If ever sanity returns to public discourse in whatever then remains of the United States, or when inevitably a competent historian from another country examines the decline and fall of our country, the media will be exposed in all their villainy.
Evidence of their betrayal of democracy is readily available even now, if you look beyond corporate-controlled outlets and seek out the testimony of whistle-blowers, honest analysts and a few other truth-tellers.
Our London correspondent, the distinguished author and ex-patriate onetime American journalist Gerald Mayer, recently observed: "When I was a youngster I thought myself unbelievably blessed to have found a place for myself in the newspaper game, where the mission was 'to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' Today I don't think I would consider it as a possible career. Gone gone gone."
'Tis a ubiquitous sentiment among fellow formerjournalists of my generation, whose number of distinguished contemporary comforters and afflicters is far too great to list here. Why their kind of journalism is gone gone gone probably begins at the top. From Punch Sulzberger to Pinch. From Kay Graham to Donnie Graham. From Otis Chandler to Corn Flakes. From Jack Knight to Tony Ridder to oblivion. From Joe Pulitzer to Joe Bftsplk. From CBS News to Fox Fiction. Rupert Murdoch rupert murdoch rupert murdoch.
With rare and sometimes dramatic exceptions, today's media barons have oiled their way across the spectrum from comforters of the afflicted and afflicters of the comfortable to unmitigated Unholy Alliance with the Complex of Greed, Wealth and Power that now governs what once were the great English-speaking democracies. One hardly expects that evil will be exposed by those who are party to it and profit from it.
Dan Rather, who was White House correspondent for CBS News when it still honored the legacy of Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, got sucked up to higher ground just as CBS was moving into the Great Ruling Corporatocracy. The unworthy heir to Walter Cronkite gave us a frightening metaphor for what happens to those who still try to practice the old time religion in today's version of journalism: they get "necklaced" with gasoline-filled burning tires.
Where once, for example, we had the likes of Meyer Berger and Harrison Salisbury, we have more recently been handed the likes of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Bill Keller, like Rather, was once an able reporter but was anointed to power in the New Era; hence his Iscariotan betrayal of Julian Assange, but only after his tenure as editor had reached its journalistic apogee thanks to WikiLeaks. This, alas, at a place supposed to be the paragon of our media!
No wonder there is no place in the mainstream any longer for such as Chris Hedges and Sy Hersh. Better to pass off the likes of Ross Douthat, Charles Gibson and Bill O'Reilly as journalists, instead.
One of the real journalists of my generation alerted me today to the fact that an important documentary film is now available on the World Wide Web. The War You Don't See, produced and directed by John Pilger, was effectively banned from United States theaters and television last year.
Now, if you hurry to http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/ before it's censored again, you can view this deft and chilling indictment of the propaganda role the British and U.S. media played in cheerleading the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes a series of interviews in which Pilger confronts British and American journalists (including Dan Rather) and news executives regarding their failure to give air time to weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts who were publicly challenging the excuses for these wars.
Viewing the film may convince you, as it did me and many others, that the real reason it was banned here is Pilger's sympathetic treatment of Assange. In a brief interview with Pilger, Assange condemns the failure of democratic governments to even attempt to control what Dwight David Eisenhower called the military industrial complex. Assange says the "complex" is a network of thousands of players (government employees and contractors and defense lobbyists) who make major policy decisions in their own self-interest sort of in loco parentis for government.
I call it a corporatocracy that really is government. But that's epistemological quibbling.
Truth sets us free; lies enslave us. Given the present state of American media, we are compelled to seek and sift most resolutely for truth, and cherish it where we find it:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-you-dont-see/
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Once, There Was a Thing called Justice . . .
Once again on Planet Earth, the most civilized among us recoil from an abomination of the most vile among us.
The government of Georgia, U.S.A., has murdered an innocent man, joining its fellow racist southern state, Texas, in the ultimate act of legal infamy.
Across the spectrum of those who seek to improve the human species -- the Pope of Rome, the E.U., the Dalai Lama; ministers, scientists, healers and thinkers -- rose today a thunder of condemnation of the rich, powerful and unutterably vile nation that slew Troy Anthony Davis with malice aforethought.
Even our craven media dare to call his execution "for killing a police officer" somewhat controversial; even these cowardly media whores suggest there might be doubt about his guilt.
Where there is the rule of law, there cannot be "guilt" if there is the shadow of a doubt. In the case of Troy Davis, the only evidence against him was the testimony of nine alleged witnesses to the crime. Seven of these have recanted their testimony, citing abuse, threats and intimidation by police, prosecutors and others sworn to uphold the law.
The shadow of doubt? This is a chasm of incredulity! This is an open and shut case of criminal racism on the part of "legal" authorities. Those who brought, pressed, abetted and consented in the charges against and "conviction" of Troy Davis should be brought in chains -- every one of them, jurors, too -- before the World Court in The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
For the victim here is not merely a black man named Troy Davis; we -- every single human of any race, creed or color who believes he or she is protected by something called the law -- we are all the victims.
But the most lamentable victim, the most sinned against, the most cruelly violated, is the thing called Justice.
"Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family," said the Attorney General of the State of Georgia, Sam Olens.
If there is a god, if somewhere beyond this tainted world there survives a pure concept called justice, if, then, there is a hell, surely there is an especially vile, punishing and inescapably terrible place within it for Mr. Olens.
Justice?
You, sir, are unfit to utter the word. You violate every ethic, more, fundament-- you urinate upon an open wound in the heart -- of the rule of law you purport to serve.
At a protest of the murder of Davis in front of the White House today, at least 12 Howard University students were arrested for failing to move off the White House sidewalk.
When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other geniuses of the Age of Enlightenment wrote our Constitution and gave us a nation, Franklin told us that we had been given a republic -- "if you can keep it."
We have failed.
We have failed.
We have utterly failed.
The government of Georgia, U.S.A., has murdered an innocent man, joining its fellow racist southern state, Texas, in the ultimate act of legal infamy.
Across the spectrum of those who seek to improve the human species -- the Pope of Rome, the E.U., the Dalai Lama; ministers, scientists, healers and thinkers -- rose today a thunder of condemnation of the rich, powerful and unutterably vile nation that slew Troy Anthony Davis with malice aforethought.Even our craven media dare to call his execution "for killing a police officer" somewhat controversial; even these cowardly media whores suggest there might be doubt about his guilt.
Where there is the rule of law, there cannot be "guilt" if there is the shadow of a doubt. In the case of Troy Davis, the only evidence against him was the testimony of nine alleged witnesses to the crime. Seven of these have recanted their testimony, citing abuse, threats and intimidation by police, prosecutors and others sworn to uphold the law.
The shadow of doubt? This is a chasm of incredulity! This is an open and shut case of criminal racism on the part of "legal" authorities. Those who brought, pressed, abetted and consented in the charges against and "conviction" of Troy Davis should be brought in chains -- every one of them, jurors, too -- before the World Court in The Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
For the victim here is not merely a black man named Troy Davis; we -- every single human of any race, creed or color who believes he or she is protected by something called the law -- we are all the victims.
