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.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Thursday, August 18, 2011
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.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Who Was Betrayed? Let Us Count the People . . .
Whatever the outcome of the debacle in Washington, President Obama and his spineless fellow Democrats in Congress have already betrayed the nation's elder citizens, and the sick, the poor, the jobless.
The ransom the Republicans extort from the people in exchange for what has historically been the routine act of raising the debt ceiling will be taken from these, the people who can least afford it.
Oil and gas companies will continue to record the highest corporate profits in the history of money. Profits of private insurance companies will continue to rise even as they exclude more and more needy people from coverage. Wall Street banks will swell with cash and CEO pay and bonuses will soar. Corporations sitting on piles of cash -- Apple right now has more money on hand than the federal government -- will continue to ship jobs overseas to places where even children have to work, and workers earn pennies a day.
Meanwhile:
--45.25 million American retirees will have their Social Security income cut, their Medicare premiums increased and benefits slashed, their private pensions -- if any -- cut off because of failed or stolen funding.
--The number of unemployed Americans, now roughly 57.28 million, will continue to rise, while the nation's roads, bridges and water systems, already outdated and in disrepair, will continue to be neglected and deteriorate.
--More than 40 million Americans will remain without health insurance; some 20,000 unnecessary deaths will occur each year because of this. The nation's overall health care system, now 13th best among industrialized countries, will decline even more.
--The number of Americans living below the poverty level -- now almost 40 million -- will increase as older retirees by the millions lose the benefits they live on.
--The 6 million Americans whose only income is food stamps will lose that assistance. Presumably they will starve to death. Triage, GOP style.
This is America as designed by The Audacious Hoper, the Tea Party and the Republicans.
Don't complain, though. As Dr. Kidglove recently scolded, he's offering a glass half-full and we only see one half empty.
And this was before he siphoned still more out of that glass to appease the puppets of the corporations that rule us.
When will we ever learn?
The ransom the Republicans extort from the people in exchange for what has historically been the routine act of raising the debt ceiling will be taken from these, the people who can least afford it.
Oil and gas companies will continue to record the highest corporate profits in the history of money. Profits of private insurance companies will continue to rise even as they exclude more and more needy people from coverage. Wall Street banks will swell with cash and CEO pay and bonuses will soar. Corporations sitting on piles of cash -- Apple right now has more money on hand than the federal government -- will continue to ship jobs overseas to places where even children have to work, and workers earn pennies a day.
Meanwhile:
--45.25 million American retirees will have their Social Security income cut, their Medicare premiums increased and benefits slashed, their private pensions -- if any -- cut off because of failed or stolen funding.
--The number of unemployed Americans, now roughly 57.28 million, will continue to rise, while the nation's roads, bridges and water systems, already outdated and in disrepair, will continue to be neglected and deteriorate.
--More than 40 million Americans will remain without health insurance; some 20,000 unnecessary deaths will occur each year because of this. The nation's overall health care system, now 13th best among industrialized countries, will decline even more.
--The number of Americans living below the poverty level -- now almost 40 million -- will increase as older retirees by the millions lose the benefits they live on.
--The 6 million Americans whose only income is food stamps will lose that assistance. Presumably they will starve to death. Triage, GOP style.
This is America as designed by The Audacious Hoper, the Tea Party and the Republicans.
Don't complain, though. As Dr. Kidglove recently scolded, he's offering a glass half-full and we only see one half empty.
And this was before he siphoned still more out of that glass to appease the puppets of the corporations that rule us.
When will we ever learn?
Saturday, July 30, 2011
If a Thing Is Wrong, It Is Wrong
Things must be really bad out there. Today I found not one, but two things to agree with on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal.
First: an editorial today concluded, "The debt-limit hobbits (in the House) should . . . realize that at this point the Washington fracas they are prolonging is harming the Republican image. The GOP is not coming off as adults to whom voters might entrust the government."
