It's an ugly "joke" but it was an ugly war, too.
Big, strong kid from the Tennessee hills decides to seek his fortune in Alaska. Asks advice from old-timers in the Frontier Saloon. "Boy," he's told, "you ain't ready fer Alaska till you've screwed a Eskimo and shot a grizzly." Youngster leaves. A few weeks later he staggers into the saloon, gashed and bleeding, his clothes in tatters and a dead Eskimo over his shoulder. "Shooting the Eskimo was the easy part," he says. "The bear was somethin' else. But it was worth it."
Enter Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the latest "it was worth it" regarding the Iraq war. “I think the price has been worth it," he said, after a one-day visit, "to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”
Stable? What is this guy smoking?
But even if the post-America Iraqi government were stable, would that really justify the cost not just in dollars, but in Iraqi and American lives and disability? Only if you accept the racist "dead Eskimo" mentality as the acceptable American norm: that collateral damage in dead civilians is too insignificant to bother counting.
American troops not only died there, unnecessarily; they also committed atrocities there. War crimes.
But "it was worth it."
Only to the shameless profiteers who sucked enormous fortunes out of the trillions of American dollars wasted on this war whose "end" we declared last week.
Or to the blood-lusting ignoramuses who think there is "honor" in war.
Or to the Machiavellian schemers who see endless war as America's manifest destiny to force "democracy" on nations we deem incapable of managing their own affairs.
"The price has been worth it."
Has it? The trillions of dollars? The innocent lives lost?
What about the forfeiture of our Bill of Rights at home? What about the utter demise of American democracy? What about the decimation of our economy, the distortion of our standards of justice, the loss of our dignity as a nation, of decency as a people?
"The price has been worth it."
Go fuck a grizzly bear, Leon.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
'Tis the Season to Be . . . Selectively Good-Spirited
The intellectual hypocrisy of the Republican party is a top-to-bottom thing, perhaps because the same handful of propaganda mills like the American Heritage Foundation feed them all the political pabulum that passes for thought.
A case in point is a recent contumely published in the local rag under the byline of the county Republican chairman.
In it, he dismisses as "pseudo-intellectuals" all the progressives in the United States, to whom he refers (in what he obviously thinks is the ultimate disparagement) as "socialists."
He would, I infer, have us reject the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and their ilk in favor of such luminaries as Michelle Bachmann, who doesn't know where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired; Rick Parry, who has trouble counting to three when it comes to his own beliefs; and Eft, the Republicans' great idea factory, who thinks the people of Palestine were "invented."
Heaven forfend!
The low-level GOP acolyte who wrote the piece dwells mainly, as a matter of fact, on heavenly inspiration.
He proudly wishes us "Merry Christmas" -- not "Happy Holidays" -- because the Dec. 25 holiday is by, er, God a Christian one. "Christmas," he lectures, "is not about the beginning of some season, Winterfest, or some other socially designed holiday. It is about the most revered religious holiday" because "it has been celebrated in one form or another by Christians for 2,000 years."
Never mind that non-Christians have celebrated "in one form or another" seasonal festivals like Inti Raymi, Calan Gaeaf, Modranect, Hanukkah, Yule, Yalda, Chahar Shanbeh Suri, Saturnalia and Koleda far longer. Tell their celebrants, after all these millennia, that they're wrong, it's about Jesus.
As they say on ESPN, "C'mon man!"
He writes, "Christ practiced compassion and brotherly love and Christmas provides us with many opportunities to follow his example." Yet he derides governments for keeping shiftless poor jerks on "the dole." Charity, he says, should be "the province of individuals and churches." Government has no damned business helping the nation's sick, its jobless, its suffering. Let them learn to fish!
Progressives, he says, don't acknowledge the rights of Americans to practice their individual religious beliefs. But he seems to argue that those rights apply only to Christian beliefs.
"Merry Christmas to all," he writes. "May each of us find that place in our hearts that urges us to reverently remember why we celebrate this day each year."
By the way, everyone. On this Dec. 16, 2011, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a Happy Beethoven's Birthday.
A case in point is a recent contumely published in the local rag under the byline of the county Republican chairman.
In it, he dismisses as "pseudo-intellectuals" all the progressives in the United States, to whom he refers (in what he obviously thinks is the ultimate disparagement) as "socialists."
He would, I infer, have us reject the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and their ilk in favor of such luminaries as Michelle Bachmann, who doesn't know where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired; Rick Parry, who has trouble counting to three when it comes to his own beliefs; and Eft, the Republicans' great idea factory, who thinks the people of Palestine were "invented."
Heaven forfend!
The low-level GOP acolyte who wrote the piece dwells mainly, as a matter of fact, on heavenly inspiration.
He proudly wishes us "Merry Christmas" -- not "Happy Holidays" -- because the Dec. 25 holiday is by, er, God a Christian one. "Christmas," he lectures, "is not about the beginning of some season, Winterfest, or some other socially designed holiday. It is about the most revered religious holiday" because "it has been celebrated in one form or another by Christians for 2,000 years."
Never mind that non-Christians have celebrated "in one form or another" seasonal festivals like Inti Raymi, Calan Gaeaf, Modranect, Hanukkah, Yule, Yalda, Chahar Shanbeh Suri, Saturnalia and Koleda far longer. Tell their celebrants, after all these millennia, that they're wrong, it's about Jesus.
As they say on ESPN, "C'mon man!"
He writes, "Christ practiced compassion and brotherly love and Christmas provides us with many opportunities to follow his example." Yet he derides governments for keeping shiftless poor jerks on "the dole." Charity, he says, should be "the province of individuals and churches." Government has no damned business helping the nation's sick, its jobless, its suffering. Let them learn to fish!
Progressives, he says, don't acknowledge the rights of Americans to practice their individual religious beliefs. But he seems to argue that those rights apply only to Christian beliefs.
"Merry Christmas to all," he writes. "May each of us find that place in our hearts that urges us to reverently remember why we celebrate this day each year."
By the way, everyone. On this Dec. 16, 2011, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a Happy Beethoven's Birthday.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
A Year of Important Beginnings
This was the year The People stirred.
In the ultimate protest against oppression, a man in Tunisia killed himself by immolation and ignited a revolution. Our Brothers and Sisters in that country overthrew a corrupt dictatorial government.
In Egypt, The People seethed under the yolk of Hosni Mubarak, who threatened to "cut off the hands" of those who opposed him. By February, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding his resignation and Tahrir Square was on a billion lips around the world. With Mubarak gone and a military interim government, Egyptians took to the Square again in the fall to demand free and fair elections.
In Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya (with a little help from NATO), Syria, public squares filled, bullets flew, tear gas filled the air. Some protesters brought down brutal regimes as in Libya, others suffered brutal suppression. Syrian authorities delivered the butchered body of a 13-year-old boy to his parents.
But The People did not rest.
They protested in Europe. They protested in the United States.
In Madison, WI, the fascist puppet governor of the Koch Brothers oil empire set out to break the public employee unions. By the thousands they poured into the square around the capitol, demanding justice. Supporters from around the country joined them. Living on pizza and popcorn they occupied the capitol building. State police refused an order to remove them by force. Now the governor, Scott Walker, faces a recall election.
Using Ghandi's tactic of civil disobedience to injustice, thousands of Americans protested the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a potential megabomb to the environment of a dozen states. More than a thousand demonstrators willingly went to jail for the cause. President Obama, a pawn of the interests behind the pipeline, summoned the gumption to postpone a decision until the heat was off.
And then came Occupy. Suggested by a lefty publication as a way to protest the vast income inequality between Wall Street and Main Street, between the richest 1% and the rest of us, it began by "occupying" Wall Street but soon spread to cities and towns across the country.
After first dismissing them as an insignificant, unwashed minority, our Oligarchy then moved to the tyrant's favorite reaction to dissent and forcefully dismantled the protestors' tent city, busting heads, spraying pepper and even manhandling reporters and photographers trying to record their misdeeds.
Occupy seized the initiative, for a while at least, from the budget-cutting whack jobs of Congress and forced the corporate sycophant in the White House to revert to the campaign trail populist rhetoric that served him so well on the way to his election. He pledged a return to "the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people." Of course he did not mention black hole torture centers, rendition, limitless detention without charge or the new right of the President to order the assassination of citizens he deems supporters of terrorism. Why stop at "cutting off their hands?"
Even in Russia, by year's end, The People stirred. Tens of thousands took to the streets to protest a rigged election; the police did not molest them and the media reported without bias on the demonstrations. The president promised to "investigate" the election fraud charges and The People sneered. The filthy rich Russian owner of an American professional basketball team announced that he would run against the regime for the presidency of Russia.
It has been a year of important beginnings. The People caused some good things to happen. Will they last?
Will the seeds The People planted in 2011 take root in 2012?
To be or not to be, that is the question.
In the ultimate protest against oppression, a man in Tunisia killed himself by immolation and ignited a revolution. Our Brothers and Sisters in that country overthrew a corrupt dictatorial government.
In Egypt, The People seethed under the yolk of Hosni Mubarak, who threatened to "cut off the hands" of those who opposed him. By February, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding his resignation and Tahrir Square was on a billion lips around the world. With Mubarak gone and a military interim government, Egyptians took to the Square again in the fall to demand free and fair elections.
In Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya (with a little help from NATO), Syria, public squares filled, bullets flew, tear gas filled the air. Some protesters brought down brutal regimes as in Libya, others suffered brutal suppression. Syrian authorities delivered the butchered body of a 13-year-old boy to his parents.
But The People did not rest.
They protested in Europe. They protested in the United States.
In Madison, WI, the fascist puppet governor of the Koch Brothers oil empire set out to break the public employee unions. By the thousands they poured into the square around the capitol, demanding justice. Supporters from around the country joined them. Living on pizza and popcorn they occupied the capitol building. State police refused an order to remove them by force. Now the governor, Scott Walker, faces a recall election.
Using Ghandi's tactic of civil disobedience to injustice, thousands of Americans protested the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a potential megabomb to the environment of a dozen states. More than a thousand demonstrators willingly went to jail for the cause. President Obama, a pawn of the interests behind the pipeline, summoned the gumption to postpone a decision until the heat was off.
And then came Occupy. Suggested by a lefty publication as a way to protest the vast income inequality between Wall Street and Main Street, between the richest 1% and the rest of us, it began by "occupying" Wall Street but soon spread to cities and towns across the country.
After first dismissing them as an insignificant, unwashed minority, our Oligarchy then moved to the tyrant's favorite reaction to dissent and forcefully dismantled the protestors' tent city, busting heads, spraying pepper and even manhandling reporters and photographers trying to record their misdeeds.
Occupy seized the initiative, for a while at least, from the budget-cutting whack jobs of Congress and forced the corporate sycophant in the White House to revert to the campaign trail populist rhetoric that served him so well on the way to his election. He pledged a return to "the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people." Of course he did not mention black hole torture centers, rendition, limitless detention without charge or the new right of the President to order the assassination of citizens he deems supporters of terrorism. Why stop at "cutting off their hands?"
Even in Russia, by year's end, The People stirred. Tens of thousands took to the streets to protest a rigged election; the police did not molest them and the media reported without bias on the demonstrations. The president promised to "investigate" the election fraud charges and The People sneered. The filthy rich Russian owner of an American professional basketball team announced that he would run against the regime for the presidency of Russia.
It has been a year of important beginnings. The People caused some good things to happen. Will they last?
Will the seeds The People planted in 2011 take root in 2012?
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The Great Universal Suicide Pact
Millions of Americans believed in the Republican bogeyman called "death panel" and so they rallied in town hall meetings to shout nonsense in objection to health care reform efforts.
As a result, we're still stuck with one of the poorest health care systems in the so-called "free world."
But there's a real death panel in this country. Its members are R. W. Tillerson, Chairman; M. W. Albers, M. J. Dolan, D. D. Humphreys, R. N. Schleckser, J. M. Spellings, Jr., S. K. Stuewer, T. R. Walters and J.J. Woodbury. They are the corporate officers of EXXON, the most profitable corporation in history, a corporation that pays no federal income taxes and in fact usually receives a fat refund from the government.
EXXON is only the most powerful of the multitude of hugely profitable extraction industries and their satellites who plunder finite planetary resources, often polluting the environment in the process, and who have used their filthy lucre to successfully ward off government intervention to save the earth.
Fittingly it is the United States, the biggest polluter, the biggest energy consumer, the most wastrel nation on the face of the earth, which, in its servitude to corporate power, has gummed the gears of world efforts to address climate change.
In Durban, South Africa, the nations of the world are working overtime to win commitments to a milksop package of compromises. The United States delegation seems reluctantly committed to backing some form of this too little, too late effort.
The United Nations climate scientists, who have documented beyond the shadow of a doubt what 's happening to our planet because of human actions like EXXON's, created the Global Carbon Project in 1997 to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories to the Protocol -- the United States refused to sign -- committed to reduce those emissions. But those commitments expire next year. Without the biggest polluter in he world, the efforts have come to nil.
How nil?
The latest Global Carbon Project report showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.
Since nothing's being done -- thank you, Mr. Obama, Mr. Tillerson, and all you other robber baron oligarchs throughout the world -- next year's report will be even more grim.
A planet already a dangerous one degree warmer because of human folly is racing to become suicidally two degrees warmer.
Tillerson's death panel is killing us -- with our tacit consent.
Is it any wonder that a society that tolerates such a death panel accepts as serious candidates for its presidency the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman, Rick Parry and Rick Santorum, or gets its "information" from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?
"Keep government out of my Medicare!" indeed. Who needs health care when we've signed off on universal suicide?
What fools these mortals be!
As a result, we're still stuck with one of the poorest health care systems in the so-called "free world."
But there's a real death panel in this country. Its members are R. W. Tillerson, Chairman; M. W. Albers, M. J. Dolan, D. D. Humphreys, R. N. Schleckser, J. M. Spellings, Jr., S. K. Stuewer, T. R. Walters and J.J. Woodbury. They are the corporate officers of EXXON, the most profitable corporation in history, a corporation that pays no federal income taxes and in fact usually receives a fat refund from the government.
EXXON is only the most powerful of the multitude of hugely profitable extraction industries and their satellites who plunder finite planetary resources, often polluting the environment in the process, and who have used their filthy lucre to successfully ward off government intervention to save the earth.
Fittingly it is the United States, the biggest polluter, the biggest energy consumer, the most wastrel nation on the face of the earth, which, in its servitude to corporate power, has gummed the gears of world efforts to address climate change.