But the most lamentable victim, the most sinned against, the most cruelly violated, is the thing called Justice.
"Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family," said the Attorney General of the State of Georgia, Sam Olens.
If there is a god, if somewhere beyond this tainted world there survives a pure concept called justice, if, then, there is a hell, surely there is an especially vile, punishing and inescapably terrible place within it for Mr. Olens.
Justice?
You, sir, are unfit to utter the word. You violate every ethic, more, fundament-- you urinate upon an open wound in the heart -- of the rule of law you purport to serve.
At a protest of the murder of Davis in front of the White House today, at least 12 Howard University students were arrested for failing to move off the White House sidewalk.
When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other geniuses of the Age of Enlightenment wrote our Constitution and gave us a nation, Franklin told us that we had been given a republic -- "if you can keep it."
We have failed.
We have failed.
We have utterly failed.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Thoughts on Fathers, on Integrity and on a Failed Presidency
As the days grow shorter and cooler and the angle of the sun bathes desert and mountain with the year's most special kind of light, Brandi and I spend more and more time out there, listening to the silence. I can't tell what my uncharacteristically pensive boxer-shepherd is thinking, but I'm thinking about fathers and about integrity.
I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.
Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.
When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."
It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Hedges:
"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."
To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.
"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.
"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."
Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.
Hedges (quoting Wright):
"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."
Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:
"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?
"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"
* * *
"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)
"Is it I, Lord?"
"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).
I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.
Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.
When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."
It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Hedges:
"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."
To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.
"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.
"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."
Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.
Hedges (quoting Wright):
"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."
Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:
"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?
"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"
* * *
"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)
"Is it I, Lord?"
"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A 9/11 Story
A Guest Post
By Lois Sutherland Wark
We were driving the wild and rugged north coast of Scotland, day-tripping from our cozy Scottish hunting lodge-turned-hotel in Tongue. After a day of sight-seeing, walking the empty beaches and climbing headlands to watch the sea crash against the towering stacks just off the coast, we pulled into Durness, the most northwesterly village on the British mainland. At the gas pump an attendant, recognizing that we were Yanks, asked, "Have you heard about the Twin Towers?"
Stunned and horrified, we drove on a short distance to a grassy clifftop near the ruined Gothic chapel of Balnakiel, where we had intended to walk a sandy path that winds north through the dunes and eventually leads to Faraid Head, where there is a good chance of spotting puffins. Instead, we sat dead silent in the car for hours, listening to the BBC reports from New York and around the world.
Later, back at our hotel in Tongue, our dinner-table mates and hotel staff reached out in sorrow. The sympathy for Americans -- and for the international community who had worked at the World Trade Center -- was strong and palpable. With U.S. air space closed indefinitely, we remained in our room at the hotel, occasionally taking walks in the rain but no longer interested in touring. We just wanted to get home. Home, where no one any longer was safe.
Finally, the call from British Airways arrived: Our flight from Gatwick to Houston would leave Saturday morning. On the drive south from Tongue, the rain and heavy clouds seemed very much in keeping with our thoughts. At the airport, attendants were particularly solicitous of travelers, as though no one ever again would take traveling lightly. It was there, while we were waiting for our flight in the gigantic airport terminal, that we took part in a Europe-wide remembrance of the 9/11 dead -- three minutes of absolute silence. Halfway through, a harried couple came rushing through a door, clearly afraid they were about to miss their flight. They stopped suddenly, feeling the silence. Dropped their bags, realizing what they had walked into. Joined the mourning.
We had begun this trip to Scotland in high anticipation, a celebration of my Scottish Sutherland ancestry. Every four years, the Clan Sutherland Society of Scotland gathers in Golspie, on the coast about four hours north of Edinburgh, to spend four days together celebrating our Sutherland ancestry -- a homecoming for the worldwide diaspora. My cousin, Donald Gene Sutherland, had proposed the trip more than a year before, and eight of us had signed on: Gene, his daughters Victoria and Heather and Heather's husband, Norbert; Gene's older brother, Guy, and wife Diana; and Tom and me. On the way out, Tom and I had met Guy and Diana at the Houston airport and flown together to Gatwick, then on to Inverness. Staying together at the Dornoch Castle Hotel near Golspie, we had admired the 97 varieties of single malt scotch above the bar in the hotel pub and vowed that among the eight of us, we would taste every single one.
The highlight of the trip had been a formal dinner dance at Dunrobin Castle, the ancestral seat of the Sutherlands which overlooks the sea a mile north of Golspie. At the castle a day before the dinner dance, Alistair Sutherland, Lord Strathnaver, son and heir to the Clan Chief, Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, had taken our group on a tour of the castle; he was a gracious host, in that way that the Scottish nobility has, who now depend on tourists for the upkeep of their ancient piles (Dunrobin is the most northerly of Scotland's great houses and is the largest house in the Northern Highlands). During the days leading up to the dinner dance, Gene's daughter Vicky had attended classes every afternoon in Scottish dancing, learning its intricacies. In Dunrobin's formal ballroom, with her father beaming on the sidelines, Victoria had danced every single dance. The trip had been Gene's gift to his daughters, in hopes it would kindle a lifelong interest in all things Scottish. Done.
Now, our fairy tale journey had ended in tragedy. As Tom and I settled into our seats on British Airways, it all seemed unreal. Midway into the flight, as Tom dozed beside me, he was suddenly awakened by a tap on the shoulder. Hovering over him was the smiling bulk of cousin Guy, who had no business being there. He and Diana had caught a flight out of Gatwick four days before us -- on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
In midair over the Atlantic, their pilots had been ordered to divert the plane to Halifax, Nova Scotia -- had been told that U.S. airspace was closed. When the British pilots demurred and asked why, they had been given no explanation. Enter U.S. airspace and you will be shot down, was the terse response from air traffic controllers. It was only after they had landed in Halifax, where the passengers were bedded down on cots at a local high school gymnasium, that they were told of the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon.
So what were Guy and Diana doing on our plane? Another of the ironies of that iconic week. When flights to the U.S. were allowed to resume, their British Airways flight was directed not to its original destination of Houston but was sent back to Gatwick, where we all boarded the first flight out.
When we landed in Houston, the first stop for Clan Sutherland was the nearest pub. Single malt all around.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Fatal Flaw in Dr. Kidglove's Voodoo
Much as I admire Krugman, Steiglitz, Baker and the other enlightened popular economists of our era, I am somewhat less whelmed than they seem to be by Kidglove's latest voodoo economics.
Their well-modulated approval of the president's plan for job creation may, as Krugman suggested, be the result of low expectations. The Princeton Nobelist called Obama's plan "bolder" than expected.
Although it's too little, and probably too late, the plan does at last acknowledge the Keynesian wisdom of increased government spending in times of both recession and high unemployment.
But too few voices of alarm have been raised about the real impact of one of the key points in the Kidglove Plan: cutting the "payroll tax" in half.
