To Those Who Rally for The American Dream

To my fellow patriots, who are rallying today in state capitals and major cities around the country in support of the government workers of Wisconsin:

I deeply regret that we were unable to make the long journey to Santa Fe to join you today. We support you from afar, as we have supported from afar the beloved granddaughter who is at this very moment with the freedom fighters in Madison, as she has been from the outset.

Like those throughout the Arab world fighting nonviolently for freedom, you are predominantly young, seeking to restore the democracy we older Americans let slip away.  Why did we allow giant corporations, plutocrats, oligarchs, to capture our democracy?  Avarice.  Ignorance.  Distraction. Moral sloth.  Ethical indifference.  Self-deceit. Deafness to uncomfortable truth.  History, I fear, will judge us harshly as it will the leaders we allowed to be "elected."

We have placed a terrible burden on your shoulders.  We gave away our moral standing when we allowed our leaders to lie us into a  degrading, illicit war, which is continuing endlessly, draining our resources and plunging us ever deeper  into debt. We forfeited our most precious rights, enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, when we failed to rebel against the so-called PATRIOT Act.  Party labels aside, we have persisted in electing a kakistocracy to public office, ignorant or cowardly or amoral individuals eager to trade the public good for private profit.

In the outcome of your struggle lies the fate of the nation.  The power of organized workers is the last remaining counter-force in these United States to the corporate takeover of everything.  Only you stand between the hope for a rebirth of freedom, and a dictatorship of the obscenely rich.

The odds are against you, as they are against the masses of the common people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and the other Arab countries where, by some miracle of the human intellect and spirit, a vast clamoring for human rights has spontaneously erupted. They are seeking what my generation had, and squandered.

It remains for you, the young and idealistic, to fight to regain them.  We have handed to you, patriots in the capitol squares of America, what our greatest president called a "great unfinished task."  You must see to it that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from the earth.

You are the last, the best, the only hope.  May you find the strength, the courage, the resolve to win this great battle on behalf of all The People.

On Wisconsin, FDR and a Coward Named Cox

Andrew Sullivan and Clive Crook have brought Franklin D. Roosevelt into the Wisconsin governor's battle with the state's government employees.

FDR is perhaps the most venerated saint in the labor movement's heaven.  Surely, then, the far right will try to make capital of his 1937 letter, cited on the Sullivan blog, to Luther C. Steward,  president of the National Federation of Federal employees, particularly these passages:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.

Blest though he may be, FDR's private opinions of 74 years ago are utterly irrelevant to what's happening in Wisconsin and spreading to other states with Tea Pot governors. Introducing his Steward letter to the Wisconsin debate would be comparable to introducing into the 1964 Civil Rights deliberations the words Lincoln spoke at Charleston, IL, in the debate with Douglas:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

Such beliefs, held by most white people at the time, did not diminish Lincoln's hatred of the institution of slavery, nor his determination that it must face "ultimate extinction" in this country.

FDR's remarks about federal government employees, set in the context of 1937, were tempered by a preface:

The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical.

It would be decades before both federal and state governments began to acknowledge that if public workers' "desire" is basically no different from that of employees in private industry, then their rights under the laws governing labor relations should be no different, either.

The historical context of FDR's letter is important.  It was written just weeks after American labor had been revolutionized by the auto industry's acceptance of the UAW as bargaining agent for its workers.  It was written just months after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the so-called Wagner Act) paved the way for not just auto workers, but millions of other American wage-earners to lift themselves up by the bootstraps into lives of dignity, able ultimately to afford better health care, pensions and win government oversight of workplace safety. New and radical stuff! It came even as the richest Americans, the barons of business and finance, were villifying "that man" in the White House for the communist folly called Social Security.  FDR's personal view about public employees was shaped by that political climate, by the times in which he governed, just as Lincoln's personal views on race were shaped by the times in which he operated.

America's labor laws are a swiss cheese of often discordant federal and state laws, so that what's legal in the 22 right to work states, for example, doesn't apply in states like Wisconsin that have for half a century recognized public employees' right to collective bargaining.  That is a right democratically won under rules virtually identical to those spelled out in the NLRA, and thus, I contend,  absolutely irrevocable by unilateral action of either signatory.  It would be for the Wisconsin courts to decide, but I submit  that neither the legislature nor the governor can repeal that right without the consent of the unions and their members.

I will not even attempt to conceal my contempt for Wisconsin's governor and Republican legislators, for the rapacious Koch brothers who put them in office, or for their supporters in other states seeking to solve budget problems by breaking the backs of labor and cutting taxes on corporations.

