the attackers, people
like Robert Rubin and Peter Peterson, promoted policies that led to this
collapse and personally profited to the tune of tens or even hundreds of
millions of dollars. In other words, after pushing the economy into a
severe recession and destroying the life's savings of tens of millions of
working families, the Wall Street crew now wants to take away their Social
Security and Medicare. This can almost make killing your parents look like
a petty offence.

ROBERT KUTTNER, PROSPECT - Fiscal conservatives in Congress hope to hold
recovery spending hostage for long-term caps on social outlay, and they
have some company in the White House. Groups like the billion-dollar Peter
G. Peterson Foundation are leading the charge.

For a quarter-century, Peterson has been exaggerating long-term costs of
Social Security and Medicare. In truth, Social Security is close to
balance -- its 75-year projected deficit is just one-half of 1 percent of
gross domestic product. Medicare is seriously in deficit, but reform of
Medicare consistent with high-quality health care depends on tackling the
deeper drivers of medical inflation.

WILLIAM GREIDER, THE NATION - He's baaack -- the Wall Street billionaire
who wants to loot Social Security. This time, Pete Peterson has invented
his own "news network" to promote his right-wing rants about shrinking the
only retirement security system available to millions of working people.
Peterson styles himself as a patriot saving the nation from fiscal
insolvency and has committed $1 billion to that cause (a chunk of the
wealth he accumulated at Blackstone Group, the notorious
corporate-takeover firm). His efforts might be dismissed as ludicrous --
except money does talk in Washington, and Peterson is now buying
Washington reporters to spread his dire warnings.

The retired mogul has created a digital news agency he dubs "The Fiscal
Times" and hired eight seasoned reporters to do the work there. "An
impressive group of veteran journalists," Peterson calls them. . .

With his great wealth, Peterson could have also bought a newspaper to
publish his dispatches, but he did better than that. He hooked up with the
Washington Post, which has agreed to "jointly produce content focusing on
the budget and fiscal issues." The newspaper is thus compromising its own
integrity. It's like buying political propaganda from a Washington
lobbyist, then printing it in the news columns as if it was just another
news story.

The first TFT "dispatch" to appear in the Post -- "Support grows for
tackling nation's debt" -- made no mention of Peterson's crusade. But it
featured the same devious gimmick the financier has been peddling around
Washington. Congress should create a special commission of eighteen
senators and representatives empowered to make the "tough" budget
decisions politicians are loathe to face -- slashing benefits, raising
payroll taxes or both. Other members of Congress would be prohibited from
changing any of the particular measures, and would cast only an up-or-down
vote on the entire package, no amendments allowed. . .

So why do the TFT reporters (Elaine Povich and Eric Pianin) zero in on old
folks and Social Security or entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid?
Because those are Pete Peterson's favorite targets. He has flogged Social
Security as a blight on our future for at least twenty years. He is a nut
on the subject. His "facts" are wildly distorted or simply not true. Never
mind, the establishment press portrays him as a disinterested statesman.

This crusade is dangerous for the people because the "respectables" in
governing circles and both parties embrace the same reactionary logic.
Does government have money problems? Don't restore the progressive income
tax on the wealthy or capital, don't cut away some of the corporate boodle
in the federal budget -- that politics is too difficult. Instead, let's
whack Social Security while folks aren't watching.

ROBERT KUTTNER, WASHINGTON POST - With the enactment of a large economic
stimulus package, fiscal conservatives are using the temporary deficit
increase to attack a perennial target -- Social Security and Medicare. . .

The Peterson Foundation is joined by leading "blue dog" (anti-deficit)
Democrats such as House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South
Carolina and his counterpart in the Senate, Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
The deficit hawks are promoting a "grand bargain" in which a bipartisan
commission enacts spending caps on social insurance as the offset for
current deficits. . .

NY TIMES - President-elect Barack Obama said that overhauling Social
Security and Medicare would be "a central part" of his administration's
efforts to contain federal spending, signaling for the first time that he
would wade into the thorny politics of entitlement programs. . .

DEAN BAKER - If Obama is successful he will have damaged two of the most
successful programs ever devised by the Democratic Party. He will receive
plaudits from the corporate media such as the NY Times, Washington Post
and Wall Street Journal and from his major backers on Wall Street. But for
other Americans it will be a continuation of the decay of social democracy
that flourished under FDR and LBJ and has been collapsing (along with our
economy and world standing) under Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton.

On the other hand, the game is a little different than when the Pete
Petersons and others started their war on Social Security. Then it was
possible to play the young against the old, blaming the latter for the
former's difficulties. But the fiscal collapse has changed all that, and
many more younger Americans may realize that its not senior citizens who
are the problem, but senior officials and their campaign contributors.

SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - If Obama is successful he will have
damaged two of the most successful programs ever devised by the Democratic
Party. He will receive plaudits from the corporate media such as the NY
Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and from his major backers
on Wall Street. But for other Americans it will be a continuation of the
decay of social democracy that flourished under FDR and LBJ and has been
collapsing (along with our economy and world standing) under Reagan, the
Bushes and Clinton.

DEAN BAKER - The deficit hawks, led by Wall Street investment banker Peter
Peterson, either did not see the bubble or chose to ignore it. They ran
around the country in the peak years of the housing bubble yelling about
"fiscal irresponsibility" even as the housing bubble was growing to ever
more dangerous level. They used their money and their political standing
to dominate public debate and crowd out those of us who were trying to
warn about the bubble. There were numerous television shows, radio shows
and news stories devoted to their dire warnings about the deficit. . .

If the Wall Street deficit hawk crew hadn't dominated public debate on
economic issues as the bubble was building, perhaps those of us warning of
the bubble could have been heard. Maybe momentum would have grown to burst
the bubble before it reached such dangerous levels.

Ironically, the collapse of the bubble was even a disaster from the
standpoint of the issue that concerns the deficit hawks most: the deficit.
The deficits that the nation is incurring as a result of the collapse of
the housing bubble are projected to have added more than $4 trillion to
the national debt by the end of this decade.

The people who allowed for this bubble to grow unchecked should be
incredibly embarrassed and certainly should be apologetic about laying the
basis for this wreckage. It is difficult to envision a more serious policy
failure.

But no, the deficit hawks are as sanctimonious as ever. They are running
around as though nothing happened. They are still preaching the exact same
lines to the public that they did before the collapse of the bubble, but
now with greater urgency due to the damage to the government's balance
sheet caused by the downturn.

The media should be jumping on deficit hawks like Peterson, asking him why
anyone should take him seriously now when he was so incredibly and
disastrously wrong about the economy just a few years ago. Unfortunately,
Peterson doesn't get questions like that; he just gets praise for his
willingness to try to take Social Security and Medicare away from retired
workers.

The problem is that Peterson has billions of dollars. To the national
media and other actors in national policy debates, Peterson's wealth
matters much more than whether or not what he is saying makes sense. That
is good news for Peterson, but really bad news for the rest of us.

DEAN BAKER - It is worth noting that Peterson has a long history of being
wrong in a big way about major economic issues. For example, in the 90s he
argued for partially privatizing Social Security as a way to increase
benefits. If Congress had taken his advice, beneficiaries today would be
receiving much lower benefits.

Peterson also argued that the consumer price index, the main measure of
inflation, substantially overstates inflation. Based on this claim,
Peterson wanted to reduce the size of the annual cost of living adjustment
to Social Security. Peterson's proposed cut would reduce benefits for
older retirees by more than 20 percent. This is a major cut for the
two-thirds of seniors who rely on Social Security for more than half of
their income.

While Peterson used the claim that the CPI overstates inflation as a basis
for cutting Social Security benefits, he never bothered to consider that
this claim implies that incomes are rising much more rapidly than current
data show. In other words, if Peterson had been right in his claim that
the CPI overstated inflation, then our children (the supposed
beneficiaries) would be far richer than we ever imagined possible because
their incomes would be growing so rapidly. However, Peterson was so
anxious to cut Social Security he never bothered thinking through the
implication of his claim.

Now Peterson wants to use the bailout as a pretext for gutting Social
Security and Medicare. There are two important ways in which the Peterson
crew is trying to mislead the public on this issue.

First, the impact of the bailout on the debt is not as large as claimed.
While the government is likely to lose money on these bailouts, it
certainly will not lose everything invested. On the $700 bank bailout, it
is unlikely to lose more than $200 billion to $300 billion. While this is
not trivial, it is less than 2 percent of current GDP. The debt to GDP
fluctuates by this amount all the time without even attracting any
attention. It makes no sense to charge that we have to rethink our core
social insurance programs because the debt to GDP ratio rose by 2
percentage points.

The other point on which the Peterson gang is misleading is the impact of
deficit spending in an economic downturn. Such spending will not make our
children poorer; in fact it is likely to make them wealthier by creating
jobs and boosting the economy.

This point should be easy to see. If the government has a $300 billion
stimulus (raising the debt by $300 billion), then the immediate effect on
the economy will be to increase GDP by around $400 billion (assuming a
well designed stimulus) and give jobs to approximately 4 million workers.
The additional growth will lead to more tax revenues, so that the increase
in the public debt will likely be closer to $240 billion rather than $300
billion.

But, even this is not a net loss to our children. While the country will
owe $240 billion more than it would in the absence of stimulus, our
children and grandchildren will also be the beneficiaries of the interest
payments on this debt. (The fact that the money may be paid to foreigners
who own the debt is immaterial, as I'll explain in future writings on this
topic.) In short, there is no good reason not to try to use the government
as a source of demand for the economy during an economic slump like the
one we currently face.
Unfortunately, Mr. Peterson either knows little economics or opts not to
be honest with the public. In this respect it is noteworthy that he
somehow managed to miss the housing bubble and the fact that its collapse
would create the largest financial crisis since World War II. But, Peter
Peterson is not interested in warning the country about the real crises it
faces. He is interested in cutting Social Security and Medicare.

CounterPunch Diary

2010-03-27T17:45:00.001-07:00

T'was a Famous Victory

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” So wrote Pascal, remembering how Caesar and Mark Anthony, those mighty generals of the Roman Empire, were captivated by Cleo’s commanding schnozz. This time Cleopatra’s nose took the form of Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor.

If the tumor hadn’t finally done in Massachusett’s senior senator last August, then there wouldn’t have been a special race for his seat. A former Cosmo nude pinup called Scott Brown wouldn’t have stunned the Democrats by capturing the seat for the Republicans this past January.

Obama wouldn’t have been hauled rudely from the supposed security of a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. senate and, instead, faced with the prospect that the health insurance bill on which he’d squandered more than half his first year in office was about to go down to defeat, leaving the victorious Republicans to trample him and his party to death in the fall elections this year.

It was a very, very close thing.

Why did Obama blow his first year? Politicians have a touching trait of often coming to believe their own campaign rhetoric, even when it’s being greeted with cynical guffaws by the cognoscenti. Having made his name and won his votes by pledging to rise above faction and draw the American people together, Obama extended the hand of bipartisanship to the Republicans and spent the following months seemingly fuddled as the Republicans chewed off his arm, inch by inch.

The whacking they gave his stimulus package in February of 2009, cutting it in half, unnerved the White House. Just when they should have been drawing lines in the sand, they opted for pliancy. It’s debatable whether they should have touched health reform at all in 2009, but suppose Obama and House Democrats had put forward a tough, progressive plan, centered on a government-underwritten “single payer” model and then challenged the Republicans to come at them, forcing them to go through the arduous exercise of actual filibusters, item by item. The whole terms of the debate would have been different.

Instead of which, Obama handed off reform to Congressional Democrats who came up with five plans. The Republicans wheeled their artillery into position and opened up with heavy salvoes about “death panels.” John McCain and other Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley started denouncing as “Obamian socialism” the very provisions they themselves had advanced a year earlier. The left, furious at the dumping of single-payer, or even a vestigial public option, was deeply demoralized.

Then, as the year turned, came three strokes of immense good fortune. The first was Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democratic favorite Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, leading to the blare of panic klaxons in the White House. Next came a February announcement by Anthem, California’s largest for-profit insurer, to hike individual rates by as much as 39 per cent, vividly dramatizing the extortions of the present system and giving the Obama administration the cue to call on Anthem to justify the hikes. Finally, Jim Bunning, a Republican senator from Kentucky and former Major League baseball pitcher heading into retirement, single-handedly blocked for five days a measure to extend eligibility for enhanced unemployment benefits for laid-off workers. “Tough shit” was Bunning’s retort to complaints that his unfeeling obstinacy would plunge hundreds of thousands into truly desperate straits. Finally, amid a firestorm of public rebukes, the Republican leadership forced Bunning to back down.