The White House is selling this as a "tax cut to the typical American family" amounting to about $1,500 a year.
What it really is, folks, is a back-door attack on your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance and survivors' benefits.
The President, I think, wants American workers -- those lucky enough to still have jobs -- to think that he's cutting their income tax, as he and his predecessor have done for the really, really rich one per cent of us.
But FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act -- is less a tax than a mandatory investment in the health and welfare of all Americans, to be used when they're too old to work. Employers and employees contribute equally -- 6.2 per cent of payroll up to a fixed limit for employers, 6.2 per cent of salary up to a fixed limit for employees --through FICA to the Social Security Trust Fund. This is what pays retirement, health and disability benefits that all Americans enjoy.
The Kidglove voodoo jobs plan would get a substantial part of the money to "create jobs" by taking it away from workers when they reach retirement age. His fifty per cent cut in the "payroll tax" is actually a fifty per cent cut in funding for those worker benefits -- robbing from Peter what should be paid to Peter when he reaches retirement age.
The White House says this plan will put more money in American pockets, which presumably they will spend, which will stimulate the economy. But with the Baby Boomer generation just reaching retirement age, it effectively cuts in half the income to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Not to worry, sayeth the Voodoo Doctor Kidglove. We will make up the difference, as we did on the last "payroll tax holiday," from general revenues.
Huh?
The same general revenues that are inadequate to pay for our ongoing wars, our ongoing government costs, our interest on trillions of dollars of debt? Those general revenues? The general revenues the Republicans refused to increase by raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, while at the same time declaring that our debt was of sufficient magnitude to threaten to bring down the government by forfeiting on its debt repayment?
Does Kidglove honestly believe that the Teapot Nuts in Congress will approve dipping into general revenues to keep Social Security solvent? The same Social Security Republicans have wanted to scuttle ever since the New Deal?
You can smell in the wind another political farce like the debt crisis fiasco. GOP fights Obama job plan. Obama cuts back on the only parts of it that will actually create new jobs (but only about a million in a country where well over 14 million able-bodied workers are jobless). GOP, in a great show of bipartisanship, says, "OK, now you can have your payroll tax cut." Smirk smirk.
Everyone in this cute little drama knows that in a year or so a new "crisis" will be declared: Social Security is "running out of money," they will shout in Congress. "We must end this failed Ponzi scheme right now!"
Lots of really, really rich folk will be chuckling all the way to the bank. Again.
Their well-modulated approval of the president's plan for job creation may, as Krugman suggested, be the result of low expectations. The Princeton Nobelist called Obama's plan "bolder" than expected.
Although it's too little, and probably too late, the plan does at last acknowledge the Keynesian wisdom of increased government spending in times of both recession and high unemployment.
But too few voices of alarm have been raised about the real impact of one of the key points in the Kidglove Plan: cutting the "payroll tax" in half.
The White House is selling this as a "tax cut to the typical American family" amounting to about $1,500 a year.
What it really is, folks, is a back-door attack on your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance and survivors' benefits.
The President, I think, wants American workers -- those lucky enough to still have jobs -- to think that he's cutting their income tax, as he and his predecessor have done for the really, really rich one per cent of us.
But FICA -- the Federal Insurance Contributions Act -- is less a tax than a mandatory investment in the health and welfare of all Americans, to be used when they're too old to work. Employers and employees contribute equally -- 6.2 per cent of payroll up to a fixed limit for employers, 6.2 per cent of salary up to a fixed limit for employees --through FICA to the Social Security Trust Fund. This is what pays retirement, health and disability benefits that all Americans enjoy.
The Kidglove voodoo jobs plan would get a substantial part of the money to "create jobs" by taking it away from workers when they reach retirement age. His fifty per cent cut in the "payroll tax" is actually a fifty per cent cut in funding for those worker benefits -- robbing from Peter what should be paid to Peter when he reaches retirement age.
The White House says this plan will put more money in American pockets, which presumably they will spend, which will stimulate the economy. But with the Baby Boomer generation just reaching retirement age, it effectively cuts in half the income to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Not to worry, sayeth the Voodoo Doctor Kidglove. We will make up the difference, as we did on the last "payroll tax holiday," from general revenues.
Huh?
The same general revenues that are inadequate to pay for our ongoing wars, our ongoing government costs, our interest on trillions of dollars of debt? Those general revenues? The general revenues the Republicans refused to increase by raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, while at the same time declaring that our debt was of sufficient magnitude to threaten to bring down the government by forfeiting on its debt repayment?
Does Kidglove honestly believe that the Teapot Nuts in Congress will approve dipping into general revenues to keep Social Security solvent? The same Social Security Republicans have wanted to scuttle ever since the New Deal?
You can smell in the wind another political farce like the debt crisis fiasco. GOP fights Obama job plan. Obama cuts back on the only parts of it that will actually create new jobs (but only about a million in a country where well over 14 million able-bodied workers are jobless). GOP, in a great show of bipartisanship, says, "OK, now you can have your payroll tax cut." Smirk smirk.
Everyone in this cute little drama knows that in a year or so a new "crisis" will be declared: Social Security is "running out of money," they will shout in Congress. "We must end this failed Ponzi scheme right now!"
Lots of really, really rich folk will be chuckling all the way to the bank. Again.
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Making of a Modern American Caesar
Things can get worse and a friend recently suggested a plausible way: a super ego smothered in military medals could become our dictator.
Don't sneer. Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned from the army at the end of August to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, could take over the country tomorrow if he wanted to.
Petraeus wears more medals on his chest than the entire U.S. Olympic team. Yet in his first 29 years in the military, he never saw a day of combat. The Pentagon refused a request to tell the public what all those medals are for. Obviously they weren't earned in combat.
At his retirement ceremony, Petraeus was lauded by the huffers and puffers of the Military Industrial Complex as the military equal of Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower. Mercifully, nobody mentioned Douglas MacArthur, the second-biggest ego ever to wear stars on his shoulder. Grant, Eisenhower and MacArthur, at least, won real wars, actually declared by Congress.
That didn't dampen the rhetoric of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said, "Gen. David Petraeus has set the gold standard for wartime command in the modern era. " Then, turning to the man himself, Mullen added: "You now stand with the giants, not just of our time, but of all time."
Maybe he was thinking of Mel Ott, a Giant who only stood 5' 11".
Petraeus finally got "combat" experience in 2003, when he led the 101st Airborne Division in the fiction-based invasion of Iraq on behalf of that eminent "wartime president," George W. Bush. The huffers and puffers cranked up a hype machine that managed to portray him as having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia., even as the country that had no weapons of mass destruction and very little in the way of an army somehow managed to stretch our invasion into our longest war. And then there's Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Libya, and . . .
Oh, never mind. The man clearly has better military credentials than little Cpl. Schickelgruber had, and look what he became. Dictator. With the greatest military machine in the world at that time.
You know who's got the greatest military machine in the world now.
And you know what we've got in the White House.
And you know the caliber of those who aspire to replace him.
