Corporate. Feudalism.

In the 1987 film Robocop we saw one vision of the corporatist "endgame." A giant corporation literally performing an hostile takeover of an entire city. OCP started by contracting to run civic services, then took over the police force, and finally by buying up all outstanding debt of Detroit planned to assume control over the city itself. Every aspect of law, taxation and services, zoning, and city amenities owned and operated by a for-profit corporation. This scenario presents an absolute return to feudalism, where the land and everyone on it was considered private property of the lord.

To clarify, feudalism was an ideology and a political system; while the economic system associated with feudalism was called manorialism. For most purposes, they can be synonyms but there is a distinction, however it does not need to be made here. It should be said though, that feudalism was a rational response to the collapse of Roman central authority, an attempt to secure safety for people on a local level that calcified into tradition over the centuries and outlived it's utility. The long medieval period is a great example of how tenaciously the powerful will defend their privilages in the face of popular protest, simple decency, or even economic efficiency. (Author's note, the argument has been made that the lords actually followed the villagers to the safety of hilltops, rendering the whole concept of feudalist security with the lords protecting the serfs moot. See
Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology) for more information on the debate."

Corporate feudalism, on the other hand, has much more in common with the initial barbarian invasions that made medieval feudalism necessary. The difference is, unlike the story in Robocop, corporations seek control but not ownership. According to intellectuals studying the changing American landscape such as Noam Chomsky, ownership implies responsibility and even the possibility of accountability. Take stadiums for instance, the public "owns" it but the team makes all the really important decisions such as ticket prices and rental or lease rates, and corporate sponsors get to have their name on the stadium for a pittance compared to how much a stadium actually costs to build and maintain. Matt Taibbi documented an even uglier trend in the corporate takeover of public spaces. At least you can avoid going to a stadium if you want (though probably not the taxes extracted by the team to build the darn thing), but in Griftopia Taibbi reported how the city of Chicago gave away their entire parking meter system for a relatively tiny lump sum payment to foreign investors. So that for the next 70 years or so every time you pay to park in Chicago you are actually transferring wealth upward and not supporting street maintainence or some other public good. It could be argued that this is simply another instance of the "lords following the serfs" mentioned in the above note.

None of this is written in stone, it does not "have" to be this way. Human beings can organize their lives in myriad ways, corporate feudalism is just one way. The idea of a legal entity having rights akin to humans with souls to damn and bodies to kick it extremely troubling in the first instance. However, a corporation does not have free will the way a human does. A corporation is legally obligated to maximize return on investment, though that is permutating into maximize profit because it is hard to argue on any rational level that the outsized salaries and bonuses of management are actually in shareholders' best interest. The few examples above of privatization real or imagined trace a trend not just in the US but around the world, numerous scholars have studied the phenomenon, of modern-day lords following the serfs. Just as those medieval villagers were able to protect themselves from bandits and invading hordes before the lords showed up by moving to the hills, we were able to govern ourselves just fine before the corporate lords showed up to extract their cut. It is human nature for some to put themselves above the rest and try to make the masses serve them. It is also human nature to recognize that the few have no real reason to take so much from us and fight back.

The struggle continues.

The Great Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theory

 From Merriam-Webster:

Definition of CONSPIRACY THEORY: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.

Of all the myths swirling around American politics today, none can be more damaging to the very existance of democracy than the pervasive belief among conservatives that swarms of people are voting illegally in every election. They know it deep in their bones that undesirables cast ballots against the conservative movement and the republican party. These wily illegal aliens or criminals or Democratic operatives somehow manage to vote without legal status or cast multiple ballots in multiple districts under the nose of election officials and the befuddled police in conservative imaginations.

The Brennen Center for Justice concluded that voter fraud, ineligable people casting ballots illegally, is so rare as to be statistically nonexistant. Their summary stated:

* Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare.
* Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud.
* Voter fraud is often conflated with other forms of election misconduct.
* Raising the unsubstantiated specter of mass voter fraud suits a particular policy agenda.
* Claims of voter fraud should be carefully tested before they become the basis for action.
 

 

Obviously, they are making it up. We just know it.



See?


I just pulled these couple of pictures off the internet to show the intense hatred of democracy on the right. There cannot be any legitimate reason in the right-wing circle jerk to vote for the President, after all the world began on 20Jan09 right? So all the problems in America were caused by Barack Obama and those nefarious liberals.



So, for your own good, we the good conservative politicians and activists must protect you from the temptation to vote for the black guy who screwed everything up.

To be continued...

Perspective

Alright, I posted about the blown call. My Packers lost because the scab refs are incompetent. I did my best to try and use the fluffy crap to tie in the larger picture of the 1% squeezing us all to death. Doubt it matters but yes, this is the fluffy crap that distracts us all from the robbery going on all the time.

Zebra sniping

This blog rarely strays into the discussion of sports. Beyond the odd political analogy there is simply no reason to do so. Sports, especially the pros, are the distraction that keeps the plebeians bedazzled and divided. Entertainment in all its guises are the massive Bread and Circuses show soothing the rightfully angry masses. Only not a free spectacle put on by elites out of civic virtue and competition for popular affection, but a profit-manufacturing center that by now is a central support of the American economy.