In Durban, South Africa, the nations of the world are working overtime to win commitments to a milksop package of compromises. The United States delegation seems reluctantly committed to backing some form of this too little, too late effort.
The United Nations climate scientists, who have documented beyond the shadow of a doubt what 's happening to our planet because of human actions like EXXON's, created the Global Carbon Project in 1997 to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories to the Protocol -- the United States refused to sign -- committed to reduce those emissions. But those commitments expire next year. Without the biggest polluter in he world, the efforts have come to nil.
How nil?
The latest Global Carbon Project report showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.
Since nothing's being done -- thank you, Mr. Obama, Mr. Tillerson, and all you other robber baron oligarchs throughout the world -- next year's report will be even more grim.
A planet already a dangerous one degree warmer because of human folly is racing to become suicidally two degrees warmer.
Tillerson's death panel is killing us -- with our tacit consent.
Is it any wonder that a society that tolerates such a death panel accepts as serious candidates for its presidency the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman, Rick Parry and Rick Santorum, or gets its "information" from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?
"Keep government out of my Medicare!" indeed. Who needs health care when we've signed off on universal suicide?
What fools these mortals be!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Owed to Frankie Luntz, Frightened Republican
"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."--Frank Luntz, Republican word-twister and strategist.
Little Frankie Luntz
Is known for bully stunts,
For wiggle words
And crafty grunts;
For lies and fibs and prevarications.
He's not a dunce,
This Frankie Luntz --
He invented the Tea Party!
He's such a smarty
That if he's on guard he
Must have reason for perturbation.
Frankie's quarrel?
"Capitalism's immoral,"
Some Occupiers say.
These heretics
Seem to get their kicks
By disparaging The American Way.
What's good for the Street
We must repeat and repeat
Is good for the working class, too.
People! To avoid being crass you
Must quit making waves right away!
Frankie, Frankie,
Why so fraidy cat?
Those women who sat
Weren't all Democrat
So why did the cops have to spray them?
And as for the books
The policemen took,
The paper may burn
But the ideas return
So nothing comes of your mayhem.
Little Frankie Luntz,
For all his bully stunts,
Hasn't a clue
Why people do
Things like Occupy Wall Street.
He's never been a renter
(He's a one percenter)
Who can't pay the lease
(The job's overseas)
And whose debt is set in concrete.
So quiver and cringe,
Frankie Luntz.
The outraged "mobs"
Simply want jobs
To feed the kids and pay the bills.
Choke on your lies,
You miserable guys,
Suffer your fears,
Swallow your tears;
How'd YOU like to work in the mills?
Little Frankie Luntz
Is known for bully stunts,
For wiggle words
And crafty grunts;
For lies and fibs and prevarications.
He's not a dunce,
This Frankie Luntz --
He invented the Tea Party!
He's such a smarty
That if he's on guard he
Must have reason for perturbation.
Frankie's quarrel?
"Capitalism's immoral,"
Some Occupiers say.
These heretics
Seem to get their kicks
By disparaging The American Way.
What's good for the Street
We must repeat and repeat
Is good for the working class, too.
People! To avoid being crass you
Must quit making waves right away!
Frankie, Frankie,
Why so fraidy cat?
Those women who sat
Weren't all Democrat
So why did the cops have to spray them?
And as for the books
The policemen took,
The paper may burn
But the ideas return
So nothing comes of your mayhem.
Little Frankie Luntz,
For all his bully stunts,
Hasn't a clue
Why people do
Things like Occupy Wall Street.
He's never been a renter
(He's a one percenter)
Who can't pay the lease
(The job's overseas)
And whose debt is set in concrete.
So quiver and cringe,
Frankie Luntz.
The outraged "mobs"
Simply want jobs
To feed the kids and pay the bills.
Choke on your lies,
You miserable guys,
Suffer your fears,
Swallow your tears;
How'd YOU like to work in the mills?
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Pay No Attention to Those Damp Squibs!
There are two ways to deal with dissent: derogate it as insignificant, or suppress it with brute force.
The ruling class in the United States, having tried the first tactic on the Occupy movement to no avail, has now resorted to the second. In city after city, riot-armed police have driven off peaceful Occupiers, bashing heads, making mass arrests, destroying tent encampments and, worst of all, burning books by the hundreds.
In England, Prime Minister David Cameron is invoking the first tactic to dismiss as a petty annoyance ("a damp squib," in his words) the strikes by public sector workers to protest proposed pension cuts. It's one of the "austerity measures" to bring down the debt bogeyman. All of Europe has been infected by the same obsession that fuels the insanity of the political parties here, as well: quit spending, lower the debt.
The austerity campaign is championed by the very people who caused the debt. None of their "austerity measures" will cost them a shilling. The One Per Cent Oligarchy will get still richer. Let the workers, the jobless, the sick, the elderly, the pensioners pay the cost of wars, unregulated financial markets and other follies of the free market priests and prelates.
In the UK, the effectiveness of Cameron's fizzling little firecracker can be judged the amount of time that elapses before he is forced to call in the armed goons and bash heads, as his peers have already done in police states around the world, from Syria and Egypt to the U.S. of A.
Governments today -- whatever label they wear: democracy, republic, dictatorship, military junta, social-democrat, monarchy, etc. -- are all in fact plutocracies. Their richest few either run the country directly, or control those delegated or "elected" to run it. They wring personal profit from traditional religious and ethnic hatreds, exploit hostility toward immigrants and love war as long as they're on the winning side. They're police states, to one degree or another. They are intolerant of dissent, whether they simply send goons to assassinate dissenters or merely throw them in jail without trial (as the United States increasingly does).
Exceptions to the rule seem almost quaint: how much do you hear or read about, say, Costa Rica? Described in 1719 as "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America," its citizens today enjoy an enviable quality of life, the highest in Central America. Their life expectancy level is among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Their government health care system provides them with better health care than U.S. citizens receive. Once dependent on coffee, banana and beef exports, Costa Rica has diversified its economy. Its high level of education (state-supported) has attracted computer chip makers, pharmaceutical companies, and financial outsourcing enterprises to set up shop there. Ecotourism now earns more foreign exchange for Costa Rica than the combined exports of the country's three main cash cops (coffee, bananas and pineapples). The economy has no army to support: Rebels against its military dictatorship won a bloody civil war in 1948 and one of the first acts of the new government was to abolish the army altogether. Costa Rica's inflation rate, once a worrisome 13.8%, has declined to 5.7%. Its poverty rate is around 8% (vs, 15.1 percent in the U.S.).
Through its last 13 presidential elections, Costa Rica has remained stable, and it is a world leader in efforts to foster human rights and ecologically sustainable development. At home, it maintains one of the strongest social welfare systems in the hemisphere.
According to the New Economics Foundation Costa Rica ranks first in the Happy Planet Index and is the most environmentally responsible country in the world.
It is a government that believes government's principal obligation is to the quality of life of its citizens.
Weird idea, isn't it?
Some might call it paradise. Others would say it's a "damp squib."
The ruling class in the United States, having tried the first tactic on the Occupy movement to no avail, has now resorted to the second. In city after city, riot-armed police have driven off peaceful Occupiers, bashing heads, making mass arrests, destroying tent encampments and, worst of all, burning books by the hundreds.
In England, Prime Minister David Cameron is invoking the first tactic to dismiss as a petty annoyance ("a damp squib," in his words) the strikes by public sector workers to protest proposed pension cuts. It's one of the "austerity measures" to bring down the debt bogeyman. All of Europe has been infected by the same obsession that fuels the insanity of the political parties here, as well: quit spending, lower the debt.
The austerity campaign is championed by the very people who caused the debt. None of their "austerity measures" will cost them a shilling. The One Per Cent Oligarchy will get still richer. Let the workers, the jobless, the sick, the elderly, the pensioners pay the cost of wars, unregulated financial markets and other follies of the free market priests and prelates.
In the UK, the effectiveness of Cameron's fizzling little firecracker can be judged the amount of time that elapses before he is forced to call in the armed goons and bash heads, as his peers have already done in police states around the world, from Syria and Egypt to the U.S. of A.
Governments today -- whatever label they wear: democracy, republic, dictatorship, military junta, social-democrat, monarchy, etc. -- are all in fact plutocracies. Their richest few either run the country directly, or control those delegated or "elected" to run it. They wring personal profit from traditional religious and ethnic hatreds, exploit hostility toward immigrants and love war as long as they're on the winning side. They're police states, to one degree or another. They are intolerant of dissent, whether they simply send goons to assassinate dissenters or merely throw them in jail without trial (as the United States increasingly does).
Exceptions to the rule seem almost quaint: how much do you hear or read about, say, Costa Rica? Described in 1719 as "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America," its citizens today enjoy an enviable quality of life, the highest in Central America. Their life expectancy level is among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Their government health care system provides them with better health care than U.S. citizens receive. Once dependent on coffee, banana and beef exports, Costa Rica has diversified its economy. Its high level of education (state-supported) has attracted computer chip makers, pharmaceutical companies, and financial outsourcing enterprises to set up shop there. Ecotourism now earns more foreign exchange for Costa Rica than the combined exports of the country's three main cash cops (coffee, bananas and pineapples). The economy has no army to support: Rebels against its military dictatorship won a bloody civil war in 1948 and one of the first acts of the new government was to abolish the army altogether. Costa Rica's inflation rate, once a worrisome 13.8%, has declined to 5.7%. Its poverty rate is around 8% (vs, 15.1 percent in the U.S.).
Through its last 13 presidential elections, Costa Rica has remained stable, and it is a world leader in efforts to foster human rights and ecologically sustainable development. At home, it maintains one of the strongest social welfare systems in the hemisphere.
According to the New Economics Foundation Costa Rica ranks first in the Happy Planet Index and is the most environmentally responsible country in the world.
It is a government that believes government's principal obligation is to the quality of life of its citizens.
Weird idea, isn't it?
Some might call it paradise. Others would say it's a "damp squib."
Friday, October 28, 2011
Scott Olsen's War Is Just Beginning -- Here in Amerika
My Teapot neighbors tell me I must "Support Our Troops" because they are fighting to preserve our freedoms.
Among those freedoms are citizens' absolute right to peaceable assembly for redress of grievances, and freedom of speech.
Scott Olsen went to Iraq as one of Our Troops and when he returned home to Oakland, CA, he exercised those rights, joining the Occupy Oakland demonstrators.
Today, however, Scott Olsen cannot speak at all. Shot in the forehead with a "non-lethal" police projectile, he is in an Oakland hospital for treatment of a skull fracture. "He cannot talk , and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," said Keith Shannon, a friend who served beside him in Iraq.
And so in exercising a right he fought for, he has lost the power to exercise it again because of a single act of police brutality. There have been many such acts since the Occupy movement grew beyond anyone's expectations. It is a symptom of our national malaise that this is the normal response to spontaneous mass expressions of citizen dissent. When the "dissent" is manufactured, funded by Koch Brothers filthy lucre, it is tolerated even if its lemmings carry fire arms into public political meetings. Go figure.
The 92-year-old icon of modern American citizen action, Pete Seger, gave Occupy his imprimatur earlier this week, hobbling into Liberty Plaza in New York with the aid of two canes and the folk singer Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son. There's no way of counting the number of times Pete and Arlo have sung Woody's "This Land is Our Land, This Land is Your Land. . .," a hymn to the oppressed workers, farmers and foreclosed of the United States. The song tells us what the union movement was about, what the civil rights movement was about, what the anti-war movements were about, and what Occupy is about.
It's about the common man, made stronger by coming together in public places, demanding to take back his "Land" and all of the rights it confers upon its citizens, including the right that was violently taken away from Scott Olsen.
Each time the common man rallies to regain his rights, he faces bigger odds, stronger forces of repression, angrier backlash from the privileged few who have put him down. Somehow he rises again and again and again -- whether in Europe, Asia, the Antipodes, Africa, South America or the former United States of America.
If Scott Olsen is unable to return to the public squares, ten more will rise to take his place, to demand justice in his name.
Perhaps, even as their numbers grow, they will not succeed. Money, Bill Moyers once wrote, fights hard. And it fights dirty.
Bullets to the forehead, even "non-lethal" ones, are dirty fighting. Koch money can buy lots of bullets, and buy off lots of bullies to use them on common folk exercising their rights to assembly, redress and free speech.
Whose land is it? The one per cent? Or the 99 per cent?
Pete and Arlo know. Scott Olsen thought he knew, too.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Republican Holiday: Trick, Treat or Flat Tax?
The official holiday of the Republican party is nearly upon us. Halloween is for bogeymen and nobody loves a good bogeyman more than a Republican.
Obamacare! Boo boo boo. (Grandma killers!)
Deficit! Boo boo boo boo! (Stop wasting money feeding poor people and declare more wars!)
But the biggest bogeyman of all is taxation. Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo booooooooooooo . . . .
Since even Republicans realize you can't run a country without some form of revenue, not even the Keystone cop zanies seeking their presidential nomination advocate eliminating all taxes on everyone. So they're falling all over one another rediscovering Steve Forbes's old chestnut, the flat tax.
But in typical Republican logic, their flat tax isn't really flat. It is just another ploy to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. First Herman Cain -- a lobbyist for the richest 1% of Americans before he donned his Halloween mask depicting a Republican populist -- introduced his "flat tax 9-9-9 plan." This would give virtually every American with more than a million dollars a year income a tax cut of almost half a million. Capital gains -- which already enrich each retired American millionaire to the tune of 112,000 tax-free dollars a year -- would not be taxed at all. How flat is that ?
Now comes Rick Perry, with another cockamamie scheme that would let you opt for a so-called 20 per cent flat tax, or remain in your present bracket. “This is a change election, and I offer a plan that changes the way Washington does business,” the Texas governor said Tuesday at an event in Gray Court, S.C. It also guarantees less revenue at a time when we're fighting wars all over the globe, prattling about the deficit bogeyman and saying we can't afford to keep our bargain with retirees on Social Security.
As my friend David Cay Johnston (a registered Republican) has demonstrated over and over again in his books, the tax code is rigged to favor the very rich and every attempt by either party to repair it has only made the inequities worse.
Even so, the current tax laws sort of kind of try a little bit to treat everyone fairly. Tea Pots in my part of the country go berserk because very, very poor households pay no federal income tax at all. "Our taxes support dead-beats," they wail. They ignore the much larger portion of income paid by these households in payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes (directly, if they're struggling to buy a home; indirectly if they rent). In Florida, add the usurious cost of hurricane protection insurance on mortgages.