It was a reprise of the face-off that gave Bill Clinton his great victory against Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in November of 1995. Gingrich, Republican speaker of the House, said he’d shut down the government unless Clinton agreed to budget cuts in social services. Clinton refused. Without necessary funds voted by Congress, federal workers started to get laid off. Then Gingrich destroyed himself and Bob Dole’s chances in 1996 to be president. He told reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One House. A stand on principle shriveled into pettiness, as with Bunning.

By early March of this year, the Republicans were looking not only mean-spirited – the Party of No – but also the Party of Nutsos, hooked to the Tea Baggers who themselves have been getting crazier by the hour.

The tide turned. At last the Democrats played hardball. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, twisted arms, stacked up votes. The long-brandished, never used filibustering weapon stayed in the armory as Democrats rediscovered procedural weapons to push the bill forward. The Tea Baggers spat on a black Missouri congressman,the Rev Emanuel Cleaver II, and taunted Barney Frank, the House's only openly gay member. On Thursday night, they threw in the towel.

The struggle commenced last June has produced, by way of health insurance reform, a Republican bill – mostly bad, with a couple of positive features. It’s certainly not reform of health care. Its decent provisions could have been passed easily early last year. It could all have been different.

But now Obama and the Democrats have put a big one up on the board. It’s still a long way to the fall elections, but Obama may last have learned the benefits of partisanship – even populist partisanship. Next comes financial reform, which is what Obama should have started with last year. But at least he has a win. As Southey’s poem “The Battle of Blenheim” put it:

“It was the English.” Kaspar cried
Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out.
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That t’was a famous victory.”

Closing Time

2010-03-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

A Historic Confirmation of Corporate Power

By CHRIS FLOYD

It looks like heaven but it feels like death;
It's something in between, I guess:
It's closing time.
-- Leonard Cohen

Official transcript of remarks by President Barack Obama after the March
21 vote in the House of Representatives on H.R.3590: Motion to Concur in
Senate Amendments to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

My fellow Americans. As many of our more serious commentators have noted,
Democrats and progressives have sought genuine reform of our broken,
bloated, unjust health care system for almost a hundred years. Today, I am
proud to say that we have brought that century-long struggle to a close.
Together with our visionary partners in the House and the Senate, we have
finally killed genuine health care reform for many years to come --
perhaps even for another century!

The struggle is over, the deal is done, the fix is in, and corporate power
-- unbridled, unchallenged, coddled, protected, and larded with the
endless pork of government-guaranteed profit -- has triumphed at last.
This is an historic achievement. This is a mighty legacy we will bequeath
to future generations.

This, my friends, is what change looks like.

Now, you know and I know that such change never comes easily. It never
comes without opposition. It never comes without controversy. Even in this
hour of victory, we know that the doom-sayers will be out in force.

And I'm not speaking here of the Republicans, whose opposition has simply
been a lurid, baseless "Red Dawn" fantasy about "communism" coming to
America. "Communism" -- in a bill that has been written by our visionary
partners in the corporate community, by our hyper-capitalist friends and
patrons on Wall Street, by the lobbyists and bagmen of Big Money! It's
true there is a tinge of socialism in the bill, but it is, of course, the
only kind of socialism that is tolerated in America: socialism for the
rich, where the masses shoulder the risks -- and the costs -- while the
wealthy reap the profits for themselves. The health-care barons, the
bailed-out banks, the farm-devouring agriconglomerates, the war profiteers
... we've got plenty of boardroom bolsheviki out there -- but it sure
ain't "communism" like Castro used to make! So let them hoot and holler
down this false trail all they like; for as I learned back in my Senate
days, when I was considered part of the "anti-war" faction, opposition
without substance only entrenches the status quo.

No, what we must look out for are all those -- or rather, those very few
-- nattering nabobs of negativism who have opposed our historic corporate
empowerment bill out of -- get this -- principle. Like barnacles hanging
onto the butt of the Titanic, they have clung to the idea of truly
universal, equal, single-payer health care, a system that is less
expensive, more efficient, more secure, more democratic, more popular and
more effective than the heroic measure we have passed here today.

These poor wretches -- who now must face the wrath of Kos and the wroth of
Rahm for their tragic apostasy -- are simply not savvy enough to see that
our 2,000-page boondogglepalooza, riddled with fine-print exceptions,
toothless regulations (which we will 'enforce' every bit as rigorously as
Wall Street has been regulated all these years), impenetrable phase-in and
phase-out schedules, and mild benefits that won't even begin kicking in
for years -- and that even after a decade will still leave millions of
people uncovered -- is much better than a simple, streamlined system that
could be implemented by the end of this year, bringing genuine relief from
intolerable, life-degrading financial burdens and medical problems to
millions and millions of people in dire need right away.

Or as that avatar of negativity, Ralph Nader put it:

"The health insurance legislation is a major political symbol wrapped

around a shredded substance. It does not provide coverage that is

universal, comprehensive or affordable. It is a remnant even of its own

initially compromised self — bereft of any public option, any safeguard

for states desiring a single payer approach, any adequate antitrust

protections, any shift of power toward consumers to defend themselves, any

regulation of insurance prices, any authority for Uncle Sam to bargain

with drug companies, and any reimportation of lower-priced drugs."

Hey, Ralph, thanks for reciting my credits! All those "berefts" you cited
were the result of my own super- savvy negotiations! It's 11-dimensional
chess, man, a really heavy-duty Matrix Zen Jedi Master use-the-Force kind
of thing, where you win the game by giving away everything you have in the
opening move! But you're too much a dinosaur to understand. 'Anti-trust
protections!' Hey, Teddy Roosevelt -- your horse-and-buggy is waiting!
Just listen to this guy:

"Most of the health insurance coverage mandated by this legislation does

not come into effect until 2014, by which time 180,000 Americans will die

because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and

diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers."

Well, what can I say? 180,000 is a lot of dead people. This is a very hard
choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.

Then there's this Chris Hedges guy. He used to be a "serious" journalist,
reporting on the imperial wars for our corporate partners in the
stovepiping community -- what old-timers and barnacles still like to call
the "news media." But he went off the rails a long time ago and joined the
carpers and cranks on the sidelines, those malcontents who, unlike so many
of our progressive partners today, have never imbibed the timeless wisdom
of Warren G. Harding: "Don't knock, boost!"

Just get a load of Hedges here, making the big-whoop observation that our
historic bill is just a bloated version of the already-failed,
Republican-created Massachusetts plan:

"Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model for what

we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have the mandated

insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of thousands of people

have been evicted from the state program because of budget cuts. The

45,000 Americans who die each year because they cannot afford coverage

will not be saved under the federal legislation. Half of all personal

bankruptcies will still be caused by an inability to pay astronomical

medical bills. The only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses

for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward. ..."

Again with the credits! Stocks going up, corporate heads filling their
pockets, pols gorging on backroom baksheesh, Big Money controlling the
debate ... Earth to Hedges: That's what we're here for! That's the whole
point! You're an old Seventies guy, aren't you, Chris? You remember ZZ
Top? "Jesus Just Left Chicago"? (If you'll pardon the immodesty.) What do
they say? "Taking care of business is his name." They got that right.

So who cares if the plan "fails"? Who cares, if, as you say,

"[the plan] will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially

since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who

cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be

between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default,

increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally

raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut

out competitors."

Listen, Hedgie: If the plan was to reform the health care system for the
benefit of the people, then we would have, like, reformed the health care
system for the benefit of the people. You follow? The plan was, is, and
will always be to appear to be reforming the system -- to make the rubes
believe that something is being done to alleviate their pain -- precisely
to avoid really reforming the system, which is just too good and greasy
for too many of us at the top of the imperial pyramid.

And when this plan fails -- as it will, as it will -- then you rig up
another boondoggle, another "great debate" full of sound and fury,
signifying zilch, to keep the rubes at bay. Meanwhile, we can get on to
the real job our corporate colleagues and patrons want us to do --
bringing that other old dream of social amelioration for the common folk
to an end at last: Social Security. Scalpel, Nurse! The doctor is in!

Chris Floyd is an American writer and a frequent contributor to
CounterPunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at
www.chris-floyd.com.

What I Learned From the Health Care Debate

2010-03-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Making them want to...

By LAURA FLANDERS

So this is what I learned from the last weekend of the health care reform
debate.

First, lay a coffin at a White House fence and you're subject to arrest.

Spit and yell abuse at members of the Black Caucus as they enter the
Capitol and you'll be left in peace. The same goes for screaming epithets
at Barney Frank.

If you're going to mass half a million strong for immigration reform,
don't expect coverage on CSPAN when they're covering live events in and
around Capitol Hill -- not if there are hundreds of epithet throwers
somewhere close to cover.

And I learned that after all, it has to be said, some Democrats do have
spine. Unfortunately the rest could take some lessons in how to negotiate
from the teeny weeny criminalize-abortion caucus and Rep. Bart Stupak.

Finally I learned that Nancy Pelosi is one hell of a house leader. She
really can corral a majority when she wants. In fact, she and President
Barack Obama can be really persuasive, when they want to be.

So let's not hear any more bunk about the impossibility of the
aforementioned immigration reform, or repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, or
actually coming up with some real financial regulation.

They can do it when they want to.

The one thing that remains a mystery is how to make them want to. If you
don't have a mountain of cash, that is.

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, which broadcasts weekdays on
satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. More...9415 Free Speech TV) on cable,
public television and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow
GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

Where the TeaPartyFoxPublicans Went To Connect With The People...

2010-03-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

This is too funny! Enlightenment through satire!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-9-2010/rnc-meeting-in-hawaii

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Taser Torture of the Week!

2010-03-22T23:57:00.001-07:00

By David Delcore TIMES ARGUS STAFF

BARRE – Some city councilors and a handful of residents Tuesday night
suggested revising a policy that governs the police department's use of
Tasers, and raised questions about a local officer's decision to
repeatedly use his stun gun to subdue a 58-year-old homeless woman who
suffers from a mental illness.

During a lengthy discussion, councilors, who received their first official
briefing on the incident that occurred last Wednesday morning in the
parking lot of the Cumberland Farms on North Main Street, did not shrink
from their decision to authorize the acquisition of Tasers last year.
However, some told Police Chief Timothy Bombardier that the events that
played out last week were not quite what they had in mind when they
approved the purchase and adopted the policy outlining how officers should
use the newly acquired devices.

Some councilors questioned why Cpl. Henry Duhaime chose not to call for
backup before deciding to use his Taser on an arguably defiant, but not
outwardly aggressive woman that he repeatedly asked to leave the parking
lot of the convenience store before placing her under arrest.

According to newly released documents, Sgt. Bob Miller was parked just up
the road on the corner of Second Street. Miller could see Duhaime's marked
SUV, but not Duhaime or Ann Osborn, the woman he was attempting to take
into custody.

According to reports, Miller responded to the scene when he heard Osborn's
screams after having been tased.

Councilor Paul Poirier was among those who questioned what Bombardier
defended as a judgment call by Duhaime.

"If we had a police officer that was having an issue with this woman and
things weren't going well … why didn't the officer ask for backup instead
of using force?" Poirier asked.

Councilor Steven Mackenzie said given "the luxury of seven days of
hindsight" he was inclined to agree, given the fact that by all accounts –
Duhaime's included – Osborn wasn't an immediate threat.

"Nobody knows whether the outcome would have been different or not, it's
just that in my mind the perception of having two officers there in front
of her may have changed the outcome," he said. "It may have changed the
need to use the Taser."

Meanwhile, Councilor Michael Smith relayed concerns from many of his
constituents who perceived Duhaime's decision to use the Taser on Osborn
as "a relatively casual use" of a potentially life-threatening device.

Smith said he had concerns about where Tasers fall on the department's
use-of-force continuum given last week's incident. He said he thought the
council had set a higher standard.

"It was my understanding when we approved the policy that we were much
closer to the higher end," he said. "That was my intent."

In the use-of-force report he filed in the wake of the incident, Duhaime
outlined his repeated attempts to persuade Osborn to leave the property,
explained how she crossed her arms defiantly immediately before he placed
her under arrest for unlawful trespass.

According to Duhaime's report, he asked the woman, whom Bombardier said is
still being treated for mental issues, to put her arms behind her back
twice before warning her she would be Tased if she didn't comply.