And you know -- or ought to know, if you're old enough to vote -- the power of the Military Industrial Complex and the corporations that run this country. They love the man with the medals on his chest. They'd be pleased to have him as dictator.
He could have the job tomorrow, if he wanted it.
Maybe the only question is, when will he decide to want it?
Don't sneer. Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned from the army at the end of August to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, could take over the country tomorrow if he wanted to.
Petraeus wears more medals on his chest than the entire U.S. Olympic team. Yet in his first 29 years in the military, he never saw a day of combat. The Pentagon refused a request to tell the public what all those medals are for. Obviously they weren't earned in combat.
At his retirement ceremony, Petraeus was lauded by the huffers and puffers of the Military Industrial Complex as the military equal of Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower. Mercifully, nobody mentioned Douglas MacArthur, the second-biggest ego ever to wear stars on his shoulder. Grant, Eisenhower and MacArthur, at least, won real wars, actually declared by Congress.
That didn't dampen the rhetoric of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said, "Gen. David Petraeus has set the gold standard for wartime command in the modern era. " Then, turning to the man himself, Mullen added: "You now stand with the giants, not just of our time, but of all time."
Maybe he was thinking of Mel Ott, a Giant who only stood 5' 11".
Petraeus finally got "combat" experience in 2003, when he led the 101st Airborne Division in the fiction-based invasion of Iraq on behalf of that eminent "wartime president," George W. Bush. The huffers and puffers cranked up a hype machine that managed to portray him as having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia., even as the country that had no weapons of mass destruction and very little in the way of an army somehow managed to stretch our invasion into our longest war. And then there's Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Libya, and . . .
Oh, never mind. The man clearly has better military credentials than little Cpl. Schickelgruber had, and look what he became. Dictator. With the greatest military machine in the world at that time.
You know who's got the greatest military machine in the world now.
And you know what we've got in the White House.
And you know the caliber of those who aspire to replace him.
And you know -- or ought to know, if you're old enough to vote -- the power of the Military Industrial Complex and the corporations that run this country. They love the man with the medals on his chest. They'd be pleased to have him as dictator.
He could have the job tomorrow, if he wanted it.
Maybe the only question is, when will he decide to want it?
Friday, September 2, 2011
Last Straw in a Failed Presidency
There are only two explanations for Barack Obama.
1. He is a simpering coward.
2. He is corrupt beyond anyone who ever occupied the White House before him.
Either way he is unfit to be President of the United States.
Today's sellout to the Republicans over EPA regulation of poisonous air condemns thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans with breathing problems to treatment in an inadequate health care system, or to death.
It is the last straw in a failed presidency.
Unless someone comes forward to challenge his renomination, we are left with the choice of voting for whichever incompetent the Republicans nominate, or re-electing the worst president in our history.
Whatever became of the idea that the "best and the brightest" sought our presidency? One would have to scour the very pits of our vilest Congress to find a worse crop of contenders.
1. He is a simpering coward.
2. He is corrupt beyond anyone who ever occupied the White House before him.
Either way he is unfit to be President of the United States.
Today's sellout to the Republicans over EPA regulation of poisonous air condemns thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans with breathing problems to treatment in an inadequate health care system, or to death.
It is the last straw in a failed presidency.
Unless someone comes forward to challenge his renomination, we are left with the choice of voting for whichever incompetent the Republicans nominate, or re-electing the worst president in our history.
Whatever became of the idea that the "best and the brightest" sought our presidency? One would have to scour the very pits of our vilest Congress to find a worse crop of contenders.
It Was a Good Time for Tossin' th' Haggis
I remember a beautiful end-of-summer in Scotland ten years ago. In lovely sunlight the soft breezes carried the lilt of lassies comin' through the rye and lovers takin' th' high road to Loch Lomond.
Back home unemployment was a rising concern; it had reached 4.9 per cent in August, the highest rate in four years. Private employers had just cut 130,000 jobs, ten times the predicted amount, and shipped nearly 50,000 jobs overseas.
Independent economists said the bad news meant the long-awaited economic recovery still was not in sight. Not to worry, "we're about where we should be," said the chief economist at Merrill Lynch, one of the Wall Street firms that was happily selling AAA-rated investment packages that seven years later would be called "sub-prime" and "toxic."
On a hillside east of a small town in the Scottish highlands, a natural waste-disposal field was in its fifth experimental year. Although toxic slush was deep underfoot somewhere, the air was scented only by a profusion of wildflowers. There's more than one way to deal with toxic.
The remains of an ancient Roman fortification crested the hill. Later in the afternoon we would stand in its shade and watch Scotsmen sling a haggis in a traditional festival game. A few days later, we took a leisurely drive toward John O'Groat., stopping often to admire rocky shorelines and the occasional sandy beach.
When we stopped for fuel, the attendant for the single pump recognized us as Yanks. "Did y' hear about the Twin Towers?" he asked. BBC radio told us the latest about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. national debt was just a shade over $5 trillion.
When he finally emerged from hiding, the President of the United States led a campaign of fear, half-truths, outright falsehood and "cooked" intelligence to launch a war against a country that had nothing to do with the September attacks and whose sleazy dictator had nothing to do with those who organized and financed it.
When he left office, that president and his unfunded wars had doubled the national debt.
Unemployment was over 10 per cent.
The toxic assets Wall Street had sold as prime investments went "Poof!" and the richest banks in the world were on their knees, begging.
A new President printed new money and showered it on the bankers who had brought the world to the brink of depression.
The national debt rose to $12 trillion.
The wars went on.
The unemployment rate remained twice what it had been in 2001. That's not counting millions more jobless who have been unemployed for so long they no longer count as "statistics."
So far only one man running for President has offered a plan intended to provide jobs for some of the unemployed. It calls essentially for tax credits to private employers to encourage them to hire more people. (These are the same private employers who cut 130,000 jobs in August of 2010 and shipped 50,000 of them overseas, causing independent economists to warn that we'd better do something soon about unemployment.)
Last month, the U.S. economy did not add one new job. Zero. Zilch. As soon as John Boehner says it's OK, the President will talk to the nation about jobs.
What he says isn't likely to do much for the millions without work. Talk doesn't buy groceries.
Last month, for the first time in ten years, not one American was killed in Iraq in George Bush's war. However, it was the worst month ever for American deaths in Afghanistan, Barack Obama's war. Nobody reports the losses here and there in the dozen or so clandestine wars we're fighting.
No politician running for President is talking about ending the wars that put us deeply in debt as a nation. Yet all the politicians say the debt is a crisis.
It is such a big, big crisis that we can't afford to create public sector jobs fixing a national infrastructure that has been neglected for so long that it's a risk to life and limb for our common citizens.
But it's not so big a crisis that we need to end the huge tax cuts we gave to our very richest citizens.
This isn't a country. It's a bloody zoo, and the animals are in charge.
Back home unemployment was a rising concern; it had reached 4.9 per cent in August, the highest rate in four years. Private employers had just cut 130,000 jobs, ten times the predicted amount, and shipped nearly 50,000 jobs overseas.
