Winning the Future is Losing Today



Work Work All Week Long, Good Times, Happy Days are Here Again. Yada Yada Yada


President Obama just doesn't seem to get it.  Rather than addressing our current jobs crisis, he is persisting in ignoring it.  Here is what he said during an Indiana factory tour yesterday -- the same day we got news that unemployment has again risen to nine percent: 

"This is the kind of company that will make sure that America remains the most prosperous nation in the world.  See, other countries understand this.  We’re in a competition all around the world, and other countries -- Germany, China, South Korea -- they know that clean energy technology is what is going to help spur job creation and economic growth for years to come.
And that's why we’ve got to make sure that we win that competition.  I don't want the new breakthrough technologies and the new manufacturing taking place in China and India.  I want all those new jobs right here in Indiana, right here in the United States of America, with American workers, American know-how, American ingenuity."

I don't know anybody who actually thinks we are still the most prosperous nation in the world, or that we care about being in some imaginary competition with other countries. This is not the Jobs Olympics. This is not about patriotism or American exceptionalism. Other countries are not looking at the USA and thinking "Holy crap!  They're gaining on us!  Whatever shall we do?"  This president may have succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden, but he has his head in the sand about jobs.  The guy is starting to sound more and more like a G.E. commercial every day.  It's probably no coincidence that one of his former campaign managers, David Plouffe, spent a year and earned over $1 million at G.E. before coming to work at The White House in January.

"This is where the jobs of the future are at," Obama enthused during his factory tour.  That ephemeral, distant future.  Only problem is, people need to eat today.

And he is still buying into the Republican deficit hysteria, still comparing the United States government to a family trying to tighten its belt and live within a budget:

"If we’re going to win the future, we’ve got to cut out the things we don't need, but still make investments in the things that we do.  That's what you do at home.  If somebody in your family loses a job, if your hours get cut, what do you do?  You may stop going out to a restaurant to eat.  You may decide we’re going to put off buying that new furniture or taking that vacation.  But you’re not going to stop fixing the boiler or the hole in the roof.  You’re not going to stop making sure that you got enough money to help your kids go to school.  Those are the things -- that's like your seed corn.  You don't eat that."

Is he kidding?  People who don't have jobs are losing the very roofs over their heads and he talks about still having money to fix a hole in the roof?  You can lose a job, yet still save money to help your kids go to school?  I know he has been living in a bubble the past few years, but this is obviously a very clueless man who thinks every American family has thousands of dollars set aside for that rainy day.

The cognitive dissonance grows ever more jarring. Next thing you know, he'll be appearing in one of those scary-cheesy G.E. Ecomagination line-dancing commercials.  If he really wants a taste of reality, I suggest he hold his next town hall/campaign pit-stop at an unemployment office.  The people in line there are definitely not dancing. Somebody has to get him to change his tune. Maybe a John Philip Sousa March will take him right to Congress for some fist-banging and arm-twisting and soaring oratory for raising taxes on the rich to fund a New Deal-type jobs program.

Work, Work, Work...Countin the Days....For a Good Time

The Senator from Hell

Shelby (center) Tours Tornado-Devastated Neighborhood

Richard Shelby is the 15th richest United States senator from the 9th poorest state in America. According to The Great Class War plan of attack, he's getting richer with every passing year, while his Alabama constituents slide ever deeper into poverty and despair.  The fact that a sizeable chunk of the state was flattened by a series of damaging storms last month will only hasten that slide.

 True Republican senator that he is, Shelby wants to make sure his position in the kleptocracy stays secure by protecting predatory bankers from government oversight.  He wants to make sure that the Alabamans he supposedly represents remain confused by abusive credit card practices and mortgage companies as they struggle to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Even as his state is reeling from death and destruction, Senator Shelby flew back to Washington this week to do his real job: screwing the little guy.

Shelby happened to be in his home state during the Congressional recess  when the deadly tornadoes hit. "This is hell," he proclaimed after touring the debris-ridden streets of Cullan, AL  "This looks like a war zone. I have seen some of the damage in the rest of the state, but this is some of the worst that I have seen."

So he rushed back to Washington and wasting no time, penned an urgent letter to President Obama. He and forty-odd of his closest millionaire Republican senator friends don't want the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to get off the ground.  They admit consumers might need a protection or two, but it should be on their terms and the bankers' terms.  They think one person - the dreaded Elizabeth Warren - would be too powerful and just too damned undemocratic.  They want oversight -- oversight by them.  They want checks and balances. (checks for them, fair and balanced for Fox News). And if they don't get their way, they'll throw a big old filibustering tantrum.

Dave Dayen of Firedoglake thinks Shelby may have just shot himself in the foot with his demands, inadvertently providing the impetus for President Obama to finally, at long last, recess-appoint Warren.  Under the Dodd-Frank Law, the bureau must be made permanent by July.  Time is running out.  Obama himself may have been backed into a corner by the sly Republicans, well aware that Warren enjoys broad popular support and that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is probably just as opposed to the bureau as they are.  They can then either accuse the President of sidestepping the Senate confirmation process, or let him face the wrath of his progressive base if he continues to waffle. But if, as now seems likely, Warren does get in via recess appointment, it'll be ten times as hard to get rid of her next year, no matter who has the majority.  People -- even the constituents of Republicans -- appear to be waking up and not taking any more crap.  When Paul Ryan has to be police-escorted out the back door of a Town Hall, that is reason to rejoice.

But back to Shelby.  He has to at least give the appearance of fighting the Warren appointment and the existence of the whole bureau.  His major campaign contributors are from the financial services sector. Among his top donors have been JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  He lists his net worth at a conservative average of $7.5 million, but as high as $30 million.