Osborn kept her arms crossed, according to the report, prompting Duhaime
to unholster his Taser. As had previously been reported, Osborn responded
by saying: "Give me a thrill." Duhaime then fired the Taser, but claimed
the probes did not penetrate Osborn's jacket and the woman doubled over
laughing.

According to the report, that's when things escalated.

"… I could see that this was not getting any results so I pulled out the
cartridge and went for a drive stun to Osborn's left thigh," Duhaime wrote
in the report that was presented to the council. "This did have some
affect and she screamed a little bit and went down on her buttocks, in the
shrub area, next to the store at which time the Taser slipped off her
thigh."

According to Duhaime's account that is when Osborn, who was struggling to
get up, "took a swing" at his knee and missed.

"… Before Osborn could get up I was able to apply a second drive stun to
her right thigh," he wrote. "This again kept her down and she began to
scream. I advised her to roll over and place her hands behind her back,
which she did and the Taser came off her leg losing contact again.

"Now Osborn was still screaming without the Taser being on her, and would
still not put her hands behind her back," he continued. "I again applied
the drive stun to the back of her left thigh. Osborn finally complied, put
her hands behind her back at which time I was able to get the handcuffs on
her and take her into custody."

Bombardier told councilors Duhaime did shout "Taser, Taser, Taser" as
required by the policy and, he believed was appropriately used the weapon
to subdue and "actively resistant" subject.

That said, Bombardier conceded there were some issues that deserved
review. Among them, he said, was the less-than-effective use of the Taser
and a need to consider training in identifying and handling subjects with
mental issues.

"That training will take place," he said. "We're moving forward with it."

Several residents spoke at Tuesday's meeting including one woman – Carlene
Wilder – who defended Duhaime as an "understanding and by the law officer"
and Osborn as a woman who could be confrontational.

Wilder rejected the suggestion by some that Duhaime could have spent more
time trying to coax Osborn off the property.

"The woman (Osborn) had her hands crossed," she said. "How long do we take
before the officers say: 'Is she going to pull a knife a gun or some other
weapon outside of her jacket?"

However, most residents in attendance – including the wife of a newly
elected council member – expressed some concern about the incident and
expressed a desire that the council consider revising the policy.

Robert Chartier said Duhaime could have reached for his radio instead of
his Taser and summoned assistance that might have been helpful.

Edward Stanak agreed, calling on the council to revisit and revise the
Taser policy.

"We need very bright lines to provide guidance to the employees of the
city so they understand them," he said, suggesting it would be "pretty
sound practice" to make summoning a second officer a requirement before
resorting to using a Taser on someone who did not pose an immediate threat.

Meanwhile, Stanak said he was troubled by Bombardier's apparent
willingness to justify the use of Tasers in circumstances the council
never contemplated.

"There's a tradition in this country that goes back to Henry David Thoreau
and it's called non-violent civil disobedience and it's woven into the
fabric of this country," Stanak said. "I'm more than a little bit
concerned now that there's a perspective that it … might have been okay to
users Tasers in Selma, Alabama because those people (civil rights
activists) weren't 'passively resistant.'"

Stanak asked for that aspect of the policy to be clarified given comments
made by Bombardier.

Hannah Etli, whose husband, Domenic, was just elected to the council and
openly disagreed with her, questioned Duhaime's use of the Taser during an
incident that, according to Bombardier lasted about eight minutes
start-to-finish.

"We're escalating a situation in the matter of 10 minutes, I don't think
that's acceptable for the City of Barre," Etli said. "I don't think this
was used appropriately."

Etli said it was also "worth questioning" why Duhaime is the only officer
to have fired his Tasers since officers started carrying them last August.

Bombardier defended Duhaime, reiterating his belief that his actions did
not violate the policy, or injure Osborn.

david.delcore@timesargus.com

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NY TIMES ADMITS IT SCREWED UP ON ACORN STORIES

2010-03-22T23:56:00.001-07:00

March 22, 2010

ROBERT PARRY, COMMON DREAMS - The New York Times admits, sort of, that it
got duped by right-wing propagandists who appear to have succeeded in a
plot to destroy ACORN, an organization that has aided and defended the
poor and powerless across the United States for four decades.

In an op-ed column Sunday, the Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt said he has
reviewed the available information and concluded that some key points of
the right-wing video presentation were false or misleading, including the
claim that right-wing media activist James O'Keefe showed up at ACORN
offices dressed in a pimp costume before getting legal advice on setting
up a brothel.

"O'Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the
outlandish costume - fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and
broad-brimmed hat - in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most
of his videos," Hoyt wrote, adding that the Times was considering a
correction regarding its earlier reporting that had accepted this
misleading point.

Hoyt also acknowledged that perhaps the most damning part of the ACORN
sting story was wrong: ACORN staffers did not go along with a plan to use
under-aged Salvadoran girls as prostitutes. Indeed, the staffers may have
thought they were helping to protect the girls.

After reviewing transcripts provided by a conservative organization, Hoyt
accepted a criticism of the Times made by the liberal media critics at
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, that the Times' earlier reporting on
the video gave the impression that O'Keefe and his supposed girlfriend
were going to exploit the girls as prostitutes. FAIR said the fuller
transcript suggests that the ACORN staffers thought the couple was trying
"to buy a house to protect child prostitutes from an abusive pimp."

"That's right," Hoyt wrote, regarding FAIR's characterization of the
child-prostitute point.

However, Hoyt, who earlier had chastised the Times for not jumping on the
ACORN scandal faster, insisted that the ACORN employees still deserved
criticism for not objecting to other apparent illegalities in O'Keefe's
fictitious schemes. Hoyt said the ACORN workers should have protested any
plans regarding a brothel, noting that one ACORN worker blithely warned,
"Don't get caught, â€˜cause it is against the law."

In other words, Hoyt isn't ready to admit that he joined the Times in a
rush to judgment and thus helped destroy ACORN, which has seen its funding
dry up, has shuttered many of its offices, and is expected to file for
bankruptcy soon.

The ACORN case also underscores how vulnerable liberal and leftist groups
are to the Right's enormous media power. One environmental activist told
me recently that every progressive organization in Washington lives in
fear that one mis-dotted "I"or one mis-crossed "T" could mean the end.

The massive right-wing media - stretching from magazines, newspapers and
books to radio, TV and the Internet - also gives the Right the capability
of stampeding the mainstream press against some disfavored politician or
even against another media outlet that digs up unwelcomed information.

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QUACK CARE BILL PASSES

2010-03-22T23:49:00.001-07:00

Sam Smith
I ended up supporting the health care bill. Not because it was a historic
measure, or the most important piece of legislation in four decades or as
an icon of Obama's greatness, but for the same reason one hands over a
wallet to a robber. There are times when principle takes the back seat.
But when it's all over, the robber is not your hero, but still a thug.
Obama essentially said that if you want 16 million poor people covered,
you have to agree to heavily subsidize the insurance industry either
through your taxes or through the individual mandate. Remember that about
a third of that money will go for marketing and other superfluous industry
spending that might have been avoided under a public plan.
The Maine Owl put it well: "The health bill neither is the Armageddon that
the Republicans claim, nor the greatest social legislation since Civil
Rights and Medicare in the 1960s. Rather, it's a warmed over version of
Republican Bob Dole's individual private insurance mandate proposal from
1994. It is what Barack Obama campaigned against versus Hillary Clinton
and later John McCain in 2008."
I can't recall a major piece of Democratic legislation that was so coated
with corruption, intellectual dishonesty, cynicism and political
disloyalty by those pushing it. Obama and the Democrats have offered us a
quack cure - full of corrupt, ineffective and even unconstitutional
provisions - neatly moderated by some good provisions. And we'll be years
straightening it all out.
The liberal groupies at Move On and the like didn't notice or weren't
bothered by all this, but much of America was, and because neither side
was being honest, the public predictably floundered. The irony is that the
Tea Party that the liberals love to hate built itself in no small part on
the indefensible way in which the Democrats have behaved on health care.
Thus, we are not only getting a badly designed bill but a future in which
the right will thrive even more than it already has.
WHAT'S GOOD
Center On Budget Policy Priorities: The plan would expand Medicaid up to
133 percent of the poverty line for all children and adults younger than
65 who are lawfully residing in the United States and not eligible for
Medicare. This would mean that millions of low-income parents, as well
non-disabled low-income adults who do not have dependent children (and who
are generally ineligible for Medicaid today except in a small number of
states with waivers), would become newly eligible for health coverage
through Medicaid. Medicaid is the most cost-effective way to provide
comprehensive and affordable coverage to people with very low incomes and
thereby ensure that the low-income uninsured gain coverage.
Reuters - Within the first year of enactment Insurance companies will be
barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.
Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be
restricted.
Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of
pre-existing conditions.
Young adults will be able to stay on their parents' health plans until the
age of 26. Many health plans currently drop dependents from coverage when
they turn 19 or finish college.
Uninsured adults with a pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain
health coverage through a new program that will expire once new insurance
exchanges begin operating in 2014.
A tax credit becomes available for some small businesses to help provide
coverage for workers.
In 2011, Medicare provides 10 percent bonus payments to primary care
physicians and general surgeons.
In 2011, Medicare beneficiaries will be able to get a free annual wellness
visit and personalized prevention plan service. New health plans will be
required to cover preventive services with little or no cost to patients.
In 2012, The threshold for claiming medical expenses on itemized tax
returns is raised to 10 percent from 7.5 percent of income. The threshold
remains at 7.5 percent for the elderly through 2016.
In 2012, The Medicare payroll tax is raised to 2.35 percent from 1.45
percent for individuals earning more than $200,000 and married couples
with incomes over $250,000. The tax is imposed on some investment income
for that income group.
In 2014, State health insurance exchanges for small businesses and
individuals open.
In 2014, Health plans no longer can exclude people from coverage due to
pre-existing conditions.
In 2014, Employers with 50 or more workers who do not offer coverage face
a fine of $2,000 for each employee if any worker receives subsidized
insurance on the exchange. The first 30 employees aren't counted for the
fine.
Crooks & Liars: Authorizes early funding of community health centers in
all 50 states. Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision
services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment
according to ability to pay.
WHAT'S BAD
There is a huge subsidy for health insurers, paid for out of either taxes
or required purchase of health insurance.
The bill doesn't take insurance and medical cost inflation into adequate
account. For example, between 2000 and 2007, health insurance went up
100%. Under such a rise, the policy subsidies would become less valuable.
Congress tends to lag badly in correcting such situations.
Major provisions of the bill don't got into effect for four to nine years.
This is a considerable con, because it allows politicians to say they've
passed something that may not go into effect until they are either out of
office or, as with the president, safely in his second term. As a result
they don't have to take responsibility for any failure or unanticipated
cost.
The individual mandate is unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court doesn't
strike it down, it will open the door to major new intrusions by the
federal government into individual freedom of choice.
Many healthy people may prefer to pay fines than to purchase health
insurance. Others would have no choice. Just because you're making a
middle class wage doesn't mean you can afford all your expenses. What
effect this will have - including on health insurance costs - is unclear
but it's not good
Medicare will be hurt one way or another, probably most deeply by cuts
recommended by an appointed budget commission with unconstitutionally
broad powers.
Because of the delay in programs, the election of a Republican Congress or
Senate could drastically change things. As the LA Times pointed out:
"Insurance industry experts say there is no way to fully gauge the effect
because of its extended time frame. Four years from now, they say,
Congress and the White House could have new occupants who may try again to
reshape the healthcare landscape."
There will be cuts to the Medicare Advantage plans that could reduce
enrollment by as much as one third.
The bill does not deal with state actions. For example, budget cuts in
Arizona may slash $385 from the state's Medicaid program and end Kids Care
for 39,000 poor children. Writes Casey Newton in Arizona Central:
"Programs benefiting low income individuals and families, such as Medicaid
and CHIP, are politically vulnerable to the whims of conservatives
wielding budget cleavers. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has just provided us
with a prime example of that. Yet popular programs benefiting everyone,
such as Medicare, are relatively impenetrable to the weapons of the
conservatives. Suppose Congress had included single payer in their
deliberations and eventually decided that the benefits were too great to
pass up ,and so enacted an improved Medicare program that covered
everyone. Gov. Brewer and her ilk on the state level would be powerless to
stop it. "
One of the big sleepers in the bill is the plan to "institute
efficiencies" in Medicare programs. In fact, Medicare is far more
efficient than any private insurance plan in the country. Consider this
snippet from CBPP: "The legislation would reduce annual payment updates to
hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, hospices, ambulatory surgical
centers, and certain other providers to account for improvements in
economy-wide productivity. It would also reduce payments to home health
agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and inpatient rehabilitation
facilities." And just what will happen to service and its availability?
Remember: one person's efficiency is another's lack of service.
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Santelli on Predatory Lending: ‘You can’t cheat an honest man’

2010-03-21T15:45:00.001-07:00

By Matt Taibbi

Look at about the 5-minute mark of this video — Janet Tavakoli debating
Rick Santelli about predatory lending. You basically have a whole panel of
CNBC goons pooh-poohing the idea that predatory lending took place,
setting up the inevitable revisionist history that the 2008 crash was
caused by individual homeowners borrowing beyond their means.