Independent economists said the bad news meant the long-awaited economic recovery still was not in sight. Not to worry, "we're about where we should be," said the chief economist at Merrill Lynch, one of the Wall Street firms that was happily selling AAA-rated investment packages that seven years later would be called "sub-prime" and "toxic."
On a hillside east of a small town in the Scottish highlands, a natural waste-disposal field was in its fifth experimental year. Although toxic slush was deep underfoot somewhere, the air was scented only by a profusion of wildflowers. There's more than one way to deal with toxic.
The remains of an ancient Roman fortification crested the hill. Later in the afternoon we would stand in its shade and watch Scotsmen sling a haggis in a traditional festival game. A few days later, we took a leisurely drive toward John O'Groat., stopping often to admire rocky shorelines and the occasional sandy beach.
When we stopped for fuel, the attendant for the single pump recognized us as Yanks. "Did y' hear about the Twin Towers?" he asked. BBC radio told us the latest about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The U.S. national debt was just a shade over $5 trillion.
When he finally emerged from hiding, the President of the United States led a campaign of fear, half-truths, outright falsehood and "cooked" intelligence to launch a war against a country that had nothing to do with the September attacks and whose sleazy dictator had nothing to do with those who organized and financed it.
When he left office, that president and his unfunded wars had doubled the national debt.
Unemployment was over 10 per cent.
The toxic assets Wall Street had sold as prime investments went "Poof!" and the richest banks in the world were on their knees, begging.
A new President printed new money and showered it on the bankers who had brought the world to the brink of depression.
The national debt rose to $12 trillion.
The wars went on.
The unemployment rate remained twice what it had been in 2001. That's not counting millions more jobless who have been unemployed for so long they no longer count as "statistics."
So far only one man running for President has offered a plan intended to provide jobs for some of the unemployed. It calls essentially for tax credits to private employers to encourage them to hire more people. (These are the same private employers who cut 130,000 jobs in August of 2010 and shipped 50,000 of them overseas, causing independent economists to warn that we'd better do something soon about unemployment.)
Last month, the U.S. economy did not add one new job. Zero. Zilch. As soon as John Boehner says it's OK, the President will talk to the nation about jobs.
What he says isn't likely to do much for the millions without work. Talk doesn't buy groceries.
Last month, for the first time in ten years, not one American was killed in Iraq in George Bush's war. However, it was the worst month ever for American deaths in Afghanistan, Barack Obama's war. Nobody reports the losses here and there in the dozen or so clandestine wars we're fighting.
No politician running for President is talking about ending the wars that put us deeply in debt as a nation. Yet all the politicians say the debt is a crisis.
It is such a big, big crisis that we can't afford to create public sector jobs fixing a national infrastructure that has been neglected for so long that it's a risk to life and limb for our common citizens.
But it's not so big a crisis that we need to end the huge tax cuts we gave to our very richest citizens.
This isn't a country. It's a bloody zoo, and the animals are in charge.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
How Refreshing: A Candidate Who Calls Nonsense . . .Nonsense!
Jon Huntsman of Utah is looking more presidential every day.
This morning, for example, he said the flap over when Dr. Kidglove gives his speech about jobs is "nonsense." Kidglove, Hunstman said, "has not been able to deliver on jobs" for almost three years, so it really doesn't matter when he says whatever it is he's got to say now.
Besides, it is no longer news that whenever John Boehner barks, Kidglove slinks off whimpering to a dark corner and says, like Cool Hand Luke to his cruel jailer, "Yas, Boss." So once again he did Boehner's bidding, even if on a matter that is, indeed, "nonsense."
Looking even more presidential, Huntsman went on to say today that his fellow Republicans haven't done any better on jobs for American workers: "we're getting drama but not solutions," he scolded.
Huntsman is the only declared candidate for the presidency who has introduced a plan to attack the unemployment crisis, a serious, substantive proposal that merits serious discussion.
And he doesn't have a -- excuse the metaphor -- prayer of becoming his party's nominee. The cockamamie crazies seeking the nomination have all claimed God as their patron. They keep topping one another in the Gaffe and Piety Derby.
Bachmann: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to Me here?’" After Katrina, kooks like her broadcast the word that that tragedy was God punishing New Orleans for the atheism of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Then there's Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme and doesn't even know what brand of nonsense his Texas schools are required to teach as "science." Evolution, he says, is just a theory with "gaps" in it, so his schools teach creationism as well. Wrong. They teach "intelligent design," which is just as flaky but not the same thing. Pity the poor children of Texas!
Mitt Romney has scurried to claim the patronage of God to persuade the Christofascists that his brand of Mormonism is really OK. If there were any doubt as to whom Romney would represent as president, take a look at the list of his top campaign donors (in order): Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Bank of America, Sullivan & Cromwell (biggest law firm to Wall Street),Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The same band of thieves is coppering its bets with huge donations to Obama. No wonder no Democrat is willing to challenge Obama for his party's nomination. The losers are American voters who will be left with Hobson's choice.
It's not surprising that third-party talk is getting louder on both sides of the theoretical center line of the American political spectrum.
Imagine, if you will, a contest that has Perry, Kidglove, Huntsman and, say, Russ Feingold, the latter two representing opposing but reasonable political viewpoints, and expressing them articulately and sanely. The majority of American voters -- who prefer catchy soundbites and slogans to actual thinking -- will stand by their party loyalties.
But voters who really want a President who understands issues and offers thoughtful plans for tackling them would profit from a debate between Huntsman and Feingold. They could decide on the merits of the arguments as they perceive them, vote accordingly, and walk away from the polls feeling that at last, at long, long last, they had not wasted their ballots.
This morning, for example, he said the flap over when Dr. Kidglove gives his speech about jobs is "nonsense." Kidglove, Hunstman said, "has not been able to deliver on jobs" for almost three years, so it really doesn't matter when he says whatever it is he's got to say now.
Besides, it is no longer news that whenever John Boehner barks, Kidglove slinks off whimpering to a dark corner and says, like Cool Hand Luke to his cruel jailer, "Yas, Boss." So once again he did Boehner's bidding, even if on a matter that is, indeed, "nonsense."
Looking even more presidential, Huntsman went on to say today that his fellow Republicans haven't done any better on jobs for American workers: "we're getting drama but not solutions," he scolded.
Huntsman is the only declared candidate for the presidency who has introduced a plan to attack the unemployment crisis, a serious, substantive proposal that merits serious discussion.
And he doesn't have a -- excuse the metaphor -- prayer of becoming his party's nominee. The cockamamie crazies seeking the nomination have all claimed God as their patron. They keep topping one another in the Gaffe and Piety Derby.
Bachmann: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to Me here?’" After Katrina, kooks like her broadcast the word that that tragedy was God punishing New Orleans for the atheism of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Then there's Perry, who calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme and doesn't even know what brand of nonsense his Texas schools are required to teach as "science." Evolution, he says, is just a theory with "gaps" in it, so his schools teach creationism as well. Wrong. They teach "intelligent design," which is just as flaky but not the same thing. Pity the poor children of Texas!