I hold in particular contempt such supporters as Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox of Indiana, who twittered recently that Wisconsin officials should "use live ammunition" against the Madison protesters.  Asked if he meant that literally, he replied, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force."

Mr. Cox, my granddaughter, Brittany, is one of those protesters and has been from the outset.  She's a social worker, who worked three jobs to get through college and earn her master's degree.  She works countless unpaid hours and often spends her own limited resources to provide her clients with things they need.  Her program has reduced Wisconsin's infant mortality rate among racial minorities from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the nation.

Mr. Cox, you scum, you are unworthy to lick the dirt off Brittany's shoe soles.  I invite you, you miserable coward, to come to New Mexico and tell me to my face that you want to "use live ammunition" against Brittany.

The Greatest Baseball Player of All Time

Ronald Reagan tops a list of the nation's greatest presidents, ahead of Abraham Lincoln, according to a new Gallup survey. -- News item.

      *   *   *

As spring training for another baseball season swings into high gear, it is time to discuss the Greatest Baseball Player of All Time.

Eddie Miller did things shortstops just don't do today.  He cut a hole in the sweet spot of his fielder's mitt!  "Gives me a better feel, especially on double plays started by Frey."  That would be Lonnie Frey, his second baseman with the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Together they turned 112 double plays in the 1943 season.  Cubs fans may sing the praises of Tinker to Evers to Chance, but in Cincy, Miller to Frey to McCormick spells G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.

Eddie (The Ripper) Miller broke into the major leagues in 1936 at the age of 19.  Already he was demonstrating the fielding prowess that would make him a seven-time All-Star.  In 1937, the 20-year-old shortstop wasn't charged with a single error.

Eddie could do it all, however.  Swing the bat, run the bases . . . he stole 11 bases in 1942 at the ripe old age of 25.  It's true that other shortstops like Luke Appling or Hughie Jennings compiled higher lifetime batting averages than Eddie's .238, but Miller could take two and hit to right like nobody before or after him. 

And in 1947, he not only hit .268, but also belted a career high 19 home runs.  Miller actually led the National League in homers for most of the first month of the season.

Sure, you had your Ty Cobbs, your Babe Ruths, your Honus Wagners, your Ted Williamses and a whole batch of terrific pitchers.

But among everyday position players, there was only one Eddie Miller. (The other Eddie Miller who played big-league baseball was a pitcher.)

To this day, kids on the sandlots of Cincinnati are inspired to go out and win one for The Ripper.

And Crown They Good, With Brotherhood . . . .

In the Arab world, common people by the thousands are taking to the streets and public squares to demand basic human rights and participation in their own government.

In Madison, WI, American workers by the thousands are taking to the public square and Capitol rotunda to preserve basic human rights democratically won half a century ago when The People still had a voice in their own government.

Police and military thugs for the king stormed Pearl square in the capital of Bahrain, killing five of the protesters and putting Manama under army control.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Teabagger, threatens to call in the National Guard to sweep Madison clean of protesters.

Ah, America, Land of the Free.

Ray McGovern, 71, had a distinguished career in United States government as an intelligence analyst.  From retirement, he spotted the falsehoods in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and warned the people about them.  He has continued to speak out bravely against not just the lies and injustices of our government, but against the abuses and cover-ups of the clergy's abuses in the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs.  He fears no power, neither Papacy nor White House.  He is a brave and honest man.

McGovern was in the audience at George Washington University the other day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to give a speech about . . . free speech. The audience, including McGovern, stood as she entered.  When she prepared to speak everyone sat down, except McGovern. "It was my symbolic way of saying not everybody agrees with her.  When she came in I not only remained standing but I turned my back to her." He was seized by government thugs, assaulted, dragged from the room and double handcuffed with metal cuffs causing profuse bleeding. 

Ah, America, land of free speech.

In South Dakota a Republican state legislator named Phil Jensen has introduced a bill that would make it "justifiable homicide" to murder any person attempting to "harm an unborn child" -- such as doctors who perform legal abortions.

Ah, America ! God Shed His Grace on Thee

The ruthless king who ordered the shock troops into Pearl Square on the island nation of Bahrain is a real pal of the American government because he lets us park our Fifth Fleet there.  Here are some of our other pals in that region:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.  Human Rights Watch says his regime "systematically suppresses or fails to protect the rights of nine million Saudi women and girls . . . and some two million Shia citizens.  Each year thousands of people receive unfair trials . . . arbitrary detention . . . curbs on freedom."

