Somewhere in space over America lurks a satellite with a giant vacuum machine that sucks the brains out of most of us during the ever-longer, ever more asinine political campaigns.
It is utterly non-partisan, this machine; its work is evident not just in the Republican presidential debates; not just in the work of the right-wing unthink tanks; not just in the voting patterns of recent presidential elections; but also in all the spin-off prattle that these things generate.
When Republicans seeking the presidency felt the hot breath of Ron Paul, who takes libertarian leaps away from party orthodoxy, they ganged up on him as a kook and crazy man.
This prompted a few progressive pundits to write that Paul had worthwhile views on a number of extremely important issues, and that he was the only voice addressing those issues during the political season. President Obama wrongly (in my opinion) opposes those views, which puts him essentially in the same corner as Romney, Gingrich and (yes) George W. Bush.
But Glenn Greenwald and other progressives who wrote favorably about Paul's views on these issues have been subjected to vicious assaults by other so-called progressives who accuse him of advocating Paul for the presidency. As Will Rogers once put it: "I am a member of no organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
For the record, Mr. Paul opposes our wars; opposes imperialism; has called American corporatism a route to “soft fascism;” supports Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks; has praised Occupy Wall Street; opposes the Patriot Act and the surveillance and police state it has engendered; opposes the war on drugs, which wastes money and perpetuates racism; opposes unilateral foreign interventions; and has expressed views on banks and the financial system that the esteemed economist Simon Johnson says "should be taken seriously." Indeed, in 2009, Mr. Paul teamed with a Democrat, Alan Grayson of Florida, to sponsor an amendment to the sweeping financial overhaul legislation that aims to regulate the industry for systemic risks. It subjects the Federal Reserve to greatly intensified audits and oversight. The amendment advanced on a 43-26 vote of the House Financial Services Committee with both Democratic and Republican support. The vote reflected the widespread and bipartisan populist anger at the central bank's policy decisions and secretive methods of operation.
These are positions which, if mainstream Democrats had an ounce of courage, a soupcon of intellectual honesty or a pinch of loyalty to their party's traditional values, every Democrat in Congress would be espousing.
I do not, repeat NOT, want to see Mr. Paul win the Republican nomination for president. I want to see him remain in Congress where his unorthodox brand of Republicanism probably does more good than his many deplorable views on other issues do harm.
I think it's important to have someone in Congress who will stand up, as Mr. Paul did, during a session of the House of Representatives, and ask questions like the following:
• Number 1: Do the America People deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
• Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
• Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our government's failure to protect classified information?
• Number 4: Are we getting our money's worth of the 80 billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
• Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
• Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
• Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
• Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
• Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
So-called progressives who refuse to recognize the importance of injecting these subjects into the American political discourse do not deserve the appellation they attach to themselves.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Sarasota Story: Outrage Heaped Upon Insult
Lives there a newsman who has never encountered pressure from the business side to "go easy" on an advertiser which becomes the subject of an unflattering news story?
In the old days, on the good newspapers and magazines, there were strong editors who stood between their reporters and the business side, maintaining a holy "separation of church and state" as one such editor memorably put it.
Now, employees of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sarasota Herald Tribune are being ordered to sign a vile and insidious "non-solicitation, non-compete and confidentiality agreement" that not only signals the end of the superb enterprise reporting for which the paper was esteemed far beyond its geographic boundaries, but also deprives its editors and reporters of their professional personhood.
The New York Times Company recently sold the Herald Tribune, and its other regional newspapers, to an outfit called Halifax Media Group, which previously had only dabbled in media proprietorship. Presumably, Times not only knew what was coming, but assented to it, agreeing, for example, not to hire any Herald Trib reporters or editors in the lifeboat.
The "agreement" being imposed on the Sarasota employees makes all their notes, memos, and related intellectual assets the sole property of Halifax. Consider:
The Herald Trib last year published a series of articles exposing criminality and fraud in the Florida insurance industry. It won the paper and its reporter, Paige St. John*, the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Now, suppose that project were still a work in progress. And suppose one or more of the insurers involved were Herald Trib advertisers. And suppose Halifax -- as one can perceive it would -- ordered the expose not to be printed. If Ms. St. John and her editors were signatories to the Halifax document, they should, and probably would, resign in protest, but would have to leave behind, in Halifax's basement limbo, their mountains of material for the stories, which of course would never see the light of day.
Under terms of the Halifax "agreement," none of them could work for two years in any media that sell advertising or distribute information in places where Halifax has business interests. Some of them might find journalism jobs in Latvia or Bangladesh, but even there they couldn't publish what they knew about a story that won America's highest journalism award for serving the public interest.
A majority of Americans, according to Gallup, already distrusts media "strongly" or totally. With outfits like Halifax taking over one of the dwindling number of exceptions to the taint that leads to such distrust, those poll numbers can only continue to rise rapidly. The likelihood that Times executives knew damned well what was in store for the regionals they sold down the river only compounds the shame.
In addition to the odious "non-solicitation &c." document, Halifax has established draconian new work rules including a reduction in vacation time, on the 16 regional newspapers formerly owned by the Times.
The violation of the personal dignity of a few outstanding journalists is in my opinion criminal; even though the Herald Trib isn't a union shop, its workers are still covered by certain labor laws and regulations. Fighting to defend themselves will require the Herald Trib employees to organize, hire a good lawyer and resist. Risky business, and very expensive, especially in these harsh economic times for all Americans except plutocrats like the Halifax ownership. (The company's foundation is in hedge fund management!) As someone who once sought to litigate against corporate newspaper ownership, I know the odds of taking on their batteries of lawyers with their encyclopedic arsenal of diversions, delays and fancy footwork that militate against individuals or small groups in courts of law. An expert in labor law called the Halifax actions "outrageous" and "offensive" -- but probably "enforceable" in anti-labor Florida.
For me and many others who served much of their working lifetime in the cause of good journalism, this latest example of corporatocratic villainy is especially painful. That it's a relatively small part of the strangulation of democracy for the sake of profit in all of the United States doesn't mitigate the pain.
Like the public employees of Wisconsin, and the union workers of Indiana, the journalists of Sarasota need allies. The war Reagan launched against the American worker has gone too far.
+ + +
(*) Paige St. John is my daughter-in-law.
In the old days, on the good newspapers and magazines, there were strong editors who stood between their reporters and the business side, maintaining a holy "separation of church and state" as one such editor memorably put it.
Now, employees of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sarasota Herald Tribune are being ordered to sign a vile and insidious "non-solicitation, non-compete and confidentiality agreement" that not only signals the end of the superb enterprise reporting for which the paper was esteemed far beyond its geographic boundaries, but also deprives its editors and reporters of their professional personhood.
The New York Times Company recently sold the Herald Tribune, and its other regional newspapers, to an outfit called Halifax Media Group, which previously had only dabbled in media proprietorship. Presumably, Times not only knew what was coming, but assented to it, agreeing, for example, not to hire any Herald Trib reporters or editors in the lifeboat.