Orwell wrote in 1984 that only the Thought Police need be efficient in Oceania, nothing else really mattered. Contemporary America has need not just for a brutally efficient state and private security apparatus to crush the odd uprising, but an equally efficient public relations and entertainment media sector to prevent uprisings in the first place. The increasingly brazen lies from the PR industry and their waning hold on the public will have to wait for another post. Entertainment has taken body blows as well, mostly self-inflicted, from digital downloading of music to utter lack of originality for Hollywood (really, a remake of Red Dawn?) and bad to worse reality TV series (Jersey Shore?). Cannot bring myself to shed a tear. Then there is pro sports... And the NFL...

Let's be clear, the National Football League has exactly one thing to sell: the ephemeral spectacle of their games. Thirty one assorted goofball billionaires or consortium's of plutocrats and one publicly-owned team competing for a truly zero-sum slice of pie. Each week, half the teams win and half lose. Even the Super Bowl is one game, exactly the same as all the others when you strip the outsized glamor and glitz surrounding it. Sure, there are concessions and merchandise, etc. but without the games there really is nothing. And all of it is driven by the willingness of fans to tune in or pay the enormous ticket costs. If the product suffers, as we shall see in a minute, the fans get upset and may start to see through the spectacle to see the man behind the curtain.

The moment may have arrived with the lockout of the professional officials by the NFL. Football can survive bad players, bad teams, even a bad rule change if it is applied evenly. But now it is clear what can ruin the fun, amateurs uniformly issuing bad calls across the league. These scab officials are an arbitrary mess, able to swoop in and distort games in ways I had not imagined possible just a year ago. Yelling at the refs and complaining about bad calls is an American pastime similar to rubbernecking traffic accidents. But that was before, now the officiating is so bad that NFL games are practically unwatchable.

The dispute has dragged on. Here is a good description from Jeff MacGregor in ESPN about a month ago:

Thus does the least-loved labor struggle in sports history proceed. What are they fighting over? What does the NFL want? What does the NFL Referees Association want? Who knows. It changes with every press release. And whatever you hear in public from either side of a labor negotiation about a specific demand or concession is spin, strategy, a lie.
Nutshell: Management wants to give the union less of something. The union wants more of it. The union wants less of something. Management wants more. That's it.
Just remember: This isn't a strike. It's a lockout. The owners are trying to teach the officials a lesson. For a league with revenues far north of $8 billion a year, the petty cash in dispute is laughable. Especially when you consider there are only 119 NFL officials. And that they're employed part time. (emphasis mine)
 

 Perhaps management and the bougeious owners have finally touched the third rail? Derek Thompson in today's Atlantic summed up just how laughable the NFL's attempt to "teach the officials a lesson" has become:

Last night on Monday Night Football, the Seattle Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson threw an interception in the endzone to lose the game to the Green Bay Packers. Then he gloriously threw up his hands, celebrated with ecstatic teammates, and watched his kicker put the extra point through the uprights, sealing a Seahawks victory.

Wait, what?

Yes, exactly. With the league's officials locked out due to a labor dispute with the NFL, the replacement referees called the interception a touchdown. Basically, the defender caught the pass, but the wide receiver put his hands around the ball to make it look like a shared catch, and under the tie-goes-to-the-runner principle, the refs called it a touchdown -- even after a video review. The TV announcers were apoplectic. Several appeared on the verge of tears. The Packers looked vaguely murderous. Even the prudish ESPN ran the indignant headline "Replacement refs decide game."

But, as Thompson points out, the NFL has no reason to negotiate whateveritis that caused them to toss this all-important cog under the bus as long as we keep watching. So, however hard it is, however much you need the escape, it is time to change the channel.

Aggressive home defense

Still think gun manics sleep with loaded weapons under their pillow at night because they are scared?

I found this on a facebook page called "I hate douchebags" with over 1200 likes and 280 shares. Must be a new "meme" but gives outsized insight into the mind of gun maniacs. Anything starting with "I hate" and ending with an arbitrary ad hominem designation immediately should bring to mind the defining characteristic of a psychopath, utter contempt for other people.

The pity party cometh

From ThinkProgress:

Mitt Romney packed the audience for a Univision forum earlier this week, BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins reports, busing in local supporters “after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus.” The campaign threatened to “reschedule” the event if organizers did not allow the “rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.” Romney also refused to come out on stage after the hosts introduced him by noting that he “had agreed to give the network 35 minutes, and that Obama had agreed to a full hour the next night.” Univision re-taped the introduction after Romney allegedly “threw a tantrum.”
During the event, Romney dodged four questions about whether he would maintain President Obama’s directive allowing young undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States on a temporary basis and said that he is happy to be known as “the grandfather of Obamacare.”
Romney has a history of padding the audience. During a speech before National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) in June, the GOP presidential candidate also brought in his supporters to the address.
 

To think that this was the most "electable" republican they could come up with.

They are us

Nope, not real

From Huffingtonpost:

Security firm HALO Corp. announced yesterday that about 1,000 military personnel, police officials, medical experts and federal workers will learn the ins and outs of a zombie apocalypse, as part of an annual counter-terrorism summit , according to the Military Times.
Sure, the lesson is tongue-in-cheek -- and only a small part of the summit's more serious course load -- but a zombie-like virus outbreak is a good training scenario. Visitors will learn to deal with a worldwide pandemic, where people become crazy, violent and fearful. Zombies will roam the summit grounds in San Diego, Calif. harassing troops and first-aid teams that will be participating.
Further details are unclear, but the Military Times made sure to note that zombies are not real.