My favorite part of this comes roughly at the six-minute mark. Tavakoli
has just deftly explained how a lot of the predatory practices worked —
people with limited financial literacy were presented with long and
complicated mortgage deals, and told they would have a fixed payment in
perpetuity or a guaranteed re-finance, or were nailed by fraudulent
appraisals. Then she mentioned the big one, the fact that investment banks
then took all these mortgages and with eyes wide open securitized them and
sold them off as worthy investments to suckers on the other end of the
chain.

While she's saying all this stuff, Santelli, who is one of the fathers of
the Tea Party movement, is shaking his head furiously, video-scoffing at
everything she's saying. When he finally does get a chance to speak, this
is what he says:

Here's my problem with this. It takes two to tango. You can't cheat an
honest man.

You can't cheat an honest man? What the fuck does that mean?

This whole scene sort of encapsulates what's wrong with the Tea Party
movement. The movement, and let's admit this, has some of its roots in
legitimate grievances about government waste and some
not-entirely-inaccurate observations about what's left of the American
welfare state. Of course what resonates most with the suburban whites who
mostly make up the Tea Party are stories about minorities and immigrants
using section 8 housing, food stamps, Medicaid, TANF and other programs,
with the Obama stimulus being for them a symbol of this ongoing government
largess. The heat of the Tea Party movement comes from the racial
frustrations that actually exist out there, in the real world outside New
York and LA, as urban expansion and immigration increasingly throw white
and nonwhite communities together, with white Tea Party types more and
more often blowing gaskets over increased crime rates, declining school
standards, and mislaid or wasted tax revenue.

That this perception that minorities are the prime or sole consumers of
government entitlement programs is absurdly inaccurate — white people, for
instance, are overwhelmingly the largest nonelderly recipients of
Medicaid, making up 42.8% of the program's rolls nationwide, compared to
22.2% for blacks and 27.9% for Hispanics — is beside the point. The point
is that the Tea Party is built largely on this narrative of "personal
responsibility," where the central demons are unwed black and Hispanic
mothers and absent black and Hispanic fathers, who are, let's face it, not
uncommon characters in the American melodrama.

Which is another subject for another time, but let's just say this: the
Tea Party movement contains a lot of people who are far more impressed by
what they can see with their own eyes than with what, for instance, they
read about. I've been to Tea Party events where global warming was
dismissed by speakers who, without irony, pointed to the fact that there
was snow on the ground outside. And while very few people have ever
actually seen a CDO manager or a Countrywide executive, or were aware if
it when they saw them, the Tea Party folks sure as hell have seen who
their neighbors in foreclosure are.

The Fox/CNBC types have very cannily latched on this narrative to rewrite
the history of the financial crisis. They know that Tea Partiers will go
for any narrative that puts blame on poor (and especially poor minority)
homeowners, because the idea of poor blacks and Hispanics borrowing beyond
their means fits seamlessly with their world view. But this is a situation
where poor minorities were really incidental to a much larger fraud scheme
that culminated in a welfare program — the bank bailouts — that dwarfs the
entire "entitlement" infrastructure. But the millions of people who are
actually in the Tea Party movement seem to have absolutely no idea that
their so-called leaders, the Santellis of their world, are shilling for
tax cheats and crooks and welfare bums of the sort they would despise
(perhaps even more than their black and Hispanic neighbors), if they could
actually see them.

But thanks to people like these CNBC goons, they don't see them, and
probably won't. The further we get from the crisis, the muddier all of
this stuff is going to get.

p.s. I seem to be getting a lot of mail from Ron Paul supporters about
this, claiming that I'm overlooking the early Ron Paul tea parties and
suppressing his message. I actually like Ron Paul and have said nothing
but nice things about him. I talk to people in his office regularly. But
the Ron Paul tea parties and these post Feb-2009 Tea Parties are two
different things. Certainly the current Tea Partiers see it that way.
While these folks may have lifted some of the Paulian themes, they're just
physically different people. They're mainstream Palin supporters, and the
reason I find them ridiculous is because I was covering these people while
the bailouts were happening and remember what was actually on their minds
back then. Does anyone remember what the cause of the day was when the AIG
bailout took place? It was the uproar from Palin supporters about Obama's
"lipstick on a pig" comment.

The reason I've always respected the Ron Paul people is that, even though
I don't always agree with them, they're intellectually consistent and
motivated by actual policy issues. These Teabagger types on the other hand
are just a giant herd of video sheep being jerked around by snickering
DC-New York types, who are very skillfully playing on their cultural
paranoia and their economic and racial frustrations. When they were told
to flip out about Obama's "lipstick" comment, they did. When they were
told to flip out about the bailouts, they did. I'm not saying that some of
these people weren't frustrated about the bailouts, to the extent that
they even knew about them, before Obama got elected. But they did not
coalesce into a mass movement against them until part II of the bailout
was passed under Obama's watch, and one should note also that their
keynote speaker in Nashville a few weeks ago, Palin, was a bailout
supporter.

The Paul people were upset about deficit spending and Fed corruption
throughout and ardently opposed Bush's policies throughout his presidency.
These Teabaggers did not. They were the people inside the rope-lines at
McCain and Romney and Rudy events, complaining about "those people"
consuming social services money, while the Paul people with their protest
placards were physically barred from coming near the events. I must have
seen that dynamic a dozen times during the campaign. So to all those Paul
people, I hear you. I'm not trying to say you weren't on these issues
beforehand. What I'm saying is, this new Tea Party thing, it's different
from your protests, not necessarily because the message is so different,
but because of two things. One, it was inspired by major-network media
figures. Two, the people at the protests are overwhelmingly different
people. They're dupes; the Paul movement is more like a real grass-roots
organization.

"My Fellow Americans, Tonight I'm Going to Talk Frankly About a Pesky Little Nation Called Israel ... "

2010-03-20T12:54:00.001-07:00

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Don't get excited. It'll never happen. Is there really a crisis in
US-Israeli relations? Yes and No. Yes, because the world's premier power
doesn't care to have its vice president publicly humiliated by a midget of
a nation whose entire population is smaller than that of Los Angeles
county. No, because the elected politicians nominally running the
government of the world's premier power live in mortal fear of the Israel
lobby in the United States. This time, as always, No will carry the day.
(You can find a detailed narrative by Jeffrey Blankfort on this site
today, from which much of this Diary is drawn.)

Consider Biden's reaction the day after Interior Minister Eli Yishai,
probably with Netanyahu's foreknowledge, announced the scheduled building
of 1600 apartments – Jews only – in East Jerusalem, right at the moment
Biden was trying to breathe life into the "peace process". As the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz points out, those projected 1600 units are part of
50,000 planned for the eastern part of the city.

So here's the vice president of the United States of America,standing with
all the injured dignity of a man who has just had a bucket of sewage
dumped over his head and who amid his discomfiture, actually did use the
word "condemn" and "Israel" in the same paragraph. The next day Biden
heads for Tel Aviv university and confides to the audience that he is a
Zionist and that, "throughout my career, Israel has not only remained
close to my heart but it has been the center of my work as a United States
Senator and now as Vice President of the United States." Get that: "the
center of my work." This mission statement is not quoted in the U.S. press.

Then Biden repeats the nonsense he spouted when he arrived in Jerusalem:
that "there is no space -- this is what they [the world] must know, every
time progress is made, it's made when the rest of the world knows there is
absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to
security, none. No space. That's the only time when progress has been
made."

Of course, if any "progress" can be identified across the past forty years
– a debatable claim – it's only because an American president has nerved
himself to briefly lay down the agenda with threats and menaces, all duly
retracted when the Lobby regroups and commences its counter-attack.

Finally Biden sidles up the "crisis". "I appreciate… the response your
Prime Minister today announced this morning that he is putting in place a
process to prevent the recurrence of that sort of that sort of events
[sic] and who clarified that the beginning of actual construction on this
particular project would likely take several years … That's significant,
because it gives negotiations the time to resolve this, as well as other
outstanding issues. Because when it was announced, I was on the West Bank.
Everyone there thought it had meant immediately the resumption of the
construction of 1,600 new units."

Yes, that's exactly what it did mean, the resumption of the construction
of the 1600 units. And as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz points out, those
projected 1600 units are part of 50,000 units planned for the eastern part
of the city. Natanyahu has said these are non-negotiable, whatever
Washington might say, let alone the pitiful Palestinian Authority.

Amid the anguished cries of the Arab princes and emirs that Israel's
brazen conduct towards Biden made it that much harder for them to sell the
Palestinians down the river, Obama's chief political aide, David Axelrod,
undoubtedly with clearance from his boss, told NBC News that not only was
Israel's conduct an "insult" to the United States but "destructive" of the
Middle East peace process.

Hillary Clinton let it be known she'd read the riot act to Netanhayu down
the phone for 43 minutes. Her spokesman claimed she'd described the
planned units in East Jerusalem as sending a "deeply negative signal about
Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit
of the vice president's trip" and that "this action had undermined trust
and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests."
Meanwhile, special envoy George Mitchell cancelled his trip to the region.

So, yes, we can call it a crisis, but not one that will be prolonged.
Obama is not the first president to have lost patience with Israel for
messing up Uncle Sam's larger plans. Mrs Clinton is not the first
Secretary of State to shout angrily down the phone to Tel Aviv.

Blankfort, historian of the Lobby, reels off other crises, all
satisfactorily resolved in Israel's favor. In 1975 President Gerald Ford
and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly blamed Israel for the
breakdown of negotiations with Egypt over withdrawing from the Sinai.
Ford said he was going to tell the American people that US-Isarel
relations should be recast. Prodded by AIPAC, 76 US senators signed a
letter to Ford telling him to lay off Israel. He did.

In March, 1980, President Carter was forced to apologize after US UN
representative Donald McHenry voted for a resolution that condemned
Israel's settlement policies in the occupied territories including East
Jerusalem and which called on Israel to dismantle them.

In June of the same year, after Carter requested a halt to Jewish
settlements and his Secretary of State, Edmund Muskie, called the Jewish
settlements an obstacle to peace, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced
plans to construct 10 new ones.

In August, 1982, the day after Reagan requested that Ariel Sharon end the
bombing of Beirut, Ariel Sharon responded by ordering bombing runs over
the city at precisely 2:42 and 3:38 in the afternoon, the times coinciding
with the two UN resolutions requiring Israel to withdraw from the occupied
territories.

In March, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker complained to Congress that
"Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process..,
I have been met with an announcement of new settlement activity… It
substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring about a peace process,
and creates quite a predicament." In 1990, he had become so disgusted with
Israel's intransigence on the settlements that he publicly gave out the
phone number of the White House switchboard and told the Israelis, "When
you're serious about peace, call us."

On September 12, 1991 President George Bush, Sr got sufficiently
infuriated by AIPAC's success in getting enough votes in both houses of
Congress to override his veto of Israel's request for $10 billion in loan
guarantees, that he declared to the television cameras, "I'm up against
some powerful forces. They've got something like 1,000 lobbyists on the
Hill working the other side of the question. We've got one lonely little
guy here doing it." A national poll taken immediately afterward gave the
president an 85 per cent approval rating. The Lobby blinked but not for
long. Not only did the loan guarantees ultimately go through, but Jewish
voters turned strongly against Bush in the '92 elections, a fact which
Bush Jr never forgot.

As Blankfort also recalls, in January 2009, former Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert publicly boasted that he had "shamed" Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice by getting President Bush to prevent her from voting for
a Gaza cease-fire resolution at the last moment that she herself had
worked on for several days with Arab and European diplomats at the United
Nations.

Olmert bragged to an Israeli audience that he pulled Bush off a stage
during a speech to take his call when he learned about the pending vote
and demanded that the president intervene.