But the wailers themselves -- like every other taxpayer-- pay no income tax on the first roughly $20,000 of their earnings. Taxpayers in higher brackets pay a higher rate only on that portion of their income that exceeds their bracket threshold -- not on their total income.
As Robert Reich, a former Clinton cabinet member, points out in a recent article, ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $250,000 would increase taxes only on the portion of income that exceeds $250,000. Republicans consistently misrepresent this. Reich writes that "they want Americans to believe, for example, that if the Bush tax cut ended, small business owners with incomes of $251,000 a year would suddenly have to pay 39 percent of their entire incomes in taxes rather than 35 percent. Wrong. They'd only have to pay the 39 percent rate on $1,000 -- the portion of their incomes over $250,000.
"Get it? We already have a flat tax -- flat within each bracket.
"The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent -- again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.
"This is absurd. It means a professional who's making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.
"Our current flat tax at the top is treating the nation's professional class exactly the same as it treats super-rich plutocrats. My doctor pays the same rate as Steve Forbes."
Which gets us back to square one. The so-called flat tax was a clinker when Stevie first introduced it and no amount of tinkering by the likes of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul or Homer Simpson will gussy it up into responsible policy.
Obamacare! Boo boo boo. (Grandma killers!)
Deficit! Boo boo boo boo! (Stop wasting money feeding poor people and declare more wars!)
But the biggest bogeyman of all is taxation. Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo booooooooooooo . . . .
Since even Republicans realize you can't run a country without some form of revenue, not even the Keystone cop zanies seeking their presidential nomination advocate eliminating all taxes on everyone. So they're falling all over one another rediscovering Steve Forbes's old chestnut, the flat tax.
But in typical Republican logic, their flat tax isn't really flat. It is just another ploy to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. First Herman Cain -- a lobbyist for the richest 1% of Americans before he donned his Halloween mask depicting a Republican populist -- introduced his "flat tax 9-9-9 plan." This would give virtually every American with more than a million dollars a year income a tax cut of almost half a million. Capital gains -- which already enrich each retired American millionaire to the tune of 112,000 tax-free dollars a year -- would not be taxed at all. How flat is that ?
Now comes Rick Perry, with another cockamamie scheme that would let you opt for a so-called 20 per cent flat tax, or remain in your present bracket. “This is a change election, and I offer a plan that changes the way Washington does business,” the Texas governor said Tuesday at an event in Gray Court, S.C. It also guarantees less revenue at a time when we're fighting wars all over the globe, prattling about the deficit bogeyman and saying we can't afford to keep our bargain with retirees on Social Security.
As my friend David Cay Johnston (a registered Republican) has demonstrated over and over again in his books, the tax code is rigged to favor the very rich and every attempt by either party to repair it has only made the inequities worse.
Even so, the current tax laws sort of kind of try a little bit to treat everyone fairly. Tea Pots in my part of the country go berserk because very, very poor households pay no federal income tax at all. "Our taxes support dead-beats," they wail. They ignore the much larger portion of income paid by these households in payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes (directly, if they're struggling to buy a home; indirectly if they rent). In Florida, add the usurious cost of hurricane protection insurance on mortgages.
But the wailers themselves -- like every other taxpayer-- pay no income tax on the first roughly $20,000 of their earnings. Taxpayers in higher brackets pay a higher rate only on that portion of their income that exceeds their bracket threshold -- not on their total income.
As Robert Reich, a former Clinton cabinet member, points out in a recent article, ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $250,000 would increase taxes only on the portion of income that exceeds $250,000. Republicans consistently misrepresent this. Reich writes that "they want Americans to believe, for example, that if the Bush tax cut ended, small business owners with incomes of $251,000 a year would suddenly have to pay 39 percent of their entire incomes in taxes rather than 35 percent. Wrong. They'd only have to pay the 39 percent rate on $1,000 -- the portion of their incomes over $250,000.
"Get it? We already have a flat tax -- flat within each bracket.
"The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent -- again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.
"This is absurd. It means a professional who's making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.
"Our current flat tax at the top is treating the nation's professional class exactly the same as it treats super-rich plutocrats. My doctor pays the same rate as Steve Forbes."
Which gets us back to square one. The so-called flat tax was a clinker when Stevie first introduced it and no amount of tinkering by the likes of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul or Homer Simpson will gussy it up into responsible policy.
Friday, October 21, 2011
A Soldier Shouts a Nation's Epitaph: "There Is No Honor"
He looms large over the New York City policemen to whom he directs his words. Expressions that might pass for shame cross the faces of the cops.
The big guy wears a patch of medals on the left side of his camouflage jacket. Smaller than the sea of brass and ribbon that adorns the tailored uniform of Betray-Us Petraeus but unlike the general's, the big guy's medals were earned in combat service in the armed forces -- two tours in the Middle East.
The police have been abusing participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and former Sgt. Shamar Thomas, in the viral video of the week on the web, is shaming them: "It doesn't make you tough to hurt these people. This isn't a war zone!"
And then he delivers the epitaph for the United States of America, words that will live in infamy as they ring with truth:
"There is no honor in what you do. No honor."
There is no honor in accepting $4.6 million bribe from JPMorgan Chase to beat the heads and mace the eyes of United States citizens peaceably assembled to exercise their Constitutional right of free speech.
There is no honor in ten years of war based on lies, wars whose toll on innocents is greater by far than the "value" of the "enemy leaders" slain in them.
There is no honor in a nation that spends trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives fighting these wars, while refusing to provide jobs for the one in five workers who have none, refusing to provide government medical care for those who have none, refusing to feed those who have nothing to eat.
There is no honor in a nation whose voters applaud aspirants to its highest office for saying that those who can't afford health insurance should be left to die.
There is no honor in a nation that tortures prisoners never charged, never tried, in black sites built at enormous profit by former Vice President Dick Cheney's Haliburton Corp.
There is no honor in a nation that creates the myth of an American Dream and then forecloses on the homes of those who believed in it.
No honor in a nation that forces its young into usurious debt in order to become educated.
No honor in a nation whose parents with children are forced into bankruptcy to pay obscene medical bills.
No honor in a military that kills women and children and then orders bomb strikes to obliterate the evidence.
No honor in a nation that willfully destroys the thin envelope called ecosystem that sustains life on the planet, in order to extract natural resources that add to the riches of the wealthiest handful of its people.
No honor in a country where there are fewer and fewer jobs, paying less money than at any time in more than a decade, except at the very top where the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. The median paycheck of working America -- barely 80 per cent of us -- is $507 a week, the lowest level since 1999. The richest one per cent of us -- who control our government, our lives, our very destinies, make that much every 72 seconds. There is no honor in this.
There is no honor in a government that rigs the official inflation measures in order to hold down cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients,.
How can a nation honor the elderly citizens who helped build it by taking away at least 4% of their retirement capital every year? (Banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC-insured savings deposits; short-term US government bond funds pay essentially nothing.) There is no honor in a nation whose government policies wipe out 11.5% of retirees' accumulated savings.
There can be no honor in a nation that labels dissent as "terrorism" and whose President actually ordered the murder of a citizen who had never been charged with or tried in a court of law for a crime.
What honor is there in national policies that negate the Constitution, imposing de facto a state religion?
There is no honor in violating international law in quest of hegemony, utter dominion over the rest of the world.
There is no honor in making the obscenely rich even richer at the expense of the sick, the poor, the aged.
There is no honor in these United States. No honor.
The big guy wears a patch of medals on the left side of his camouflage jacket. Smaller than the sea of brass and ribbon that adorns the tailored uniform of Betray-Us Petraeus but unlike the general's, the big guy's medals were earned in combat service in the armed forces -- two tours in the Middle East.
The police have been abusing participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and former Sgt. Shamar Thomas, in the viral video of the week on the web, is shaming them: "It doesn't make you tough to hurt these people. This isn't a war zone!"
And then he delivers the epitaph for the United States of America, words that will live in infamy as they ring with truth:
"There is no honor in what you do. No honor."
There is no honor in accepting $4.6 million bribe from JPMorgan Chase to beat the heads and mace the eyes of United States citizens peaceably assembled to exercise their Constitutional right of free speech.
There is no honor in ten years of war based on lies, wars whose toll on innocents is greater by far than the "value" of the "enemy leaders" slain in them.
There is no honor in a nation that spends trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives fighting these wars, while refusing to provide jobs for the one in five workers who have none, refusing to provide government medical care for those who have none, refusing to feed those who have nothing to eat.
There is no honor in a nation whose voters applaud aspirants to its highest office for saying that those who can't afford health insurance should be left to die.
There is no honor in a nation that tortures prisoners never charged, never tried, in black sites built at enormous profit by former Vice President Dick Cheney's Haliburton Corp.
There is no honor in a nation that creates the myth of an American Dream and then forecloses on the homes of those who believed in it.
No honor in a nation that forces its young into usurious debt in order to become educated.
No honor in a nation whose parents with children are forced into bankruptcy to pay obscene medical bills.
No honor in a military that kills women and children and then orders bomb strikes to obliterate the evidence.
No honor in a nation that willfully destroys the thin envelope called ecosystem that sustains life on the planet, in order to extract natural resources that add to the riches of the wealthiest handful of its people.
No honor in a country where there are fewer and fewer jobs, paying less money than at any time in more than a decade, except at the very top where the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. The median paycheck of working America -- barely 80 per cent of us -- is $507 a week, the lowest level since 1999. The richest one per cent of us -- who control our government, our lives, our very destinies, make that much every 72 seconds. There is no honor in this.
There is no honor in a government that rigs the official inflation measures in order to hold down cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients,.
How can a nation honor the elderly citizens who helped build it by taking away at least 4% of their retirement capital every year? (Banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC-insured savings deposits; short-term US government bond funds pay essentially nothing.) There is no honor in a nation whose government policies wipe out 11.5% of retirees' accumulated savings.
There can be no honor in a nation that labels dissent as "terrorism" and whose President actually ordered the murder of a citizen who had never been charged with or tried in a court of law for a crime.
What honor is there in national policies that negate the Constitution, imposing de facto a state religion?
There is no honor in violating international law in quest of hegemony, utter dominion over the rest of the world.
There is no honor in making the obscenely rich even richer at the expense of the sick, the poor, the aged.
There is no honor in these United States. No honor.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
A Giving of Hearts on a Special Birthday
We are celebrating the birthday the odds said would never come.
Brandi, the shelter mutt whose "kennel cough" turned out to be a life-threatening case of distemper, is a year old today. More or less. This is the birthdate his doctor and I arbitrarily assigned to him when we decided to"throw the book" at his ailment rather than "throwing in the towel."
Our five-pound runt is a 57-pound guy now, a boxer-shepherd who runs like a greyhound, eats like a horse and repays us a thousand times a day for the long hours spent nursing and medicating him.
Each of our dogs has been special in his or her own way. (Dog people will understand this. It is our fate to "give our hearts to a dog to tear," as a poet once put it.) But Brandi, having cheated death with our help, is beyond special, and so is his first birthday.
If it were in my power, I'd capture a jackrabbit for him, or find him a lifetime supply of the most succulent chew bones, or even reverse his neutering for a single day so that he could just this once know the Joy of Sex. Something, you know, spectacular.
But that isn't really necessary. He already knows he's my one, true dog.
In the finest hour of a magnificent fall day here in the desert, we'll sit by a favorite rock overlooking a favorite canyon and watch the setting sun paint murals on the mountains. I'll stroke his ears. He'll nuzzle my cheek.
What a perfect birthday, eh Brandi?
Brandi, the shelter mutt whose "kennel cough" turned out to be a life-threatening case of distemper, is a year old today. More or less. This is the birthdate his doctor and I arbitrarily assigned to him when we decided to"throw the book" at his ailment rather than "throwing in the towel."
Our five-pound runt is a 57-pound guy now, a boxer-shepherd who runs like a greyhound, eats like a horse and repays us a thousand times a day for the long hours spent nursing and medicating him.
Each of our dogs has been special in his or her own way. (Dog people will understand this. It is our fate to "give our hearts to a dog to tear," as a poet once put it.) But Brandi, having cheated death with our help, is beyond special, and so is his first birthday.If it were in my power, I'd capture a jackrabbit for him, or find him a lifetime supply of the most succulent chew bones, or even reverse his neutering for a single day so that he could just this once know the Joy of Sex. Something, you know, spectacular.
But that isn't really necessary. He already knows he's my one, true dog.
In the finest hour of a magnificent fall day here in the desert, we'll sit by a favorite rock overlooking a favorite canyon and watch the setting sun paint murals on the mountains. I'll stroke his ears. He'll nuzzle my cheek.
What a perfect birthday, eh Brandi?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Last (Best?) Fanfare for the Common Man
From Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, from the Arab Spring to the American Autumn, the common man is aroused.
In what even the skeptic Chris Hedges hopes will become a movement too big to fail, the common man is speaking out against his oppressors. He has, Hedges observed, "nothing as weapons but dignity, resilience and courage." His movement, Jimmy Breslin reports, "is threatening to become historic."
He can achieve great change, this common man, and has done so often in my lifetime alone. Just in this year of his newest arousal he has overthrown dictators. But if one form of tyranny is simply replaced by another form of tyranny, he must rise again, and so he has returned to Tahrir Square, where it all began, and where, once again, the real outcome is in doubt.
Can he prevail against the enormous power of tyranny, greed, wealth , bigotry and weaponry in the modern world? In Egypt or in Libya; in Somalia or Syria or America, can the common man win back his human rights, his freedom, his dignity? Can he once again secure the blessings of liberty for himself and his posterity? Can he do so with no weapons save his voice, his resilience, his yearning to breathe free?
In America, his "Occupy" movement has spread from Zuccotti Park and Wall Street to squares and parks and plazas in cities large and small across the nation. It has lasted longer and grown larger than even its deepest sympathizer ever dreamed it could. And when the oligarchs who rule us showered money on the New York police to embolden them to suppress the mother movement, reinforcements flocked to Zuccotti Park and, in the dawn of last Friday, the army of repression backed off. For now.
Hedges celebrates this as "the first salvo in a long struggle for justice . .. a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure."
I want to believe. Ever so desperately, I want to believe that the revolution has begun, there in Zuccotti Park, where a regiment of common men with brooms and mops stood off the kevlar-clad, mace-wielding, rapid-fire weapon toting army Wall Street had sent to drive them out.
In Egypt, the common man drove out a ruthless dictator only to have him replaced by a ruthless military.
