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."
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
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.
Monday, August 8, 2011
It's Like Having a Reverse Midas Touch; All That's Gold Turns to S---
Paul Krugman (whose name Kidglove can't even pronounce) said it, and said it well: "The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn’t whether we’ll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized."
If even the President of the United States won't stand up to them, who's going to lead the effort to "defeat and marginalize" these idiots? I've cupped my ear, my friends; the answer isn't blowin' in the wind.
What's really depressing for intelligent, visionary, progressive Americans is that the extremists of whom Krugman speaks won't be satisfied until they've destroyed and dismantled everything good the federal government has done in the last 100 years.
When Kidglove caved in on the phony deficit "crisis," he opened the door for them to destroy Social Security ("the dole"), Medicare ("socialized medicine") and Medicaid. No doubt the Cato Heritage squad is already putting the plan for this into the hands of the corporate puppets in Congress, something enabling us poor suckers to put roughly the equivalent of our Social Security payments into their beloved Market, so the hedge fund managers who pay no taxes can steal billions more.
Meanwhile, at the back door, the wolf has already entered the house of environmental protections. Goodbye, clean air. So long, potable water. Hello, cancer. Goodbye, Grand Canyon, Arches, Vermillion Cliffs and a thousand other beautiful and wonderful places owned by We, the People. Hello poisonous mining, fracking, drilling, coal burning and mountain top removal. Goodbye green landscapes, blue skies and sweet-smelling earth. Hello mercury run-off, fiish kills, oil spills and black lung disease. They've already slipped a rider into H.R. 2584 (the 2012 appropriations bill) to severely weaken many environmental regulations.
In time, they'll eliminate or emasculate OSHA, the EPA and what shred of manhood remains in the NRC. Fukushima II, anyone?
Here's a sample of what they've already got in the legislative pipeline:
--Natural gas and oil drilling in and around Arches National Park.
--Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.
--Increased amonia emissions from power plants.
--Ending requirements for better gas mileage in automobiles beginning in 2016 and reducing limits on carcinogens in exhaust emissions.
--Allowing chemical companies to dump pesticides into waterways and publish false information on pesticide labels.
--Repealing health-based air quality standards fior offshore oil operations.
--Eliminate regulation of mountaintop removal water runoff into streams, ash from the burning of coal and hard rock mining.
There's more. Much more. ALEC, the right-wing source of Koch- and Exxon-friendly state legislation, is propagating laws to make it virtually impossible for environmental groups to sue polluters.
And then there's education. Besides cutting funding for public schools they will in effect subsidize (with taxpayer money) private, religious schools through things called vouchers. Any inducement for our best and brightest to become teachers will be doused by cutting teacher pay, benefits and pensions, a la Wisconsin.
The concept of trust-busting and regulating corporate crime is as old as Teddy Roosevelt's presidency. Deregulation, depending upon the Holy Market to regulate itself and allowing corporations to run the country is the new, raw deal.
Defeat them? Marginalize them? Not in Dr. Kidglove's U.S.A.
If even the President of the United States won't stand up to them, who's going to lead the effort to "defeat and marginalize" these idiots? I've cupped my ear, my friends; the answer isn't blowin' in the wind.
What's really depressing for intelligent, visionary, progressive Americans is that the extremists of whom Krugman speaks won't be satisfied until they've destroyed and dismantled everything good the federal government has done in the last 100 years.
When Kidglove caved in on the phony deficit "crisis," he opened the door for them to destroy Social Security ("the dole"), Medicare ("socialized medicine") and Medicaid. No doubt the Cato Heritage squad is already putting the plan for this into the hands of the corporate puppets in Congress, something enabling us poor suckers to put roughly the equivalent of our Social Security payments into their beloved Market, so the hedge fund managers who pay no taxes can steal billions more.
Meanwhile, at the back door, the wolf has already entered the house of environmental protections. Goodbye, clean air. So long, potable water. Hello, cancer. Goodbye, Grand Canyon, Arches, Vermillion Cliffs and a thousand other beautiful and wonderful places owned by We, the People. Hello poisonous mining, fracking, drilling, coal burning and mountain top removal. Goodbye green landscapes, blue skies and sweet-smelling earth. Hello mercury run-off, fiish kills, oil spills and black lung disease. They've already slipped a rider into H.R. 2584 (the 2012 appropriations bill) to severely weaken many environmental regulations.
In time, they'll eliminate or emasculate OSHA, the EPA and what shred of manhood remains in the NRC. Fukushima II, anyone?
Here's a sample of what they've already got in the legislative pipeline:
--Natural gas and oil drilling in and around Arches National Park.
--Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.