The "agreement" being imposed on the Sarasota employees makes all their notes, memos, and related intellectual assets the sole property of Halifax. Consider:
The Herald Trib last year published a series of articles exposing criminality and fraud in the Florida insurance industry. It won the paper and its reporter, Paige St. John*, the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Now, suppose that project were still a work in progress. And suppose one or more of the insurers involved were Herald Trib advertisers. And suppose Halifax -- as one can perceive it would -- ordered the expose not to be printed. If Ms. St. John and her editors were signatories to the Halifax document, they should, and probably would, resign in protest, but would have to leave behind, in Halifax's basement limbo, their mountains of material for the stories, which of course would never see the light of day.
Under terms of the Halifax "agreement," none of them could work for two years in any media that sell advertising or distribute information in places where Halifax has business interests. Some of them might find journalism jobs in Latvia or Bangladesh, but even there they couldn't publish what they knew about a story that won America's highest journalism award for serving the public interest.
A majority of Americans, according to Gallup, already distrusts media "strongly" or totally. With outfits like Halifax taking over one of the dwindling number of exceptions to the taint that leads to such distrust, those poll numbers can only continue to rise rapidly. The likelihood that Times executives knew damned well what was in store for the regionals they sold down the river only compounds the shame.
In addition to the odious "non-solicitation &c." document, Halifax has established draconian new work rules including a reduction in vacation time, on the 16 regional newspapers formerly owned by the Times.
The violation of the personal dignity of a few outstanding journalists is in my opinion criminal; even though the Herald Trib isn't a union shop, its workers are still covered by certain labor laws and regulations. Fighting to defend themselves will require the Herald Trib employees to organize, hire a good lawyer and resist. Risky business, and very expensive, especially in these harsh economic times for all Americans except plutocrats like the Halifax ownership. (The company's foundation is in hedge fund management!) As someone who once sought to litigate against corporate newspaper ownership, I know the odds of taking on their batteries of lawyers with their encyclopedic arsenal of diversions, delays and fancy footwork that militate against individuals or small groups in courts of law. An expert in labor law called the Halifax actions "outrageous" and "offensive" -- but probably "enforceable" in anti-labor Florida.
For me and many others who served much of their working lifetime in the cause of good journalism, this latest example of corporatocratic villainy is especially painful. That it's a relatively small part of the strangulation of democracy for the sake of profit in all of the United States doesn't mitigate the pain.
Like the public employees of Wisconsin, and the union workers of Indiana, the journalists of Sarasota need allies. The war Reagan launched against the American worker has gone too far.
+ + +
(*) Paige St. John is my daughter-in-law.
Friday, January 6, 2012
The Web: Democracy's Handmaiden
A friend e-mails another friend to praise his "effort to debunk some small share of the nonsense which is transmitted on the Web and transformed thereby into Truth."
The particular bit of nonsense he referred to emerged from a right-wing (is there any other kind?) radio talk show. A caller who identified himself as a "brain surgeon" said he had learned that under "Obama's new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care," patients over 70 would be given nothing more than "comfort care."
Like most of the canards that thrive on the 'Net, this one has sore thumbs. First, the host of the radio program is a Limbaugh acolyte; by definition, his audience is made up of kooks, fruitcakes and nuts. Second, no self-respecting neurosurgen, even one who specializes in surgery inside the cranium, would call himself a "brain surgeon." That's a layman's term. Third, this smells very much like the old "death panel" crap.
The e-mailee bothered to do a bit of fundamental checking and found that the meeting at which the "brain surgeon" purported to learn about the "Obama plan" for 70-year-olds was pure fiction. There was no such meeting.
Ninety-per cent of the nonsense which is transmitted on the Web is just as easily debunked. But even if all of the nonsense were clearly labeled "This is a lie!" the poor fools whose biases are reinforced by the lie would propagate it as Truth.
The friend praising the debunker blames the 'Net. "I think it's possible," he writes, "a generation from now, when ignorance has come to full flower and authority, that the remaining thinkers of thoughts will say that when the Internet killed off the purveyors of mostly reliable information and replaced them with a readily accessible global blackboard of prejudice and stupidity, that whatever chance the democratic experiment had was finished."
I think he's just being cranky. (He has bad knees and so far has resisted surgery.) For all the prejudice and stupidity on the global blackboard, there is also infinitely more useful, reliable information and opinion, more easily accessible, than at any time in human history.
No need to pad down to the local library and pore through two dozen publications to sip the economic wisdom of such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Robert Reich and Simon Johnson, without which mere laymen likely could not savvy the entire venality and wrongness of our leadership's economic policies. Their ready availability on the Web serves democracy far better than, say, newspapers, even when there were still several good ones around.
The Arab spring of 2011 -- the first steps toward democracy for millions -- could not have happened without the Internet.
The Web gave birth to the Occupy movement, the most promising development so far for the restoration of at least a semblance of democracy in the United States. It sustained the people's protests against oligarchy in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.
When even the New York Times lied to us about yellow cake, aluminum tubes and WMDs in Iraq, the only reasonable, experienced and reliable voices of dissent -- real truth, in this case -- were on the Internet: Hans Blix, for example, the Swedish diplomat who was personally involved in nearly a thousand onsite inspections in Iraq; or Ray McGovern, the outspoken former senior CIA intelligence analyst. In "balancing" her utterly false reports, Judith Miller did not consult either of these legitimate experts. She knew that doing so would cut off access to her source for the bogus information, "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's errand boy.
ALEC. The framing of Acorn. The health threat and unreliability of airport scanners.
The tentacles of the Koch Brothers. The real origins of the Tea Party. For either the first, or the only, or surely the deepest understanding of these compromises of our democracy one had to scour the Internet.
Of course, using a tool like the Internet -- itself a functioning democracy -- demands discretion, care and double-checking. But then, hasn't that always been true of newspapers? Magazines? Books?
The particular bit of nonsense he referred to emerged from a right-wing (is there any other kind?) radio talk show. A caller who identified himself as a "brain surgeon" said he had learned that under "Obama's new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care," patients over 70 would be given nothing more than "comfort care."
Like most of the canards that thrive on the 'Net, this one has sore thumbs. First, the host of the radio program is a Limbaugh acolyte; by definition, his audience is made up of kooks, fruitcakes and nuts. Second, no self-respecting neurosurgen, even one who specializes in surgery inside the cranium, would call himself a "brain surgeon." That's a layman's term. Third, this smells very much like the old "death panel" crap.
The e-mailee bothered to do a bit of fundamental checking and found that the meeting at which the "brain surgeon" purported to learn about the "Obama plan" for 70-year-olds was pure fiction. There was no such meeting.
Ninety-per cent of the nonsense which is transmitted on the Web is just as easily debunked. But even if all of the nonsense were clearly labeled "This is a lie!" the poor fools whose biases are reinforced by the lie would propagate it as Truth.
The friend praising the debunker blames the 'Net. "I think it's possible," he writes, "a generation from now, when ignorance has come to full flower and authority, that the remaining thinkers of thoughts will say that when the Internet killed off the purveyors of mostly reliable information and replaced them with a readily accessible global blackboard of prejudice and stupidity, that whatever chance the democratic experiment had was finished."
I think he's just being cranky. (He has bad knees and so far has resisted surgery.) For all the prejudice and stupidity on the global blackboard, there is also infinitely more useful, reliable information and opinion, more easily accessible, than at any time in human history.