Wall Street is a power far stronger, more ruthless and more evil than Hosni Mubarak. Yet if somehow the common man prevails over Wall Street, it would be only the second salvo in a long struggle for justice.
For, after all, what kind of nation would remain?
Hedges:
What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?
This is the kind of nation that would remain, even if, against such enormous odds, the common man prevailed over Wall Street.
Lurking still in the background, as in Egypt, would be the military -- the strongest element in the trinity of corporate greed, political cowardice and sheer armed force that rules us. It represents, exponentially, the greatest power the common man has ever undertaken to defy, armed only with his "dignity, resilience and courage."
Perhaps, as the "Occupy" movement gains momentum by the day, the choice at last is thrust upon the rest of us: either we join the common man, or we, too, are the enemy.
In what even the skeptic Chris Hedges hopes will become a movement too big to fail, the common man is speaking out against his oppressors. He has, Hedges observed, "nothing as weapons but dignity, resilience and courage." His movement, Jimmy Breslin reports, "is threatening to become historic."
He can achieve great change, this common man, and has done so often in my lifetime alone. Just in this year of his newest arousal he has overthrown dictators. But if one form of tyranny is simply replaced by another form of tyranny, he must rise again, and so he has returned to Tahrir Square, where it all began, and where, once again, the real outcome is in doubt.
Can he prevail against the enormous power of tyranny, greed, wealth , bigotry and weaponry in the modern world? In Egypt or in Libya; in Somalia or Syria or America, can the common man win back his human rights, his freedom, his dignity? Can he once again secure the blessings of liberty for himself and his posterity? Can he do so with no weapons save his voice, his resilience, his yearning to breathe free?
In America, his "Occupy" movement has spread from Zuccotti Park and Wall Street to squares and parks and plazas in cities large and small across the nation. It has lasted longer and grown larger than even its deepest sympathizer ever dreamed it could. And when the oligarchs who rule us showered money on the New York police to embolden them to suppress the mother movement, reinforcements flocked to Zuccotti Park and, in the dawn of last Friday, the army of repression backed off. For now.
Hedges celebrates this as "the first salvo in a long struggle for justice . .. a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure."
I want to believe. Ever so desperately, I want to believe that the revolution has begun, there in Zuccotti Park, where a regiment of common men with brooms and mops stood off the kevlar-clad, mace-wielding, rapid-fire weapon toting army Wall Street had sent to drive them out.
In Egypt, the common man drove out a ruthless dictator only to have him replaced by a ruthless military.
Wall Street is a power far stronger, more ruthless and more evil than Hosni Mubarak. Yet if somehow the common man prevails over Wall Street, it would be only the second salvo in a long struggle for justice.
For, after all, what kind of nation would remain?
Hedges:
What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?
This is the kind of nation that would remain, even if, against such enormous odds, the common man prevailed over Wall Street.
Lurking still in the background, as in Egypt, would be the military -- the strongest element in the trinity of corporate greed, political cowardice and sheer armed force that rules us. It represents, exponentially, the greatest power the common man has ever undertaken to defy, armed only with his "dignity, resilience and courage."
Perhaps, as the "Occupy" movement gains momentum by the day, the choice at last is thrust upon the rest of us: either we join the common man, or we, too, are the enemy.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
A Citizen Murdered by His Government
And so it has come to this: the United States government, on orders of the President, has murdered a United States citizen who has never been tried for, much less convicted of, a capital crime.
Anwar al Awlaki, 40, was born in the very city in which I now reside. His father, a Fulbright scholar, earned his master's degree at a university a few miles from the house I live in.
He was slain, my government boasts, by the same elite team that murdered Osama bin Laden rather than bringing him to trial for allegedly plotting, directing and financing the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on this country.
My government says ex patriate Citizen Anwar al Awlaki is a terrorist.
My Constitution says no American citizen can be executed by my government unless convicted of a capital crime in a trial by a jury of his peers, and that anyone accused of a crime must be presumed innocent until proved guilty in a trial.
My government says al Awlaki was involved in planning the attempted bombing of a U.S. - bound aircraft in December of 2009.
My government told me we had to invade Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction. It had no such weapons.
My government says Citizen al Awlaki sought to use poisons, including cyanide and ricin, to attack "Westerners."
My government sent its Secretary of State to the United Nations to soberly assure the world that trucks photographed by aerial surveillance in Iraq contained lethal chemicals for warfare. They were laundry trucks.
My government says Citizen al Awalaki "inspired" several people now jailed awaiting trial for a variety of capital crimes.
My government says terrorists "hate us because we are free."
My government lies.
My government kills.
My government uses its lies to justify its killing.
Is this what it means to be "free?"
Anwar al Awlaki, 40, was born in the very city in which I now reside. His father, a Fulbright scholar, earned his master's degree at a university a few miles from the house I live in.
He was slain, my government boasts, by the same elite team that murdered Osama bin Laden rather than bringing him to trial for allegedly plotting, directing and financing the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on this country.
My government says ex patriate Citizen Anwar al Awlaki is a terrorist.
My Constitution says no American citizen can be executed by my government unless convicted of a capital crime in a trial by a jury of his peers, and that anyone accused of a crime must be presumed innocent until proved guilty in a trial.
My government says al Awlaki was involved in planning the attempted bombing of a U.S. - bound aircraft in December of 2009.
My government told me we had to invade Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction. It had no such weapons.
My government says Citizen al Awlaki sought to use poisons, including cyanide and ricin, to attack "Westerners."
My government sent its Secretary of State to the United Nations to soberly assure the world that trucks photographed by aerial surveillance in Iraq contained lethal chemicals for warfare. They were laundry trucks.
My government says Citizen al Awalaki "inspired" several people now jailed awaiting trial for a variety of capital crimes.
My government says terrorists "hate us because we are free."
My government lies.
My government kills.
My government uses its lies to justify its killing.
Is this what it means to be "free?"
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
TBA: Rotten, From the Top to The Core
If ever sanity returns to public discourse in whatever then remains of the United States, or when inevitably a competent historian from another country examines the decline and fall of our country, the media will be exposed in all their villainy.
Evidence of their betrayal of democracy is readily available even now, if you look beyond corporate-controlled outlets and seek out the testimony of whistle-blowers, honest analysts and a few other truth-tellers.
Our London correspondent, the distinguished author and ex-patriate onetime American journalist Gerald Mayer, recently observed: "When I was a youngster I thought myself unbelievably blessed to have found a place for myself in the newspaper game, where the mission was 'to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' Today I don't think I would consider it as a possible career. Gone gone gone."
'Tis a ubiquitous sentiment among fellow formerjournalists of my generation, whose number of distinguished contemporary comforters and afflicters is far too great to list here. Why their kind of journalism is gone gone gone probably begins at the top. From Punch Sulzberger to Pinch. From Kay Graham to Donnie Graham. From Otis Chandler to Corn Flakes. From Jack Knight to Tony Ridder to oblivion. From Joe Pulitzer to Joe Bftsplk. From CBS News to Fox Fiction. Rupert Murdoch rupert murdoch rupert murdoch.
With rare and sometimes dramatic exceptions, today's media barons have oiled their way across the spectrum from comforters of the afflicted and afflicters of the comfortable to unmitigated Unholy Alliance with the Complex of Greed, Wealth and Power that now governs what once were the great English-speaking democracies. One hardly expects that evil will be exposed by those who are party to it and profit from it.
Dan Rather, who was White House correspondent for CBS News when it still honored the legacy of Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, got sucked up to higher ground just as CBS was moving into the Great Ruling Corporatocracy. The unworthy heir to Walter Cronkite gave us a frightening metaphor for what happens to those who still try to practice the old time religion in today's version of journalism: they get "necklaced" with gasoline-filled burning tires.
Where once, for example, we had the likes of Meyer Berger and Harrison Salisbury, we have more recently been handed the likes of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Bill Keller, like Rather, was once an able reporter but was anointed to power in the New Era; hence his Iscariotan betrayal of Julian Assange, but only after his tenure as editor had reached its journalistic apogee thanks to WikiLeaks. This, alas, at a place supposed to be the paragon of our media!
No wonder there is no place in the mainstream any longer for such as Chris Hedges and Sy Hersh. Better to pass off the likes of Ross Douthat, Charles Gibson and Bill O'Reilly as journalists, instead.
One of the real journalists of my generation alerted me today to the fact that an important documentary film is now available on the World Wide Web. The War You Don't See, produced and directed by John Pilger, was effectively banned from United States theaters and television last year.
Now, if you hurry to http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/ before it's censored again, you can view this deft and chilling indictment of the propaganda role the British and U.S. media played in cheerleading the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes a series of interviews in which Pilger confronts British and American journalists (including Dan Rather) and news executives regarding their failure to give air time to weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts who were publicly challenging the excuses for these wars.
Viewing the film may convince you, as it did me and many others, that the real reason it was banned here is Pilger's sympathetic treatment of Assange. In a brief interview with Pilger, Assange condemns the failure of democratic governments to even attempt to control what Dwight David Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. Assange says the "complex" is a network of thousands of players (government employees and contractors and defense lobbyists) who make major policy decisions in their own self-interest sort of in loco parentis for government.
I call it a corporatocracy that really is government. But that's epistemological quibbling.
Truth sets us free; lies enslave us. Given the present state of American media, we are compelled to seek and sift most resolutely for truth, and cherish it where we find it:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/
Evidence of their betrayal of democracy is readily available even now, if you look beyond corporate-controlled outlets and seek out the testimony of whistle-blowers, honest analysts and a few other truth-tellers.
Our London correspondent, the distinguished author and ex-patriate onetime American journalist Gerald Mayer, recently observed: "When I was a youngster I thought myself unbelievably blessed to have found a place for myself in the newspaper game, where the mission was 'to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' Today I don't think I would consider it as a possible career. Gone gone gone."
'Tis a ubiquitous sentiment among fellow formerjournalists of my generation, whose number of distinguished contemporary comforters and afflicters is far too great to list here. Why their kind of journalism is gone gone gone probably begins at the top. From Punch Sulzberger to Pinch. From Kay Graham to Donnie Graham. From Otis Chandler to Corn Flakes. From Jack Knight to Tony Ridder to oblivion. From Joe Pulitzer to Joe Bftsplk. From CBS News to Fox Fiction. Rupert Murdoch rupert murdoch rupert murdoch.
With rare and sometimes dramatic exceptions, today's media barons have oiled their way across the spectrum from comforters of the afflicted and afflicters of the comfortable to unmitigated Unholy Alliance with the Complex of Greed, Wealth and Power that now governs what once were the great English-speaking democracies. One hardly expects that evil will be exposed by those who are party to it and profit from it.
Dan Rather, who was White House correspondent for CBS News when it still honored the legacy of Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, got sucked up to higher ground just as CBS was moving into the Great Ruling Corporatocracy. The unworthy heir to Walter Cronkite gave us a frightening metaphor for what happens to those who still try to practice the old time religion in today's version of journalism: they get "necklaced" with gasoline-filled burning tires.
Where once, for example, we had the likes of Meyer Berger and Harrison Salisbury, we have more recently been handed the likes of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Bill Keller, like Rather, was once an able reporter but was anointed to power in the New Era; hence his Iscariotan betrayal of Julian Assange, but only after his tenure as editor had reached its journalistic apogee thanks to WikiLeaks. This, alas, at a place supposed to be the paragon of our media!
No wonder there is no place in the mainstream any longer for such as Chris Hedges and Sy Hersh. Better to pass off the likes of Ross Douthat, Charles Gibson and Bill O'Reilly as journalists, instead.
One of the real journalists of my generation alerted me today to the fact that an important documentary film is now available on the World Wide Web. The War You Don't See, produced and directed by John Pilger, was effectively banned from United States theaters and television last year.
Now, if you hurry to http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/ before it's censored again, you can view this deft and chilling indictment of the propaganda role the British and U.S. media played in cheerleading the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes a series of interviews in which Pilger confronts British and American journalists (including Dan Rather) and news executives regarding their failure to give air time to weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts who were publicly challenging the excuses for these wars.
Viewing the film may convince you, as it did me and many others, that the real reason it was banned here is Pilger's sympathetic treatment of Assange. In a brief interview with Pilger, Assange condemns the failure of democratic governments to even attempt to control what Dwight David Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. Assange says the "complex" is a network of thousands of players (government employees and contractors and defense lobbyists) who make major policy decisions in their own self-interest sort of in loco parentis for government.
I call it a corporatocracy that really is government. But that's epistemological quibbling.
Truth sets us free; lies enslave us. Given the present state of American media, we are compelled to seek and sift most resolutely for truth, and cherish it where we find it:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/
Friday, September 23, 2011
Once, There Was a Thing called Justice . . .
Once again on Planet Earth, the most civilized among us recoil from an abomination of the most vile among us.
The government of Georgia, U.S.A., has murdered an innocent man, joining its fellow racist southern state, Texas, in the ultimate act of legal infamy.
Across the spectrum of those who seek to improve the human species -- the Pope of Rome, the E.U., the Dalai Lama; ministers, scientists, healers and thinkers -- rose today a thunder of condemnation of the rich, powerful and unutterably vile nation that slew Troy Anthony Davis with malice aforethought.
Even our craven media dare to call his execution "for killing a police officer" somewhat controversial; even these cowardly media whores suggest there might be doubt about his guilt.
Where there is the rule of law, there cannot be "guilt" if there is the shadow of a doubt. In the case of Troy Davis, the only evidence against him was the testimony of nine alleged witnesses to the crime. Seven of these have recanted their testimony, citing abuse, threats and intimidation by police, prosecutors and others sworn to uphold the law.
The shadow of doubt? This is a chasm of incredulity! This is an open and shut case of criminal racism on the part of "legal" authorities. Those who brought, pressed, abetted and consented in the charges against and "conviction" of Troy Davis should be brought in chains -- every one of them, jurors, too -- before the World Court in The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
For the victim here is not merely a black man named Troy Davis; we -- every single human of any race, creed or color who believes he or she is protected by something called the law -- we are all the victims.
But the most lamentable victim, the most sinned against, the most cruelly violated, is the thing called Justice.
"Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family," said the Attorney General of the State of Georgia, Sam Olens.
If there is a god, if somewhere beyond this tainted world there survives a pure concept called justice, if, then, there is a hell, surely there is an especially vile, punishing and inescapably terrible place within it for Mr. Olens.
Justice?
You, sir, are unfit to utter the word. You violate every ethic, more, fundament-- you urinate upon an open wound in the heart -- of the rule of law you purport to serve.
At a protest of the murder of Davis in front of the White House today, at least 12 Howard University students were arrested for failing to move off the White House sidewalk.