King Abdullah II of Jordan.  Human Rights Watch: "Torture (is) routine and widespread, in particular at police stations."  Free speech is prohibited.

President Gurbanguly Berdmukhamedov of Turkmenistan.  One of the most repressive regimes in the world, a favorite of General David Petraeus in particular.  Makes arbitrary arrests, detains prisoners incommunicado, tortures, abuses women.  No freedom of religion, speech or press.  Has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.

President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.  Routinely elected with 90 or more percent of the vote, Kamirov  endorses torture of dissenters; two were boiled to death in 2003.  The government rounds up children to do the cotton harvest every year. U.S. props him up with aid to his spy agency and police.  He provides U.S. with supply routes for our forces in Afghanistan.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.  Commands large offshore oil reserves.  Good pal of Condi Rice.  Human Rights Watch: "Mired in corruption, poverty and repression."  Posed for Photo Op with his buddy, Barry Obama, at Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2009.

Ah, America, Beacon of Liberty to the World.

How Our Corporatocracy Works

The tragic human cost of living in a corporatocracy is becoming ever more clear to anyone who takes the blinders off and thinks for a while.

Our corporatocracy has been ratified by the Supreme Court, has intimidated our president and bought our Congress.  Tea Party Congresswomen to the contrary notwithstanding, that's all three branches of government.  Total control.

The budget submitted by Dr. Kidglove, created under the specter of the deficit bogeyman, proposes to make the poor, the old, the sick and  the uneducated pay for the economic crimes of filthy rich bankers and financiers. 

While the filthy rich count their profits and chuckle like Scrooge, millions of Americans remain jobless.  For the most recent quarter, the country has created barely one-fifth of the number of new jobs needed just to accommodate new workers entering the job market.  So the net number of unemployed Americans continues to grow.

Meanwhile, corporate America is sitting on a cash horde of well over two trillion dollars.  Their Republican puppets in Congress, willy-nilly cutting "job-killing entitlements," talk about the need for jobs even while opposing the very public policies that would create them.  The United States Chamber of Commerce prattles about the need for jobs even while plotting possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against those who support proposals to create them.

Dr. Kidglove, eying the corporate stash of cash, went to the US C of C, hat in hand, and begged them to please, sir, spend some of that money putting Americans back to work.  They listened grumpily, but have absolutely no intention of spending a dime of the cash horde to hire American workers.  The business plans of corporate America have committed all of that cash to huge stock buyback programs and increased dividends to enrich big investors and senior managers.  They did this in 2002-2006 with nearly three trillion in hoarded profits, which they dispensed just in time for filthy rich investors and managers to benefit from George Bush's first big round of tax cuts for the richest two percent of us.  The new round of payouts comes just in time for the filthy rich to benefit from the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Responding to the Big Bust of 2008,  the Bush-Obama strategy was to bail out out the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that caused it.  Obama's rationale was that the bailed-out banks and investors would eventually create jobs, lower mortgage rates and adjust terms to save homeowners and boost tax revenues of the cash-starved states.  None of it happened.

Now the corporations and their lackeys in Congress have coerced Dr. Kidglove into a policy of cutting the social services that poor, old, jobless and sick Americans depend upon for their very lives.  The cuts he offers won't satisfy them.  They'll cut more.

Meanwhile, there's no talk whatsoever about cutting the defense budget or ending the immoral wars that drove us into this deficit.  There's no talk of cutting the lavish subsidies to big oil and gas companies, to drug manufacturers, to health insurance companies, to the huge Agribusiness conglomerates.  These suckers at the teats of tax revenue are part of the corporatocracy that owns us; of course their subsidies won't be touched.

Meanwhile, a new tip of the corporate iceberg is peeking out above the waves.  It is the virtual merging of the government's massive spying on citizenry with corporate skullduggery against citizens who speak the truth to power.

The U.S. Chamber, through its rich and powerful Washington law firm, has conspired with government spy technology contractors to engage in possibly criminal disinformation campaigns against supporters of WikiLeaks and other progressive information outlets.  It has targeted online journalists and others for "disruption."

And just today, the New York Times and the economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated how financial institutions manipulate their Congressional puppets and the public to avoid any real regulation of the sort of crimes that caused the 2008 Bust.  They disclosed the utter fallacy of a major report commissioned by the "Derivative End Users Coalition" -- formed by the big banks to prevent implementation of the financial controls in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act.  It was prepared by a consulting firm called Keybridge Research, which falsified data and lied about its affiliations with responsible academics.

Confronted with the Stiglitz findings by a Times reporter, the president of Keybridge  replied that "the client had asked us" to create the report, which was "a hypothetical study."