Next, this observation by the normally vacuous Peggy Noonan: "(Obama) is losing a battle in which he had superior forces -- the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser."
Robert Reich, former top aide to Democratic presidents, makes the point in a slightly different way:
"Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he's too embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy making in Washington, or too intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message. He may also disdain the repetition necessary to break through the noise and drive home the larger purpose of his presidency. I have known (and worked for) presidents who succumbed to all these, at least for a time.
"A more disturbing explanation is that he simply lacks the courage to tell the truth. He wants most of all to be seen as a responsible adult rather than a fighter. As such, he allows himself to be trapped by situations -- the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently -- within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start.
"Obama cannot mobilize America around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. This is not leadership."
Compromise has been useful to U.S. governments in times when reasonable arguments could be made on both sides of an issue. But as Lincoln put it:
"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."
President Obama has failed to part with those who have "gone wrong:" Republicans who have allowed Tea Party fools to drag them rightward in the extreme; Wall Street; big oil and gas; pharmaceutical and health insurance companies; CIA torturers; advocates of excessive secrecy in government and excessive power for the executive; those who abrogate the Bill of Rights . . .
These are matters of moral and constitutional law. If a thing is wrong, it is wrong. Compromise does not mitigate its wrongness.
What's been happening lately in Washington is wrong. Everyone who has been part of it is wrong.
For those who, deep in their private beliefs, know that it is wrong -- and there are such -- it is time to "live by the light that they have."
One day, if the nation survives, it will thank them.
First: an editorial today concluded, "The debt-limit hobbits (in the House) should . . . realize that at this point the Washington fracas they are prolonging is harming the Republican image. The GOP is not coming off as adults to whom voters might entrust the government."
Next, this observation by the normally vacuous Peggy Noonan: "(Obama) is losing a battle in which he had superior forces -- the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser."
Robert Reich, former top aide to Democratic presidents, makes the point in a slightly different way:
"Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he's too embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy making in Washington, or too intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message. He may also disdain the repetition necessary to break through the noise and drive home the larger purpose of his presidency. I have known (and worked for) presidents who succumbed to all these, at least for a time.
"A more disturbing explanation is that he simply lacks the courage to tell the truth. He wants most of all to be seen as a responsible adult rather than a fighter. As such, he allows himself to be trapped by situations -- the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently -- within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start.
"Obama cannot mobilize America around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. This is not leadership."
Compromise has been useful to U.S. governments in times when reasonable arguments could be made on both sides of an issue. But as Lincoln put it:
"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."
President Obama has failed to part with those who have "gone wrong:" Republicans who have allowed Tea Party fools to drag them rightward in the extreme; Wall Street; big oil and gas; pharmaceutical and health insurance companies; CIA torturers; advocates of excessive secrecy in government and excessive power for the executive; those who abrogate the Bill of Rights . . .
These are matters of moral and constitutional law. If a thing is wrong, it is wrong. Compromise does not mitigate its wrongness.
What's been happening lately in Washington is wrong. Everyone who has been part of it is wrong.
For those who, deep in their private beliefs, know that it is wrong -- and there are such -- it is time to "live by the light that they have."
One day, if the nation survives, it will thank them.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Speak Not Truth, Lest Ye Be Fired (Part IV)
Attention scientists: Don't mess with Wall Street or Big Oil. Their puppet President, Dr. Kidglove, will gitcha.
Latest example (from the Guardian, UK, not one of our lap-puppy media): the scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for scientific misconduct.
Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. His misconduct: writing the truth.
"You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas," said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic."
After accidentally discovering the bodies of four dead polar bears seven years ago, Monnet did further research. He and a colleague wrote in the scientific journal Polar Biology, "Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."
Planet-raping oil companies, which want to drill in the pristine environment of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, have been bitching to their Oval Office puppet about delays caused by environmental reviews. This month Obama issued an order to speed up Arctic drilling permits.