When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other geniuses of the Age of Enlightenment wrote our Constitution and gave us a nation, Franklin told us that we had been given a republic -- "if you can keep it."
We have failed.
We have failed.
We have utterly failed.
The government of Georgia, U.S.A., has murdered an innocent man, joining its fellow racist southern state, Texas, in the ultimate act of legal infamy.
Across the spectrum of those who seek to improve the human species -- the Pope of Rome, the E.U., the Dalai Lama; ministers, scientists, healers and thinkers -- rose today a thunder of condemnation of the rich, powerful and unutterably vile nation that slew Troy Anthony Davis with malice aforethought.Even our craven media dare to call his execution "for killing a police officer" somewhat controversial; even these cowardly media whores suggest there might be doubt about his guilt.
Where there is the rule of law, there cannot be "guilt" if there is the shadow of a doubt. In the case of Troy Davis, the only evidence against him was the testimony of nine alleged witnesses to the crime. Seven of these have recanted their testimony, citing abuse, threats and intimidation by police, prosecutors and others sworn to uphold the law.
The shadow of doubt? This is a chasm of incredulity! This is an open and shut case of criminal racism on the part of "legal" authorities. Those who brought, pressed, abetted and consented in the charges against and "conviction" of Troy Davis should be brought in chains -- every one of them, jurors, too -- before the World Court in The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
For the victim here is not merely a black man named Troy Davis; we -- every single human of any race, creed or color who believes he or she is protected by something called the law -- we are all the victims.
But the most lamentable victim, the most sinned against, the most cruelly violated, is the thing called Justice.
"Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family," said the Attorney General of the State of Georgia, Sam Olens.
If there is a god, if somewhere beyond this tainted world there survives a pure concept called justice, if, then, there is a hell, surely there is an especially vile, punishing and inescapably terrible place within it for Mr. Olens.
Justice?
You, sir, are unfit to utter the word. You violate every ethic, more, fundament-- you urinate upon an open wound in the heart -- of the rule of law you purport to serve.
At a protest of the murder of Davis in front of the White House today, at least 12 Howard University students were arrested for failing to move off the White House sidewalk.
When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other geniuses of the Age of Enlightenment wrote our Constitution and gave us a nation, Franklin told us that we had been given a republic -- "if you can keep it."
We have failed.
We have failed.
We have utterly failed.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Thoughts on Fathers, on Integrity and on a Failed Presidency
As the days grow shorter and cooler and the angle of the sun bathes desert and mountain with the year's most special kind of light, Brandi and I spend more and more time out there, listening to the silence. I can't tell what my uncharacteristically pensive boxer-shepherd is thinking, but I'm thinking about fathers and about integrity.
I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.
Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.
When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."
It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Hedges:
"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."
To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.
"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.
"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."
Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.
Hedges (quoting Wright):
"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."
Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:
"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?
"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"
* * *
"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)
"Is it I, Lord?"
"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).
I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.
Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.
When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."
It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Hedges:
"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."
To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.
"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.
"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."
Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.
Hedges (quoting Wright):
"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."
Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:
"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?
"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"
* * *
"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)
"Is it I, Lord?"
"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A 9/11 Story
A Guest Post
By Lois Sutherland Wark
We were driving the wild and rugged north coast of Scotland, day-tripping from our cozy Scottish hunting lodge-turned-hotel in Tongue. After a day of sight-seeing, walking the empty beaches and climbing headlands to watch the sea crash against the towering stacks just off the coast, we pulled into Durness, the most northwesterly village on the British mainland. At the gas pump an attendant, recognizing that we were Yanks, asked, "Have you heard about the Twin Towers?"
Stunned and horrified, we drove on a short distance to a grassy clifftop near the ruined Gothic chapel of Balnakiel, where we had intended to walk a sandy path that winds north through the dunes and eventually leads to Faraid Head, where there is a good chance of spotting puffins. Instead, we sat dead silent in the car for hours, listening to the BBC reports from New York and around the world.
Later, back at our hotel in Tongue, our dinner-table mates and hotel staff reached out in sorrow. The sympathy for Americans -- and for the international community who had worked at the World Trade Center -- was strong and palpable. With U.S. air space closed indefinitely, we remained in our room at the hotel, occasionally taking walks in the rain but no longer interested in touring. We just wanted to get home. Home, where no one any longer was safe.
Finally, the call from British Airways arrived: Our flight from Gatwick to Houston would leave Saturday morning. On the drive south from Tongue, the rain and heavy clouds seemed very much in keeping with our thoughts. At the airport, attendants were particularly solicitous of travelers, as though no one ever again would take traveling lightly. It was there, while we were waiting for our flight in the gigantic airport terminal, that we took part in a Europe-wide remembrance of the 9/11 dead -- three minutes of absolute silence. Halfway through, a harried couple came rushing through a door, clearly afraid they were about to miss their flight. They stopped suddenly, feeling the silence. Dropped their bags, realizing what they had walked into. Joined the mourning.
We had begun this trip to Scotland in high anticipation, a celebration of my Scottish Sutherland ancestry. Every four years, the Clan Sutherland Society of Scotland gathers in Golspie, on the coast about four hours north of Edinburgh, to spend four days together celebrating our Sutherland ancestry -- a homecoming for the worldwide diaspora. My cousin, Donald Gene Sutherland, had proposed the trip more than a year before, and eight of us had signed on: Gene, his daughters Victoria and Heather and Heather's husband, Norbert; Gene's older brother, Guy, and wife Diana; and Tom and me. On the way out, Tom and I had met Guy and Diana at the Houston airport and flown together to Gatwick, then on to Inverness. Staying together at the Dornoch Castle Hotel near Golspie, we had admired the 97 varieties of single malt scotch above the bar in the hotel pub and vowed that among the eight of us, we would taste every single one.
The highlight of the trip had been a formal dinner dance at Dunrobin Castle, the ancestral seat of the Sutherlands which overlooks the sea a mile north of Golspie. At the castle a day before the dinner dance, Alistair Sutherland, Lord Strathnaver, son and heir to the Clan Chief, Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, had taken our group on a tour of the castle; he was a gracious host, in that way that the Scottish nobility has, who now depend on tourists for the upkeep of their ancient piles (Dunrobin is the most northerly of Scotland's great houses and is the largest house in the Northern Highlands). During the days leading up to the dinner dance, Gene's daughter Vicky had attended classes every afternoon in Scottish dancing, learning its intricacies. In Dunrobin's formal ballroom, with her father beaming on the sidelines, Victoria had danced every single dance. The trip had been Gene's gift to his daughters, in hopes it would kindle a lifelong interest in all things Scottish. Done.
Now, our fairy tale journey had ended in tragedy. As Tom and I settled into our seats on British Airways, it all seemed unreal. Midway into the flight, as Tom dozed beside me, he was suddenly awakened by a tap on the shoulder. Hovering over him was the smiling bulk of cousin Guy, who had no business being there. He and Diana had caught a flight out of Gatwick four days before us -- on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
In midair over the Atlantic, their pilots had been ordered to divert the plane to Halifax, Nova Scotia -- had been told that U.S. airspace was closed. When the British pilots demurred and asked why, they had been given no explanation. Enter U.S. airspace and you will be shot down, was the terse response from air traffic controllers. It was only after they had landed in Halifax, where the passengers were bedded down on cots at a local high school gymnasium, that they were told of the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon.
So what were Guy and Diana doing on our plane? Another of the ironies of that iconic week. When flights to the U.S. were allowed to resume, their British Airways flight was directed not to its original destination of Houston but was sent back to Gatwick, where we all boarded the first flight out.
When we landed in Houston, the first stop for Clan Sutherland was the nearest pub. Single malt all around.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Fatal Flaw in Dr. Kidglove's Voodoo
Much as I admire Krugman, Steiglitz, Baker and the other enlightened popular economists of our era, I am somewhat less whelmed than they seem to be by Kidglove's latest voodoo economics.
Their well-modulated approval of the president's plan for job creation may, as Krugman suggested, be the result of low expectations. The Princeton Nobelist called Obama's plan "bolder" than expected.
Although it's too little, and probably too late, the plan does at last acknowledge the Keynesian wisdom of increased government spending in times of both recession and high unemployment.
But too few voices of alarm have been raised about the real impact of one of the key points in the Kidglove Plan: cutting the "payroll tax" in half.
The White House is selling this as a "tax cut to the typical American family" amounting to about $1,500 a year.
What it really is, folks, is a back-door attack on your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance and survivors' benefits.
The President, I think, wants American workers -- those lucky enough to still have jobs -- to think that he's cutting their income tax, as he and his predecessor have done for the really, really rich one per cent of us.
But FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act -- is less a tax than a mandatory investment in the health and welfare of all Americans, to be used when they're too old to work. Employers and employees contribute equally -- 6.2 per cent of payroll up to a fixed limit for employers, 6.2 per cent of salary up to a fixed limit for employees --through FICA to the Social Security Trust Fund. This is what pays retirement, health and disability benefits that all Americans enjoy.
The Kidglove voodoo jobs plan would get a substantial part of the money to "create jobs" by taking it away from workers when they reach retirement age. His fifty per cent cut in the "payroll tax" is actually a fifty per cent cut in funding for those worker benefits -- robbing from Peter what should be paid to Peter when he reaches retirement age.
The White House says this plan will put more money in American pockets, which presumably they will spend, which will stimulate the economy. But with the Baby Boomer generation just reaching retirement age, it effectively cuts in half the income to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Not to worry, sayeth the Voodoo Doctor Kidglove. We will make up the difference, as we did on the last "payroll tax holiday," from general revenues.
Huh?
The same general revenues that are inadequate to pay for our ongoing wars, our ongoing government costs, our interest on trillions of dollars of debt? Those general revenues? The general revenues the Republicans refused to increase by raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, while at the same time declaring that our debt was of sufficient magnitude to threaten to bring down the government by forfeiting on its debt repayment?
Does Kidglove honestly believe that the Teapot Nuts in Congress will approve dipping into general revenues to keep Social Security solvent? The same Social Security Republicans have wanted to scuttle ever since the New Deal?
You can smell in the wind another political farce like the debt crisis fiasco. GOP fights Obama job plan. Obama cuts back on the only parts of it that will actually create new jobs (but only about a million in a country where well over 14 million able-bodied workers are jobless). GOP, in a great show of bipartisanship, says, "OK, now you can have your payroll tax cut." Smirk smirk.
Everyone in this cute little drama knows that in a year or so a new "crisis" will be declared: Social Security is "running out of money," they will shout in Congress. "We must end this failed Ponzi scheme right now!"
Lots of really, really rich folk will be chuckling all the way to the bank. Again.
Their well-modulated approval of the president's plan for job creation may, as Krugman suggested, be the result of low expectations. The Princeton Nobelist called Obama's plan "bolder" than expected.
Although it's too little, and probably too late, the plan does at last acknowledge the Keynesian wisdom of increased government spending in times of both recession and high unemployment.
But too few voices of alarm have been raised about the real impact of one of the key points in the Kidglove Plan: cutting the "payroll tax" in half.
The White House is selling this as a "tax cut to the typical American family" amounting to about $1,500 a year.
What it really is, folks, is a back-door attack on your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance and survivors' benefits.
The President, I think, wants American workers -- those lucky enough to still have jobs -- to think that he's cutting their income tax, as he and his predecessor have done for the really, really rich one per cent of us.
But FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act -- is less a tax than a mandatory investment in the health and welfare of all Americans, to be used when they're too old to work. Employers and employees contribute equally -- 6.2 per cent of payroll up to a fixed limit for employers, 6.2 per cent of salary up to a fixed limit for employees --through FICA to the Social Security Trust Fund. This is what pays retirement, health and disability benefits that all Americans enjoy.
The Kidglove voodoo jobs plan would get a substantial part of the money to "create jobs" by taking it away from workers when they reach retirement age. His fifty per cent cut in the "payroll tax" is actually a fifty per cent cut in funding for those worker benefits -- robbing from Peter what should be paid to Peter when he reaches retirement age.
The White House says this plan will put more money in American pockets, which presumably they will spend, which will stimulate the economy. But with the Baby Boomer generation just reaching retirement age, it effectively cuts in half the income to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Not to worry, sayeth the Voodoo Doctor Kidglove. We will make up the difference, as we did on the last "payroll tax holiday," from general revenues.
Huh?
The same general revenues that are inadequate to pay for our ongoing wars, our ongoing government costs, our interest on trillions of dollars of debt? Those general revenues? The general revenues the Republicans refused to increase by raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, while at the same time declaring that our debt was of sufficient magnitude to threaten to bring down the government by forfeiting on its debt repayment?
Does Kidglove honestly believe that the Teapot Nuts in Congress will approve dipping into general revenues to keep Social Security solvent? The same Social Security Republicans have wanted to scuttle ever since the New Deal?
You can smell in the wind another political farce like the debt crisis fiasco. GOP fights Obama job plan. Obama cuts back on the only parts of it that will actually create new jobs (but only about a million in a country where well over 14 million able-bodied workers are jobless). GOP, in a great show of bipartisanship, says, "OK, now you can have your payroll tax cut." Smirk smirk.
Everyone in this cute little drama knows that in a year or so a new "crisis" will be declared: Social Security is "running out of money," they will shout in Congress. "We must end this failed Ponzi scheme right now!"
Lots of really, really rich folk will be chuckling all the way to the bank. Again.
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Making of a Modern American Caesar
Things can get worse and a friend recently suggested a plausible way: a super ego smothered in military medals could become our dictator.
Don't sneer. Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned from the army at the end of August to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, could take over the country tomorrow if he wanted to.
Petraeus wears more medals on his chest than the entire U.S. Olympic team. Yet in his first 29 years in the military, he never saw a day of combat. The Pentagon refused a request to tell the public what all those medals are for. Obviously they weren't earned in combat.
At his retirement ceremony, Petraeus was lauded by the huffers and puffers of the Military Industrial Complex as the military equal of Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower. Mercifully, nobody mentioned Douglas MacArthur, the second-biggest ego ever to wear stars on his shoulder. Grant, Eisenhower and MacArthur, at least, won real wars, actually declared by Congress.
That didn't dampen the rhetoric of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said, "Gen. David Petraeus has set the gold standard for wartime command in the modern era. " Then, turning to the man himself, Mullen added: "You now stand with the giants, not just of our time, but of all time."
Maybe he was thinking of Mel Ott, a Giant who only stood 5' 11".