Another term for it is lying, but it will serve as a rationale for the puppets of Congress to do the bidding of their corporate masters. The rich will get richer and the poor will pay.

Let them eat cake.

The Message from Liberation Square

Two protesters in Cairo have posted an open letter to the rest of the world that raises an interesting question in the United States.

Mahmoud Salem and Gihan Ibrahim, 20-ish activists and bloggers who have been in Tahir Square since Jan. 25, had this to say:

      
 People here are tired. We’ve been beaten, shot at, tear-gassed, rained on, 
      denied   medical access, and have lived in a public square for more than two 
      weeks. Mercenary thugs on horses have attacked us with whips, swords, 
      and knives. Hundreds of people have lost their lives and thousands are 
      hurt or missing.


   
      The revolutionary feeling here is incredible. Every day this square is full of 
      peasants, workers, students and professionals, engineers, teachers, singers, 
      writers and celebrities, Muslims, Christians, young, old, rich and poor.



      We are demanding things which everyone can agree on: an end to 
      corruption,  dictatorship and oppression; the ability to vote in free, fair and 
      democratic elections; freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens. 

The "interesting question" is this.

When, if ever, will masses of Americans bestir themselves to demand the same things here?

Chile to Egypt: A Broad, Blood-Red Line

Little noticed in the focus on Egypt's popular uprising, Chile at almost the same moment began a government investigation into the death of Salvador Allende. The timing is ironic.  It calls attention to the continuum, under presidents of both parties, of American support for "friendly" dictators, never mind the poverty and misery of the people under their thumb.

The investigation announced Jan. 26 comes 38 years after Allende, the first democratically elected Socialist head of state in the Americas, died during a military coup d'etat engineered by the CIA .  The police declared his death a suicide -- the same police who celebrated it with 24 documented cases of kidnaping, torture and murder in the immediate aftermath of the military takeover.

U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet became Chile's dictator, lavishly supported by American taxpayer funds.  This, according to the Human Rights Foundation, is what he accomplished: "He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,200 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet’s name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex."

And so as Chile seeks the truth about a savage dictator installed by the United States -- the long-held suspicion is that Allende was slain on the CIA's orders by Pinochet's troops -- Egypt  seethes with popular revolt against another.  It is four decades in time but only a moment of truth in ideology between Pinochet and Mubarak.

Washington's view is, and for too long has been, that bad guys are just fine as long as they're our bad guys.  Let us never forget that before he was reviled, Saddam Hussein was our friend. Or that Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagen, those great leaders of the free world, pointed with pride to the Chilean economic miracle while Pinochet was torturing and killing the people of Chile, while the underclass grew in number and diminished in its share of that economy, while oligarchs and military thugs and friends of the CIA -- and American corporations -- prospered.

Now the successors to Maggie and Ron wring their hands over the situation in Egypt, piously proclaiming their support for "democracy" yet fretting about "stability."  These are code words.  "Support for democracy" means the western powers don't want to reveal their hypocrisy by endorsing a ruthless military suppression of the popular uprising. Let the blood flow in prisons and torture chambers, but not on TV.  "Stability" means retaining a pro-Israel government in a populous Arab country that controls an absolutely vital strategic venue in the Middle East, the Suez Canal. The people be damned; Washington must remain the off-stage power in the region; its warships must retain free access and egress on the Suez.

Searching for soothing classical music yesterday, the "seek" function on my car radio paused briefly on one of the stations that blares those insufferably stupid right wing talk shows.  Sotto voce: "Well, yes Mubarak is a dictator," host and guest agreed. Energico: "But the great danger is that they'll replace him with something worse."

No, no you fools! Here is the "great danger:"

Our government's domestic policies are moving uncomfortably parallel to our failed foreign policy.  Abroad, we prop up regimes that  enrich corporations, oligarchs and despots while the mass of common people suffer, starve and die.  At home we are ruled by a shadow government of corporations and oligarchs who find plenty of money for weapons  but none for health care or social security.  People don't count, democracy is just a word, what's good for business is good for America whose business is war.

Pinochet kept his grip in Chile firm by creating a Death Squad of  several Army officers and two infantrymen which traveled from prison to prison in a U.S.-supplied Puma helicopter, picking out those detainees -- all of them held incognito and without charge --  considered most dangerous to the state, murdering them and burying them in unmarked mass graves.

Legislation passed in the Bush Administration, and policies continuing under Obama, could over time lead to that very thing happening here.

Look what's happening -- legally -- to a kid named Bradley Manning.