Do you get the feeling things have gone too far? One of Hollywood's many functions in our political system is to keep as many people scared out of their wits as much as possible. But I don't recall preparations for asteroid collisions being made by the state security apparatus when Deep Impact and Armageddon were released. I do however, recall being dumbstruck by the riot scene in Soylent Green when garbage trucks just scooped up protesters by the shovelful and dumped them into the trailer, apparently to be carted off to the Soylent Corporation's processing plant.



My first thoughts after reading this article were along the lines of "oh good, one of the frankenstein 'private security' companies unleashed by the bush wars has figured out a way to lever fat government contracts even after the bush wars are petering out." Then I started skimming the comments, and oops, it seems most people analyzing this article have decided that "zombie" is code for the hopeless, unemployed members of the "lost generation" detailed a bit in this NYTimes article. Zombies may not be real, but desperate people are very real. It may just be coincidence that Max Brooks patterned the zombie survival and response plan of World War Z on the South African government's contingency plan to save the white Afrikaans population in the event of a full uprising by the black majority.

Given that the R(money) campaign has officially written off 47% of Americans as losers, publicly. And the tea party co-opting manuver has pretty much run out of steam. The plutocracy may have decided to make contingency plans of it's own.

Not to jump into bed with the conspiracy theorists, but the idea of government or the class controlling it ordering others to shoot at civilians is not unheard of in our history. Bacon's rebellion, Shay's rebellion, the Whiskey rebellion, the Civil War, pinkerton's shooting strikers during the long gilded age, the Palmer raids, Kent State, the difference being duration and purpose. The zombie apocalypse exercises seem to be preparation for an indefinite culling of "useless eaters." Let us not forget that Social Darwinism as an ideology had it's height when the population of the Earth was about one billion. With a bona fide Social Darwinist on the republican ticket, is it any suprise that the plutocracy has rediscovered so much Spencerian and Sumnerian rhetoric as humanity has zoomed past seven billion?

As a character in Dawn of the Living Dead remarked upon seeing zombies wandering around the mall; "They are us."

We built that, even the socialist messiah

Even though it has been thoroughly debunked literally thousands of times, wingnuts continue to insist on selectively editing the President's "You didn't build that" quote to somehow mean business owners and their businesses. Over and over they invoke "You didn't build that" and over and over thinking people have to say "back up the tape ten seconds." If you do back it up to what is a full sound bite, the meaning of that phrase becomes clear. From Factcheck:

There’s no question Obama inartfully phrased those two sentences, but it’s clear from the context what the president was talking about. He spoke of government — including government-funded education, infrastructure and research — assisting businesses to make what he called “this unbelievable American system that we have.”
In summary, he said: “The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” (emphasis mine)
 

So, professional manipulators took what is a completely reasonable point, chopped it down, added their own interpretation and in the process completely changing the context to accomodate their bullshit, and built an entire and completely lame convention out of it. With massive ad buys to supplement the lie. It is so crass, so utterly deceitful, that it could only come from a deeply damaged mind. And anyone who repeats this crock of shit is really saying "I have absolutely no critical thinking skills, please castrate me."

Pulling this doozy out says far more about the person saying it, and their willingness to buy a lie, than about the non-wingnut it is meant to silence. Because it reinforces the caricature built up about the all-too-mortal and flawed man who somehow became president despite the temper tantrums of wingnuts. What it really is is a disconnection from reality, very dangerous for the continuation of democracy. I pray no reasonable people believe the crap that surrounds this manipulated quotation because if anyone does... well we really have fully and finally taken up residence in fantasyland.

The magical projection tour

Soledad O'Brien continues to challenge the liars:

“Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here, he never once used the word apology,” O’Brien pointed out. “He never once said, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1nzd8)

“But that’s not apology,” O’Brien pressed. “But everybody keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the president and I’m trying to find the words ‘I’m sorry, I apologize’ in any of those speeches, which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, and if you go to Factcheck.org, which we check in a lot, they’ll say the same thing. They fact check this…”

“I don’t care what FactCheck[.org] says!” King exclaimed.

“They’re a fact checker,” the CNN host laughed. “But they’re a fact checker and I’m reading the speeches.”

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1nzd8)

 

 How do the people of peter king's district rationalize electing such an utter liar to represent them? This behavior is a serious exercise in projection, the republicans know that the US violated all of it's values during the bush administration. The republicans know that their behavior during those years deserves an apology to all the peoples and nations the bush administration bullied and harmed, but that just means they will resist it that much farther. And if the new president, in due course of cleaning up the mess left behind by the most obscenely evil gang of criminals ever to inhabit the White House, refuses to play that role well the republicans will simply act like Obama is apologizing. Anyone paying attention knows better and it sure is nice to have journalists like Soledad O'Brien actually challenging the fevered imagination. What does the media have to lose? No matter how hard they tried to roll over for the lies of right wingers the media are still and forever "liberally biased" so there is nothing to gain by trying to accomodate the angry tea bag crowd.

On GM, structure of a debate.

By zombie.
My nemesis recently posted this story and had this to say about it:

And there in lies the catch 22... the government doesn't want to sell until it's either at "break even" or at least a little closer, however government ownership "hurts the company's reputation and its ability to attract top talent due to pay restrictions" so unless the government gets out of the company that may never happen. So as I keep asking of many of the governments plans: WHATS THE ENDGAME?
 

Now the entire article is only one paragraph long.