Petraeus finally got "combat" experience in 2003, when he led the 101st Airborne Division in the fiction-based invasion of Iraq on behalf of that eminent "wartime president," George W. Bush. The huffers and puffers cranked up a hype machine that managed to portray him as having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia., even as the country that had no weapons of mass destruction and very little in the way of an army somehow managed to stretch our invasion into our longest war. And then there's Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Libya, and . . .
Oh, never mind. The man clearly has better military credentials than little Cpl. Schickelgruber had, and look what he became. Dictator. With the greatest military machine in the world at that time.
You know who's got the greatest military machine in the world now.
And you know what we've got in the White House.
And you know the caliber of those who aspire to replace him.
And you know -- or ought to know, if you're old enough to vote -- the power of the Military Industrial Complex and the corporations that run this country. They love the man with the medals on his chest. They'd be pleased to have him as dictator.
He could have the job tomorrow, if he wanted it.
Maybe the only question is, when will he decide to want it?
Don't sneer. Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned from the army at the end of August to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, could take over the country tomorrow if he wanted to.
Petraeus wears more medals on his chest than the entire U.S. Olympic team. Yet in his first 29 years in the military, he never saw a day of combat. The Pentagon refused a request to tell the public what all those medals are for. Obviously they weren't earned in combat.
At his retirement ceremony, Petraeus was lauded by the huffers and puffers of the Military Industrial Complex as the military equal of Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower. Mercifully, nobody mentioned Douglas MacArthur, the second-biggest ego ever to wear stars on his shoulder. Grant, Eisenhower and MacArthur, at least, won real wars, actually declared by Congress.
That didn't dampen the rhetoric of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said, "Gen. David Petraeus has set the gold standard for wartime command in the modern era. " Then, turning to the man himself, Mullen added: "You now stand with the giants, not just of our time, but of all time."
Maybe he was thinking of Mel Ott, a Giant who only stood 5' 11".
Petraeus finally got "combat" experience in 2003, when he led the 101st Airborne Division in the fiction-based invasion of Iraq on behalf of that eminent "wartime president," George W. Bush. The huffers and puffers cranked up a hype machine that managed to portray him as having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia., even as the country that had no weapons of mass destruction and very little in the way of an army somehow managed to stretch our invasion into our longest war. And then there's Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Libya, and . . .
Oh, never mind. The man clearly has better military credentials than little Cpl. Schickelgruber had, and look what he became. Dictator. With the greatest military machine in the world at that time.
You know who's got the greatest military machine in the world now.
And you know what we've got in the White House.
And you know the caliber of those who aspire to replace him.
And you know -- or ought to know, if you're old enough to vote -- the power of the Military Industrial Complex and the corporations that run this country. They love the man with the medals on his chest. They'd be pleased to have him as dictator.
He could have the job tomorrow, if he wanted it.
Maybe the only question is, when will he decide to want it?
Friday, September 2, 2011
Last Straw in a Failed Presidency
There are only two explanations for Barack Obama.
1. He is a simpering coward.
2. He is corrupt beyond anyone who ever occupied the White House before him.
Either way he is unfit to be President of the United States.
Today's sellout to the Republicans over EPA regulation of poisonous air condemns thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans with breathing problems to treatment in an inadequate health care system, or to death.
It is the last straw in a failed presidency.
Unless someone comes forward to challenge his renomination, we are left with the choice of voting for whichever incompetent the Republicans nominate, or re-electing the worst president in our history.
Whatever became of the idea that the "best and the brightest" sought our presidency? One would have to scour the very pits of our vilest Congress to find a worse crop of contenders.
1. He is a simpering coward.
2. He is corrupt beyond anyone who ever occupied the White House before him.
Either way he is unfit to be President of the United States.
Today's sellout to the Republicans over EPA regulation of poisonous air condemns thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans with breathing problems to treatment in an inadequate health care system, or to death.
It is the last straw in a failed presidency.
Unless someone comes forward to challenge his renomination, we are left with the choice of voting for whichever incompetent the Republicans nominate, or re-electing the worst president in our history.
Whatever became of the idea that the "best and the brightest" sought our presidency? One would have to scour the very pits of our vilest Congress to find a worse crop of contenders.
It Was a Good Time for Tossin' th' Haggis
I remember a beautiful end-of-summer in Scotland ten years ago. In lovely sunlight the soft breezes carried the lilt of lassies comin' through the rye and lovers takin' th' high road to Loch Lomond.
Back home unemployment was a rising concern; it had reached 4.9 per cent in August, the highest rate in four years. Private employers had just cut 130,000 jobs, ten times the predicted amount, and shipped nearly 50,000 jobs overseas.
Independent economists said the bad news meant the long-awaited economic recovery still was not in sight. Not to worry, "we're about where we should be," said the chief economist at Merrill Lynch, one of the Wall Street firms that was happily selling AAA-rated investment packages that seven years later would be called "sub-prime" and "toxic."
On a hillside east of a small town in the Scottish highlands, a natural waste-disposal field was in its fifth experimental year. Although toxic slush was deep underfoot somewhere, the air was scented only by a profusion of wildflowers. There's more than one way to deal with toxic.
The remains of an ancient Roman fortification crested the hill. Later in the afternoon we would stand in its shade and watch Scotsmen sling a haggis in a traditional festival game. A few days later, we took a leisurely drive toward John O'Groat., stopping often to admire rocky shorelines and the occasional sandy beach.
When we stopped for fuel, the attendant for the single pump recognized us as Yanks. "Did y' hear about the Twin Towers?" he asked. BBC radio told us the latest about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. national debt was just a shade over $5 trillion.
When he finally emerged from hiding, the President of the United States led a campaign of fear, half-truths, outright falsehood and "cooked" intelligence to launch a war against a country that had nothing to do with the September attacks and whose sleazy dictator had nothing to do with those who organized and financed it.
When he left office, that president and his unfunded wars had doubled the national debt.
Unemployment was over 10 per cent.
The toxic assets Wall Street had sold as prime investments went "Poof!" and the richest banks in the world were on their knees, begging.
A new President printed new money and showered it on the bankers who had brought the world to the brink of depression.
The national debt rose to $12 trillion.
The wars went on.
The unemployment rate remained twice what it had been in 2001. That's not counting millions more jobless who have been unemployed for so long they no longer count as "statistics."
So far only one man running for President has offered a plan intended to provide jobs for some of the unemployed. It calls essentially for tax credits to private employers to encourage them to hire more people. (These are the same private employers who cut 130,000 jobs in August of 2010 and shipped 50,000 of them overseas, causing independent economists to warn that we'd better do something soon about unemployment.)
Last month, the U.S. economy did not add one new job. Zero. Zilch. As soon as John Boehner says it's OK, the President will talk to the nation about jobs.
What he says isn't likely to do much for the millions without work. Talk doesn't buy groceries.
Last month, for the first time in ten years, not one American was killed in Iraq in George Bush's war. However, it was the worst month ever for American deaths in Afghanistan, Barack Obama's war. Nobody reports the losses here and there in the dozen or so clandestine wars we're fighting.
No politician running for President is talking about ending the wars that put us deeply in debt as a nation. Yet all the politicians say the debt is a crisis.
It is such a big, big crisis that we can't afford to create public sector jobs fixing a national infrastructure that has been neglected for so long that it's a risk to life and limb for our common citizens.
But it's not so big a crisis that we need to end the huge tax cuts we gave to our very richest citizens.
This isn't a country. It's a bloody zoo, and the animals are in charge.
Back home unemployment was a rising concern; it had reached 4.9 per cent in August, the highest rate in four years. Private employers had just cut 130,000 jobs, ten times the predicted amount, and shipped nearly 50,000 jobs overseas.
Independent economists said the bad news meant the long-awaited economic recovery still was not in sight. Not to worry, "we're about where we should be," said the chief economist at Merrill Lynch, one of the Wall Street firms that was happily selling AAA-rated investment packages that seven years later would be called "sub-prime" and "toxic."
On a hillside east of a small town in the Scottish highlands, a natural waste-disposal field was in its fifth experimental year. Although toxic slush was deep underfoot somewhere, the air was scented only by a profusion of wildflowers. There's more than one way to deal with toxic.
The remains of an ancient Roman fortification crested the hill. Later in the afternoon we would stand in its shade and watch Scotsmen sling a haggis in a traditional festival game. A few days later, we took a leisurely drive toward John O'Groat., stopping often to admire rocky shorelines and the occasional sandy beach.
When we stopped for fuel, the attendant for the single pump recognized us as Yanks. "Did y' hear about the Twin Towers?" he asked. BBC radio told us the latest about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. national debt was just a shade over $5 trillion.
When he finally emerged from hiding, the President of the United States led a campaign of fear, half-truths, outright falsehood and "cooked" intelligence to launch a war against a country that had nothing to do with the September attacks and whose sleazy dictator had nothing to do with those who organized and financed it.
When he left office, that president and his unfunded wars had doubled the national debt.
Unemployment was over 10 per cent.
The toxic assets Wall Street had sold as prime investments went "Poof!" and the richest banks in the world were on their knees, begging.
A new President printed new money and showered it on the bankers who had brought the world to the brink of depression.
The national debt rose to $12 trillion.
The wars went on.
The unemployment rate remained twice what it had been in 2001. That's not counting millions more jobless who have been unemployed for so long they no longer count as "statistics."
So far only one man running for President has offered a plan intended to provide jobs for some of the unemployed. It calls essentially for tax credits to private employers to encourage them to hire more people. (These are the same private employers who cut 130,000 jobs in August of 2010 and shipped 50,000 of them overseas, causing independent economists to warn that we'd better do something soon about unemployment.)
Last month, the U.S. economy did not add one new job. Zero. Zilch. As soon as John Boehner says it's OK, the President will talk to the nation about jobs.
What he says isn't likely to do much for the millions without work. Talk doesn't buy groceries.
Last month, for the first time in ten years, not one American was killed in Iraq in George Bush's war. However, it was the worst month ever for American deaths in Afghanistan, Barack Obama's war. Nobody reports the losses here and there in the dozen or so clandestine wars we're fighting.
No politician running for President is talking about ending the wars that put us deeply in debt as a nation. Yet all the politicians say the debt is a crisis.
It is such a big, big crisis that we can't afford to create public sector jobs fixing a national infrastructure that has been neglected for so long that it's a risk to life and limb for our common citizens.
But it's not so big a crisis that we need to end the huge tax cuts we gave to our very richest citizens.
This isn't a country. It's a bloody zoo, and the animals are in charge.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
How Refreshing: A Candidate Who Calls Nonsense . . .Nonsense!
Jon Huntsman of Utah is looking more presidential every day.
This morning, for example, he said the flap over when Dr. Kidglove gives his speech about jobs is "nonsense." Kidglove, Hunstman said, "has not been able to deliver on jobs" for almost three years, so it really doesn't matter when he says whatever it is he's got to say now.
Besides, it is no longer news that whenever John Boehner barks, Kidglove slinks off whimpering to a dark corner and says, like Cool Hand Luke to his cruel jailer, "Yas, Boss." So once again he did Boehner's bidding, even if on a matter that is, indeed, "nonsense."
Looking even more presidential, Huntsman went on to say today that his fellow Republicans haven't done any better on jobs for American workers: "we're getting drama but not solutions," he scolded.
Huntsman is the only declared candidate for the presidency who has introduced a plan to attack the unemployment crisis, a serious, substantive proposal that merits serious discussion.
And he doesn't have a -- excuse the metaphor -- prayer of becoming his party's nominee. The cockamamie crazies seeking the nomination have all claimed God as their patron. They keep topping one another in the Gaffe and Piety Derby.
Bachmann: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to Me here?’" After Katrina, kooks like her broadcast the word that that tragedy was God punishing New Orleans for the atheism of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Then there's Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme and doesn't even know what brand of nonsense his Texas schools are required to teach as "science." Evolution, he says, is just a theory with "gaps" in it, so his schools teach creationism as well. Wrong. They teach "intelligent design," which is just as flaky but not the same thing. Pity the poor children of Texas!
Mitt Romney has scurried to claim the patronage of God to persuade the Christofascists that his brand of Mormonism is really OK. If there were any doubt as to whom Romney would represent as president, take a look at the list of his top campaign donors (in order): Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Bank of America, Sullivan & Cromwell (biggest law firm to Wall Street),Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The same band of thieves is coppering its bets with huge donations to Obama. No wonder no Democrat is willing to challenge Obama for his party's nomination. The losers are American voters who will be left with Hobson's choice.
It's not surprising that third-party talk is getting louder on both sides of the theoretical center line of the American political spectrum.
Imagine, if you will, a contest that has Perry, Kidglove, Huntsman and, say, Russ Feingold, the latter two representing opposing but reasonable political viewpoints, and expressing them articulately and sanely. The majority of American voters -- who prefer catchy soundbites and slogans to actual thinking -- will stand by their party loyalties.
But voters who really want a President who understands issues and offers thoughtful plans for tackling them would profit from a debate between Huntsman and Feingold. They could decide on the merits of the arguments as they perceive them, vote accordingly, and walk away from the polls feeling that at last, at long, long last, they had not wasted their ballots.
This morning, for example, he said the flap over when Dr. Kidglove gives his speech about jobs is "nonsense." Kidglove, Hunstman said, "has not been able to deliver on jobs" for almost three years, so it really doesn't matter when he says whatever it is he's got to say now.
Besides, it is no longer news that whenever John Boehner barks, Kidglove slinks off whimpering to a dark corner and says, like Cool Hand Luke to his cruel jailer, "Yas, Boss." So once again he did Boehner's bidding, even if on a matter that is, indeed, "nonsense."
Looking even more presidential, Huntsman went on to say today that his fellow Republicans haven't done any better on jobs for American workers: "we're getting drama but not solutions," he scolded.
Huntsman is the only declared candidate for the presidency who has introduced a plan to attack the unemployment crisis, a serious, substantive proposal that merits serious discussion.
And he doesn't have a -- excuse the metaphor -- prayer of becoming his party's nominee. The cockamamie crazies seeking the nomination have all claimed God as their patron. They keep topping one another in the Gaffe and Piety Derby.
Bachmann: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to Me here?’" After Katrina, kooks like her broadcast the word that that tragedy was God punishing New Orleans for the atheism of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Then there's Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme and doesn't even know what brand of nonsense his Texas schools are required to teach as "science." Evolution, he says, is just a theory with "gaps" in it, so his schools teach creationism as well. Wrong. They teach "intelligent design," which is just as flaky but not the same thing. Pity the poor children of Texas!