No need to pad down to the local library and pore through two dozen publications to sip the economic wisdom of such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Robert Reich and Simon Johnson, without which mere laymen likely could not savvy the entire venality and wrongness of our leadership's economic policies. Their ready availability on the Web serves democracy far better than, say, newspapers, even when there were still several good ones around.
The Arab spring of 2011 -- the first steps toward democracy for millions -- could not have happened without the Internet.
The Web gave birth to the Occupy movement, the most promising development so far for the restoration of at least a semblance of democracy in the United States. It sustained the people's protests against oligarchy in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.
When even the New York Times lied to us about yellow cake, aluminum tubes and WMDs in Iraq, the only reasonable, experienced and reliable voices of dissent -- real truth, in this case -- were on the Internet: Hans Blix, for example, the Swedish diplomat who was personally involved in nearly a thousand onsite inspections in Iraq; or Ray McGovern, the outspoken former senior CIA intelligence analyst. In "balancing" her utterly false reports, Judith Miller did not consult either of these legitimate experts. She knew that doing so would cut off access to her source for the bogus information, "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's errand boy.
ALEC. The framing of Acorn. The health threat and unreliability of airport scanners.
The tentacles of the Koch Brothers. The real origins of the Tea Party. For either the first, or the only, or surely the deepest understanding of these compromises of our democracy one had to scour the Internet.
Of course, using a tool like the Internet -- itself a functioning democracy -- demands discretion, care and double-checking. But then, hasn't that always been true of newspapers? Magazines? Books?
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
"The Price Has Been Worth It"
It's an ugly "joke" but it was an ugly war, too.
Big, strong kid from the Tennessee hills decides to seek his fortune in Alaska. Asks advice from old-timers in the Frontier Saloon. "Boy," he's told, "you ain't ready fer Alaska till you've screwed a Eskimo and shot a grizzly." Youngster leaves. A few weeks later he staggers into the saloon, gashed and bleeding, his clothes in tatters and a dead Eskimo over his shoulder. "Shooting the Eskimo was the easy part," he says. "The bear was somethin' else. But it was worth it."
Enter Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the latest "it was worth it" regarding the Iraq war. “I think the price has been worth it," he said, after a one-day visit, "to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”
Stable? What is this guy smoking?
But even if the post-America Iraqi government were stable, would that really justify the cost not just in dollars, but in Iraqi and American lives and disability? Only if you accept the racist "dead Eskimo" mentality as the acceptable American norm: that collateral damage in dead civilians is too insignificant to bother counting.
American troops not only died there, unnecessarily; they also committed atrocities there. War crimes.
But "it was worth it."
Only to the shameless profiteers who sucked enormous fortunes out of the trillions of American dollars wasted on this war whose "end" we declared last week.
Or to the blood-lusting ignoramuses who think there is "honor" in war.
Or to the Machiavellian schemers who see endless war as America's manifest destiny to force "democracy" on nations we deem incapable of managing their own affairs.
"The price has been worth it."
Has it? The trillions of dollars? The innocent lives lost?
What about the forfeiture of our Bill of Rights at home? What about the utter demise of American democracy? What about the decimation of our economy, the distortion of our standards of justice, the loss of our dignity as a nation, of decency as a people?
"The price has been worth it."
Go fuck a grizzly bear, Leon.
Big, strong kid from the Tennessee hills decides to seek his fortune in Alaska. Asks advice from old-timers in the Frontier Saloon. "Boy," he's told, "you ain't ready fer Alaska till you've screwed a Eskimo and shot a grizzly." Youngster leaves. A few weeks later he staggers into the saloon, gashed and bleeding, his clothes in tatters and a dead Eskimo over his shoulder. "Shooting the Eskimo was the easy part," he says. "The bear was somethin' else. But it was worth it."
Enter Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the latest "it was worth it" regarding the Iraq war. “I think the price has been worth it," he said, after a one-day visit, "to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”
Stable? What is this guy smoking?
But even if the post-America Iraqi government were stable, would that really justify the cost not just in dollars, but in Iraqi and American lives and disability? Only if you accept the racist "dead Eskimo" mentality as the acceptable American norm: that collateral damage in dead civilians is too insignificant to bother counting.
American troops not only died there, unnecessarily; they also committed atrocities there. War crimes.
But "it was worth it."
Only to the shameless profiteers who sucked enormous fortunes out of the trillions of American dollars wasted on this war whose "end" we declared last week.
Or to the blood-lusting ignoramuses who think there is "honor" in war.
Or to the Machiavellian schemers who see endless war as America's manifest destiny to force "democracy" on nations we deem incapable of managing their own affairs.
"The price has been worth it."
Has it? The trillions of dollars? The innocent lives lost?
What about the forfeiture of our Bill of Rights at home? What about the utter demise of American democracy? What about the decimation of our economy, the distortion of our standards of justice, the loss of our dignity as a nation, of decency as a people?
"The price has been worth it."
Go fuck a grizzly bear, Leon.
Friday, December 16, 2011
'Tis the Season to Be . . . Selectively Good-Spirited
The intellectual hypocrisy of the Republican party is a top-to-bottom thing, perhaps because the same handful of propaganda mills like the American Heritage Foundation feed them all the political pabulum that passes for thought.
A case in point is a recent contumely published in the local rag under the byline of the county Republican chairman.
In it, he dismisses as "pseudo-intellectuals" all the progressives in the United States, to whom he refers (in what he obviously thinks is the ultimate disparagement) as "socialists."
He would, I infer, have us reject the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and their ilk in favor of such luminaries as Michelle Bachmann, who doesn't know where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired; Rick Parry, who has trouble counting to three when it comes to his own beliefs; and Eft, the Republicans' great idea factory, who thinks the people of Palestine were "invented."
Heaven forfend!
The low-level GOP acolyte who wrote the piece dwells mainly, as a matter of fact, on heavenly inspiration.
He proudly wishes us "Merry Christmas" -- not "Happy Holidays" -- because the Dec. 25 holiday is by, er, God a Christian one. "Christmas," he lectures, "is not about the beginning of some season, Winterfest, or some other socially designed holiday. It is about the most revered religious holiday" because "it has been celebrated in one form or another by Christians for 2,000 years."
Never mind that non-Christians have celebrated "in one form or another" seasonal festivals like Inti Raymi, Calan Gaeaf, Modranect, Hanukkah, Yule, Yalda, Chahar Shanbeh Suri, Saturnalia and Koleda far longer. Tell their celebrants, after all these millennia, that they're wrong, it's about Jesus.
As they say on ESPN, "C'mon man!"
He writes, "Christ practiced compassion and brotherly love and Christmas provides us with many opportunities to follow his example." Yet he derides governments for keeping shiftless poor jerks on "the dole." Charity, he says, should be "the province of individuals and churches." Government has no damned business helping the nation's sick, its jobless, its suffering. Let them learn to fish!
Progressives, he says, don't acknowledge the rights of Americans to practice their individual religious beliefs. But he seems to argue that those rights apply only to Christian beliefs.
"Merry Christmas to all," he writes. "May each of us find that place in our hearts that urges us to reverently remember why we celebrate this day each year."
By the way, everyone. On this Dec. 16, 2011, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a Happy Beethoven's Birthday.
A case in point is a recent contumely published in the local rag under the byline of the county Republican chairman.