"I have no problem with what Olmert did," Abraham Foxman, national
director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Forward. "I think the
mistake was to talk about it in public."

In sum, as Stephen Green wrote in "Taking Sides: America's Secret
Relations with Militant Israel" (Morrow, 1984) a quarter century ago,
"Since 1953, Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the
broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American
presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm,
and to deal with tactical issues."

There are powerful forces in America that wish that this was not so,
starting with the US military. Before Biden's trip no less a prominent
and widely admired commander as General David Petraeus wrote a memo to
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with its sentiments reduplicated in testimony
last Tuesday before a US Senate Armed Services Committee.

In his prepared statement to Congress, Petraeus described the Israeli-Arab
conflict as the first "cross cutting challenge to security and stability"
in the CENTCOM area of responsibility [AOR]. "The enduring hostilities
between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to
our ability to advance our interests in the AOR."

Petraeus then told the Senate committee that "The conflict foments
anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for
Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and
depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and
weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world." Not long
before, Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, warned the Israelis
publicly that an attack on Iran would be a "big, big, big problem for all
of us."

In Israel the widely-read Yediot Ahronoth reported that privately Biden
had echoed Petraeus's sentiments, telling Netanyahu that Israel's conduct
was "starting to get dangerous for us." "What you're doing here," Biden
reportedly said, "undermines the security of our troops who are fighting
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers
regional peace."

Would not the charge that Israel is putting harm's way the lives of
Americans battling terror on the front lines be devastating if toughly
presented by a capable politician to the American people? Yes it would.
Honestly conducted polls, without weasel wording, would probably give the
politician making such a charge ratings as higher or higher than Bush got
in 1991.

So will Gen. Petraeus, assuming he embarks on a political run in 2012 or
2016, make such a move? First of all, one can make the assumption that
after his memo and testimony it won't be long before we're reading some
investigative story about the "questionable claims", associated with Gen.
Petraeus' numerous medals, maybe even disclosures of Flashmanesque
prudence on the field of battle. Secondly, any Republican candidate has
to court the Republican ultra-Christians, passionate in support of Israel,
by reason of doctrinal scheduling of the ultimate Rapture. Thirdly, why
scare all Jewish campaign money back into the Democratic Party?

As Blankfort remarks, shortly before the first time he met with President
Obama, 76 US senators, led by Christopher Dodd and Evan Bayh, plus 330
members of the House, sent AIPAC-crafted letters to the president calling
on him not to put pressure on the Israeli prime minister when they met.
The House, do not forget, cheered on Israel's onslaught in Gaza and by
334 to 36 condemned the Goldstone Report.

The Democrat Party is heavily reliant on major Jewish political funders,
up to 60 per cent of the top tier of contributors, according to
Blankfort. Soon AIPAC has its convention (at which Tony Blair will be a
minor attraction). Here will come all major politicians to fawn and pay
tribute. On June 3, 2008, right after he had finally prevailed in the race
for the nomination against Hilary Clinton, Obama addressed the AIPAC
crowd, some 7,000 strong: "We will also use all elements of American power
to pressure Iran," he assured AIPAC." I will do everything in my power to
prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power.
Everything and I mean everything." He swore he wouldn't talk to the
elected representatives Palestinians, Hamas. To thunderous applause he
declared, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain
undivided." The next day, Obama's foreign policy advisors, aghast at this
outburst, issued some corrections.

As Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli writer and peace activist expostulated
furiously in the wake of this last sentence: "Along comes Obama and
retrieves from the junkyard the outworn slogan 'Undivided Jerusalem, the
Capital of Israel for all Eternity'. Since Camp David, all Israeli
governments have understood that this mantra constitutes an insurmountable
obstacle to any peace process…. The fear of AIPAC is so terrible, that
even this candidate, who promises change in all matters, does not dare. In
this matter he accepts the worst old-style Washington routine. He is
prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US
has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will
allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to
Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his
future - if and when he is elected president… If he sticks to them, once
elected, he will be obliged to say, as far as peace between the two
peoples of this country is concerned: 'No, I can't!'

So yes, the crisis will soon be over, and no, there is no new era in
US-Israel relations in the offing.

--
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EIGHT HOURS IN THE BASEMENT FOR PEACE

2010-03-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

February 22, 2010
Sam Smith
Last Saturday I spent eight hours with three dozen other people in a
basement conference room of a Washington hotel engaged in an extraordinary
exercise of mind and hope.
The topic was, by itself, depressingly familiar: building an anti-war
coalition. What made it so strikingly different was the nature of those at
the table. They included progressives, conservatives, traditional liberals
and libertarians. Some reached back to the Reagan years or to 196
activism, some - including an SDS leader from the University of Maryland
and several Young Americans for Liberty - were still in college.
In a time when politics is supposed to be hopelessly polarized along the
lines proposed by Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, the most heated debate
occurred not between left and right but over tactics between Ralph Nader
and Bill Greider.
There was an economics professor from a naval war college and the
executive director of Veterans for Peace; there was Katrina vanden Heuvel,
editor of the Nation, me from the Progressive Review, and editors from the
American Conservative and Reason Magazine.
The session had been conceived by long time activist and current head of
Voters for Peace, Kevin Zeese, along with artist George D. O'Neill, Jr.
who had been chair of the Rockford Institute, a leading traditional
conservative intellectual think tank in the 1980s, and who had worked on
Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign.
What we shared was an antipathy towards war. It was not so much that we
were anti-war as we were seeking a post-war world. Our approaches might
differ but our goals were, at worst, next door.
As Zeese put it in an introduction the session, it was about "views from
the right, left and radical center, views that reflect those of many
Americans which are not represented in the political dialogue in Congress
or the White House, or the mainstream media. Throughout American history
there have been times when movements developed that were outside the
limited political dialogue of the two major parties. . .
"Polling actually shows majorities often oppose war and escalation of war.
But these views are not represented in government or the media. In
addition, opposition to war is not limited to people on the left; it
covers the American political spectrum and it always has. There is a long
history of opposition to war among traditional conservatives. Their
philosophy goes back to President Washington's Farewell Address where he
urged America to avoid 'foreign entanglements.' It has showed itself
throughout American history. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed the
colonialism of the Philippines in the 1890s. The largest anti-war movement
in history, the America First Committee, opposed World War II and had a
strong middle America conservative foundation in its make-up. The
strongest speech of an American president against militarism was President
Eisenhower's 1961 final speech from the White House warning America
against the growing military-industrial complex. In recent years the
militarist neo-conservative movement has become dominate of conservatism
in the United States. Perhaps none decry this more than traditional
conservatives who oppose massive military budgets, militarism and the
American empire.
"Of course, the left also has a long history of opposition to war from the
Civil War to early imperialism in the Philippines, World Wars I and II
through Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes socialists, Quakers,
social justice Catholics and progressives. Indeed, the opposition to entry
into World War I was led by the left including socialists, trade
unionists, pacifists including people like union leader and presidential
candidate Eugene Debs, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams and author and
political activist Helen Keller. . .
"Opposition to Vietnam brought together peace advocates with the civil
rights movement, highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s outspoken
opposition to the war. . . .
"What are the ingredients for a successful anti-war, pro-peace movement?
- The anti-war movement needs to be a reflection of not just the left but
of Middle America and traditional conservatives who oppose war.
- A successful anti-war peace movement cannot give up the flag of
patriotism. It needs to grab hold of America's patriotic impulses and show
the United States can be the nation many imagine us to be-leading by
positive example, helping in crisis, being a force for good, rather than
propagating military dominance and hegemony.
- A successful anti-war movement needs to be a place where veterans, from
grunts to generals, can openly participate, share their stories and
explain the lessons they learned from American militarism.
- A well organized anti-war movement will have committees not only
reaching out to military and business, but to academics, students, clergy,
labor, nurses, doctors, teachers and a host of others.
- The 1960s tactics of big marches and congressional demonstrations have
their role but they are not sufficient. The media and government have
adjusted to them. We need to use tools like voter initiatives and
referenda to break through and put our issues before the voters. And, we
need to learn from around the world what has worked; for example, general
strikes, whether of a few hours or few days, have shown unified opposition
to government policy
- Make war relevant to Americans' day-to-day lives by constantly linking
the cost of war to their communities, incomes, and bank accounts. People
need to learn that Empire is not good for the U.S. economy.
- Both parties are dominated by pro-militarist elected officials. The
anti-war movement needs to be strong in criticizing candidates who call
for a larger military, escalation of war, or other militarist policies."
Clips from the bios of those at the session suggest the unusual
cross-ideological and cross-cultural presence:
- A Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He also is the Robert A. Taft
Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and served as a
Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
- His leading work includes a biography of historian William A. Williams,
the Encyclopedia of the American Left, five volumes on the lives and work
of the Hollywood Blacklistees, . . . and eight volumes of nonfiction comic
art (adaptations of Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel, graphic biographies of
Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman, The Beats, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman,
etc).
- He has been a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, and currently covers
national security for its National Affairs section. He is a contributing
editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior
correspondent for The American Prospect.
- An associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in
Monterey, California and a Research Fellow with the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University. From 1982 to 1984, he was the senior economist for
health policy, and from 1983 to 1984 he was the senior economist for
energy policy, with President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.
- Founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of
Black Journalists; executive board member of the National Alliance of
Third World Journalists. . .
- Founding Managing Editor and current Executive Editor of The American
Conservative. Research director of Pat Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
- Executive Director of Veterans For Peace. His volunteer social and
economic justice activist work include membership in Military Families
Speak Out, coordinating committee member for the Bring Them Home Now
campaign against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Co-Chair of United For
Peace and Justice.
- Legislative aide for the armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of
Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary
Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. An opponent of the Iraq War, has
written for the Marine Corps Gazette, and Defense and the National
Interest. . .
- For over four decades has exposed problems and organized millions of
citizens into more than 100 public interest groups to advocate for
solutions. . .
- Active within the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties at various
times. As a boy, he supported George McGovern for president in 1972 partly
because of the Democrat's anti-war stance. In the mid 1970s, he became a
conservative who backed Ronald . . .
- Managing editor of Reason magazine, is the author of Rebels on the Air:
An Alternative History of Radio in America.
Notably absent from the session were members of the extremist center,
liberal professors seeking to prove their manhood by backing yet another
war, legislators afraid to challenge the Pentagon, belligerent bullies and
the cowardly complacent. And everyone in the room was trying something
different.
Which, when you come to think of it, is just what happens when you make
peace. People who have been shooting at each other sit down and find a way
to share some space. One might expect that anti-war activists would
understand this, but too often we all regard our political beliefs not as
the product of imperfect and struggling minds but as our sacred identity,
our justification and our privileged demographic. We reduce politics to
the theology of the self-righteous rather than as an imperfect search for
better times.
As I sat around that table, I tried to recall those few occasions when I
had experienced something close to this - few, that is, since the days
when I sat around the family table as the third child of six and learned
about living with those different from oneself and more than willing to
say so.
Some of the later times worked; some didnâ€™t. One that worked was the
anti-freeway coalition of the 1960s and 70s that kept Washington from
becoming another Los Angeles. It was started by among the least likely
activists - black and white middle class homeowners whose neighborhood was
about to be ruined. It expanded to include those of us in the civil rights
group SNCC as well as the all white Georgetown Citizens Association. I
once wrote of the leader, "By all rights, Sammie Abbott should have been
disqualified as a DC leader on at least three grounds: he was too white,
he was too old, and he lived in the suburbs. Instead, this short man with
a nail-file voice became the nemesis of public officials for years.
Abbott, the grandson of Arab Christians who fled Turkish persecution in
Syria, had been a labor organizer, a bricklayer and a World War II veteran
with a Bronze Star."
There was only one qualification to join the anti-freeway movement:
opposition to freeways. And the success of our effort - rare among such
highway protests - left a mark on a city colony devoid of rights and helps
to explain how - just two years after the riots - we were able to form a
biracial third party that would hold seats on the city council and/or
school board for 25 years.
I would come to think of it as existential politics - in which one defined
one's existence by one's actions rather than by one's ethnicity, class,
party registration or magazine subscriptions. And it was a sort of
politics that would become increasingly rare.
But it didn't always work. In the mid sixties, I was editing a
neighborhood newspaper in Washington's biracial Capitol East. Things were
already well beyond the capacity of any one community to solve. America's
cities were starting to burn and you could feel the heat even in Capitol
East. In September 1967, anti-poverty activist Lola Singletary convinced
the white businessmen of H Street to form a organization dedicated to
involvement in community problems.
In late 1967 I came up with the idea of pulling together the various
leaders of Capitol East into an informal leadership council with the
possibility of forming a major neighborhood coalition. Fourteen people
attended a meeting on January 31: 7 white and 7 black. Among our purposes:
- To share our group differences so we can increase our knowledge of one
another's group positions, plans and needs.
- To increase opportunities to share our group concerns so that we can
better support one another's group efforts.
- To unite in common action where we have agreement.
It was too late. A little more than two months later, the riots broke out
and Capitol East had two of the four major riot strips, including H
Street. Hope had burned up as well.
then in 1995, as part of the Green Politics Network, I joined a number of
other Greens in hosting a conference of third party activists. Over a
hundred showed up, ranging from one of the founders of the American Labor
Party to Greens, Libertarians, Perot backers, Democratic Socialists of
America, and followers of Lenora Fulani. It was a recklessly dangerous
idea for a Washington weekend, but John Rensenbrink, Linda Martin, and
Tony Affigne seemed to know what they were doing and I was happy to go
along. We established two basic rules:
- We would only discuss issues on which we might find some agreement.
- We would reach that agreement by consensus.
I was one of the kickoff speakers and said:
"As a simple empirical matter you can say that one of the great
characteristics of Americans is not merely opposition to a system of the
moment but antipathy towards unnatural systems in general -- opposition to
all systems that revoke, replace or restrain the natural rights of humans
and the natural blessings of their habitats.
"This, I think, is why we are here today. If nothing else binds us it is
an understanding of the damage that heartless, leaderless, mindless
systems have done to the specifics of our existence. . .
"Further, in our distaste with the systems suffocating our lives, we are
very much in the mainstream. These systems have done half our work for us,
they have lost the people's faith. . .
"We must stake out a position with real programs for real people, with our
enthusiasm on our sleeve and our ideology in our pocket, with small words
and big hearts, and -- most of all -- with a clear vision of what a better
future might look like. We must tackle what Chesterton called the "huge
modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of
altering human conditions to fit the human soul.". . .
"This then is our task. Let's embrace it not as sectarians or as prigs but
as a happy fellow members of a new mainstream. Not as radicals permanently
in exile but as moderates of an age that has not quite arrived. Let's
laugh and make new friends and be gentle with one another. Let's remember
Camus' dictum that the only sin we are not permitted is despair. . ."
Despite the wide range of views present, despite the near total absence of
Robert's Rules of Order, the final document, with full consensus, called
for nothing less than a major transformation. The group unanimously agreed
to support proportional representation, campaign finance reform "to
provide a level playing field in elections;" initiative, referendum and
recall; better ballot access; the end of corporate welfare; strong
environmental policies; sexual and reproductive freedom; an end to the war
on drugs and treatment of addiction as a health matter rather than as a
crime; a dramatic cut in military expenditures; workplace democracy and
the maximum empowerment of people in their communities "consistent with
fairness, social responsibilities and human rights."
Not bad for a meeting at which nobody yelled at anyone.
Interesting stories but how rare.
Now Kevin Zeese and George O'Neill have to try to build on the spirit in
that basement last Saturday and turn it into something that all can see.
Perhaps it will be a catalyst as was, say, the Seneca Falls conference was
for women's rights. Perhaps it will be nothing but another nice try that
didn't work out.
We may never know. After all, only two women who attended Seneca Falls
conference lived long enough to vote.
We do know, however, that good futures are built on the efforts of those
unafraid of failure. At a time when a majority of Americans consider their
system broken, we can either consign ourselves to being victims or we can,
as we did last Saturday, come together in new ways, with new ideas and new
allies and start replacing a failed system with communities that work.
--
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HOW TO GET GOD OUT OF THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