Mitt Romney has scurried to claim the patronage of God to persuade the Christofascists that his brand of Mormonism is really OK. If there were any doubt as to whom Romney would represent as president, take a look at the list of his top campaign donors (in order): Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Bank of America, Sullivan & Cromwell (biggest law firm to Wall Street),Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The same band of thieves is coppering its bets with huge donations to Obama. No wonder no Democrat is willing to challenge Obama for his party's nomination. The losers are American voters who will be left with Hobson's choice.
It's not surprising that third-party talk is getting louder on both sides of the theoretical center line of the American political spectrum.
Imagine, if you will, a contest that has Perry, Kidglove, Huntsman and, say, Russ Feingold, the latter two representing opposing but reasonable political viewpoints, and expressing them articulately and sanely. The majority of American voters -- who prefer catchy soundbites and slogans to actual thinking -- will stand by their party loyalties.
But voters who really want a President who understands issues and offers thoughtful plans for tackling them would profit from a debate between Huntsman and Feingold. They could decide on the merits of the arguments as they perceive them, vote accordingly, and walk away from the polls feeling that at last, at long, long last, they had not wasted their ballots.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Can We Save the Earth by Talking With One Another?
A friend who is of conservative political bent writes, "we are not and have not been good custodians of our earth."
Just a few days ago, in Seattle, the great progressive statesman Dennis Kucinich, said:
"Are you prepared to rescue our planet, to protect our air, water, and land from further exploitation by demanding an end to drilling the earth, fracking the earth, cracking the earth, an end to poisoning the seas and the skies with carbon based energies, and a rapid transition to an environmentally friendly, socially responsible green economy?"
Green energy, my conservative friend wrote, can "revitalize our own economy with our own resources . . .(and) . . . create U.S. jobs."
Can two such voices communicate across the Great Divide of political rancor in this land and formulate a strategy to rescue the planet?
My conservative friend offers to initiate such a dialogue with his own list of recommendations for a greener planet. Some of them are quite good.
But it seems to me that before such a dialogue can begin, the participants need to establish their bona fides. If we're serious about moving beyond "big oil companies and the failed ethanol experiment," as my friend puts it, we must begin by eliminating the government subsidies for Big Oil. My friend wants to reduce the corporate income tax rate to 17 or 18% to provide incentives for green practices. I say that if corporations are persons, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then they should pay taxes at rates equivalent to those for the human persons who work for them. As it stands, the corporate tax rate is irrelevant because most corporations pay little or no tax at all.
If we're serious about being "good custodians of the earth," we have got to be willing to accept regulation of those actions that pollute its life-giving resources, damage the health of its inhabitants, alter its climate and disturb nature. The federal government is the obvious choice to do this, and its regulatory agencies must have adequate power over corporations in order to fill this function. These are essential first steps.
My friend acknowledges that "green talk" can "turn off moderates and conservatives," but insists there is a constructive middle course involving "intermediate options such as natural gas, hydroelectric, low-grade nuclear, and geothermal power."
T. Boone Pickens has already put his wealth and influence behind a big push for natural gas -- which, while it burns cleaner than fossil fuels, is still a finite resource whose extraction damages vast areas of public lands with enormous aesthetic, recreational, traditional and ethereal value to large numbers of human citizens. If we are willing to sacrifice those values for the economic values of corporations we are doomed before we begin.
My friend dismisses solar and wind energy as "neither economically nor technologically feasible at this time," but I believe that a sincere effort to formulate an effective energy strategy must keep them on the table.
In the Pickens plan, a vast wind farm in the Texas panhandle, utilizing the newest technology,would provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy needs. A national strategy of wind energy, subsidized by the government with tax incentives for private investment like that proposed by Pickens, would more than double that percentage. Intelligent energy conservation practices by consumers would lower the demand. Some interim energy strategies propose using "clean coal" to fuel power plants. Clean coal is a myth. Pickens advocates refitting coal-burning power plants to burn natural gas --substituting one finite fuel for another. Perhaps this has a place in an interim strategy.
Massive bird kills, including raptors such as the bald eagle, have been cited as an argument against wind energy that true conservationists ought to support. The bird argument took flight when the bodies of a number of eagles were discovered beneath some of the turbines of the Altamount Pass wind farm in California. These are old turbines, made obsolete by advances in technology. Ornithologists have discovered that the turbine blades of Altamount Pass actually attract birds. Newer blade technology eliminates the attractant. Radar studies in New York and research in Denmark -- arguably the world leader in wind power technology -- indicate that wind farms and bird populations can co-exist.
The entire southwest could become energy self-sufficient, and sell surplus power to a national grid, if it harnessed its sunshine. There may be animal habitat arguments against massive solar installations in the open spaces of the west. But with government encouragement, diverting Big Oil subsidies to solar research, and government standards for the construction industry, solar-powered homes and buildings could be the norm throughout the southwest. Keep an eye on Philadelphia, hardly the sunniest place on earth. Jeff Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, is turning his team's stadium into a solar-powered, 100% self-sufficient, aesthetically pleasing example of what can be done if we're really sincere about finding solutions.
By all means, let's have a conversation about these things. But let's limit the participants to those who have demonstrated genuine concern about being "good custodians of the earth."
Just a few days ago, in Seattle, the great progressive statesman Dennis Kucinich, said:
"Are you prepared to rescue our planet, to protect our air, water, and land from further exploitation by demanding an end to drilling the earth, fracking the earth, cracking the earth, an end to poisoning the seas and the skies with carbon based energies, and a rapid transition to an environmentally friendly, socially responsible green economy?"
Green energy, my conservative friend wrote, can "revitalize our own economy with our own resources . . .(and) . . . create U.S. jobs."
Can two such voices communicate across the Great Divide of political rancor in this land and formulate a strategy to rescue the planet?
My conservative friend offers to initiate such a dialogue with his own list of recommendations for a greener planet. Some of them are quite good.
But it seems to me that before such a dialogue can begin, the participants need to establish their bona fides. If we're serious about moving beyond "big oil companies and the failed ethanol experiment," as my friend puts it, we must begin by eliminating the government subsidies for Big Oil. My friend wants to reduce the corporate income tax rate to 17 or 18% to provide incentives for green practices. I say that if corporations are persons, as the Supreme Court has ruled, then they should pay taxes at rates equivalent to those for the human persons who work for them. As it stands, the corporate tax rate is irrelevant because most corporations pay little or no tax at all.
If we're serious about being "good custodians of the earth," we have got to be willing to accept regulation of those actions that pollute its life-giving resources, damage the health of its inhabitants, alter its climate and disturb nature. The federal government is the obvious choice to do this, and its regulatory agencies must have adequate power over corporations in order to fill this function. These are essential first steps.
My friend acknowledges that "green talk" can "turn off moderates and conservatives," but insists there is a constructive middle course involving "intermediate options such as natural gas, hydroelectric, low-grade nuclear, and geothermal power."