Mitt Romney has scurried to claim the patronage of God to persuade the Christofascists that his brand of Mormonism is really OK. If there were any doubt as to whom Romney would represent as president, take a look at the list of his top campaign donors (in order): Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Bank of America, Sullivan & Cromwell (biggest law firm to Wall Street),Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The same band of thieves is coppering its bets with huge donations to Obama. No wonder no Democrat is willing to challenge Obama for his party's nomination. The losers are American voters who will be left with Hobson's choice.
It's not surprising that third-party talk is getting louder on both sides of the theoretical center line of the American political spectrum.
Imagine, if you will, a contest that has Perry, Kidglove, Huntsman and, say, Russ Feingold, the latter two representing opposing but reasonable political viewpoints, and expressing them articulately and sanely. The majority of American voters -- who prefer catchy soundbites and slogans to actual thinking -- will stand by their party loyalties.
But voters who really want a President who understands issues and offers thoughtful plans for tackling them would profit from a debate between Huntsman and Feingold. They could decide on the merits of the arguments as they perceive them, vote accordingly, and walk away from the polls feeling that at last, at long, long last, they had not wasted their ballots.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Can We Save the Earth by Talking With One Another?
A friend who is of conservative political bent writes, "we are not and have not been good custodians of our earth."
Just a few days ago, in Seattle, the great progressive statesman Dennis Kucinich, said:
"Are you prepared to rescue our planet, to protect our air, water, and land from further exploitation by demanding an end to drilling the earth, fracking the earth, cracking the earth, an end to poisoning the seas and the skies with carbon based energies, and a rapid transition to an environmentally friendly, socially responsible green economy?"
Green energy, my conservative friend wrote, can "revitalize our own economy with our own resources . . .(and) . . . create U.S. jobs."
Can two such voices communicate across the Great Divide of political rancor in this land and formulate a strategy to rescue the planet?
My conservative friend offers to initiate such a dialogue with his own list of recommendations for a greener planet. Some of them are quite good.
But it seems to me that before such a dialogue can begin, the participants need to establish their bona fides. If we're serious about moving beyond "big oil companies and the failed ethanol experiment," as my friend puts it, we must begin by eliminating the government subsidies for Big Oil. My friend wants to reduce the corporate income tax rate to 17 or 18% to provide incentives for green practices. I say that if corporations are persons, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then they should pay taxes at rates equivalent to those for the human persons who work for them. As it stands, the corporate tax rate is irrelevant because most corporations pay little or no tax at all.
If we're serious about being "good custodians of the earth," we have got to be willing to accept regulation of those actions that pollute its life-giving resources, damage the health of its inhabitants, alter its climate and disturb nature. The federal government is the obvious choice to do this, and its regulatory agencies must have adequate power over corporations in order to fill this function. These are essential first steps.
My friend acknowledges that "green talk" can "turn off moderates and conservatives," but insists there is a constructive middle course involving "intermediate options such as natural gas, hydroelectric, low-grade nuclear, and geothermal power."
T. Boone Pickens has already put his wealth and influence behind a big push for natural gas -- which, while it burns cleaner than fossil fuels, is still a finite resource whose extraction damages vast areas of public lands with enormous aesthetic, recreational, traditional and ethereal value to large numbers of human citizens. If we are willing to sacrifice those values for the economic values of corporations we are doomed before we begin.
My friend dismisses solar and wind energy as "neither economically nor technologically feasible at this time," but I believe that a sincere effort to formulate an effective energy strategy must keep them on the table.
In the Pickens plan, a vast wind farm in the Texas panhandle, utilizing the newest technology,would provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy needs. A national strategy of wind energy, subsidized by the government with tax incentives for private investment like that proposed by Pickens, would more than double that percentage. Intelligent energy conservation practices by consumers would lower the demand. Some interim energy strategies propose using "clean coal" to fuel power plants. Clean coal is a myth. Pickens advocates refitting coal-burning power plants to burn natural gas --substituting one finite fuel for another. Perhaps this has a place in an interim strategy.
Massive bird kills, including raptors such as the bald eagle, have been cited as an argument against wind energy that true conservationists ought to support. The bird argument took flight when the bodies of a number of eagles were discovered beneath some of the turbines of the Altamount Pass wind farm in California. These are old turbines, made obsolete by advances in technology. Ornithologists have discovered that the turbine blades of Altamount Pass actually attract birds. Newer blade technology eliminates the attractant. Radar studies in New York and research in Denmark -- arguably the world leader in wind power technology -- indicate that wind farms and bird populations can co-exist.
The entire southwest could become energy self-sufficient, and sell surplus power to a national grid, if it harnessed its sunshine. There may be animal habitat arguments against massive solar installations in the open spaces of the west. But with government encouragement, diverting Big Oil subsidies to solar research, and government standards for the construction industry, solar-powered homes and buildings could be the norm throughout the southwest. Keep an eye on Philadelphia, hardly the sunniest place on earth. Jeff Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, is turning his team's stadium into a solar-powered, 100% self-sufficient, aesthetically pleasing example of what can be done if we're really sincere about finding solutions.
By all means, let's have a conversation about these things. But let's limit the participants to those who have demonstrated genuine concern about being "good custodians of the earth."
Just a few days ago, in Seattle, the great progressive statesman Dennis Kucinich, said:
"Are you prepared to rescue our planet, to protect our air, water, and land from further exploitation by demanding an end to drilling the earth, fracking the earth, cracking the earth, an end to poisoning the seas and the skies with carbon based energies, and a rapid transition to an environmentally friendly, socially responsible green economy?"
Green energy, my conservative friend wrote, can "revitalize our own economy with our own resources . . .(and) . . . create U.S. jobs."
Can two such voices communicate across the Great Divide of political rancor in this land and formulate a strategy to rescue the planet?
My conservative friend offers to initiate such a dialogue with his own list of recommendations for a greener planet. Some of them are quite good.
But it seems to me that before such a dialogue can begin, the participants need to establish their bona fides. If we're serious about moving beyond "big oil companies and the failed ethanol experiment," as my friend puts it, we must begin by eliminating the government subsidies for Big Oil. My friend wants to reduce the corporate income tax rate to 17 or 18% to provide incentives for green practices. I say that if corporations are persons, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then they should pay taxes at rates equivalent to those for the human persons who work for them. As it stands, the corporate tax rate is irrelevant because most corporations pay little or no tax at all.
If we're serious about being "good custodians of the earth," we have got to be willing to accept regulation of those actions that pollute its life-giving resources, damage the health of its inhabitants, alter its climate and disturb nature. The federal government is the obvious choice to do this, and its regulatory agencies must have adequate power over corporations in order to fill this function. These are essential first steps.
My friend acknowledges that "green talk" can "turn off moderates and conservatives," but insists there is a constructive middle course involving "intermediate options such as natural gas, hydroelectric, low-grade nuclear, and geothermal power."
T. Boone Pickens has already put his wealth and influence behind a big push for natural gas -- which, while it burns cleaner than fossil fuels, is still a finite resource whose extraction damages vast areas of public lands with enormous aesthetic, recreational, traditional and ethereal value to large numbers of human citizens. If we are willing to sacrifice those values for the economic values of corporations we are doomed before we begin.
My friend dismisses solar and wind energy as "neither economically nor technologically feasible at this time," but I believe that a sincere effort to formulate an effective energy strategy must keep them on the table.
In the Pickens plan, a vast wind farm in the Texas panhandle, utilizing the newest technology,would provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy needs. A national strategy of wind energy, subsidized by the government with tax incentives for private investment like that proposed by Pickens, would more than double that percentage. Intelligent energy conservation practices by consumers would lower the demand. Some interim energy strategies propose using "clean coal" to fuel power plants. Clean coal is a myth. Pickens advocates refitting coal-burning power plants to burn natural gas --substituting one finite fuel for another. Perhaps this has a place in an interim strategy.
Massive bird kills, including raptors such as the bald eagle, have been cited as an argument against wind energy that true conservationists ought to support. The bird argument took flight when the bodies of a number of eagles were discovered beneath some of the turbines of the Altamount Pass wind farm in California. These are old turbines, made obsolete by advances in technology. Ornithologists have discovered that the turbine blades of Altamount Pass actually attract birds. Newer blade technology eliminates the attractant. Radar studies in New York and research in Denmark -- arguably the world leader in wind power technology -- indicate that wind farms and bird populations can co-exist.
The entire southwest could become energy self-sufficient, and sell surplus power to a national grid, if it harnessed its sunshine. There may be animal habitat arguments against massive solar installations in the open spaces of the west. But with government encouragement, diverting Big Oil subsidies to solar research, and government standards for the construction industry, solar-powered homes and buildings could be the norm throughout the southwest. Keep an eye on Philadelphia, hardly the sunniest place on earth. Jeff Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, is turning his team's stadium into a solar-powered, 100% self-sufficient, aesthetically pleasing example of what can be done if we're really sincere about finding solutions.
By all means, let's have a conversation about these things. But let's limit the participants to those who have demonstrated genuine concern about being "good custodians of the earth."
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Thank Heavens for Green Chile Roasting
They've started roasting the green chile here in southern New Mexico. This produces one of the great food aromas in the world, like baking bread or fresh-brewed coffee or grandma's roladen.
All great chefs understand the importance of the olfactory element in food. So, too, do dogs, often with results that displease their human companions.
A few fortunate folks have developed keen olfactory skills for political odors, as well,. In this country they're called liberals. Every now and then they catch a political aroma like green chile roasting. More often than not, in these United States, what they smell is rotten meat.
They are underwhelmed of late by a really bad stink on the wings of the winds out of Texas. Gov. Goodhair, as he was dubbed by the late, great Molly Ivins, wants to be our President.
Honest Injun! THAT Gov. Goodhair.
The one whose only policy decision about the state's record, impoverishing drought was, "pray for rain." (It didn't work.)
The one who brags about the "Texas miracle" of increasing jobs during the recession, whereas in fact in true job creation data Texas ranks last among the 50.
The one who has compelled the state's history teachers to tell their pupils that Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlaffly are "great Americans," whereas Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez are not.
The one who primed his base for his presidential run by staging a great pray-in featuring some of the most whacko, racist, ill-informed Christofascists on the face of the earth.
The one who set the all-time gubernatorial record for executing prisoners who suffered from mental disability.
Ramblin' Rick thinks he can pull Texas out of the union with a stroke of his pen; calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and -- get this -- thinks the way to get this country moving again is to suspend ALL Federal laws and regulations. And one of his lesser gaffes: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke commits "treason" when he takes even mild regulatory action to keep the country solvent.
In Iowa, a handful of kooks got together in Ames to eat pork tenders and proclaim Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congressperson, their favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. This makes her Gov. Goodhair's principal rival.
What a pair!
Bachmann could improve her knowledge of her country's history by studying even Goodhair's cockeyed version of it. Last I heard she thought Paul Revere crossed the Delaware to warn Manchester, NH, that the British were comin', which alerted Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys to win the battle of Lafayette, Ind. Something like that.
She and her hubby made their little fortune by praying homosexual people into heterosexuality, the way God intended it. Maybe her contest with Goodhair will come down to a praying contest. What a choice to inflict on God!
Meanwhile, vile odors waft unto us from Minnesota and from Texas. Fortunately, they come together right at the point of heavy green chile roasting, which neutralizes them.
All great chefs understand the importance of the olfactory element in food. So, too, do dogs, often with results that displease their human companions.
A few fortunate folks have developed keen olfactory skills for political odors, as well,. In this country they're called liberals. Every now and then they catch a political aroma like green chile roasting. More often than not, in these United States, what they smell is rotten meat.
They are underwhelmed of late by a really bad stink on the wings of the winds out of Texas. Gov. Goodhair, as he was dubbed by the late, great Molly Ivins, wants to be our President.
Honest Injun! THAT Gov. Goodhair.
The one whose only policy decision about the state's record, impoverishing drought was, "pray for rain." (It didn't work.)
The one who brags about the "Texas miracle" of increasing jobs during the recession, whereas in fact in true job creation data Texas ranks last among the 50.
The one who has compelled the state's history teachers to tell their pupils that Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlaffly are "great Americans," whereas Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez are not.
The one who primed his base for his presidential run by staging a great pray-in featuring some of the most whacko, racist, ill-informed Christofascists on the face of the earth.
The one who set the all-time gubernatorial record for executing prisoners who suffered from mental disability.
Ramblin' Rick thinks he can pull Texas out of the union with a stroke of his pen; calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and -- get this -- thinks the way to get this country moving again is to suspend ALL Federal laws and regulations. And one of his lesser gaffes: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke commits "treason" when he takes even mild regulatory action to keep the country solvent.
In Iowa, a handful of kooks got together in Ames to eat pork tenders and proclaim Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congressperson, their favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. This makes her Gov. Goodhair's principal rival.
What a pair!
Bachmann could improve her knowledge of her country's history by studying even Goodhair's cockeyed version of it. Last I heard she thought Paul Revere crossed the Delaware to warn Manchester, NH, that the British were comin', which alerted Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys to win the battle of Lafayette, Ind. Something like that.
She and her hubby made their little fortune by praying homosexual people into heterosexuality, the way God intended it. Maybe her contest with Goodhair will come down to a praying contest. What a choice to inflict on God!
Meanwhile, vile odors waft unto us from Minnesota and from Texas. Fortunately, they come together right at the point of heavy green chile roasting, which neutralizes them.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Citizens United: A Brief History Lesson
J.C. Bancroft Davis is the most influential American you did not read about in high school history class.
He's the very source of the corporate takeover of everything in these United States. It was he (not Mitt Romney, not Antonin Scalia) who invented personhood for corporations. And he was a mere clerk. Granted he was the law clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States, Morrison Waite.
Davis did his shenanigans in 1886, but the significant background begins in 1857. A black man named Dred Scott, who had lived as a free man in one of the original states, was forced into servitude when he moved to a slave state. He sued for his freedom but the U.S. Supreme Court, under the leadership of a slave-owner, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney, held that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen and hence Scott had no standing to sue in federal court.
Years later the great Justice John Marshall Harlan would call the Dred Scott decision "pernicious" and another great justice, Charles Evans Hughes, would call it a "self-inflicted wound" on the court. Nonetheless, no subsequent court ever overruled Dred Scott v. Sandford. It was negated in 1865 by the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal in the United States, and of the 14th Amendment , whose First Article declared:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was intended as the final nail in the coffin of the pernicious Dred Scott decision.