2010-03-14T18:42:00.001-07:00

One nation, under law..yeah, that's the ticket. Wish I had thought of that
before my progeny attended the consumer culture incubation system.--Pete

SAM SMITH - Now that a federal appeals court has ruled that the words
"under God" are fine for the pledge of allegiance, we once more find
ourselves without the support of any of the three branches of the federal
government.

What to do?

Baltimore Orioles fans figured this out long ago. When they sing the
national anthem, it suddenly turns into a team fight song as the words, "O
say does that. . ." are modified by a stadium full of fans yelling "O" in
honor of their team. We can do something similar with the pledge. When it
comes to the words "under God," just cry out, "under law." It might just
catch on.

OBAMA REALLY GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT EDUCATION

2010-03-14T18:08:00.001-07:00

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with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training
and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.
Interested sources must submit detailed technical capabilities and any
other information that demonstrates their ability to meet the requirements
above, no later than March 12, 2010 at 12 PM, E.S.T. Any quotes must be
submitted electronically to the attention of Holly.Le@ed.gov, Contract
Specialist (Contract Operations Group), with a concurrent copy to
Sherese.Lewis@ed.gov, Contracting Officer (Contract Operations Group).

THE O BOMB: WHY IS OBAMA DOING SO BADLY?

2010-03-14T17:45:00.001-07:00

Sam Smith
- His supporters didn't read the small type above the box marked "I
accept." If they had they would have learned during the campaign that
Obama was pro-military, anti-civil liberties and conservative on
economics. They got what they paid for, just not what they thought they
had paid for.
- Obama got where he is by repeatedly pleasing the establishment. He still
is.
- Everyone from his mother to his law professors to the Democratic
Leadership Council kept telling him how great he was. He came to believe
them. Wisdom and judgment in life requires losses as well as victories.
- He understands how to create transparent data but not how to create
visible programs. No one knows why we're in Afghanistan, what's really in
the healthcare bill, or what's being stimulated in their communities. It's
hard to argue for things people can't see and it makes it easy for your
opponents to claim that they're something awful. The best politics is the
sort you can see and feel.
- Obama's a lawyer surrounded by too many lawyers. The legalocracy has
been taking over Washington for years, but with Obama it's reached a new
peak. Lawyers do somethings well, like write contracts, sue people and
draft your will. In other matters - like actually doing whatever it is
they're providing legal support for - they are not particularly qualified.
Harry Markopolos, the Bernie Madoff whistleblower, recently described how
it works at the SEC:"The five commissioners of the SEC are securities
lawyers. Securities lawyers never understand finance. They don't have the
math background. If you can't do math and if you can't take apart the
investment products of the 21st century backward and forward and put them
together in your sleep you'll never find the frauds on Wall Street."
- Further, lawyers think truth lies in documents and not out on the
street. Which is one reason FDR did better with his stimulus package: he
put a social worker, and not a lawyer, in charge.
- Rahm Emmanuel. Hope and change don't go over so well when they are
accompanied by threats.
- As soon as Obama got elected he dumped his liberal supporters, thereby
ignoring the advice of a wiser Chicago politician, Richard Daley the
elder: "Dance with the one that brung you."
- He has too many economists. Multi-factor crises are not handled well by
one-factor thinkers.
- Obama thinks bipartisanship is great. A better politician, Harry Truman,
said that when anyone told him they were bipartisan, he knew they were
going to vote against him. My Coast Guard navigation instructor told us
that if you take a navigational fix and it puts you on one side of a rock
and then you take another fix and it puts you on the other side of the
rock, "Don't split the difference." Obama doesn't seem to grasp this
principle.
- There's nothing intrinsically wrong with compromise, but wise
compromises are made by those who know where they want to go. Using a
compromise as the starting point is a premeditated act of random, like you
know, whatever.
- Looking deeply pensive when someone else is speaking or doing a little
jog up to the podium is cute the first few times; after that it becomes
corny.
- Obama's problem is not that he uses a teleprompter but that he seems
totally dependent on it, such as using one when speaking to a group of
school children. Joe Biden should give him lessons in human conversation.
- Academic intelligence takes you only so far. At some point, you have to
apply it and that requires other skills such as social wisdom, empathy and
judgment.
- Obama, who has a hard time running those governmental functions covered
by the Constitution, can't keep his hands off things that are none of his
business like local education or how health records are maintained. The
wisest leaders know how to share power with others and to respect the 10th
Amendment.
- People don't want more laws and regulations; they want more money, help
and happiness. Obama doesn't seem to understand this.
- Everyone talks about Obama and race, but it's really class that's
causing the problem. People feel they're being talked down to, scolded,
and told what to do by people who come across as intellectual snobs. This
didn't used to be a problem, because liberals were the ones who helped the
workers and the less fortunate in society. Now they don't seem to care all
that much. If liberals, beginning with Obama, had a people-friendly
economic policy, the right wouldn't be able to get away with their
hypocritical blarney and the Democrats would have some weapons to combat
it.
- With Obama as with the rest of his party, there is no interest, concern
or respect for the local - where people really live. Getting through life
doesn't happen at a White House summit but in the 'hood.
- After you've had all your summits and your speeches and special meetings
with special people, it helps to make a decision or two that everyone can
understand and a lot of people can get excited about.

The Bogus Hispanic Crime Wave

2010-03-06T14:44:00.001-08:00

This is especially salient for San Jose, where the po-po have racked up a
wildly disproportionate arrest rate for young Latino males. They're not
racist, though - at least that's what they keep telling me.--Pete