The Treasury Department is resisting General Motors' push for the government to sell off its stake in the auto maker, The Wall Street Journal reports. Following a $50 billion bailout in 2009, the U.S. taxpayers now own almost 27% of the company. But the newspaper said GM executives are now chafing at that, saying it hurts the company's reputation and its ability to attract top talent due to pay restrictions. Earlier this year, GM /quotes/zigman/1466682/quotes/nls/gmGM-1.70% presented a plan to repurchase 200 million of the 500 million shares the U.S. holds with the balance being sold via a public offering. But officials at the Treasury Department were not interested as selling now would lead to a multibillion dollar loss for the government, the newspaper noted.
 

We had a little argument because I refused to comment. Why should I? For a little background, this guy is a close friend despite how vehemently disagree on political matters. And since just about everything is politicised these days, that extends to... just about everything unfortunately. Now, why did I decline to engage in a discussion? My friend is a radio DJ, therefore in between songs he reads headlines and makes brief comments about them. The thing is, he can make those comments as pure assertions without any supporting evidence as though he was declaring that band X is superior to band Y or some reality show star is an idiot, etc. In matters of judgment, i.e. substantive issues that affect others, assertions are insufficient. Ideological assertions that imply the entire superstructure of heroes and villains, and ways the world works without evidence are invalid. No matter how much you want issue X to be resolved through force of will, it does not actually work that way.

A google search for "General Motors bailout" returns 3.3 million hits. Even if 99% of those are garbage there are still over 3,000 sources to search before making an informed judgement. Most people are not academics, and trying to seek out all sides of every issue would be impossible for anyone. Even academics have prejudices, it is how we deal with them that make us honest.

Now the crass part. My friend is a DJ, as such he primarily gets paid for flapping his gums on the air. I do not. I do not get paid for writing this blog either, which is a one reason I largely stopped. But at least in this format I can get a whole point across without being interrupted. Lecturing as opposed to debating in text format.

First of all, the story DJ posted was more of a stub and the WSJ posted more here. Still not a lot of information, but a little better. At least it gives us the parameters the WSJ is willing to state and not simply the latest update that GM's management is whining and the Federal Government is unwilling to stick the taxpayers with a $15 billion loss. This is a "straight" news report, expressing the events, players, and each side's concerns. No comment is apparent.

If you went down to the next item on the list, you would find this editorial from Forbes' contributor

Micheline Maynard who writes:

GM is obviously frustrated at the “Government Motors” tag that’s adhered to it since it took a $50 billion bailout, and it’s understandable that it would like to sail under its own power. But there’s a big reason why Treasury should hang onto its GM shares, at least for a while longer.
Treasury was the only entity that could get GM to change. And if Treasury pulls out now, there is no guarantee that GM won’t revert to the behavior that sent it looking for a government bailout and into an Obama Administration directed bankruptcy. (emphasis mine)
Without Treasury’s presence, even just as a stakeholder, that old GM could come flooding back.
Look how many years analysts suggested that GM should get rid of some of its dying brands, like Hummer, Pontiac and Saturn. Despite dwindling market share and mounting costs, it was still clinging to some of them until weeks before its bankruptcy.
The role that the auto task force played in GM’s restructuring gives Treasury a bigger stake in GM’s future than just the value of its shares. Endless hours of time and effort were involved, and beyond that, there was finally a force greater than GM to make it face reality.

 A related story linked to this one by Joann Muller argues that this is not a Catch-22 at all.

For GM, there’s really only one solution: Forget worrying about the stock price and get on with running the business. GM has some enormous challenges in the near-term. It’s about to embark on a huge sequence of important product launches that will result in 70 percent of its vehicle lineup being new, or thoroughly redesigned. Most important is a new family of pickup trucks and SUVs, along with redesigns of the Chevrolet Impala and Corvette. Launching these vehicles flawlessly will be critical to GM’s success. (emphasis mine)

So here are just two opinion pieces from credible writers at a media outlet not exactly known to be friendly to government or liberalism and especially not to the dread "socialism." What did the WSJ story do? Under the pretense of objective reporting, the story set up a false dilemma fallacy. GM wants what it wants and it wants it right now. Government is the bad guy for acting like any other investor and not wanting to eat its investment. So, in just two short articles the false dilemma is shot down and GM's residual old line managers revealed to be insolent children throwing a tantrum. What do I "think" about this issue? Does it even matter? The point is when you make an assertion in a vacuum, it is intellectually dishonest. When you act like a logical fallacy is valid, the joke's on you.

 

The MICC

A very good reason, but one of many

What is it with gun people and misattibuted or fabricated quotations?

These two pictures and quotations are making the rounds of gun rights people. We get it. You guys like your guns, fine and dandy. Why do you insist on making up quotations and attributing them to famous people?

Factcheck.org had this to say about our great adversary of the Pacific war:

Advocates of gun rights often argue that in World War II Japan was deterred from invading the U.S. mainland by a fear of American citizens with guns in their closets. They frequently quote Japan’s Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto as saying: "You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."
But this quote is unsubstantiated and almost certainly bogus, even though it has been repeated thousands of times in various Internet postings. There is no record of the commander in chief of Japan’s wartime fleet ever saying it.
How do we know? We contacted Donald M. Goldstein, sometimes called "the dean of Pearl Harbor historians." Among his many books are "The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans" (1993) and the best-selling "At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" (1981). He is a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He told us the supposed Yamamoto quote is "bogus."