In it, he dismisses as "pseudo-intellectuals" all the progressives in the United States, to whom he refers (in what he obviously thinks is the ultimate disparagement) as "socialists."
He would, I infer, have us reject the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and their ilk in favor of such luminaries as Michelle Bachmann, who doesn't know where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired; Rick Parry, who has trouble counting to three when it comes to his own beliefs; and Eft, the Republicans' great idea factory, who thinks the people of Palestine were "invented."
Heaven forfend!
The low-level GOP acolyte who wrote the piece dwells mainly, as a matter of fact, on heavenly inspiration.
He proudly wishes us "Merry Christmas" -- not "Happy Holidays" -- because the Dec. 25 holiday is by, er, God a Christian one. "Christmas," he lectures, "is not about the beginning of some season, Winterfest, or some other socially designed holiday. It is about the most revered religious holiday" because "it has been celebrated in one form or another by Christians for 2,000 years."
Never mind that non-Christians have celebrated "in one form or another" seasonal festivals like Inti Raymi, Calan Gaeaf, Modranect, Hanukkah, Yule, Yalda, Chahar Shanbeh Suri, Saturnalia and Koleda far longer. Tell their celebrants, after all these millennia, that they're wrong, it's about Jesus.
As they say on ESPN, "C'mon man!"
He writes, "Christ practiced compassion and brotherly love and Christmas provides us with many opportunities to follow his example." Yet he derides governments for keeping shiftless poor jerks on "the dole." Charity, he says, should be "the province of individuals and churches." Government has no damned business helping the nation's sick, its jobless, its suffering. Let them learn to fish!
Progressives, he says, don't acknowledge the rights of Americans to practice their individual religious beliefs. But he seems to argue that those rights apply only to Christian beliefs.
"Merry Christmas to all," he writes. "May each of us find that place in our hearts that urges us to reverently remember why we celebrate this day each year."
By the way, everyone. On this Dec. 16, 2011, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a Happy Beethoven's Birthday.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
A Year of Important Beginnings
This was the year The People stirred.
In the ultimate protest against oppression, a man in Tunisia killed himself by immolation and ignited a revolution. Our Brothers and Sisters in that country overthrew a corrupt dictatorial government.
In Egypt, The People seethed under the yolk of Hosni Mubarak, who threatened to "cut off the hands" of those who opposed him. By February, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding his resignation and Tahrir Square was on a billion lips around the world. With Mubarak gone and a military interim government, Egyptians took to the Square again in the fall to demand free and fair elections.
In Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya (with a little help from NATO), Syria, public squares filled, bullets flew, tear gas filled the air. Some protesters brought down brutal regimes as in Libya, others suffered brutal suppression. Syrian authorities delivered the butchered body of a 13-year-old boy to his parents.
But The People did not rest.
They protested in Europe. They protested in the United States.
In Madison, WI, the fascist puppet governor of the Koch Brothers oil empire set out to break the public employee unions. By the thousands they poured into the square around the capitol, demanding justice. Supporters from around the country joined them. Living on pizza and popcorn they occupied the capitol building. State police refused an order to remove them by force. Now the governor, Scott Walker, faces a recall election.
Using Ghandi's tactic of civil disobedience to injustice, thousands of Americans protested the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a potential megabomb to the environment of a dozen states. More than a thousand demonstrators willingly went to jail for the cause. President Obama, a pawn of the interests behind the pipeline, summoned the gumption to postpone a decision until the heat was off.
And then came Occupy. Suggested by a lefty publication as a way to protest the vast income inequality between Wall Street and Main Street, between the richest 1% and the rest of us, it began by "occupying" Wall Street but soon spread to cities and towns across the country.
After first dismissing them as an insignificant, unwashed minority, our Oligarchy then moved to the tyrant's favorite reaction to dissent and forcefully dismantled the protestors' tent city, busting heads, spraying pepper and even manhandling reporters and photographers trying to record their misdeeds.
Occupy seized the initiative, for a while at least, from the budget-cutting whack jobs of Congress and forced the corporate sycophant in the White House to revert to the campaign trail populist rhetoric that served him so well on the way to his election. He pledged a return to "the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people." Of course he did not mention black hole torture centers, rendition, limitless detention without charge or the new right of the President to order the assassination of citizens he deems supporters of terrorism. Why stop at "cutting off their hands?"
Even in Russia, by year's end, The People stirred. Tens of thousands took to the streets to protest a rigged election; the police did not molest them and the media reported without bias on the demonstrations. The president promised to "investigate" the election fraud charges and The People sneered. The filthy rich Russian owner of an American professional basketball team announced that he would run against the regime for the presidency of Russia.
It has been a year of important beginnings. The People caused some good things to happen. Will they last?
Will the seeds The People planted in 2011 take root in 2012?
To be or not to be, that is the question.
In the ultimate protest against oppression, a man in Tunisia killed himself by immolation and ignited a revolution. Our Brothers and Sisters in that country overthrew a corrupt dictatorial government.
In Egypt, The People seethed under the yolk of Hosni Mubarak, who threatened to "cut off the hands" of those who opposed him. By February, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding his resignation and Tahrir Square was on a billion lips around the world. With Mubarak gone and a military interim government, Egyptians took to the Square again in the fall to demand free and fair elections.
In Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya (with a little help from NATO), Syria, public squares filled, bullets flew, tear gas filled the air. Some protesters brought down brutal regimes as in Libya, others suffered brutal suppression. Syrian authorities delivered the butchered body of a 13-year-old boy to his parents.
But The People did not rest.
They protested in Europe. They protested in the United States.
In Madison, WI, the fascist puppet governor of the Koch Brothers oil empire set out to break the public employee unions. By the thousands they poured into the square around the capitol, demanding justice. Supporters from around the country joined them. Living on pizza and popcorn they occupied the capitol building. State police refused an order to remove them by force. Now the governor, Scott Walker, faces a recall election.
Using Ghandi's tactic of civil disobedience to injustice, thousands of Americans protested the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a potential megabomb to the environment of a dozen states. More than a thousand demonstrators willingly went to jail for the cause. President Obama, a pawn of the interests behind the pipeline, summoned the gumption to postpone a decision until the heat was off.
And then came Occupy. Suggested by a lefty publication as a way to protest the vast income inequality between Wall Street and Main Street, between the richest 1% and the rest of us, it began by "occupying" Wall Street but soon spread to cities and towns across the country.
After first dismissing them as an insignificant, unwashed minority, our Oligarchy then moved to the tyrant's favorite reaction to dissent and forcefully dismantled the protestors' tent city, busting heads, spraying pepper and even manhandling reporters and photographers trying to record their misdeeds.
Occupy seized the initiative, for a while at least, from the budget-cutting whack jobs of Congress and forced the corporate sycophant in the White House to revert to the campaign trail populist rhetoric that served him so well on the way to his election. He pledged a return to "the vision that is truest to our history and most representative of the core decency of the American people." Of course he did not mention black hole torture centers, rendition, limitless detention without charge or the new right of the President to order the assassination of citizens he deems supporters of terrorism. Why stop at "cutting off their hands?"