--Increased amonia emissions from power plants.
--Ending requirements for better gas mileage in automobiles beginning in 2016 and reducing limits on carcinogens in exhaust emissions.
--Allowing chemical companies to dump pesticides into waterways and publish false information on pesticide labels.
--Repealing health-based air quality standards fior offshore oil operations.
--Eliminate regulation of mountaintop removal water runoff into streams, ash from the burning of coal and hard rock mining.
There's more. Much more. ALEC, the right-wing source of Koch- and Exxon-friendly state legislation, is propagating laws to make it virtually impossible for environmental groups to sue polluters.
And then there's education. Besides cutting funding for public schools they will in effect subsidize (with taxpayer money) private, religious schools through things called vouchers. Any inducement for our best and brightest to become teachers will be doused by cutting teacher pay, benefits and pensions, a la Wisconsin.
The concept of trust-busting and regulating corporate crime is as old as Teddy Roosevelt's presidency. Deregulation, depending upon the Holy Market to regulate itself and allowing corporations to run the country is the new, raw deal.
Defeat them? Marginalize them? Not in Dr. Kidglove's U.S.A.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Our 4F Government in Full Fancy
OK, Uncle Sam's checks won't bounce -- for a while, at least. Big deal.
The feckless frauds, falsifiers, freaks and fanatics in Washington have achieved nothing else with their comedy of errors. Economic problems abound and the "deal" brokered by these nut cases will only make them worse. "It's a step," they tell us. A step off a cliff.
Today, for example, came the news that in July, the number of planned job cuts surged to a 16-month high of 66,414 -- a 60 percent increase from June. What's worse: most of the new cuts come in segments of the economy that had been relatively immune to layoffs.
This comes at a time when some 50 million Americans are jobless. Economists say the Raw Deal from Washington will kill another 1.8 million jobs. That's on top of the 8.7 million jobs that have vanished since January, 2008. The economy added 18,000 new jobs in June. In the 1990s we added jobs at the rate of 350,000 a month. If the 1990s rate were to be magically restored, it would still take four years to get the unemployment rate down to a tolerable 5 per cent. At the current rate, it will take 11 years -- if even the current feeble rate can be sustained. The number of jobless Americans has increased at the rate of more than 120,00 per month since March of this year. If the 4F's in Washington continue the present course, the labor force participation rate in the national economy will reach an historic low later this year.
In the first quarter of this year, corporate profits increased by more than $140 billion. Double-digit profits are continuing into the second quarter, especially in pharmaceuticals and health care -- two areas planning big layoffs. (If we cut taxes on bidness, the 4Fs tell us, bidness will add jobs. GE, a really enormous corporation whose former CEO is a top economic advisor to Kidglove, paid NO taxes last year -- and shipped thousands of jobs overseas just a month ago.)
While the 4Fs were doing their silly dance about an imaginary "crisis" cause by the deficit bogeyman, they didn't bother to renew funding for the FAA, forcing it to shut down. The central issue was $163 million (M=million) in subsidies paid to small, rural airports. The right-wing kooks wanted that cut. Their shut-down snit is costing us $1.2 billion (B=billion) in ticket-tax revenues. These jerks can't even do simple arithmetic.
It's clear that Kidglove and his playmates in the 4F Gang want to gut our so-called "entitlements" -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in particular. If the appointment of Alan Simpson to head his austerity committee didn't make that clear, his eagerness to make these programs bargaining chips in his sell-out to the far right last week absolutely proved it.
Like the GOP, Kidglove is turning "entitlements" into a dirty word in the national dialogue, like "liberal" and "socialism" and "Obamacare." But "entitlement," the dictionary tells us, is another word for "right" -- "the fact of having a right to something."
We, the People, have a right to these benefits. That is a fact.
But "fact" isn't one of the 4Fs in Washington.
There's another four-letter "f-word" that fits the situation. It's a verb and it's what the President and the Congress are doing to the American people.
Postscript
And what does the GOP's beloved Market think of the Raw Deal? The Dow closed down 500 points Thursday, the worst one-day plummet since 2008.
The feckless frauds, falsifiers, freaks and fanatics in Washington have achieved nothing else with their comedy of errors. Economic problems abound and the "deal" brokered by these nut cases will only make them worse. "It's a step," they tell us. A step off a cliff.
Today, for example, came the news that in July, the number of planned job cuts surged to a 16-month high of 66,414 -- a 60 percent increase from June. What's worse: most of the new cuts come in segments of the economy that had been relatively immune to layoffs.