Counterpunch Diary

Nothing more easily elicits roars of assent across a good slice of the
political spectrum than the hoarse alarums that wave after wave of
brown-skinned illegals continually flood across the border, plunging
neighborhoods and whole cities into an inferno of crime, over-whelming
cops and prosecutors, clogging the justice system, cramming the prisons.
Lou Dobbs is pondering a political run powered by a thousand pop-eyed
commentaries catering to this fear. "A third of the prison population in
this country is estimated to be illegal aliens," he shouts. Glenn Beck
screams about "an illegal alien crime wave." The panic is by no means
confined to the nutball right. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, launching his
commendable plan for a National Criminal Justice Commission last year,
invoked the specter of organized Mexican gangs that supposedly threaten
"hundreds" of American cities. "There are an estimated 1 million gang
members in the United States, many of them foreign-based," Webb wrote.
"Every American neighborhood is vulnerable. Gangs commit 80% of the crime
in some locations. Mexican cartels, which are military-capable, have
operations in 230+ U.S. cities."
It's all nonsense. There's no crime wave swollen by brown gangbangers to
city-destroying proportions. If you want a lucid walk through the data you
can turn to … The American Conservative, whose March issue features a
cover story by the magazine's publisher, Ron Unz. There's a photo of a
tattooed gangbanger, and the title -"HisPANIC," then the subtitle: "The
Myth of Immigrant Crime."
Yes, this is the magazine co-founded by Pat Buchanan, whose physical form
I last clapped eyes on at the Republican convention in the Houston
Astrodome in 1992, roaring to a climactic fist-shake against the black and
brown hordes who had recently rioted in Los Angeles: "We must take back
our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country!"
Unz comes to statistical analysis of populations and crime data with
decent credentials—he majored in theoretical physics at Harvard, then went
on to physics graduate study at Cambridge and Stanford before swerving
into very successful software work on Wall Street and now a busy life in
Silicon Valley, fostering ideas on both sides of the political aisle. I
should add that I count him as a discriminating friend, supportive of left
ventures such as CounterPunch as well as The American Conservative, whose
tiller he took over in 2007.
At the heart of Unz's essay is the matter of age-weighting. Most serious
crime is committed by young males, especially those between 18 and 29.
Now, the age distribution of Hispanics and whites in the overall
population is markedly different. The median age for Hispanics is around
27; for whites it's above 40. But to get useful comparisons you need to
look at the relative criminality of Hispanics and whites of the same age;
you need to sift out immigration-related offenses (more than half of all
federal prosecutions) from state-prosecuted crimes such as robbery, rape,
murder, burglary, assault and theft; you need to review comparative data
state by state, since there are very significant regional differences in
the way justice systems are administered, hence significant variations in
incarceration rates.
Unz's bottom line: "Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as
whites of the same age." Since poverty and crime have an intimate
connection, and since America's Hispanics are advancing economically, the
Hispanic crime rate will most likely drop more. An important further
point: Unz uses Census figures for all the states, with a total estimate
in 2008 of around 45 million Hispanics. But there's a widespread view that
illegal immigrants are significantly undercounted. So if there are, as
some "brown tide" scaremongers allege, 25 million unreported Hispanic
illegals above Census numbers, then the true Hispanic crime rate is 35
percent lower than Unz estimates. Almost beyond the shadow of a doubt,
white crime rates nationwide are significantly higher than Hispanic ones.
Senator Webb needs to refocus his Threat Assessment.
But what about Los Angeles, allegedly the dystopian HQ of immigrant crime,
half Hispanic in population, many of them poor and illegal? All crime
rates in LA, Unz explains, have been dropping for two decades. Homicides
plunged 18 percent last year. Violent crime is roughly the same in LA as
in Portland, Oregon, the whitest major city in America, the same as it was
in the lily-white LA of the early 1960s. But the gangs? Ah, yes. You see,
the feds dole out hundreds of millions each year for gang prevention. Pay
a city to find a gang problem and the city will oblige.
Unz had a question for me: "Pro-immigrant advocacy organizations spend
hundreds of millions of dollars each year in this exact subject area. So
if my theories were correct or even just remotely plausible, wouldn't such
a vast army of paid researchers have long since discovered the same
evidence and blasted it out to the four corners of the earth via a very
supportive mainstream media?"
My answer: remember that mainstream NGO liberalism—starting with
Rockefeller and particularly saturating every environmental foundation—is
built on the bedrock of demographic panic about the pullulating poor,
particularly the brown and black and yellow hordes. Every billionaire
setting up his foundation almost invariably has population control in his
mandate. Shoulder to shoulder with hysteria about immigrant crime waves
rides fear of the fecund darker races. So I think we can surmise an
instinctive racist bias among foundation liberals, their likely belief
that Hispanics do commit more crimes and hence their desire to steer clear
of all data that they fear might ratify this instinct.
Now, among the names that cause Nation columnist Katha Pollitt to twitch
with reflexive irritation, the name Cockburn can most certainly be
included. Hardly had I published Unz's conclusions in the Nation magazine
than Pollitt dashed to her laptop to pound a peeved commentary.
It's "annoying," she snapped, "when conservatives take credit for work
liberals have been doing for much longer and far more seriously. It's even
more irritating when a leftist [that's AC] is so eager to bash liberals,
he joins the parade."
Then Pollitt listed a number of papers from the liberal end of the
spectrum on the topic of Hispanics and crime, plus some testy comments
from academics working in this field, claiming that Unz was reinventing
the wheel and that what the American Conservative was trumpeting on its
cover was old news, known to all, or at least to liberal communicators
such as Pollitt, though not Cockburn, all too eager to take yet another
whack at the pwogs.
The trouble is that Katha--to judge from this piece at least--doesn't
actually know anything about the topic of Hispanic crime, therefore
doesn't know what's widely known, what's not widely known, and what's
completely mistaken. Even the very limited research she references is on
the topic of "immigrant Hispanic crime" not "overall Hispanic crime," and
these studies are sometimes are highly misleading for that reason. For
example Katha quotes Rubén Rumbaut at UC Irvine as saying patronizingly on
the phone to her that "I'm amused by [Unz's] 'discovery' of something I've
been writing about since the last millennium." She encourages Nation
readers to peruse a 2007 paper by Rumbaut. Actually, this paper
claims--wrongly--that Mexican crime rates skyrocket 700 per cent in the
generation after immigration. According to a Rumbaut chart, American-born
Hispanics are 250 percent more likely to be imprisoned than American-born
whites--a result which would be grim news for America's future if it were
correct. Here's a link.. Scroll down a bit to Figure 3, and Nation readers
can discover where Tom Tancredo may have got his ideas about Latino crime
rates.
But Katha seems to have been in too much of a hurry even to look at the
studies she cited as proof that "everyone already knew" exactly the
opposite of what the studies actually claimed. Similarly, she cites
Harvard's Robert J. Sampson as having had an op-ed in the New York Times a
few years back, arguing that immigrant Hispanics had low crime rates. But
this column didn't say anything about the much larger number of
native-born Hispanics, a very different question.
Pollitt's derision--buttressed by a couple of academics (not a breed
renowned for intellectual generosity) about the supposed lack of
originality of Unz's piece--is misplaced. As Unz points out, no one
previously explored the age-adjustment or cross-correlation methods, even
in the academic literature.
Let's go to the all important general point: just how well known are the
facts about Hispanics and crime? Anecdotally, I should say that my report
on Unz's TAC piece, scrutinized by a few Nation editors—presumably well
informed on social issues --did not elicit the swift rebuke that I was
flogging a dead horse.
It's true that some academic specialists have generally been aware that
Latinos didn't have especially high crime rates (though as far as I know
nobody's previously used Unz's particular methodologies to make the point
directly and quantitatively.) Even the volume of academic literature seems
extremely scant, relative to the magnitude of the subject involved. Over
the last decade, there have been a couple of books by Ramiro Martinez
dealing with the subject, and a relatively small number of journal
articles, few of which are very direct or explicit. But there's a huge
difference between academic specialists being generally aware of this, and
perhaps occasionally communicating their results to other academic
specialists via turgid journal articles and books, and this information
getting out to a wider public audience.
As a Nation reader responded crisply to Pollitt: "You are wrong to
suggest that a few articles here and there have successfully debunked the
Latino crime wave myth. They have not done anything of the kind except
perhaps through those few who read the articles. The myth is still
pervasive not only because of the blatant racists out there but because it
has not effectively been debunked in academia and the media. ..Outside of
your rarefied circles, their are many, many people who believe Latinos are
the worse criminals in our society and they will continue to do so until
as long as racism comes down from the wealthiest layers of society. That
is what you should be reporting on rather than telling us that we all know
Latins aren't all criminals because someone, somewhere wrote in some
obscure article that they aren't. Please come down out of your ivory tower
and learn what racist viewpoints the average person has and why they have
such viewpoints.
"As far as I can tell," Unz says, "there's been virtually no effort to get
the information out to a wider audience. I'm pretty sure I've almost never
seen anything mentioned in any of the six newspapers I've read daily for
the last 15 years, or in any of the numerous opinion magazines to which I
subscribe. If you go on the websites of the major liberal
pro-immigrant/pro-Hispanic public advocacy organizations ranging from the
National Immigration Forum to La Raza you'll find almost no mention of
this claim anywhere, let alone any study or report highlighting it. If you
try using Google, you'll find very, very little that suggests otherwise.
"In fact, one of the very few individuals who's directly specialized in
this field is Ramiro Martinez, cited by Ms. Pollitt, who's written almost
the only books directly on the topic of Hispanic crime. I sent him a copy
of my article, which he said he liked, and we traded several notes. He
actually agreed with me how unfortunate it was that so little of the
public had been informed of these important facts. My claim is certainly
not that the academic specialists have been deluded, but simply that they,
and the organizations sponsoring them, have done an extremely poor job of
communicating their findings to the general public."
Katha cites Sampson's op-ed in the NYT, addressing crime rates of
immigrant Hispanics. Meanwhile, there have been a large number of major
NYT news stories focusing on murderous Latino gangs, Latino prison
inmates, and Latino social pathologies which have provided exactly the
opposite impression, let alone what's daily on Rush Limbaugh, Fox News,
and similar media outlets. Given how much money Ford, Soros, et al.,
spend, maybe during all these years they could have issued one study or
report entitled "Hispanic Crime Rates" arguing that Hispanics have
approximately the same crime rates as whites, and sent it out with a big
press release.
There are at least about 50 million Hispanics in America, and they're
projected to become 25 percent of the total national population. Whether
they have high crime rates or low crime rates is a huge issue for the
future of America, and a very large fraction of the public wrongly
believes they have high crime rates. As Unz wrote to me, "All my article
really does is prove that rocks fall downward--but that may still be a
huge revelation to lots of people. I'd be very curious if Ms. Pollitt can
find any sentence in any article which she's ever written or which The
Nation has ever published by someone else saying something like 'Hispanics
seem to have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same
age.'"
Probably naívely, I thought it encouraging that a magazine founded by Pat
Buchanan should devote its March cover and a substantial number of pages
to a persuasive assault on right-wing hysteria about the supposedly
astronomic crime rates of Hispanics in America. But aside from my own
piece – I think the first commentary on Unz's work – The American
Conservative's cover story raised no interest on the left. However,
reaction across the larger political spectrum reaction on the right
swiftly gave the lie to Pollitt's claim that this was all stale news.
Slate listed Unz's piece as "one of the top pieces of the day, saying "Ron
Unz takes on, and takes down, one of the far-right's most cherished
doctrines". Tyler Cowen, New York Times economics columnist, called it
"An excellent article, full of good information." Heather Horn, announced
on the The Atlantic Monthly/Atlantic Wire that "Unz debunks the high
Hispanic crime rate myth...the piece requires a full reading."
Over at the libertarian Reason Magazine Rodney Balko called it "One of
the more courageous endeavors I've seen from a political magazine in a
long time." USA Today called attention to it.
The Ron Paul movement, fresh from its remarkable victory in the CPAC
presidential straw poll, was quite supportive. Not only did the Ron Paul
News website prominently highlight Unz's article and mention it in a
twitter feed to their supporters, but LewRockwell.com, a popular website
closely associated with Ron Paul, republished large excerpts of the piece,
and followed it up with several blog items focusing on the ongoing debate
surrounding the piece . A couple of the leading anti-Immigrationist
publications struck back with lengthy and detailed critiques.
Unz responded to these with specific rebuttals published on the TAC
website, where his original article can be found.

--

CABLE NEWS OUTLETS NOT REVEALING CORPORATE TIES OF GUESTS

2010-02-28T22:20:00.001-08:00

Since 2007, at least 75 registered lobbyists, public relations
representatives and corporate officials have appeared on cable news
broadcasts "with no disclosure of the corporate interests that paid them,"
reports the Nation magazine.

Many of these people are "paid by companies and trade groups to manage
their public image and promote their financial and political interests,"
writes Sebastian Jones.

For example, Tom Ridge, identified as the former governor of Pennsylvania,
appeared on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews urging the White House to
"create nuclear power plants." What viewers were not told, though, is that
Ridge since 2005 has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for
serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's biggest nuclear power company.

On the same day, last Dec. 4th, retired general Barry McCaffrey, told
MSNBC viewers the war in Afghanistan would require a three-to-ten-year
effort and "a lot of money." Unmentioned, Jones says, was the fact DynCorp
paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone and that DynCorp has a five-year,
$5.9 billion deal to aid U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Jones describes MSNBC as "the cable network with the most egregious
instances of airing guests with conflicts of interest." He notes, "Only on
MSNBC was a prime-time program, Countdown, hosted by public relations
operative Richard Wolffe and later by a pharmaceutical company consultant,
former Governor Howard Dean, with no mention of the outside work either
man was engaged in. And MSNBC has yet to introduce DynCorp's Barry
McCaffrey as anything but a 'military analyst.'"

Moreover, last January 22nd, MSNBC's Morning Joe audience saw Mark Penn,
identified only as a Clinton administration pollster, suggest the Obama
administration put healthcare reform on ice. Unmentioned, says Jones, was
"Penn's role as worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which has an entire
healthcare division devoted to helping clients like Eli Lilly and Pfizer
'create and manage perceptions that deliver positive business results.'"

Jones reports that what transpires on MSNBC also occurs on Fox News, Fox
Business Network, CNN and CNBC. During a Sept. 18 Fox News appearance to
discuss Sarah Palin, Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight
Strategies---whose clients include marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy &
Mather---lambasted Sen. John McCain for proposing to "Let AIG fail,"
saying his position demonstrated "just how little he understands the
global economy today." Whitman's work for AIG was not mentioned.

OBAMA PERFORMS TRIPLE AXEL ON PATRIOT ACT

2010-02-28T21:58:00.001-08:00

Demonstrating his high skill at rotating three and a half times on key
issues, Barack Obama has signed an extension on the Patriot Act. Here, in his own words, is where he was on the issue in 2005:

"This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law...When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary. They simply need sign-off from a local FBI official. That's all."

"And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document - through library books they've read and phone calls they've made, this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law."

"No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong."

Apparently this wasn't the guy for the job, folks. Starting to look a little clearer, isn't it?
--

THE SILENT SURRENDER

2010-02-28T21:43:00.001-08:00

Sam Smith

One of the scariest things about living in America these days is how few -
especially in government and the media - seem to care about the things
that used to define the place.

Thus there is hardly a murmur as the Senate approves by a voice vote the
extension of the despicable Patriot Act or when Bush and Obama wreck the
Fourth Amendment or as the latter increasingly treats the U.S. like a
corporation he has taken over in a merger deal - with those who used to be
considered citizens now just employees wondering how much longer they'll
have a job.