It should be noted that Yamamoto was actually assasinated by the US Army Air Force when his transport plane was intercepted by P-38 Lightnings. Maybe it is irony, maybe just coincidence that this is exactly what US high command feared about invading Japan and why we dropped the atomic bomb instead. And exactly what happened when we invaded and occupied Iraq. Partisan or irregular warfare can sometimes drive out an occupying force, for example Yugoslavia during WWII. The price was incredibly high for the Slavic peoples, the nazis had a policy of executing 10 civilians for every German soldier killed or maybe more, and may not have worked if the Wehrmacht had not been stretched so thin fighting the Russians etc.

I regretfully imagine that our would-be Wolverines would be enthusiastically willing to sacrifice 10 "useless eaters" in their battle against the invading horde. Like ayn rand and the train wreck, the gun maniacs like owen robinson are of the mindset "sucks to be you libs, you should have stockpiled weapons and ammo like the real men."

Actually, there are lots of scary stories floating around the right-wing fever swamps about guns that factcheck tries to clear the air on. Fat lot of good it will do.

This one's a little more dumb. Especially when you look at the quotation at the bottom supposedly uttered by Thomas Jefferson. I know the picture is cut off but I think it says "Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading." [I had to upload a new picture, sorry the original disappeared down the memory hole]

Seriously... they buy this.

Beyond the usual suspects, it seems marines are really into our third president and his stands (supposedly) about the second amendment. Putting aside the fact that TJ was a slaveowner and certainly had no issue with "abridging the rights of [black] people to bear arms." An odd choice to hang your hat on. But Monticello has no record of the master ever uttering these words. I personally am much more acquainted with George Washington's writings and admit that I was suprised to see that the left-wing icon Noam Chomsky misattributed several TJ quotations himself, or simply made them up the way he manufactured a right-wing Truman, Kennedy, and Carter.

The moral I guess is that gun maniacs are not just physically cowards but know their position is so weak that they must make things up to rationalize why they want to kill people with such reckless abandon.

Still rooting for economic collapse

Let's say you found yourself a delegate to the convention designing the first written constitution for a new state, one that had just finished fighting a long war for independence from a colonial power. How might you feel about the nature of government? What would be good, and what would you consider bad? Well, given that you and your fellow delegates shared much of the culture of that colonial power but were in a unique position to correct many of the flaws your countrymen objected to in that culture, how might you construct governing institutions? This is hypothetical of course, but you would probably not feel much love or respect for the institution of monarchy, or an insulated aristrocratic class that enjoyed power and privilage simply through inheritance. On the other hand, you would respect the traditions of liberty for the common people built up by long centuries of precedent and struggle against the arbitrary power of unelected rulers.

If you and your peers felt that concentrations of power were dangerous to that liberty, it would follow that you would build a structure of government that would diffuse power and allow for accountability from office holders. This structure would take two forms. First the theoretical source of all power comes from the people who must consent through elections of good leaders. Second, rules in the constitution would prevent the abuse of power by any rascals who snuck through the democratic process. Certainly it is not perfect, but in your worldview governments are a necessary evil that need to be restrained. While exceptions exist, generally governments headed by monarchs or oligarchic councils tend to exercise power to the detriment of the people, to fight wars of conquest and so forth.

Luckily, vast oceans separate the new state from great powers that might threaten it. Therefore, government can be designed with rules constraining what it can do. Government in your eyes is something to be protected from, affirmative government is not something you can fathom. Liberalism is a relatively new idea that society will function efficiently and produce prosperity for all if government stays out of the way. A vast new continent lays before you and your countrymen that is sparsely populated by people you consider savages. The land is ripe for exploitation and "civilizing."

Now, say you could fast forward 220 odd years and see what this arrangement has wrought. After some looking around you would see that power will find a way, like gravitational attraction, power concentrates. Only the real power no longer even theoretically lies with the people despite the extension of the franchise to women and non-whites, and the attendent extension of civil and constitutional rights. The nation you were building did indeed stretch across the continent and was thoroughly exploited and developed. But power no longer centered on the military strength of the sovereign government, but legal entities of economic power. The joint-stock companies that were strictly controlled in your day now exercised vast freedom to make profit through whatever means comes easiest to hand. A not-so-close examination revealed that much of this profit by "corporations" was obtained through "rents" extracted from government. Then, examining the actions of the last administration, you found that the freedoms you thought guarrenteed by the written constitution were easily circumvented to trample on the rights of citizens and even torture people considered a threat.

You also find that affirmative government to help people was possible and many programs exist alongside the rent-seeking to empower people. The economy is highly stratified by extreme division of labor but those sneaky speculators that caused so much trouble after the revolution have manipulated the people's institutions into giving them vast power and wealth without any real merit. The people today that call themselves liberals see government as a force to restrain abuse by the really existing centers of power. The conservatives by contrast resemble liberals, at least rhetorically, in their praise of freedom and liberty. But their real concern is not liberty and freedom for all, but the centers of real power that pretend to be "the people." Freedom to oppress and liberty to extract private profit, the rest of society be damned. It has gotten so bad that factions (that other danger talked about so convincingly in your day) seek power for themselves, not in the spirit of public service. The constraints you worked so hard to put in place to prevent government from oppressing citizens are now preventing government from restraining private power that is the real source of oppression.

And private power, the plutocracy with no responsibility to society, has all but succeeded in using the system to insulate itself. The political faction protecting private power over everything else feels so empowered today that it sees economic collapse as a legitimate way to regain power in government. The republican party has successfully tied the hands of government to address the crisis they themselves brought on with their allegiance to private power. The one public institition left beyond their control that can take steps to resolve the iniquities, the Federal Reserve, has now announced that it will take action. The details can be found here.