T. Boone Pickens has already put his wealth and influence behind a big push for natural gas -- which, while it burns cleaner than fossil fuels, is still a finite resource whose extraction damages vast areas of public lands with enormous aesthetic, recreational, traditional and ethereal value to large numbers of human citizens. If we are willing to sacrifice those values for the economic values of corporations we are doomed before we begin.
My friend dismisses solar and wind energy as "neither economically nor technologically feasible at this time," but I believe that a sincere effort to formulate an effective energy strategy must keep them on the table.
In the Pickens plan, a vast wind farm in the Texas panhandle, utilizing the newest technology,would provide 20 per cent of the nation's energy needs. A national strategy of wind energy, subsidized by the government with tax incentives for private investment like that proposed by Pickens, would more than double that percentage. Intelligent energy conservation practices by consumers would lower the demand. Some interim energy strategies propose using "clean coal" to fuel power plants. Clean coal is a myth. Pickens advocates refitting coal-burning power plants to burn natural gas --substituting one finite fuel for another. Perhaps this has a place in an interim strategy.
Massive bird kills, including raptors such as the bald eagle, have been cited as an argument against wind energy that true conservationists ought to support. The bird argument took flight when the bodies of a number of eagles were discovered beneath some of the turbines of the Altamount Pass wind farm in California. These are old turbines, made obsolete by advances in technology. Ornithologists have discovered that the turbine blades of Altamount Pass actually attract birds. Newer blade technology eliminates the attractant. Radar studies in New York and research in Denmark -- arguably the world leader in wind power technology -- indicate that wind farms and bird populations can co-exist.
The entire southwest could become energy self-sufficient, and sell surplus power to a national grid, if it harnessed its sunshine. There may be animal habitat arguments against massive solar installations in the open spaces of the west. But with government encouragement, diverting Big Oil subsidies to solar research, and government standards for the construction industry, solar-powered homes and buildings could be the norm throughout the southwest. Keep an eye on Philadelphia, hardly the sunniest place on earth. Jeff Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, is turning his team's stadium into a solar-powered, 100% self-sufficient, aesthetically pleasing example of what can be done if we're really sincere about finding solutions.
By all means, let's have a conversation about these things. But let's limit the participants to those who have demonstrated genuine concern about being "good custodians of the earth."
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Thank Heavens for Green Chile Roasting
They've started roasting the green chile here in southern New Mexico. This produces one of the great food aromas in the world, like baking bread or fresh-brewed coffee or grandma's roladen.
All great chefs understand the importance of the olfactory element in food. So, too, do dogs, often with results that displease their human companions.
A few fortunate folks have developed keen olfactory skills for political odors, as well,. In this country they're called liberals. Every now and then they catch a political aroma like green chile roasting. More often than not, in these United States, what they smell is rotten meat.
They are underwhelmed of late by a really bad stink on the wings of the winds out of Texas. Gov. Goodhair, as he was dubbed by the late, great Molly Ivins, wants to be our President.
Honest Injun! THAT Gov. Goodhair.
The one whose only policy decision about the state's record, impoverishing drought was, "pray for rain." (It didn't work.)
The one who brags about the "Texas miracle" of increasing jobs during the recession, whereas in fact in true job creation data Texas ranks last among the 50.
The one who has compelled the state's history teachers to tell their pupils that Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlaffly are "great Americans," whereas Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez are not.
The one who primed his base for his presidential run by staging a great pray-in featuring some of the most whacko, racist, ill-informed Christofascists on the face of the earth.
The one who set the all-time gubernatorial record for executing prisoners who suffered from mental disability.
Ramblin' Rick thinks he can pull Texas out of the union with a stroke of his pen; calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and -- get this -- thinks the way to get this country moving again is to suspend ALL Federal laws and regulations. And one of his lesser gaffes: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke commits "treason" when he takes even mild regulatory action to keep the country solvent.
In Iowa, a handful of kooks got together in Ames to eat pork tenders and proclaim Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congressperson, their favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. This makes her Gov. Goodhair's principal rival.
What a pair!
Bachmann could improve her knowledge of her country's history by studying even Goodhair's cockeyed version of it. Last I heard she thought Paul Revere crossed the Delaware to warn Manchester, NH, that the British were comin', which alerted Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys to win the battle of Lafayette, Ind. Something like that.
She and her hubby made their little fortune by praying homosexual people into heterosexuality, the way God intended it. Maybe her contest with Goodhair will come down to a praying contest. What a choice to inflict on God!
Meanwhile, vile odors waft unto us from Minnesota and from Texas. Fortunately, they come together right at the point of heavy green chile roasting, which neutralizes them.
All great chefs understand the importance of the olfactory element in food. So, too, do dogs, often with results that displease their human companions.
A few fortunate folks have developed keen olfactory skills for political odors, as well,. In this country they're called liberals. Every now and then they catch a political aroma like green chile roasting. More often than not, in these United States, what they smell is rotten meat.
They are underwhelmed of late by a really bad stink on the wings of the winds out of Texas. Gov. Goodhair, as he was dubbed by the late, great Molly Ivins, wants to be our President.
Honest Injun! THAT Gov. Goodhair.
The one whose only policy decision about the state's record, impoverishing drought was, "pray for rain." (It didn't work.)
The one who brags about the "Texas miracle" of increasing jobs during the recession, whereas in fact in true job creation data Texas ranks last among the 50.
The one who has compelled the state's history teachers to tell their pupils that Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlaffly are "great Americans," whereas Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez are not.
The one who primed his base for his presidential run by staging a great pray-in featuring some of the most whacko, racist, ill-informed Christofascists on the face of the earth.
The one who set the all-time gubernatorial record for executing prisoners who suffered from mental disability.
Ramblin' Rick thinks he can pull Texas out of the union with a stroke of his pen; calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and -- get this -- thinks the way to get this country moving again is to suspend ALL Federal laws and regulations. And one of his lesser gaffes: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke commits "treason" when he takes even mild regulatory action to keep the country solvent.
In Iowa, a handful of kooks got together in Ames to eat pork tenders and proclaim Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congressperson, their favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. This makes her Gov. Goodhair's principal rival.
What a pair!
Bachmann could improve her knowledge of her country's history by studying even Goodhair's cockeyed version of it. Last I heard she thought Paul Revere crossed the Delaware to warn Manchester, NH, that the British were comin', which alerted Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys to win the battle of Lafayette, Ind. Something like that.
She and her hubby made their little fortune by praying homosexual people into heterosexuality, the way God intended it. Maybe her contest with Goodhair will come down to a praying contest. What a choice to inflict on God!
Meanwhile, vile odors waft unto us from Minnesota and from Texas. Fortunately, they come together right at the point of heavy green chile roasting, which neutralizes them.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Citizens United: A Brief History Lesson
J.C. Bancroft Davis is the most influential American you did not read about in high school history class.
He's the very source of the corporate takeover of everything in these United States. It was he (not Mitt Romney, not Antonin Scalia) who invented personhood for corporations. And he was a mere clerk. Granted he was the law clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States, Morrison Waite.