The 14th Amendment was drafted by a joint committee of 15 members of the House and Senate. Sen. Roscoe Conkling was a member of the joint committee. Upon leaving the Senate he became a railroad lawyer. He was as well-connected in Washington as he was absent scruples, for now he declared that it had been the original intent of the committee that corporations should be "persons" for purposes of this Amendment. In 1882 he made this very argument as an expert witness in a federal court case that reached the Supreme Court, so that Chief Justice Waite and the associate justices were familiar with it. In 1886, a case Conkling argued, and lost, in California was fast-tracked on appeal to the Waite Supreme Court. It was a mundane matter involving state taxes and it was called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. By this time Conkling had magically turned up a journal he said he had kept during the joint committee sessions. Its notes supported the corporate personhood thesis he had invented four years earlier. It was later determined to be a forgery.
But now, even before arguments began in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, Chief Justice Waite told attorneys for both sides, somewhat out of the blue, that he would not entertain arguments about whether corporations were persons under the 14th Amendment because the court already was of the opinion that they were. This seems to have impressed the chief justice's clerk, Mr. Davis, perhaps because he was himself a shareholder and member of the board of directors of a railroad.
The case proceded with no mention of corporate personhood, nor was the subject addressed in the majority decision. When it came time for Mr. Davis to do his most important clerical chore, writing the caption and "headnotes" (or summary) of the decision for publication in the official record, he was moved to write an inquiry to the Chief Justice:
"I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c &c as follows:
In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of opinion that it does. Please let me know whether I correctly caught your words and oblige."
This was the Chief Justice's reply:
"I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."
(Emphasis mine.)
On that basis, and that alone, railroad board member Davis, a mere clerk of court at the time, wrote as the very first sentence of his syllabus:
The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And this is the "legal precedent" on which Scalia, Roberts, Alioto, Kennedy and Thomas based their infamous Citizens United decision, which puts every American citizen under the corporate thumb; which enabled the Koch Brothers to buy the Wisconsin recall elections for Republican incumbents, and which will put virtually all future state and federal office-holders in corporate servitude.
Thank you, J.C. Bancroft Davis, Great American.
Postscript
The 14th Amendment also establishes the method of determining the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives:
"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State. . . .
Thus little ol' Delaware, with fewer than a million persons in the 2010 census, is entitled to only one congressman.
But:
Delaware is home to nearly three million U.S. corporations: by incorporating there, these corporations have declared Delaware to be their "legal domicile." These corporations are persons. They are entitled to representation!
If you gave Delaware the seats its corporate persons entitle it to, the state would have six representatives in Congress.
If I were the governor of Delaware. I'd sue for my rightful representation.
He's the very source of the corporate takeover of everything in these United States. It was he (not Mitt Romney, not Antonin Scalia) who invented personhood for corporations. And he was a mere clerk. Granted he was the law clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States, Morrison Waite.
Davis did his shenanigans in 1886, but the significant background begins in 1857. A black man named Dred Scott, who had lived as a free man in one of the original states, was forced into servitude when he moved to a slave state. He sued for his freedom but the U.S. Supreme Court, under the leadership of a slave-owner, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney, held that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen and hence Scott had no standing to sue in federal court.
Years later the great Justice John Marshall Harlan would call the Dred Scott decision "pernicious" and another great justice, Charles Evans Hughes, would call it a "self-inflicted wound" on the court. Nonetheless, no subsequent court ever overruled Dred Scott v. Sandford. It was negated in 1865 by the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal in the United States, and of the 14th Amendment , whose First Article declared:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was intended as the final nail in the coffin of the pernicious Dred Scott decision.
The 14th Amendment was drafted by a joint committee of 15 members of the House and Senate. Sen. Roscoe Conkling was a member of the joint committee. Upon leaving the Senate he became a railroad lawyer. He was as well-connected in Washington as he was absent scruples, for now he declared that it had been the original intent of the committee that corporations should be "persons" for purposes of this Amendment. In 1882 he made this very argument as an expert witness in a federal court case that reached the Supreme Court, so that Chief Justice Waite and the associate justices were familiar with it. In 1886, a case Conkling argued, and lost, in California was fast-tracked on appeal to the Waite Supreme Court. It was a mundane matter involving state taxes and it was called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. By this time Conkling had magically turned up a journal he said he had kept during the joint committee sessions. Its notes supported the corporate personhood thesis he had invented four years earlier. It was later determined to be a forgery.
But now, even before arguments began in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, Chief Justice Waite told attorneys for both sides, somewhat out of the blue, that he would not entertain arguments about whether corporations were persons under the 14th Amendment because the court already was of the opinion that they were. This seems to have impressed the chief justice's clerk, Mr. Davis, perhaps because he was himself a shareholder and member of the board of directors of a railroad.
The case proceded with no mention of corporate personhood, nor was the subject addressed in the majority decision. When it came time for Mr. Davis to do his most important clerical chore, writing the caption and "headnotes" (or summary) of the decision for publication in the official record, he was moved to write an inquiry to the Chief Justice:
"I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c &c as follows:
In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of opinion that it does. Please let me know whether I correctly caught your words and oblige."
This was the Chief Justice's reply:
"I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."
(Emphasis mine.)
On that basis, and that alone, railroad board member Davis, a mere clerk of court at the time, wrote as the very first sentence of his syllabus:
The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And this is the "legal precedent" on which Scalia, Roberts, Alioto, Kennedy and Thomas based their infamous Citizens United decision, which puts every American citizen under the corporate thumb; which enabled the Koch Brothers to buy the Wisconsin recall elections for Republican incumbents, and which will put virtually all future state and federal office-holders in corporate servitude.
Thank you, J.C. Bancroft Davis, Great American.
Postscript
The 14th Amendment also establishes the method of determining the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives:
"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State. . . .
Thus little ol' Delaware, with fewer than a million persons in the 2010 census, is entitled to only one congressman.
But:
Delaware is home to nearly three million U.S. corporations: by incorporating there, these corporations have declared Delaware to be their "legal domicile." These corporations are persons. They are entitled to representation!
If you gave Delaware the seats its corporate persons entitle it to, the state would have six representatives in Congress.
If I were the governor of Delaware. I'd sue for my rightful representation.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Wisconsin? Just Another Grain of Sand in the Land
A few starry-eyed progressives of my acquaintance had high hopes for yesterday's Wisconsin recall elections, even though the targeted incumbents represented some of the most solidly Republican districts in the state.
Challengers did manage to take away two state senate seats, but nothing really changes: the right wing still controls the entire state government, and now feels empowered to carry out its most extreme agenda.
That's essentially where the entire country is. Perhaps Wisconsin stands as the last grain of proof that the United States will never again be what it has been for some 100 years. The people of the United States, as a political entity, will not open their eyes to the truth, as Wisconsin voters have just demonstrated.
The SCOTUS gang of five assured that Koch money would prevail in Wisconsin, and that big corporations would control all future elections everywhere in the country, with the Citizens United decision. The blind citizenry won't rise up to overturn it.
It has been clear since Reagan what the Republican agenda is, and that agenda has been moved even further toward fascism by the teapot tail that wags the GOP dog. Now that the White House is occupied by a so-called leader who, either because of corruption or sadly mistaken belief, is Reagan without the Gipper chutzpah, there is absolutely no obstacle to the enactment of that agenda.
Get ready for:
* Never-ending war. This is the most important single factor in the Republican economic plan. It is not about patriotism, or protecting us from terrorists or any other "ists." We already spend more on war than China, North Korea and Russia combined. Besides the three wars that the government allows us to know about, our clandestine wars are huge beyond our worst nightmares. The Seals killed in that 'copter crash were fighting one of the uncounted clandestine wars. We've got undercover missions in three quarters of the nations on this globe we call Earth. Look at the profit margins of "defense" contractors.
* The end of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans have had the entire New Deal in their sights for ages. Now that their way is clear, the Big Three will be the first to go. Ultimately every facet of social justice and systemic fairness built by the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society will be dismantled. With their utter command of the vocabulary of Washington, the Far Right will mask the destruction in euphemism. Social Security will be "privatized," which means that the billions we now entrust to the government for safekeeping to be paid back to us in our old age will instead be turned over to Wall Street as "investments." "Investment" means placing funds in a great casino in cyberspace, where bankers and hedge fund managers pillage it, leaving "investors" penniless. Government medical insurance will be replaced with wonderful things called "vouchers," which can be used to pay private insurers to provide medical coverage for those of us who are young enough and healthy enough not to need it. Insurers, of course, will be free to keep raising their premiums until the vouchers become worthless, whereupon those of us who aren't filthy rich can simply get sick and die. Who needs "death panels?" Grandma ain't got a chance, anyway.
* Deregulation of . . .well, ultimately everything that NEEDS regulation. Banks and Wall Street, especially. And the aforementioned insurers. Corporations -- the bigger they are, the less oversight they'll get. Mergers! Takeovers! Big is good. Greed is great. Profits aren't the most important things; they're the ONLY things.
* Repeal of the Bill of Rights. We're halfway there with the Patriot Act. Learn to be VERY careful what you say and who hears you say it.
*Destruction of unions. AFL-CIO will be six meaningless letters in the alphabet. Remember St. Ronnie and the Air Traffic Controllers? Burn your union cards. They might become tickets to jail.
* Air filled with filth -- carcinogens, stench and smog. The Clean Air Act has already been weakened; the GOP has legislation in the pipeline to weaken it further; soon it won't exist.
* Non-potable water -- in lakes, streams and underground. Let them drink Coke, to paraphrase the French -- who, by the way, are Old Europe and bad.
* Vanishing public lands. Oh, there will still be "government land" but it will all be turned over to mining, drilling, logging, looting, pillaging -- whatever corporate America wants to use it for. The Grand Canyon Uranium Mine. Arches National Natural Gas. The Worst Congressman Ever, who represents southern New Mexico, is typical: he says the first thing we've got to do is repeal that awful endangered Species Act. The last wolf in the world will be "preserved" in a zoo in Billings, Mont. -- a zoo owned by Marriott.
* Contaminated earth. There'll be a Love Canal in everyone's back yard, and piles of nuclear waste in every canyon and arroyo in the west.
* Millions of unwanted children. The Official State Religion will ban contraception and make abortion a criminal act for both the provider and the abortee. Keep 'em barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
* Dead of night raids on your homes. Who knows what's going on behind those closed bedroom doors, or in those computer rooms? There's all them sex preeverts, you know, and terrorists everywhere that you least expect them.
God Bless Our Troops and God Bless America.
Challengers did manage to take away two state senate seats, but nothing really changes: the right wing still controls the entire state government, and now feels empowered to carry out its most extreme agenda.
That's essentially where the entire country is. Perhaps Wisconsin stands as the last grain of proof that the United States will never again be what it has been for some 100 years. The people of the United States, as a political entity, will not open their eyes to the truth, as Wisconsin voters have just demonstrated.
The SCOTUS gang of five assured that Koch money would prevail in Wisconsin, and that big corporations would control all future elections everywhere in the country, with the Citizens United decision. The blind citizenry won't rise up to overturn it.
It has been clear since Reagan what the Republican agenda is, and that agenda has been moved even further toward fascism by the teapot tail that wags the GOP dog. Now that the White House is occupied by a so-called leader who, either because of corruption or sadly mistaken belief, is Reagan without the Gipper chutzpah, there is absolutely no obstacle to the enactment of that agenda.
Get ready for:
* Never-ending war. This is the most important single factor in the Republican economic plan. It is not about patriotism, or protecting us from terrorists or any other "ists." We already spend more on war than China, North Korea and Russia combined. Besides the three wars that the government allows us to know about, our clandestine wars are huge beyond our worst nightmares. The Seals killed in that 'copter crash were fighting one of the uncounted clandestine wars. We've got undercover missions in three quarters of the nations on this globe we call Earth. Look at the profit margins of "defense" contractors.
* The end of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans have had the entire New Deal in their sights for ages. Now that their way is clear, the Big Three will be the first to go. Ultimately every facet of social justice and systemic fairness built by the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society will be dismantled. With their utter command of the vocabulary of Washington, the Far Right will mask the destruction in euphemism. Social Security will be "privatized," which means that the billions we now entrust to the government for safekeeping to be paid back to us in our old age will instead be turned over to Wall Street as "investments." "Investment" means placing funds in a great casino in cyberspace, where bankers and hedge fund managers pillage it, leaving "investors" penniless. Government medical insurance will be replaced with wonderful things called "vouchers," which can be used to pay private insurers to provide medical coverage for those of us who are young enough and healthy enough not to need it. Insurers, of course, will be free to keep raising their premiums until the vouchers become worthless, whereupon those of us who aren't filthy rich can simply get sick and die. Who needs "death panels?" Grandma ain't got a chance, anyway.
* Deregulation of . . .well, ultimately everything that NEEDS regulation. Banks and Wall Street, especially. And the aforementioned insurers. Corporations -- the bigger they are, the less oversight they'll get. Mergers! Takeovers! Big is good. Greed is great. Profits aren't the most important things; they're the ONLY things.
* Repeal of the Bill of Rights. We're halfway there with the Patriot Act. Learn to be VERY careful what you say and who hears you say it.
*Destruction of unions. AFL-CIO will be six meaningless letters in the alphabet. Remember St. Ronnie and the Air Traffic Controllers? Burn your union cards. They might become tickets to jail.
* Air filled with filth -- carcinogens, stench and smog. The Clean Air Act has already been weakened; the GOP has legislation in the pipeline to weaken it further; soon it won't exist.
* Non-potable water -- in lakes, streams and underground. Let them drink Coke, to paraphrase the French -- who, by the way, are Old Europe and bad.
* Vanishing public lands. Oh, there will still be "government land" but it will all be turned over to mining, drilling, logging, looting, pillaging -- whatever corporate America wants to use it for. The Grand Canyon Uranium Mine. Arches National Natural Gas. The Worst Congressman Ever, who represents southern New Mexico, is typical: he says the first thing we've got to do is repeal that awful endangered Species Act. The last wolf in the world will be "preserved" in a zoo in Billings, Mont. -- a zoo owned by Marriott.
* Contaminated earth. There'll be a Love Canal in everyone's back yard, and piles of nuclear waste in every canyon and arroyo in the west.
* Millions of unwanted children. The Official State Religion will ban contraception and make abortion a criminal act for both the provider and the abortee. Keep 'em barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
* Dead of night raids on your homes. Who knows what's going on behind those closed bedroom doors, or in those computer rooms? There's all them sex preeverts, you know, and terrorists everywhere that you least expect them.
God Bless Our Troops and God Bless America.
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