This comes at a time when some 50 million Americans are jobless. Economists say the Raw Deal from Washington will kill another 1.8 million jobs. That's on top of the 8.7 million jobs that have vanished since January, 2008. The economy added 18,000 new jobs in June. In the 1990s we added jobs at the rate of 350,000 a month. If the 1990s rate were to be magically restored, it would still take four years to get the unemployment rate down to a tolerable 5 per cent. At the current rate, it will take 11 years -- if even the current feeble rate can be sustained. The number of jobless Americans has increased at the rate of more than 120,00 per month since March of this year. If the 4F's in Washington continue the present course, the labor force participation rate in the national economy will reach an historic low later this year.
In the first quarter of this year, corporate profits increased by more than $140 billion. Double-digit profits are continuing into the second quarter, especially in pharmaceuticals and health care -- two areas planning big layoffs. (If we cut taxes on bidness, the 4Fs tell us, bidness will add jobs. GE, a really enormous corporation whose former CEO is a top economic advisor to Kidglove, paid NO taxes last year -- and shipped thousands of jobs overseas just a month ago.)
While the 4Fs were doing their silly dance about an imaginary "crisis" cause by the deficit bogeyman, they didn't bother to renew funding for the FAA, forcing it to shut down. The central issue was $163 million (M=million) in subsidies paid to small, rural airports. The right-wing kooks wanted that cut. Their shut-down snit is costing us $1.2 billion (B=billion) in ticket-tax revenues. These jerks can't even do simple arithmetic.
It's clear that Kidglove and his playmates in the 4F Gang want to gut our so-called "entitlements" -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in particular. If the appointment of Alan Simpson to head his austerity committee didn't make that clear, his eagerness to make these programs bargaining chips in his sell-out to the far right last week absolutely proved it.
Like the GOP, Kidglove is turning "entitlements" into a dirty word in the national dialogue, like "liberal" and "socialism" and "Obamacare." But "entitlement," the dictionary tells us, is another word for "right" -- "the fact of having a right to something."
We, the People, have a right to these benefits. That is a fact.
But "fact" isn't one of the 4Fs in Washington.
There's another four-letter "f-word" that fits the situation. It's a verb and it's what the President and the Congress are doing to the American people.
Postscript
And what does the GOP's beloved Market think of the Raw Deal? The Dow closed down 500 points Thursday, the worst one-day plummet since 2008.
Monday, August 1, 2011
The New America of the Raw Deal
This is, to recall the words of a great president, "a day which will live in infamy."
At a time when we needed a new New Deal, the worst president in our history has joined hands with the worst Congress in our history to give us a Raw Deal.
If the nearly 60 million jobless Americans don't mobilize and march on Washington demanding justice; if the millions of progressive Americans don't mobilize and form a vigorous third party; if the so-called Tea Party doesn't strangle on its own bile; if the few liberals in Congress don't seize the bully pullpit and raise unshirted hell; if independent Americans don't recognize the treason just committed in Washington . . .
. . . if these things don't happen now, they will never happen. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
None of these things will happen, of course.
Once there was a democracy known as the United States of America.
Now there is a United Corporatocracy of North America, founded in greed and dedicated to the proposition that all corporations are people with inalienable rights to unconscionable profits.
Ruled by oligarchs, racists and bigots, it has sucked the blood of protest from hundreds of millions of spineless, leaderless so-called citizens.
For the masses, there is nothing left but guilt, groveling, subservience, submission, orts on the table and potholes in the road: grim, grinding poverty. Poverty of ideas. Poverty of ethics. Poverty of the body and the soul.
Learn to like it, you ignorant fools.
You brought it on yourselves.
At a time when we needed a new New Deal, the worst president in our history has joined hands with the worst Congress in our history to give us a Raw Deal.
If the nearly 60 million jobless Americans don't mobilize and march on Washington demanding justice; if the millions of progressive Americans don't mobilize and form a vigorous third party; if the so-called Tea Party doesn't strangle on its own bile; if the few liberals in Congress don't seize the bully pullpit and raise unshirted hell; if independent Americans don't recognize the treason just committed in Washington . . .
. . . if these things don't happen now, they will never happen. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
None of these things will happen, of course.
Once there was a democracy known as the United States of America.
Now there is a United Corporatocracy of North America, founded in greed and dedicated to the proposition that all corporations are people with inalienable rights to unconscionable profits.
Ruled by oligarchs, racists and bigots, it has sucked the blood of protest from hundreds of millions of spineless, leaderless so-called citizens.
For the masses, there is nothing left but guilt, groveling, subservience, submission, orts on the table and potholes in the road: grim, grinding poverty. Poverty of ideas. Poverty of ethics. Poverty of the body and the soul.
Learn to like it, you ignorant fools.
You brought it on yourselves.
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