Even in Russia, by year's end, The People stirred. Tens of thousands took to the streets to protest a rigged election; the police did not molest them and the media reported without bias on the demonstrations. The president promised to "investigate" the election fraud charges and The People sneered. The filthy rich Russian owner of an American professional basketball team announced that he would run against the regime for the presidency of Russia.
It has been a year of important beginnings. The People caused some good things to happen. Will they last?
Will the seeds The People planted in 2011 take root in 2012?
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The Great Universal Suicide Pact
Millions of Americans believed in the Republican bogeyman called "death panel" and so they rallied in town hall meetings to shout nonsense in objection to health care reform efforts.
As a result, we're still stuck with one of the poorest health care systems in the so-called "free world."
But there's a real death panel in this country. Its members are R. W. Tillerson, Chairman; M. W. Albers, M. J. Dolan, D. D. Humphreys, R. N. Schleckser, J. M. Spellings, Jr., S. K. Stuewer, T. R. Walters and J.J. Woodbury. They are the corporate officers of EXXON, the most profitable corporation in history, a corporation that pays no federal income taxes and in fact usually receives a fat refund from the government.
EXXON is only the most powerful of the multitude of hugely profitable extraction industries and their satellites who plunder finite planetary resources, often polluting the environment in the process, and who have used their filthy lucre to successfully ward off government intervention to save the earth.
Fittingly it is the United States, the biggest polluter, the biggest energy consumer, the most wastrel nation on the face of the earth, which, in its servitude to corporate power, has gummed the gears of world efforts to address climate change.
In Durban, South Africa, the nations of the world are working overtime to win commitments to a milksop package of compromises. The United States delegation seems reluctantly committed to backing some form of this too little, too late effort.
The United Nations climate scientists, who have documented beyond the shadow of a doubt what 's happening to our planet because of human actions like EXXON's, created the Global Carbon Project in 1997 to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories to the Protocol -- the United States refused to sign -- committed to reduce those emissions. But those commitments expire next year. Without the biggest polluter in he world, the efforts have come to nil.
How nil?
The latest Global Carbon Project report showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.
Since nothing's being done -- thank you, Mr. Obama, Mr. Tillerson, and all you other robber baron oligarchs throughout the world -- next year's report will be even more grim.
A planet already a dangerous one degree warmer because of human folly is racing to become suicidally two degrees warmer.
Tillerson's death panel is killing us -- with our tacit consent.
Is it any wonder that a society that tolerates such a death panel accepts as serious candidates for its presidency the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman, Rick Parry and Rick Santorum, or gets its "information" from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?
"Keep government out of my Medicare!" indeed. Who needs health care when we've signed off on universal suicide?
What fools these mortals be!
As a result, we're still stuck with one of the poorest health care systems in the so-called "free world."
But there's a real death panel in this country. Its members are R. W. Tillerson, Chairman; M. W. Albers, M. J. Dolan, D. D. Humphreys, R. N. Schleckser, J. M. Spellings, Jr., S. K. Stuewer, T. R. Walters and J.J. Woodbury. They are the corporate officers of EXXON, the most profitable corporation in history, a corporation that pays no federal income taxes and in fact usually receives a fat refund from the government.
EXXON is only the most powerful of the multitude of hugely profitable extraction industries and their satellites who plunder finite planetary resources, often polluting the environment in the process, and who have used their filthy lucre to successfully ward off government intervention to save the earth.
Fittingly it is the United States, the biggest polluter, the biggest energy consumer, the most wastrel nation on the face of the earth, which, in its servitude to corporate power, has gummed the gears of world efforts to address climate change.
In Durban, South Africa, the nations of the world are working overtime to win commitments to a milksop package of compromises. The United States delegation seems reluctantly committed to backing some form of this too little, too late effort.
The United Nations climate scientists, who have documented beyond the shadow of a doubt what 's happening to our planet because of human actions like EXXON's, created the Global Carbon Project in 1997 to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories to the Protocol -- the United States refused to sign -- committed to reduce those emissions. But those commitments expire next year. Without the biggest polluter in he world, the efforts have come to nil.
How nil?
The latest Global Carbon Project report showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.
Since nothing's being done -- thank you, Mr. Obama, Mr. Tillerson, and all you other robber baron oligarchs throughout the world -- next year's report will be even more grim.
A planet already a dangerous one degree warmer because of human folly is racing to become suicidally two degrees warmer.
Tillerson's death panel is killing us -- with our tacit consent.
Is it any wonder that a society that tolerates such a death panel accepts as serious candidates for its presidency the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachman, Rick Parry and Rick Santorum, or gets its "information" from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?
"Keep government out of my Medicare!" indeed. Who needs health care when we've signed off on universal suicide?
What fools these mortals be!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Owed to Frankie Luntz, Frightened Republican
"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."--Frank Luntz, Republican word-twister and strategist.
Little Frankie Luntz
Is known for bully stunts,
For wiggle words
And crafty grunts;
For lies and fibs and prevarications.
He's not a dunce,
This Frankie Luntz --
He invented the Tea Party!
He's such a smarty
That if he's on guard he
Must have reason for perturbation.
Frankie's quarrel?
"Capitalism's immoral,"
Some Occupiers say.
These heretics
Seem to get their kicks
By disparaging The American Way.
What's good for the Street
We must repeat and repeat
Is good for the working class, too.
People! To avoid being crass you
Must quit making waves right away!
Frankie, Frankie,
Why so fraidy cat?
Those women who sat
Weren't all Democrat
So why did the cops have to spray them?
And as for the books
The policemen took,
The paper may burn
But the ideas return
So nothing comes of your mayhem.
Little Frankie Luntz,
For all his bully stunts,
Hasn't a clue
Why people do
Things like Occupy Wall Street.
He's never been a renter
(He's a one percenter)
Who can't pay the lease
(The job's overseas)
And whose debt is set in concrete.
So quiver and cringe,
Frankie Luntz.
The outraged "mobs"
Simply want jobs
To feed the kids and pay the bills.
Choke on your lies,
You miserable guys,
Suffer your fears,
Swallow your tears;
How'd YOU like to work in the mills?
Little Frankie Luntz
Is known for bully stunts,
For wiggle words
And crafty grunts;
For lies and fibs and prevarications.
He's not a dunce,
This Frankie Luntz --
He invented the Tea Party!
He's such a smarty
That if he's on guard he
Must have reason for perturbation.
Frankie's quarrel?
"Capitalism's immoral,"
Some Occupiers say.
These heretics
Seem to get their kicks
By disparaging The American Way.
What's good for the Street
We must repeat and repeat
Is good for the working class, too.
People! To avoid being crass you
Must quit making waves right away!
Frankie, Frankie,
Why so fraidy cat?
Those women who sat
Weren't all Democrat
So why did the cops have to spray them?
And as for the books
The policemen took,
The paper may burn
But the ideas return
So nothing comes of your mayhem.
Little Frankie Luntz,
For all his bully stunts,
Hasn't a clue
Why people do
Things like Occupy Wall Street.
He's never been a renter
(He's a one percenter)
Who can't pay the lease
(The job's overseas)
And whose debt is set in concrete.
So quiver and cringe,
Frankie Luntz.
The outraged "mobs"
Simply want jobs
To feed the kids and pay the bills.