Monnett's wife, Lisa Rotterman, a fellow scientist who worked with Monnett for years, said the effort to silence him came as no surprise. The government has bedeviled him before for speaking the truth about what his science showed. She said his 2006 article wasn't framed in the context of climate change but was relevant to the topic."I don't believe the timing is coincidental," she said.
Earlier this year, other truth-tellers got the axe:
Carlos Pascual, a veteran diplomat who had been U.S. ambassador to Mexico since 2009, was forced to resign recently because of leaked embassy cables that bluntly described the shortcomings of Mexico's efforts to control its drug cartels.
His criticism was absolutely true, as anyone who lives close to the border can attest. The cables were in the trove of material passed by WikiLeaks to certain news media.
P.J. Crowley, the State Department media spokesman, told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the military treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." This is absolutely true.
Manning, who is accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks, suffered torture and naked humiliation at a military brig before being transferred to a civilian federal prison.
President Obama fired Crowley.
Vivian Schiller was forced out as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video. This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic." Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.
Oh, what the hell. Once the Republicans plunge the country into default there won't BE any scientific research to stifle.
Latest example (from the Guardian, UK, not one of our lap-puppy media): the scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for scientific misconduct.
Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. His misconduct: writing the truth.
"You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas," said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic."
After accidentally discovering the bodies of four dead polar bears seven years ago, Monnet did further research. He and a colleague wrote in the scientific journal Polar Biology, "Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."
Planet-raping oil companies, which want to drill in the pristine environment of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, have been bitching to their Oval Office puppet about delays caused by environmental reviews. This month Obama issued an order to speed up Arctic drilling permits.
Monnett's wife, Lisa Rotterman, a fellow scientist who worked with Monnett for years, said the effort to silence him came as no surprise. The government has bedeviled him before for speaking the truth about what his science showed. She said his 2006 article wasn't framed in the context of climate change but was relevant to the topic."I don't believe the timing is coincidental," she said.
Earlier this year, other truth-tellers got the axe:
Carlos Pascual, a veteran diplomat who had been U.S. ambassador to Mexico since 2009, was forced to resign recently because of leaked embassy cables that bluntly described the shortcomings of Mexico's efforts to control its drug cartels.
His criticism was absolutely true, as anyone who lives close to the border can attest. The cables were in the trove of material passed by WikiLeaks to certain news media.
P.J. Crowley, the State Department media spokesman, told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the military treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." This is absolutely true.
Manning, who is accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks, suffered torture and naked humiliation at a military brig before being transferred to a civilian federal prison.
President Obama fired Crowley.
Vivian Schiller was forced out as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video. This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic." Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.
Oh, what the hell. Once the Republicans plunge the country into default there won't BE any scientific research to stifle.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
There Are Negotiations, and There is Dr. Kidglove
Remember John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, George Meany . . . ? Picture any one of them, before even the first meeting on contract negotiations, declaring, "We'll give up $2 an hour in pay, forgo company paid vacations and health care benefits, and expand the work week to 48 hours."
That essentially is how Dr. Kidglove, whom we elected to be our leader, deals with the Republicans in Congress. I presume he thinks this is how to get elected to a second term.
As a governing tactic, it enabled him to achieve his crowning moment: passage of a milksop health care bill whose defenders assure us that it's a little better than what we had before. (Duh, why have pharmaceutical and private insurance stock prices soared so high?)
Some of his supporters might argue that he saved the country from another Great Depression by his decisions about an economy that was a shambles when he took office. But for Americans who are not Wall Street bankers or mega-corporate CEOs, the economy is no better now that it was then. One in six of us common folk of working age are still jobless.
Soon, things will get worse. Having drawn a line in the sand at 95% of what Republicans were demanding, Kidglove is insisting that maybe, if paying down the deficit is so damned important, we should increase revenue a teensy bit in addition to taking away Grandma's arthritis medicine and Tiny Tim's crutch. John Boeher, who has spent so much time on the golf course and in the tanning salon that his brain is fried, was much affronted by this, so he went on TV and told a bunch of whopping lies. American voters love to be lied to.