The moral is that a determined group of bandits acting as a mercenary army for malicious plutocrats can find a way through any obstacles to prevent democracy, opportunity, and the very idea of public service. Now that the foxes are in the henhouse, those constraints put in place by the founders act more to keep the people out than protecting them. Sure, we still supposedly enjoy freedom and rights but the bandits have proven they can make people disappear and torture them without any accountability. The money power can speculate with your retirement for the sake of bonuses for themselves, and not only get away with it but get a bailout on the public dime. Meanwhile, the political arm of the money power can openly root for economic collapse, guerranteeing to harm their own constituents and face no consequences. Your experiment, dear delegate, has failed. Power will always find a way.

Tax cuts are not the answer

One study does not a conclusion make, but economist Owen Zidar has some interesting data to show that cutting taxes for the 1% does only one thing; make the rich richer.

The data show that tax cuts at the top, though, do not result in faster growth in states with more high-earners. “Almost all of the stimulative effect of tax cuts,” Zidar found, “results from tax cuts for the bottom 90 percent. A one percent of GDP tax cut for the bottom 90 percent results in 2.7 percentage points of GDP growth over a two-year period. The corresponding estimate for the top 10 percent is 0.13 percentage points and is insignificant statistically.”
 

 There was some theoretical basis for the "supply-side" economics when reagan came into office, it was a new field and the US was facing a serious problem of "stagflation" where both unemployment and inflation were high. Keynesian economics had no answer for this situation. So the experiment had some merit. But it did not work then, and it has never worked. Deregulating and making the tax system more regressive did not "unleash capitalism" or usher in waves of innovation and productive investment, as the theory stated it would. Reaganomics unleashed bain capital and other predatory financial firms to gobble up productive assets, it unleashed speculators to blow up asset bubbles and crush the real economy, and set up the monsterous inequities of the contemporary American economy.

ThinkProgress summarized the choice we face:

Zidar’s study provides more empirical backing to what the U.S. has experienced over the last 30 years. Supply-side tax cutting policies have not led to the growth their Republican proponents promised. The Bush tax cuts, for instance, were followed by the weakest decade for economic expansion on record.
Still, Republicans, some of whom admit that the Bush tax cuts didn’t lead to the desired growth, are sticking to their ideology. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney proposed a tax cut that is four times larger than the Bush tax cuts; the GOP has fought efforts to allow the high-income tax cuts expire at the end of the year, arguing that doing so would dampen growth; and Republican governors across the country have pushed tax cut packages aimed at the wealthy even as their states struggle with budget shortfalls.
 

 When you peel back the theoretical basis and the political rhetoric, the only answer republicans have given for thirty years empirically demonstrates that they are killing the republic. Period. It is time to reject their voodoo economics, it is time to reject the glorification of greed and wealth and get back to work in the real world.

Today is the first day of the rest of America's life

Many people are writing rememberences of that tragic day right now, they are all important and all memories surrounding the attacks are unique impressions of a common event. Mine was probably shared by thousands of others, I was working third shift at the time and first heard about the towers at a friend's house. Then, of course, I had to try and get some sleep without knowing whether the world would be here when I woke up. That was difficult. When I went to work that night I passed a gas station, and what I saw there might wrap up the American experience ever since. The line was out into the street and the price had doubled...

Selfish, gullible people being preyed upon by unscrupulous business. That's about it. And America has pretty much gone downhill since.

And the "since" is the more significant part. Putting aside conspiracy theories for a second about what really happened that day, the history of the last decade is pretty bleak. I remember chatting with a friend at college not long after, somehow the topic of Al Gore came up. Long before the tea party belly-crawled onto the political scene my friend said "Gore would have surrendered to the terrorists and tried to understand their feelings." Umm, right. Glib, without a trace of evidence, that's just how wingnuts roll.

Now, what do we actually know about the events leading up to 9/11? Investigative journalist Greg Palast laid out a great deal of the scam in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Especially his section on Florida, katherine harris, jeb bush, and the criminal purge of voting rolls that went on but was not touched by most media. Now, after a dozen years of outrages, atrocities, and crimes against civilization, it is not considered such horrible to say in public that the election was stolen. Sure, the Democrats are hardly blameless in the coup, but the republicans showed their extreme contempt for democracy long before they started passing disenfranchisement laws two years ago. In hindsight, not fighting for democracy out of some sense of misplaced manners really looks silly, doesn't it?

The road to 9/11 was best laid out in (now Senator) Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Senator Al gives some credence to the tale of "misplaced priorities" in the bush administration on the screaming warnings from departing Clinton officials and members of the FBI, CIA, and others about al queda. After all, those taxes won't cut themselves. There were plans a plenty, such as vp cheney poring over a map of Iraq with his secret energy task force, i.e. oil company ceos, government agencies to wreck and staff with incompetents, and all sorts of rents to be handed out to cronies. This was before they actually invaded Iraq of course.

To be continued...

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/09/11/bush-white-house-ignored-bin-laden-warnings-because-they-wanted-iraq/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=2

The condescension of Ann Romney

The wife of Mitt Romney, republican candidate for president, is appearing more and more like Marie Antoinette, Imelda Marcos, or most ominously Madame Nhu, better known as the Dragon Lady of Saigon. I dislike criticising wives of the candidates, but Mrs. Romney's predilection for using "you people" when addressing non-republicans has set her apart.