Choke on your lies,
You miserable guys,
Suffer your fears,
Swallow your tears;
How'd YOU like to work in the mills?
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Pay No Attention to Those Damp Squibs!
There are two ways to deal with dissent: derogate it as insignificant, or suppress it with brute force.
The ruling class in the United States, having tried the first tactic on the Occupy movement to no avail, has now resorted to the second. In city after city, riot-armed police have driven off peaceful Occupiers, bashing heads, making mass arrests, destroying tent encampments and, worst of all, burning books by the hundreds.
In England, Prime Minister David Cameron is invoking the first tactic to dismiss as a petty annoyance ("a damp squib," in his words) the strikes by public sector workers to protest proposed pension cuts. It's one of the "austerity measures" to bring down the debt bogeyman. All of Europe has been infected by the same obsession that fuels the insanity of the political parties here, as well: quit spending, lower the debt.
The austerity campaign is championed by the very people who caused the debt. None of their "austerity measures" will cost them a shilling. The One Per Cent Oligarchy will get still richer. Let the workers, the jobless, the sick, the elderly, the pensioners pay the cost of wars, unregulated financial markets and other follies of the free market priests and prelates.
In the UK, the effectiveness of Cameron's fizzling little firecracker can be judged the amount of time that elapses before he is forced to call in the armed goons and bash heads, as his peers have already done in police states around the world, from Syria and Egypt to the U.S. of A.
Governments today -- whatever label they wear: democracy, republic, dictatorship, military junta, social-democrat, monarchy, etc. -- are all in fact plutocracies. Their richest few either run the country directly, or control those delegated or "elected" to run it. They wring personal profit from traditional religious and ethnic hatreds, exploit hostility toward immigrants and love war as long as they're on the winning side. They're police states, to one degree or another. They are intolerant of dissent, whether they simply send goons to assassinate dissenters or merely throw them in jail without trial (as the United States increasingly does).
Exceptions to the rule seem almost quaint: how much do you hear or read about, say, Costa Rica? Described in 1719 as "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America," its citizens today enjoy an enviable quality of life, the highest in Central America. Their life expectancy level is among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Their government health care system provides them with better health care than U.S. citizens receive. Once dependent on coffee, banana and beef exports, Costa Rica has diversified its economy. Its high level of education (state-supported) has attracted computer chip makers, pharmaceutical companies, and financial outsourcing enterprises to set up shop there. Ecotourism now earns more foreign exchange for Costa Rica than the combined exports of the country's three main cash cops (coffee, bananas and pineapples). The economy has no army to support: Rebels against its military dictatorship won a bloody civil war in 1948 and one of the first acts of the new government was to abolish the army altogether. Costa Rica's inflation rate, once a worrisome 13.8%, has declined to 5.7%. Its poverty rate is around 8% (vs, 15.1 percent in the U.S.).
Through its last 13 presidential elections, Costa Rica has remained stable, and it is a world leader in efforts to foster human rights and ecologically sustainable development. At home, it maintains one of the strongest social welfare systems in the hemisphere.
According to the New Economics Foundation Costa Rica ranks first in the Happy Planet Index and is the most environmentally responsible country in the world.
It is a government that believes government's principal obligation is to the quality of life of its citizens.
Weird idea, isn't it?
Some might call it paradise. Others would say it's a "damp squib."
The ruling class in the United States, having tried the first tactic on the Occupy movement to no avail, has now resorted to the second. In city after city, riot-armed police have driven off peaceful Occupiers, bashing heads, making mass arrests, destroying tent encampments and, worst of all, burning books by the hundreds.
In England, Prime Minister David Cameron is invoking the first tactic to dismiss as a petty annoyance ("a damp squib," in his words) the strikes by public sector workers to protest proposed pension cuts. It's one of the "austerity measures" to bring down the debt bogeyman. All of Europe has been infected by the same obsession that fuels the insanity of the political parties here, as well: quit spending, lower the debt.
The austerity campaign is championed by the very people who caused the debt. None of their "austerity measures" will cost them a shilling. The One Per Cent Oligarchy will get still richer. Let the workers, the jobless, the sick, the elderly, the pensioners pay the cost of wars, unregulated financial markets and other follies of the free market priests and prelates.
In the UK, the effectiveness of Cameron's fizzling little firecracker can be judged the amount of time that elapses before he is forced to call in the armed goons and bash heads, as his peers have already done in police states around the world, from Syria and Egypt to the U.S. of A.
Governments today -- whatever label they wear: democracy, republic, dictatorship, military junta, social-democrat, monarchy, etc. -- are all in fact plutocracies. Their richest few either run the country directly, or control those delegated or "elected" to run it. They wring personal profit from traditional religious and ethnic hatreds, exploit hostility toward immigrants and love war as long as they're on the winning side. They're police states, to one degree or another. They are intolerant of dissent, whether they simply send goons to assassinate dissenters or merely throw them in jail without trial (as the United States increasingly does).
Exceptions to the rule seem almost quaint: how much do you hear or read about, say, Costa Rica? Described in 1719 as "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America," its citizens today enjoy an enviable quality of life, the highest in Central America. Their life expectancy level is among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Their government health care system provides them with better health care than U.S. citizens receive. Once dependent on coffee, banana and beef exports, Costa Rica has diversified its economy. Its high level of education (state-supported) has attracted computer chip makers, pharmaceutical companies, and financial outsourcing enterprises to set up shop there. Ecotourism now earns more foreign exchange for Costa Rica than the combined exports of the country's three main cash cops (coffee, bananas and pineapples). The economy has no army to support: Rebels against its military dictatorship won a bloody civil war in 1948 and one of the first acts of the new government was to abolish the army altogether. Costa Rica's inflation rate, once a worrisome 13.8%, has declined to 5.7%. Its poverty rate is around 8% (vs, 15.1 percent in the U.S.).
Through its last 13 presidential elections, Costa Rica has remained stable, and it is a world leader in efforts to foster human rights and ecologically sustainable development. At home, it maintains one of the strongest social welfare systems in the hemisphere.
According to the New Economics Foundation Costa Rica ranks first in the Happy Planet Index and is the most environmentally responsible country in the world.
It is a government that believes government's principal obligation is to the quality of life of its citizens.
Weird idea, isn't it?
Some might call it paradise. Others would say it's a "damp squib."
Friday, October 28, 2011
Scott Olsen's War Is Just Beginning -- Here in Amerika
My Teapot neighbors tell me I must "Support Our Troops" because they are fighting to preserve our freedoms.
Among those freedoms are citizens' absolute right to peaceable assembly for redress of grievances, and freedom of speech.
Scott Olsen went to Iraq as one of Our Troops and when he returned home to Oakland, CA, he exercised those rights, joining the Occupy Oakland demonstrators.
Today, however, Scott Olsen cannot speak at all. Shot in the forehead with a "non-lethal" police projectile, he is in an Oakland hospital for treatment of a skull fracture. "He cannot talk , and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," said Keith Shannon, a friend who served beside him in Iraq.
And so in exercising a right he fought for, he has lost the power to exercise it again because of a single act of police brutality. There have been many such acts since the Occupy movement grew beyond anyone's expectations. It is a symptom of our national malaise that this is the normal response to spontaneous mass expressions of citizen dissent. When the "dissent" is manufactured, funded by Koch Brothers filthy lucre, it is tolerated even if its lemmings carry fire arms into public political meetings. Go figure.