Meanwhile, the government is fast running out of money to meet its financial obligations. "We don't want to default," the Republicans say. "But Obama is forcing us to."
Yes, my fellow Americans, things are bad enough already, but soon they'll get worse.
So there's Walter Reuther, in the negotiating room with Engine Charlie Wilson, who is thundering, "Your Grand Bargain isn't grand enough, Walter. What's good for GM is good for the country. You must work for GM without pay." Reuther rolls his eyes, winces, and says, "I hate to do this, but everyone has to share the sacrifice. OK. No pay."
"Not enough!" declares Engine Charlie. "Building cars for GM is a privilege, not an entitlement! You must pay us for the privilege. Five dollars per man per day. What was good enough for Henry Ford is good enough for me!"
Oops! You already have.
That essentially is how Dr. Kidglove, whom we elected to be our leader, deals with the Republicans in Congress. I presume he thinks this is how to get elected to a second term.
As a governing tactic, it enabled him to achieve his crowning moment: passage of a milksop health care bill whose defenders assure us that it's a little better than what we had before. (Duh, why have pharmaceutical and private insurance stock prices soared so high?)
Some of his supporters might argue that he saved the country from another Great Depression by his decisions about an economy that was a shambles when he took office. But for Americans who are not Wall Street bankers or mega-corporate CEOs, the economy is no better now that it was then. One in six of us common folk of working age are still jobless.
Soon, things will get worse. Having drawn a line in the sand at 95% of what Republicans were demanding, Kidglove is insisting that maybe, if paying down the deficit is so damned important, we should increase revenue a teensy bit in addition to taking away Grandma's arthritis medicine and Tiny Tim's crutch. John Boeher, who has spent so much time on the golf course and in the tanning salon that his brain is fried, was much affronted by this, so he went on TV and told a bunch of whopping lies. American voters love to be lied to.
Meanwhile, the government is fast running out of money to meet its financial obligations. "We don't want to default," the Republicans say. "But Obama is forcing us to."
Yes, my fellow Americans, things are bad enough already, but soon they'll get worse.
* * *
So there's Walter Reuther, in the negotiating room with Engine Charlie Wilson, who is thundering, "Your Grand Bargain isn't grand enough, Walter. What's good for GM is good for the country. You must work for GM without pay." Reuther rolls his eyes, winces, and says, "I hate to do this, but everyone has to share the sacrifice. OK. No pay."
"Not enough!" declares Engine Charlie. "Building cars for GM is a privilege, not an entitlement! You must pay us for the privilege. Five dollars per man per day. What was good enough for Henry Ford is good enough for me!"
* * *
This silly world is confusing me, Alice. Take me through the looking glass. Take me to the Tea Party.Oops! You already have.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Reflections on a Bicycling Competition in France
Everything I think I know about the sport of cycling I learned from my son David, who has occasionally accompanied the likes of George Hincapie on training rides. (Hincapie has been one of the more prominent American contestants in the Tour de France over recent years.)
So when Dave and George said on Day One that their pick to win the most important cycling race in the world was Cadel Evans, I gave it great currency.
Today, Evans, a 34-year-old Australian, rode in triumph down the Champs Elysees to claim the yellow jersey of the champion.
I found much to applaud. It had been a most thrilling race to watch on television: exciting plot twists and turns, great performances by elder statesmen like Thor Hushovd of Norway, and strong young riders like the Schleck brothers of Luxembourg, capped by Evans's charge to the top in the penultimate stage, an individual time trial. This may be the most difficult discipline of all in cycling, more difficult, in its way, than the climbs up the steep mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees. The top competitors know their rivals well in the climbs up the mountains; it becomes man against man, a test of will and strength. In the time trial, a cyclist rides alone, with no teammates to "mark" his rivals, man against the time clock. There is no rival on your wheel, or leading an attack up the hill, no measure of your standing except the clock. A special discipline, indeed.