Madame Nhu

But don't take my word for it. Here is commentary by an Hispanic columnist on why a woman seeking to be First Lady of all of America should not be setting herself above the American people.

Ann Romney is not running for office, but her recent remarks about the Latino community show the Right’s mentality on minority votes and, on a personal level, showed her contempt for people like me.
At a recent luncheon, Mrs. Romney went on about how Latinos need to understand that the GOP, and her husband in particular, are working in the best interest of Latinos in this country. She gushed over how much damage another Obama presidency will do to us and how we’re just uninformed about current issues and policies.
It’s us, not them, she tells us.
I like to think my arguments are better than just flinging insults or calling names, but I would like to vent a little steam before starting by saying that Ann Romney sounds like any abusive husband on a Lifetime movie telling his battered wife that it’s her fault she’s on the ground doubled over.

 

Why on Earth would Hispanics not trust the republican party?

The reason Latino voters vote Democrat is because the overwhelming majority of Republicans who actually address Latino concerns usually do so in order to profile or discriminate. Arizona’s various laws that target us specifically come to mind. The idea of the border fence, now part of Romney’s plan, was also from the Right. Destroying the DREAM Act, a law that would have granted a path to citizenship to children who did not break the law but were instead brought here by their parents, showed that your party has no interest in immigrants being here at all.
The Republican Party has not just ignored the Latino community, but has instead gone out of its way to even deny we exist.
In Arizona, Chicano studies were taken away under the banner of protecting the people from inflammatory rhetoric. My history, and the fact that Latinos struggled to become part of this country, is now seen as subversive.
Voter suppression proposals hurt minorities and are being pushed specifically because we tend to against you and your ilk.
American citizens have been detained and sometimes deported simply because they were Hispanic. In these cases, they were afforded almost none of the rights any criminal would expect. A suspected murderer would receive more protection under the law than Jose on the Street simply because of skin color or heritage.
My family has certainly adapted. We speak English and Spanish. I myself have worked as a Congressional speechwriter and correspondent, teacher, tutor, blogger, and freelance artist. I have nothing more than a speeding ticket on my record, I pay my taxes, and would consider myself a good citizen.
And yet I have a higher chance of getting arrested due to GOP policies than Romney does for tanking several companies in order to make a profit.
I know, I know. These were not Romney’s policies. Just other members of his party that acted and were not chastised by the Right. What has Mitt Romney, however, done for the Latino community?
Nothing.
Obama hasn’t done much for us either, but that’s mostly because the GOP has obstructed everything he has tried to do, often simply because they don’t want him to win.
Let me be blunt now. Mitt Romney’s policies, and those of his party, will hurt us. They will hurt ALL of us. All this talk about regulation for banks, Super PACS, and all that other stuff is academic for most people. The truth is that my family, friends, and I have to live with these laws targeting us because of our skin and our heritage. They affect us directly. When someone says immigrants are hurting our country, when people shout that we need a border fence or that we need to shoot people crossing illegally, they’re talking about my community…
But it’s nice for the nice, rich white lady to tell me how I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Mrs. Romney, THIS is why we don’t vote for your party. You also keep referring to us as “you people.” Please stop it. When you, for example, say things like this.
 

And making pictures like this:
 

 

Entitled hogs at the trough

No, not the single mother trapped in a structural area of low employment and even lower opportunity. No, not the laid-off worker getting unemployment insurance that they paid into every year they worked. No, not even the recent college grad forced to defer payments on the out-sized pile of student loan debt because there are no jobs.

Yes, circumstances count. Bushie jr. took the ship of state and rammed it into the rocks, then threw all the loot overboard and left the passengers to the cannibals.


The real problem in our economy is that the supposedly "self-reliant" business community who impetuously claim "they built it" all by themselves have captured the very government they claim to despise and hoover off as much lucre as they can.

Aided by guys like this:


From commondreams:

Corporate Subsidies: We spend $59 billion on social welfare programs, but more than $92 billion on corporate subsidies. According to the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuel industries alone get more than $70 billion in subsidies, with most going to the oil and gas sector. Yeah, we certainly can’t afford to deprive Exxon of its record profits just to give money to needy kids.
Sheltering Off-Shore Profits: Corporations are given $58 billion a year in tax breaks for “deferred” taxes for off shore profits. Yep. Sure want to encourage US companies to hide profits off-shore. Can you say “job creators?”
Capital gains: Rich folks make the majority of their money in the form of dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at only 15%. This allows them to avoid some $59 billion in taxes per year.
Carried interest: Hedge fund managers avoid at least $2.1 billion in taxes a year. This sweet deal – not available to the ninety-nine percenters, by the way – lets hedge fund managers and other selected fat cats take what amounts to ordinary wages and have them taxed as if they were capital gains. So instead of being taxed at 35% (39.5% if we eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for the rich) it’s taxed at 15%. Ayn Rand would be proud. Thomas Jefferson, not so much. This amount – $2.1 billion – is roughly equivalent to the entire budget for the Administration on Aging. Wouldn’t want to deprive millionaire and billionaire hedge fund managers of their windfall just to help a lot of old geezers.
Bank Bailouts: Then there’s the $700 billion bank bailout – to rescue banks from problems they themselves created. Yes it got paid back; and yes, we had to do something. But the reason this money was little more than welfare was because the banks got to do what they wanted to with it. It could have come with strings – we could have insisted that they write down mortgages to market value or allowed refinancing at lower interest rates or longer amortization periods. We could even have given the money directly to stressed homeowners, instead of the banksters who caused the problem. Any of these approaches would have prevented defaults, slowed – or even reversed – the precipitous declines in real estate values, and given low and middle income consumers some ability to consume, which, at the end of the day is the real “job creator.” And we most certainly could have insisted that banks money loan out the money to small businesses and home buyers.
 