The 92-year-old icon of modern American citizen action, Pete Seger, gave Occupy his imprimatur earlier this week, hobbling into Liberty Plaza in New York with the aid of two canes and the folk singer Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son. There's no way of counting the number of times Pete and Arlo have sung Woody's "This Land is Our Land, This Land is Your Land. . .," a hymn to the oppressed workers, farmers and foreclosed of the United States. The song tells us what the union movement was about, what the civil rights movement was about, what the anti-war movements were about, and what Occupy is about.
It's about the common man, made stronger by coming together in public places, demanding to take back his "Land" and all of the rights it confers upon its citizens, including the right that was violently taken away from Scott Olsen.
Each time the common man rallies to regain his rights, he faces bigger odds, stronger forces of repression, angrier backlash from the privileged few who have put him down. Somehow he rises again and again and again -- whether in Europe, Asia, the Antipodes, Africa, South America or the former United States of America.
If Scott Olsen is unable to return to the public squares, ten more will rise to take his place, to demand justice in his name.
Perhaps, even as their numbers grow, they will not succeed. Money, Bill Moyers once wrote, fights hard. And it fights dirty.
Bullets to the forehead, even "non-lethal" ones, are dirty fighting. Koch money can buy lots of bullets, and buy off lots of bullies to use them on common folk exercising their rights to assembly, redress and free speech.
Whose land is it? The one per cent? Or the 99 per cent?
Pete and Arlo know. Scott Olsen thought he knew, too.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Republican Holiday: Trick, Treat or Flat Tax?
The official holiday of the Republican party is nearly upon us. Halloween is for bogeymen and nobody loves a good bogeyman more than a Republican.
Obamacare! Boo boo boo. (Grandma killers!)
Deficit! Boo boo boo boo! (Stop wasting money feeding poor people and declare more wars!)
But the biggest bogeyman of all is taxation. Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo booooooooooooo . . . .
Since even Republicans realize you can't run a country without some form of revenue, not even the Keystone cop zanies seeking their presidential nomination advocate eliminating all taxes on everyone. So they're falling all over one another rediscovering Steve Forbes's old chestnut, the flat tax.
But in typical Republican logic, their flat tax isn't really flat. It is just another ploy to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. First Herman Cain -- a lobbyist for the richest 1% of Americans before he donned his Halloween mask depicting a Republican populist -- introduced his "flat tax 9-9-9 plan." This would give virtually every American with more than a million dollars a year income a tax cut of almost half a million. Capital gains -- which already enrich each retired American millionaire to the tune of 112,000 tax-free dollars a year -- would not be taxed at all. How flat is that ?
Now comes Rick Perry, with another cockamamie scheme that would let you opt for a so-called 20 per cent flat tax, or remain in your present bracket. “This is a change election, and I offer a plan that changes the way Washington does business,” the Texas governor said Tuesday at an event in Gray Court, S.C. It also guarantees less revenue at a time when we're fighting wars all over the globe, prattling about the deficit bogeyman and saying we can't afford to keep our bargain with retirees on Social Security.
As my friend David Cay Johnston (a registered Republican) has demonstrated over and over again in his books, the tax code is rigged to favor the very rich and every attempt by either party to repair it has only made the inequities worse.
Even so, the current tax laws sort of kind of try a little bit to treat everyone fairly. Tea Pots in my part of the country go berserk because very, very poor households pay no federal income tax at all. "Our taxes support dead-beats," they wail. They ignore the much larger portion of income paid by these households in payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes (directly, if they're struggling to buy a home; indirectly if they rent). In Florida, add the usurious cost of hurricane protection insurance on mortgages.
But the wailers themselves -- like every other taxpayer-- pay no income tax on the first roughly $20,000 of their earnings. Taxpayers in higher brackets pay a higher rate only on that portion of their income that exceeds their bracket threshold -- not on their total income.
As Robert Reich, a former Clinton cabinet member, points out in a recent article, ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $250,000 would increase taxes only on the portion of income that exceeds $250,000. Republicans consistently misrepresent this. Reich writes that "they want Americans to believe, for example, that if the Bush tax cut ended, small business owners with incomes of $251,000 a year would suddenly have to pay 39 percent of their entire incomes in taxes rather than 35 percent. Wrong. They'd only have to pay the 39 percent rate on $1,000 -- the portion of their incomes over $250,000.
"Get it? We already have a flat tax -- flat within each bracket.
"The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent -- again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.
"This is absurd. It means a professional who's making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.
"Our current flat tax at the top is treating the nation's professional class exactly the same as it treats super-rich plutocrats. My doctor pays the same rate as Steve Forbes."
Which gets us back to square one. The so-called flat tax was a clinker when Stevie first introduced it and no amount of tinkering by the likes of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul or Homer Simpson will gussy it up into responsible policy.
Obamacare! Boo boo boo. (Grandma killers!)
Deficit! Boo boo boo boo! (Stop wasting money feeding poor people and declare more wars!)
But the biggest bogeyman of all is taxation. Boo boo boo boo boo boo boo booooooooooooo . . . .
Since even Republicans realize you can't run a country without some form of revenue, not even the Keystone cop zanies seeking their presidential nomination advocate eliminating all taxes on everyone. So they're falling all over one another rediscovering Steve Forbes's old chestnut, the flat tax.
But in typical Republican logic, their flat tax isn't really flat. It is just another ploy to make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. First Herman Cain -- a lobbyist for the richest 1% of Americans before he donned his Halloween mask depicting a Republican populist -- introduced his "flat tax 9-9-9 plan." This would give virtually every American with more than a million dollars a year income a tax cut of almost half a million. Capital gains -- which already enrich each retired American millionaire to the tune of 112,000 tax-free dollars a year -- would not be taxed at all. How flat is that ?
Now comes Rick Perry, with another cockamamie scheme that would let you opt for a so-called 20 per cent flat tax, or remain in your present bracket. “This is a change election, and I offer a plan that changes the way Washington does business,” the Texas governor said Tuesday at an event in Gray Court, S.C. It also guarantees less revenue at a time when we're fighting wars all over the globe, prattling about the deficit bogeyman and saying we can't afford to keep our bargain with retirees on Social Security.
As my friend David Cay Johnston (a registered Republican) has demonstrated over and over again in his books, the tax code is rigged to favor the very rich and every attempt by either party to repair it has only made the inequities worse.
Even so, the current tax laws sort of kind of try a little bit to treat everyone fairly. Tea Pots in my part of the country go berserk because very, very poor households pay no federal income tax at all. "Our taxes support dead-beats," they wail. They ignore the much larger portion of income paid by these households in payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes (directly, if they're struggling to buy a home; indirectly if they rent). In Florida, add the usurious cost of hurricane protection insurance on mortgages.
But the wailers themselves -- like every other taxpayer-- pay no income tax on the first roughly $20,000 of their earnings. Taxpayers in higher brackets pay a higher rate only on that portion of their income that exceeds their bracket threshold -- not on their total income.