I was first attracted to the Tour on TV because of the gorgeous images of the French countryside. But in this year's race, especially, the cyclists stole the show from the scenery. And Evans was the best scene-stealer of all. He has a compelling personal story as well: conquest of childhood illnesses and injuries, victor over repeated misfortunes not of his own making, able to mount his greatest effort despite the death of a coach who "believed in me even more than I sometimes believed in myself." And an Ozzie, a species that shows the world how to be a gracious winner.
I asked Dave, when he told me his prediction, if Evans was strong enough to match the Schlenks in the high climbs. "He's a mountain man," Dave said. Then , aware of all the doping scandals in the sport, including a positive drug test of the defending champion, Alberto Contador of Spain, I asked: "Is Evans 'clean'?" "I like to think so," Dave replied.
Now comes a new argument for the importance of the 2011 Tour de France: two experts say that the performances this year offer evidence that the sport may have turned a corner in its efforts to curb the use of performance-enhancing, banned substances.
In an article in the Sunday New York Times opinion section, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas, exercise physiologists and sport science specialists, wrote as follows:
Some battles are still being lost — a Russian rider was forced out of this year’s Tour after a blood test — but the war on doping is slowly being won.
Most telling has been the noticeable slowing down in performances in the crucial mountain stages. Taken in isolation, a single performance tells little about the state of doping — there are simply too many factors, like wind, race situation, rider preparation and injury, that influence performance to prove that the sport is cleaner based on one climb alone. But the trend toward slower performances has, to date, been universal, so much so that the finishing climbs in the 2010 and 2011 Tours de France have been substantially slower than those of the 1990s and the 2000s, some by many minutes.
For example, the fastest riders on three of the last climbs in the Tour, including the famed Alpe d’Huez, were still three minutes slower — a lifetime in cycling — than many of the fastest riders on the same climbs during the 1990s and 2000s.
Linked to this are the physiological aspects of performance. In the same way that a motor vehicle requires certain components to travel at 200 m.p.h. — a huge engine, fuel and aerodynamics — a cyclist requires certain physiological characteristics to produce the power output necessary to win the Tour de France. Those characteristics, which include a high maximal capacity to use oxygen and efficiency of converting metabolic energy into power, are identifiable and measurable.
It is possible to use these physiological characteristics to estimate the maximal sustainable power output for a cyclist. It requires some assumptions, but if they are consistent and made in favor of the cyclist, then they reveal that in the 1990s and 2000s, Tour performances routinely exceeded the predicted physiological capacity of humans. In contrast, 2010 and 2011 Tour riders have been beneath this ceiling on every climb of the race. The slowing in times thus brings physiology back in line with what are believed to be limits of performance.
This of course is not conclusive evidence that the race is "clean" again. But I like to think so.
So when Dave and George said on Day One that their pick to win the most important cycling race in the world was Cadel Evans, I gave it great currency.
Today, Evans, a 34-year-old Australian, rode in triumph down the Champs Elysees to claim the yellow jersey of the champion.
I found much to applaud. It had been a most thrilling race to watch on television: exciting plot twists and turns, great performances by elder statesmen like Thor Hushovd of Norway, and strong young riders like the Schleck brothers of Luxembourg, capped by Evans's charge to the top in the penultimate stage, an individual time trial. This may be the most difficult discipline of all in cycling, more difficult, in its way, than the climbs up the steep mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees. The top competitors know their rivals well in the climbs up the mountains; it becomes man against man, a test of will and strength. In the time trial, a cyclist rides alone, with no teammates to "mark" his rivals, man against the time clock. There is no rival on your wheel, or leading an attack up the hill, no measure of your standing except the clock. A special discipline, indeed.
I was first attracted to the Tour on TV because of the gorgeous images of the French countryside. But in this year's race, especially, the cyclists stole the show from the scenery. And Evans was the best scene-stealer of all. He has a compelling personal story as well: conquest of childhood illnesses and injuries, victor over repeated misfortunes not of his own making, able to mount his greatest effort despite the death of a coach who "believed in me even more than I sometimes believed in myself." And an Ozzie, a species that shows the world how to be a gracious winner.