Davis did his shenanigans in 1886, but the significant background begins in 1857. A black man named Dred Scott, who had lived as a free man in one of the original states, was forced into servitude when he moved to a slave state. He sued for his freedom but the U.S. Supreme Court, under the leadership of a slave-owner, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney, held that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen and hence Scott had no standing to sue in federal court.
Years later the great Justice John Marshall Harlan would call the Dred Scott decision "pernicious" and another great justice, Charles Evans Hughes, would call it a "self-inflicted wound" on the court. Nonetheless, no subsequent court ever overruled Dred Scott v. Sandford. It was negated in 1865 by the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal in the United States, and of the 14th Amendment , whose First Article declared:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was intended as the final nail in the coffin of the pernicious Dred Scott decision.
The 14th Amendment was drafted by a joint committee of 15 members of the House and Senate. Sen. Roscoe Conkling was a member of the joint committee. Upon leaving the Senate he became a railroad lawyer. He was as well-connected in Washington as he was absent scruples, for now he declared that it had been the original intent of the committee that corporations should be "persons" for purposes of this Amendment. In 1882 he made this very argument as an expert witness in a federal court case that reached the Supreme Court, so that Chief Justice Waite and the associate justices were familiar with it. In 1886, a case Conkling argued, and lost, in California was fast-tracked on appeal to the Waite Supreme Court. It was a mundane matter involving state taxes and it was called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. By this time Conkling had magically turned up a journal he said he had kept during the joint committee sessions. Its notes supported the corporate personhood thesis he had invented four years earlier. It was later determined to be a forgery.
But now, even before arguments began in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, Chief Justice Waite told attorneys for both sides, somewhat out of the blue, that he would not entertain arguments about whether corporations were persons under the 14th Amendment because the court already was of the opinion that they were. This seems to have impressed the chief justice's clerk, Mr. Davis, perhaps because he was himself a shareholder and member of the board of directors of a railroad.
The case proceded with no mention of corporate personhood, nor was the subject addressed in the majority decision. When it came time for Mr. Davis to do his most important clerical chore, writing the caption and "headnotes" (or summary) of the decision for publication in the official record, he was moved to write an inquiry to the Chief Justice:
"I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c &c as follows:
In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of opinion that it does. Please let me know whether I correctly caught your words and oblige."
This was the Chief Justice's reply:
"I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."
(Emphasis mine.)
On that basis, and that alone, railroad board member Davis, a mere clerk of court at the time, wrote as the very first sentence of his syllabus:
The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And this is the "legal precedent" on which Scalia, Roberts, Alioto, Kennedy and Thomas based their infamous Citizens United decision, which puts every American citizen under the corporate thumb; which enabled the Koch Brothers to buy the Wisconsin recall elections for Republican incumbents, and which will put virtually all future state and federal office-holders in corporate servitude.
Thank you, J.C. Bancroft Davis, Great American.
Postscript
The 14th Amendment also establishes the method of determining the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives:
"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State. . . .
Thus little ol' Delaware, with fewer than a million persons in the 2010 census, is entitled to only one congressman.
But:
Delaware is home to nearly three million U.S. corporations: by incorporating there, these corporations have declared Delaware to be their "legal domicile." These corporations are persons. They are entitled to representation!
If you gave Delaware the seats its corporate persons entitle it to, the state would have six representatives in Congress.
If I were the governor of Delaware. I'd sue for my rightful representation.
He's the very source of the corporate takeover of everything in these United States. It was he (not Mitt Romney, not Antonin Scalia) who invented personhood for corporations. And he was a mere clerk. Granted he was the law clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States, Morrison Waite.
Davis did his shenanigans in 1886, but the significant background begins in 1857. A black man named Dred Scott, who had lived as a free man in one of the original states, was forced into servitude when he moved to a slave state. He sued for his freedom but the U.S. Supreme Court, under the leadership of a slave-owner, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney, held that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen and hence Scott had no standing to sue in federal court.
Years later the great Justice John Marshall Harlan would call the Dred Scott decision "pernicious" and another great justice, Charles Evans Hughes, would call it a "self-inflicted wound" on the court. Nonetheless, no subsequent court ever overruled Dred Scott v. Sandford. It was negated in 1865 by the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal in the United States, and of the 14th Amendment , whose First Article declared:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was intended as the final nail in the coffin of the pernicious Dred Scott decision.
The 14th Amendment was drafted by a joint committee of 15 members of the House and Senate. Sen. Roscoe Conkling was a member of the joint committee. Upon leaving the Senate he became a railroad lawyer. He was as well-connected in Washington as he was absent scruples, for now he declared that it had been the original intent of the committee that corporations should be "persons" for purposes of this Amendment. In 1882 he made this very argument as an expert witness in a federal court case that reached the Supreme Court, so that Chief Justice Waite and the associate justices were familiar with it. In 1886, a case Conkling argued, and lost, in California was fast-tracked on appeal to the Waite Supreme Court. It was a mundane matter involving state taxes and it was called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. By this time Conkling had magically turned up a journal he said he had kept during the joint committee sessions. Its notes supported the corporate personhood thesis he had invented four years earlier. It was later determined to be a forgery.
But now, even before arguments began in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, Chief Justice Waite told attorneys for both sides, somewhat out of the blue, that he would not entertain arguments about whether corporations were persons under the 14th Amendment because the court already was of the opinion that they were. This seems to have impressed the chief justice's clerk, Mr. Davis, perhaps because he was himself a shareholder and member of the board of directors of a railroad.
The case proceded with no mention of corporate personhood, nor was the subject addressed in the majority decision. When it came time for Mr. Davis to do his most important clerical chore, writing the caption and "headnotes" (or summary) of the decision for publication in the official record, he was moved to write an inquiry to the Chief Justice:
"I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c &c as follows:
In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of opinion that it does. Please let me know whether I correctly caught your words and oblige."
This was the Chief Justice's reply:
"I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."
(Emphasis mine.)
On that basis, and that alone, railroad board member Davis, a mere clerk of court at the time, wrote as the very first sentence of his syllabus:
The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And this is the "legal precedent" on which Scalia, Roberts, Alioto, Kennedy and Thomas based their infamous Citizens United decision, which puts every American citizen under the corporate thumb; which enabled the Koch Brothers to buy the Wisconsin recall elections for Republican incumbents, and which will put virtually all future state and federal office-holders in corporate servitude.
Thank you, J.C. Bancroft Davis, Great American.
Postscript
The 14th Amendment also establishes the method of determining the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives:
"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State. . . .
Thus little ol' Delaware, with fewer than a million persons in the 2010 census, is entitled to only one congressman.
But:
Delaware is home to nearly three million U.S. corporations: by incorporating there, these corporations have declared Delaware to be their "legal domicile." These corporations are persons. They are entitled to representation!
If you gave Delaware the seats its corporate persons entitle it to, the state would have six representatives in Congress.
If I were the governor of Delaware. I'd sue for my rightful representation.
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