So, you want to fix the American economy? Make these hogs live by the same rules as the rest of us

 

The spirit of reform is alive and well

It is so easy to give up and resign ourselves to broken politics, stagnant economies, and no hope for the future. Everywhere you look there are outbreaks of violence, political intimidation, corporate domination, and the disappearance of opportunity. Commonplace things that we used to take for granted are under attack as never before in this country. What can we little people do? Is our decline into feudalism inexorable?

People in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and elsewhere asked the same questions while under the Soviet boot. No one thought things could change until people actually just went out and did it. While Eastern Europe is certainly no paradise, at least they are free of foreign domination in fact. The Soviet Union was crumbling in the 1980s but remained militarily strong. When Solidarity organized and demonstrated, many cringed that the nascent movment would be crushed by Soviet Tanks but it did not happen.

The same thing has been happening in Latin America and now the Middle East. Popular fights for freedom are never easy, but it is happening. If those two areas are under America's version of the Iron Curtain, will we see the collapse of the American state soon? The decade that followed the demise of the Soviet Union certainly was not pretty, and the plight of the Russian people is still pretty grim. Will this be the American fate? When the corporate oligarchy finally crushes the remnents of government authority and any other institution outside the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" agenda, will the American nation collapse into anarchy or worse?

Despite the awful headlines, the even more horrific state of government and elections there is reason to believe freedom will survive the collapse. There is activism and organizing all over the country that does not involve silly old people in colonial garb decorated with tea bags. Real groups fighting real battles for the betterment of society.

Right here in one of the reddest counties of Wisconsin we have some organizations building real community. Doing work to supply goods and services outside of the corporate and wall st. financial mercantilism. The Glacier Hills Credit Union circumscribes bankster greed by pooling members' funds for local loans and skimming the least possible amount from those transactions. The Kettle Moraine Community Time Bank goes around big business' increasing stranglehold on all sorts of services and their markups by directly trading skills and labor among members. The Washington County Community Garden allows urban dwellers to grow some of their own food without need of big agribusiness concerns or their genetically modified seeds. Likewise, the West Bend Farmers Market downtown continues to be an avenue for farmers and customers to do business outside of the corporate middleman. These are just a few examples from my neck of the woods. What kind of things are going on in your area? Is there a way you can get involved or start something of your own?

"Simultaneously ridiculous and heartless"

Ryan's Budget: The Most Fraudulent Proposal in American Historyhttp://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/08/ryans-budget-the-most-fraudulent-proposal-in-american-history.html

of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
 

This deep cutting might tangentially have some merit to the beltway crowd that worries so about deficits and the government promising too much to the sans collottes. But alas, the vice presidential candidate's (and by extension, romney and the entire gop) budget proposal is pure class warfare disguised in concern over "sustainability" or whatever mask they wish to use this week.

Lyin' Ryan calls these cuts “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” Sure.

The simultaneous part is a call for even deeper cuts to taxes for the already filthy rich. In fact he calls for an end to all taxation of unearned income, in the name of job creation of course. How the 1% would use their windfall to create jobs, as if it was a real goal, remains still unclear beyond demonstrably false ideological assertions.

So, as if eviscerating any government program that might help people while cutting taxes for the leisure class is not enough, lyin' ryan wants even more. The discrepency between the cruel cuts to services and the mammoth tax cuts are to be made up by "closing loopholes." While which ones are not clear, uber rich romney and his sychophantic lapdog lyin' ryan are certainly not going to close loopholes that supposedly aid in the mythical "job creation" of oil companies, pharmacuticals, etc. No, you lucky duckies in the middle class must sacrifice. You will give up mortgage interest deductions, education and childcare deductions. Sure life is not fair, for several generations people looked to government to use it's power to mitigate the unfairness caused by capitalism and class warfare. The capitalists acquiesed for a time because their lavish lifestyles were threatened by an outside force. The cold war, communism, and communist states, vicious as they were, served as a bulwark against plutocratic capture of government and the forces of darkness here.

The mask is finally dropped. Multi-national corporations and individuals flex their muscles to gain all the advantage while sticking patriotic Americans with the bill. And they have the money, resources, and media outlets to convince those patriotic Americans to go along.

So, if you think life isn't fair now. Wait until the next turn of the worm. Or you can fight back now. It is up to you.

A test for the dumb

From the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR):

If you hear a reporter ask people in President Obama's administration, ideally in a belligerent tone, "are the American people better off than they were four years ago?,"the reporter is trying to tell you that they are not qualified to do their job.The reason we know that the questioners are incompetent reporters is that this is a pointless question. Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, "is the house in better shape than when you got here?"
Yes, that would be a really ridiculous question. Hence George Stephanopoulos was being absurd when he posed this question to David Plouffe, a top political adviser to President Obama on ABC's This Week. Bob Schieffer was being equally silly when he asked Martin O’Malley, the Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the same question on CBS's Face the Nation. (emphasis mine)

 

So in the future, when you hear this question you will know that it is a slogan and not serious. Similarly, "are you ready for some football?"