I asked Dave, when he told me his prediction, if Evans was strong enough to match the Schlenks in the high climbs. "He's a mountain man," Dave said. Then , aware of all the doping scandals in the sport, including a positive drug test of the defending champion, Alberto Contador of Spain, I asked: "Is Evans 'clean'?" "I like to think so," Dave replied.
Now comes a new argument for the importance of the 2011 Tour de France: two experts say that the performances this year offer evidence that the sport may have turned a corner in its efforts to curb the use of performance-enhancing, banned substances.
In an article in the Sunday New York Times opinion section, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas, exercise physiologists and sport science specialists, wrote as follows:
Some battles are still being lost — a Russian rider was forced out of this year’s Tour after a blood test — but the war on doping is slowly being won.
Most telling has been the noticeable slowing down in performances in the crucial mountain stages. Taken in isolation, a single performance tells little about the state of doping — there are simply too many factors, like wind, race situation, rider preparation and injury, that influence performance to prove that the sport is cleaner based on one climb alone. But the trend toward slower performances has, to date, been universal, so much so that the finishing climbs in the 2010 and 2011 Tours de France have been substantially slower than those of the 1990s and the 2000s, some by many minutes.
For example, the fastest riders on three of the last climbs in the Tour, including the famed Alpe d’Huez, were still three minutes slower — a lifetime in cycling — than many of the fastest riders on the same climbs during the 1990s and 2000s.
Linked to this are the physiological aspects of performance. In the same way that a motor vehicle requires certain components to travel at 200 m.p.h. — a huge engine, fuel and aerodynamics — a cyclist requires certain physiological characteristics to produce the power output necessary to win the Tour de France. Those characteristics, which include a high maximal capacity to use oxygen and efficiency of converting metabolic energy into power, are identifiable and measurable.
It is possible to use these physiological characteristics to estimate the maximal sustainable power output for a cyclist. It requires some assumptions, but if they are consistent and made in favor of the cyclist, then they reveal that in the 1990s and 2000s, Tour performances routinely exceeded the predicted physiological capacity of humans. In contrast, 2010 and 2011 Tour riders have been beneath this ceiling on every climb of the race. The slowing in times thus brings physiology back in line with what are believed to be limits of performance.
This of course is not conclusive evidence that the race is "clean" again. But I like to think so.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Doing All the Wrong Things to End the Dive
All the top athletes were in the armed forces during World War II, so that boys growing up in those years had only the military to hero-worship.
One of my heroes was a family friend who was an Army Air Force test pilot. When he had leave to visit his father, a retired career officer himself, there would be a big picnic at his parents' home in northern Kentucky. My hero seldom talked about his work, but one evening, under prodding by his Dad, he began talking about the maneuvers he had to perform when testing aircraft. He drifted into talking about a power dive in an experimental plane that failed to respond to any of the controls. Mere seconds away from a deadly crash, he remembered something an aircraft engineer told him never, ever to do. He did it. The plane pulled out of its dive. He said he never mentioned the episode to his fellow pilots. "You could try that 50 times," he said, "and you'd crash every time."
Our country's economy is in a suicide dive right now and our so-called leaders are doing all the wrong things. Presumably they're expecting a lucky miracle like my boyhood hero's. What they're heading for, though, is a deadly crash. The problem is, their metaphoric test plane has passengers: the American public.
Dr. Kidglove, who "governs" by giving the minority party everything it wants, has sought to persuade them to raise the nation's debt ceiling -- a routine practice that Congress has performed countless times before -- by sacrificing the nation's sick, poor, aged, military veterans, jobless and helpless. That's a lot of common folk.
In return, he got . . . nothing. No revenue increase. Zero.