As Robert Reich, a former Clinton cabinet member, points out in a recent article, ending the Bush tax cuts on incomes over $250,000 would increase taxes only on the portion of income that exceeds $250,000. Republicans consistently misrepresent this. Reich writes that "they want Americans to believe, for example, that if the Bush tax cut ended, small business owners with incomes of $251,000 a year would suddenly have to pay 39 percent of their entire incomes in taxes rather than 35 percent. Wrong. They'd only have to pay the 39 percent rate on $1,000 -- the portion of their incomes over $250,000.
"Get it? We already have a flat tax -- flat within each bracket.
"The real problem is the top brackets are set too low relative to where the money is. The top-most bracket starts at $375,000 a year. People with incomes higher than that pay 35 percent -- again, only on that portion of their incomes exceeding $375,000.
"This is absurd. It means a professional who's making, say, $380,000 a year pays the same income-tax rate as a plutocrat pulling in $2 billion or $20 billion.
"Our current flat tax at the top is treating the nation's professional class exactly the same as it treats super-rich plutocrats. My doctor pays the same rate as Steve Forbes."
Which gets us back to square one. The so-called flat tax was a clinker when Stevie first introduced it and no amount of tinkering by the likes of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul or Homer Simpson will gussy it up into responsible policy.
Friday, October 21, 2011
A Soldier Shouts a Nation's Epitaph: "There Is No Honor"
He looms large over the New York City policemen to whom he directs his words. Expressions that might pass for shame cross the faces of the cops.
The big guy wears a patch of medals on the left side of his camouflage jacket. Smaller than the sea of brass and ribbon that adorns the tailored uniform of Betray-Us Petraeus but unlike the general's, the big guy's medals were earned in combat service in the armed forces -- two tours in the Middle East.
The police have been abusing participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and former Sgt. Shamar Thomas, in the viral video of the week on the web, is shaming them: "It doesn't make you tough to hurt these people. This isn't a war zone!"
And then he delivers the epitaph for the United States of America, words that will live in infamy as they ring with truth:
"There is no honor in what you do. No honor."
There is no honor in accepting $4.6 million bribe from JPMorgan Chase to beat the heads and mace the eyes of United States citizens peaceably assembled to exercise their Constitutional right of free speech.
There is no honor in ten years of war based on lies, wars whose toll on innocents is greater by far than the "value" of the "enemy leaders" slain in them.
There is no honor in a nation that spends trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives fighting these wars, while refusing to provide jobs for the one in five workers who have none, refusing to provide government medical care for those who have none, refusing to feed those who have nothing to eat.
There is no honor in a nation whose voters applaud aspirants to its highest office for saying that those who can't afford health insurance should be left to die.
There is no honor in a nation that tortures prisoners never charged, never tried, in black sites built at enormous profit by former Vice President Dick Cheney's Haliburton Corp.
There is no honor in a nation that creates the myth of an American Dream and then forecloses on the homes of those who believed in it.
No honor in a nation that forces its young into usurious debt in order to become educated.
No honor in a nation whose parents with children are forced into bankruptcy to pay obscene medical bills.
No honor in a military that kills women and children and then orders bomb strikes to obliterate the evidence.
No honor in a nation that willfully destroys the thin envelope called ecosystem that sustains life on the planet, in order to extract natural resources that add to the riches of the wealthiest handful of its people.
No honor in a country where there are fewer and fewer jobs, paying less money than at any time in more than a decade, except at the very top where the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. The median paycheck of working America -- barely 80 per cent of us -- is $507 a week, the lowest level since 1999. The richest one per cent of us -- who control our government, our lives, our very destinies, make that much every 72 seconds. There is no honor in this.
There is no honor in a government that rigs the official inflation measures in order to hold down cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients,.
How can a nation honor the elderly citizens who helped build it by taking away at least 4% of their retirement capital every year? (Banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC-insured savings deposits; short-term US government bond funds pay essentially nothing.) There is no honor in a nation whose government policies wipe out 11.5% of retirees' accumulated savings.
There can be no honor in a nation that labels dissent as "terrorism" and whose President actually ordered the murder of a citizen who had never been charged with or tried in a court of law for a crime.
What honor is there in national policies that negate the Constitution, imposing de facto a state religion?
There is no honor in violating international law in quest of hegemony, utter dominion over the rest of the world.
There is no honor in making the obscenely rich even richer at the expense of the sick, the poor, the aged.
There is no honor in these United States. No honor.
The big guy wears a patch of medals on the left side of his camouflage jacket. Smaller than the sea of brass and ribbon that adorns the tailored uniform of Betray-Us Petraeus but unlike the general's, the big guy's medals were earned in combat service in the armed forces -- two tours in the Middle East.
The police have been abusing participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and former Sgt. Shamar Thomas, in the viral video of the week on the web, is shaming them: "It doesn't make you tough to hurt these people. This isn't a war zone!"
And then he delivers the epitaph for the United States of America, words that will live in infamy as they ring with truth:
"There is no honor in what you do. No honor."
There is no honor in accepting $4.6 million bribe from JPMorgan Chase to beat the heads and mace the eyes of United States citizens peaceably assembled to exercise their Constitutional right of free speech.
There is no honor in ten years of war based on lies, wars whose toll on innocents is greater by far than the "value" of the "enemy leaders" slain in them.
There is no honor in a nation that spends trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives fighting these wars, while refusing to provide jobs for the one in five workers who have none, refusing to provide government medical care for those who have none, refusing to feed those who have nothing to eat.
There is no honor in a nation whose voters applaud aspirants to its highest office for saying that those who can't afford health insurance should be left to die.
There is no honor in a nation that tortures prisoners never charged, never tried, in black sites built at enormous profit by former Vice President Dick Cheney's Haliburton Corp.
There is no honor in a nation that creates the myth of an American Dream and then forecloses on the homes of those who believed in it.
No honor in a nation that forces its young into usurious debt in order to become educated.
No honor in a nation whose parents with children are forced into bankruptcy to pay obscene medical bills.
No honor in a military that kills women and children and then orders bomb strikes to obliterate the evidence.
No honor in a nation that willfully destroys the thin envelope called ecosystem that sustains life on the planet, in order to extract natural resources that add to the riches of the wealthiest handful of its people.
No honor in a country where there are fewer and fewer jobs, paying less money than at any time in more than a decade, except at the very top where the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. The median paycheck of working America -- barely 80 per cent of us -- is $507 a week, the lowest level since 1999. The richest one per cent of us -- who control our government, our lives, our very destinies, make that much every 72 seconds. There is no honor in this.
There is no honor in a government that rigs the official inflation measures in order to hold down cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients,.
How can a nation honor the elderly citizens who helped build it by taking away at least 4% of their retirement capital every year? (Banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC-insured savings deposits; short-term US government bond funds pay essentially nothing.) There is no honor in a nation whose government policies wipe out 11.5% of retirees' accumulated savings.
There can be no honor in a nation that labels dissent as "terrorism" and whose President actually ordered the murder of a citizen who had never been charged with or tried in a court of law for a crime.
What honor is there in national policies that negate the Constitution, imposing de facto a state religion?
There is no honor in violating international law in quest of hegemony, utter dominion over the rest of the world.
There is no honor in making the obscenely rich even richer at the expense of the sick, the poor, the aged.
There is no honor in these United States. No honor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)