What we have now is a silent surrender. No terrorists, no war, no
revolution, just incremental capitulation led by those supposed to guard
our rights and our freedoms.

A case in point is the mandatory mandate in the Democrat's health plan.
The idea that the government can order how you spend your money in the
private sector is unprecedented. No, auto insurance is not a parallel,
since you don't have to drive a car on a public road. You do, - if you
want to be human, that is - have to live.

There is one reason for this extraordinary plan: to avoid having to admit
that the government would be raising taxes. In fact, the mandate is a tax
on some of those least able to pay it and it would be one of the great tax
increases in American history.

To understand the madness, consider that if the government can order you
to pay a badly administered, fiscally irresponsible, avaricious
corporation for some health insurance, that same government could order
you to buy a computer for each of your children so they will be properly
educated or purchase a condo for your aged parents. It could even close
all public schools and fire stations and require you to pay tuition to
corporate beneficiaries of its plan.

But the greatest madness is that no one is talking about this. Once again,
as we have done so often in recent years, we are simply giving up our
rights because there is no one in power to tell us what is really going on.

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens

2010-01-27T23:28:00.001-08:00

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens
It was controversial when Bush imprisoned foreign nationals without charges; what about killing U.S. citizens?

Glenn Greenwald

Jan. 27, 2010

The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That's just the essence of war. That's why it's permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they're captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we're talking about here. The people on this "hit list" are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration -- like the Bush administration before it -- defines the "battlefield" as the entire world. So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks. That's quite a power for an American President to claim for himself.

As we well know from the last eight years, the authoritarians among us in both parties will, by definition, reflexively justify this conduct by insisting that the assassination targets are Terrorists and therefore deserve death. What they actually mean, however, is that the U.S. Government has accused them of being Terrorists, which (except in the mind of an authoritarian) is not the same thing as being a Terrorist. Numerous Guantanamo detainees accused by the U.S. Government of being Terrorists have turned out to be completely innocent, and the vast majority of federal judges who provided habeas review to detainees have found an almost complete lack of evidence to justify the accusations against them, and thus ordered them released. That includes scores of detainees held while the U.S. Government insisted that only the "Worst of the Worst" remained at the camp.

No evidence should be required for rational people to avoid assuming that Government accusations are inherently true, but for those do need it, there is a mountain of evidence proving that. And in this case, Anwar Aulaqi -- who, despite his name and religion, is every bit as much of an American citizen as Scott Brown and his daughters are -- has a family who vigorously denies that he is a Terrorist and is "pleading" with the U.S. Government not to murder their American son:

His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen.

"I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. . . .

"I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said.

"If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.

Who knows what the truth is here? That's why we have what are called "trials" -- or at least some process -- before we assume that government accusations are true and then mete out punishment accordingly. As Marcy Wheeler notes, the U.S. Government has not only repeatedly made false accusations of Terrorism against foreign nationals in the past, but against U.S. citizens as well. She observes: "I guess the tenuousness of those ties don’t really matter, when the President can dial up the assassination of an American citizen."

A 1981 Executive Order signed by Ronald Reagan provides: "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Before the Geneva Conventions were first enacted, Abraham Lincoln -- in the middle of the Civil War -- directed Francis Lieber to articulate rules of conduct for war, and those were then incorporated into General Order 100, signed by Lincoln in April, 1863. Here is part of what it provided, in Section IX, entitled "Assassinations":

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

Can anyone remotely reconcile that righteous proclamation with what the Obama administration is doing? And more generally, what legal basis exists for the President to unilaterally compile hit lists of American citizens he wants to be killed?

What's most striking of all is that it was recently revealed that, in Afghanistan, the U.S. had compiled a "hit list" of Afghan citizens it suspects of being drug traffickers or somehow associated with the Taliban, in order to target them for assassination. When that hit list was revealed, Afghan officials "fiercely" objected on the ground that it violates due process and undermines the rule of law to murder people without trials:

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised U.S. and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.

"They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes," Daud said. "We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own" . . . .

Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, said that he had long urged the Pentagon and its NATO allies to crack down on drug smugglers and suppliers, and that he was glad that the military alliance had finally agreed to provide operational support for Afghan counternarcotics agents. But he said foreign troops needed to avoid the temptation to hunt down and kill traffickers on their own.

"There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," he said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?" . . .

So we're in Afghanistan to teach them about democracy, the rule of law, and basic precepts of Western justice. Meanwhile, Afghan officials vehemently object to the lawless, due-process-free assassination "hit list" of their citizens based on the unchecked say-so of the U.S. Government, and have to lecture us on the rule of law and Constitutional constraints. By stark contrast, our own Government, our media and our citizenry appear to find nothing wrong whatsoever with lawless assassinations aimed at our own citizens. And the most glaring question for those who critized Bush/Cheney detention policies but want to defend this: how could anyone possibly object to imprisoning foreign nationals without charges or due process at Guantanamo while approving of the assassination of U.S. citizens without any charges or due process?

UPDATE: In comments, sysprog documents the numerous countries condemned in 2009 by the U.S. State Department for "extra-judicial killings." I trust that it goes without saying that it's different (and better) when we do it than when They do it, because we're different (and better), but it still seems worth noting.

UPDATE II: James Joyner argues that this "hit list" policy is not much different than our drone attacks in Pakistan, which Obama has substantially escalated, and that "no one seems to be complaining about the President's authority" to kill suspected Terrorists there. Actually, there are substantial questions about the legality of those drone attacks, though the complete secrecy behind which the program operates makes those questions very difficult to address. Beyond that, though, there's a substantial difference between a government which (a) targets foreign nationals whom it claims are part of a enemy organization and (b) targets its own citizens for assassination without any due process. They both have substantial legal and moral problems, and killing innocent foreigners is obviously no better than killing one's own innocent citizens, but (a) is at least a fairly common act of war, whereas (b) -- as the U.S. Government itself has long argued -- is a hallmark of tyranny. There's a much greater danger from allowing a government to target its own citizens for extra-judicial killings.-- Glenn Greenwald

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Obamaphiles Are Running Out Of Excuses...

2010-01-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

Sam Smith, Progressive Review

The Obamaphiles are scratching around for anything that might work . Eleanor Clift, whose knee jerks so badly she qualifies for early handicap airplane boarding, cites a CQ reports that says, "CQ rates Obama higher than any president in the last five decades in working his will on Capitol Hill, surpassing even the fabled Lyndon Johnson. Obama's success rate in the House and Senate on votes where he staked out a clear position was 96.7 percent, beating previous record-holder Johnson's 93 percent in 1965."

Says Clift: "People may not be talking about Obama's stimulus package in 2050, but fair-minded historians looking back will give him credit for pulling the economy back from the brink, and the $787 billion stimulus bill that he passed during his first hundred days with almost no Republican support was critical to the rescue effort. If Obama gets health-care reform, which seems likely, that will be an enduring achievement despite all the partisan nitpicking. He will have accomplished these things without some of the structural advantages LBJ enjoyed. The filibuster, which has its poisonous history in Southern segregationist efforts to kill civil-rights legislation, has morphed into a routine requirement for a supermajority of 60 votes on everything."

Rachel Maddow got real excited about this, too, as she interview sometime historian sometime hack Michael Beschloss:

MADDOW: Empirically, whether or not you like Obama's policies, but from a pure quantitative perspective in terms of what this president has done-how does President Obama's first year stack up against previous presidencies?

BESCHLOSS: Well, he is the equal of Franklin Roosevelt in his first year, LBJ in 1965 or Ronald Reagan in 1981. You know, Obama last year, or two years ago during the campaign, kept on saying, "I want to be a transforming president," like Roosevelt, like Johnson, like Reagan. And the breadth of the kind of things he has done-you're absolutely right to talk about them-I think suggests that that's what he's going to be. . .

MADDOW: That he'd be dealing with the economy. Can you give us some historical context for what challenges he was handed?

BESCHLOSS: It's almost unique in the last century. When FDR came in in 1933, we were in a terrible Great Depression, but in terms of foreign policy, the world was fairly quiet. And Roosevelt could spend his first term basically concentrating on the economy.

If you look at a case, for instance, like LBJ coming in in 1963, had to deal with the death of John Kennedy. But, again, the world was relatively quiet. He was able to concentrate on his domestic program.

In contrast, look at Obama coming in just a year ago. We were teetering--as you said--on the brink of another Great Depression. We had two wars, a struggle with terrorism. This is someone who had to deal with things on all sorts of fronts and engage with every single one of them.

Fortunately, Paul Rosenberg at Open Left cut through the crap:

News flash: Al Qaeda is not the Soviet Union or Red China. The military threats in LBJ's world dwarfed those in Obama's no matter how much Bush/Cheney Kool Aid the denizens of Versailles may drink. What's more, the mere fact that you face a major crisis such as the financial meltdown doesn't really count for much if your response is basically to turn your back on it.

Comparing Obama to FDR is nothing short of laughable. Heck, even on foreign policy, FDR's Good Neighbor Policy was more profound than anything Obama has done. But even the comparison to LBJ is patently absurd as well. Here's a list of Johnson's major accomplishments in his Great Society agenda that were passed in 1965, his first year after winning election on his own:

Civil rights
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965

War on Poverty
* Upward Bound
* Head Start

Education
* Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
* Higher Education Act of 1965

Health
* Medicare
* Medicaid

Arts and Culture
* National Endowment for the Arts
* National Endowment for the Humanities

Consumer protection
* Cigarette Labeling Act of 1965

Environment
* Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965
* Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965
* Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965

The Civil Rights or health care accomplishments alone dwarf everything that Obama has accomplished this year. But one doesn't even have to look at such mega-epochal pieces of legislation. Consider how profoundly America has been changed by the Cigarette Labeling Act, or the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act. . . The comparison between Obama and LBJ is not even close to being close.

LBJ was an effective President. Obama is an efficient one. The difference is night and day. The only real valid comparison between the two men is that Obama is doubling down on LBJ's tragic mistake in Vietnam with his own embrace of the neo-cons brain-dead "long war" ideology.

Obama's Expanding War On Terra

2009-12-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

By Pete Stanislaw, Get Off This!

A new front is revealed in our Nobel Peace Laureate President's war for the last few resources left on Terra. That front is Yemen, with cruise missile attacks ordered by the commander-in-chief against alleged "al-Qaeda" targets for the purpose - we are repeatedly told - of fighting the threat of terrorism. The last cowardly lobbing of incredibly powerful ordnance across the Yemeni border killed a large group of high school-age boys. This brings the total of largely Muslim nations that our government's military is either occupying or bombing the shit out of from a safe distance to five - Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Yemen, the last two added since the new administration took office on a surge of pro-peace votes.

Since Yemen has been acknowledged to be a "covert" front in the alleged war on terror (until now), there may be others our government doesn't think we should know about. At this point, our docility in the face of utter lies and proclaimed absurdities is comic in the extreme. Whoever still believes that these violent interventions have anything at all to do with fighting terrorism is suffering from willful blindness.

In the last eight years, our government's military has done more to expand the cause(s) of terrorism on the planet than any nation accused (by our government) of "harboring" or "sponsoring" terrorists. The story for the mediated masses has always been that we have to "get in there and smoke 'em out", which makes for entertaining movies but lousy international relations, especially since it only takes 3 minutes of rational thought to realize that terrorism and terrorists are red herrings. How in hell does killing civilians in poor Muslim nations fight against angry extremists? Wouldn't such actions produce more angry extremists? Yes they would and indeed they do!

The object has never changed. Control over the resources which are absolutely necessary to sustain our wasteful and largely ignorant lifestyles remains the rationale for mass murder of those who happen to occupy the earth above said resources. The continued war and occupation in Afghanistan by the US forces as well as the puppet government we have entrenched there has much more to do with the completion and the securing of two oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea across Afghanistan from existing Turkmenistan fields. They would continue through Pakistan to shipping ports in the south. Unfortunately, they will have to pass through areas controlled by the theocratic Taliban, who are actively maneuvering for position in whatever government should result in the aftermath of the violence. These fighters for their perceived birthright are known in the US mass media as "insurgents". One would do well to realize that they were here before our government's military was. This is their nation, when imperial powers aren't occupying it. But I digress.

My point is this: As Alexander Cockburn said in Counterpunch two months ago, President Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize should come as acknowledgement that absurdity is part and parcel of the human condition. That he can order cruise missiles to be launched over sovereign borders the world over and still be regarded by the Nobel Committee as deserving of a Peace Prize is patently absurd.

Remember, Henry Kissinger has one too...