The deficit bogeyman is the result of two things: our endless wars and the Bush-Obama tax cuts for the rich in 2001, 2003 and 2009. Extending them will add $612 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. Simply letting those cuts expire (restoring tax rates to the level of the prosperous 1990s) would wipe out the deficit in ten years. Ending all our wars and cutting the military budget accordingly would wipe it out in 18 months. None of the "deals" kicking around Washington considers these possibilities.
The tax-cut puppets of Big Business say they want to pare the size of government. But if they force default, the size of government necessarily would increase. Default would destroy the nation's entire credit system, toss government bonds into the high-risk pool, wipe out billions in "safe"worker and retiree savings, send unemployment soaring above 20%, and immediately make "big" government more, not less important. It would become the employer of last resort. The American default would send ripples around the world, toppling markets abroad as well.
A recent government audit of the Federal Reserve disclosed that the government made $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst recession in 80 years -- caused by those same banks. And now we're going to pay down the deficit by cutting out the social safety net that should, in fact, be strengthened as part of a massive government bailout of people, not banks.
Instead, Dr. Kidglove offered Speaker Boehner the entire candy store. Boehner surveyed the merchandise and walked out. Some guys can't stand the sight of no blood.
What an ugly spectacle is Washington: a bad president, desperate to be re-elected, embracing a worse Congress in a danse macabre.
And it's our lives they're gambolling away.
One of my heroes was a family friend who was an Army Air Force test pilot. When he had leave to visit his father, a retired career officer himself, there would be a big picnic at his parents' home in northern Kentucky. My hero seldom talked about his work, but one evening, under prodding by his Dad, he began talking about the maneuvers he had to perform when testing aircraft. He drifted into talking about a power dive in an experimental plane that failed to respond to any of the controls. Mere seconds away from a deadly crash, he remembered something an aircraft engineer told him never, ever to do. He did it. The plane pulled out of its dive. He said he never mentioned the episode to his fellow pilots. "You could try that 50 times," he said, "and you'd crash every time."
Our country's economy is in a suicide dive right now and our so-called leaders are doing all the wrong things. Presumably they're expecting a lucky miracle like my boyhood hero's. What they're heading for, though, is a deadly crash. The problem is, their metaphoric test plane has passengers: the American public.
Dr. Kidglove, who "governs" by giving the minority party everything it wants, has sought to persuade them to raise the nation's debt ceiling -- a routine practice that Congress has performed countless times before -- by sacrificing the nation's sick, poor, aged, military veterans, jobless and helpless. That's a lot of common folk.
In return, he got . . . nothing. No revenue increase. Zero.
The deficit bogeyman is the result of two things: our endless wars and the Bush-Obama tax cuts for the rich in 2001, 2003 and 2009. Extending them will add $612 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. Simply letting those cuts expire (restoring tax rates to the level of the prosperous 1990s) would wipe out the deficit in ten years. Ending all our wars and cutting the military budget accordingly would wipe it out in 18 months. None of the "deals" kicking around Washington considers these possibilities.
The tax-cut puppets of Big Business say they want to pare the size of government. But if they force default, the size of government necessarily would increase. Default would destroy the nation's entire credit system, toss government bonds into the high-risk pool, wipe out billions in "safe"worker and retiree savings, send unemployment soaring above 20%, and immediately make "big" government more, not less important. It would become the employer of last resort. The American default would send ripples around the world, toppling markets abroad as well.
A recent government audit of the Federal Reserve disclosed that the government made $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst recession in 80 years -- caused by those same banks. And now we're going to pay down the deficit by cutting out the social safety net that should, in fact, be strengthened as part of a massive government bailout of people, not banks.
Instead, Dr. Kidglove offered Speaker Boehner the entire candy store. Boehner surveyed the merchandise and walked out. Some guys can't stand the sight of no blood.
What an ugly spectacle is Washington: a bad president, desperate to be re-elected, embracing a worse Congress in a danse macabre.
And it's our lives they're gambolling away.
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