And to say that as ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee he has conflicts of interests is to be putting it kindly. Much of his wealth comes from his real estate holdings and their financing.  He came under heavy scrutiny during the 2008 mortgage meltdown when it was revealed that he had financed an apartment complex he owns in Tuscaloosa with a $5 million loan from Freddie Mac, the same government-sponsored mortgage company falling under  his committee's  oversight. He owns a real estate title company valued at $1-$5 million. His earmarks sent federal dollars toward construction of the new $60 million science building at the University of Alabama -- which he humbly named after himself and wife Annette.(It kind of reminds me of Monticello). Tens of millions in additional earmarks have helped the college expand its enrollment.  His apartment complex houses mainly university students. The banks make billions in college loans. And round and round the great world spins.



What Being a Senator Will Buy You



And Now For Something Completely Different.....

Another Doctored Breitbart Video Costs Teacher His Job

Right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart just can't kick his nasty habit of doctoring videos to get good people fired.  This time, he spliced together some footage of a professor of labor studies to make it appear that the teacher was advocating union violence.  And even though the Univerity of Missouri acknowledged the video was a sham, they're getting rid of the professor anyway, out of fear.

Don Giljum co-taught a course called "Labor in Society and Politics" at the St. Louis campus with Judy Ancel, director of UMKC’s Institute for Labor Studies. Spliced footage of their lectures originally appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s conservative Big Government website and showed the instructors talking about industrial sabotage. Giljum is also a former union business manager. The videos, which also appeared on YouTube, were later yanked because they were posted without the permission of the school.

Breitbart is a master of smearing people and organizations he doesn't like through the creative editing of videos.  He did it with voter registration advocacy group ACORN and again with Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod.  Now he's turned his ugliness against teachers and unions.

According to the Labor Notes blog, "In one Breitbart-distorted section, Ancel explains how neoliberal governments use crises to 'shift power dramatically.' This lecture was actually in an entirely different course. But Breitbart inserts the sentence into a lecture on union contract campaigns, so it looks as if Ancel advocates unions causing a crisis."

Another section of the Breitbart video has Giljum saying, 'Labor can’t deny its violent past in response to the repression that was perpetrated on it. It’s hard to say that was not appropriate at that time; it might have been. I don't believe those tactics are going to work today and I think they would do more harm than good."  Breitbart spliced out the words in italics to make his false point.

Chillingly, while acknowledging the video was a fake, neither Giljum's union nor the university is jumping to his defense.  The school has already informed him he won't be rehired next semester. (He was an adjunct professor without tenure).   Herb Johnson, Missouri AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, told Labor Notes he prefers not to “fan the flames” by mounting a too-vigorous defense of Giljum. (The Missouri Legislature is apparently crafting an anti-union "right to work" bill). But as if to make up for its wimpiness, his Board passed a resolution denying that unions condone or endorse violence. And to placate those real and imagined critics, the attorney for the Missouri AFL-CIO, Ron Gladney, called Giljum’s international union and asked officials there to pressure him to resign from his local and international positions.  They did, and Giljum handed in his resignation -- just days before he was scheduled to retire anyway.

This is all so reminiscent of Breitbart's success in getting powerful people to panic and act before investigating.  In the Department of Agriculture's haste to get rid of Shirely Sherrod, they fired her while she was driving to work, lest she show up and embarrass the Obama Administration.  Their apology and chagrin were too little, too late.  In Giljum's case, it's even worse.  His superiors knew Breitbart's video was a hoax, but they buckled anyway.  So Breitbart got his way.  His terrorism did the trick.

Letters of support for Giljum may be sent to University of Missouri-St. Louis Chancellor Thomas F. George, chancellor@umsl.edu, with a copy to Deborah Baldini, Associate Dean for Continuing Education, BaldiniD@msx.umsl.edu.  Ancel asks that letters should ask for Giljum's rehiring in future semesters and "question his forced resignation with no investigation, no due process, and violation of his academic freedom."

Meanwhile, Breitbart continues with impunity on his crusade of hate, lies and videotape.  And he is not even that good at it - his doctored  video actually shows Giljum miraculously changing shirts mid-paragraph!  But the mainstream media loves outrageousness, and even MSNBC invited him on last week to plug his new book.

James Rucker of ColorofChange, which successfully got the Huffington Post to drop Breitbart from prominent display on its site, has complained to MSNBC about Breitbart's appearance on the Dylan Ratigan show last week. Rucker said:

"At ColorOfChange, we had been contemplating a campaign to demand that MSNBC stop treating Breibart as a credible commentator. Breitbart's appearance on Ratigan's show seemed to be another case of a mainstream news organization lending Breitbart legitimacy -- and thousands of ColorOfChange members have taken action in the past to stop this from happening at ABC and Huffington Post. But in this case, when we reached out to Ratigan and MSNBC, they responded quickly and indicated they would not treat Breitbart as legitimate in the future.
We'll be keeping our eyes open to see how MSNBC deals with Breitbart moving forward. But while I still believe it was a mistake for MSNBC to host Breitbart in the first place, Ratigan and his producers deserve credit for being receptive to our concerns, agreeing with our assessment of Breitbart, and committing to treat him as the liar and race-baiter that he is."

MSNBC, while considered the liberal-leaning opposite of Fox, has a penchant for inviting crazy right-wingers on ita shows because they are sitting ducks and require little to no legwork or research to "expose" them.  Lawrence O'Donnell recently hosted Birther Queen Orly Taitz and allowed her to spew her nonsense before self-righteously kicking her off the show.  When will these pundits learn that provocateurs crave negative as well as positive attention?  Giving them a platform in order to humiliate them only perpetuates their martyr complex and ensures their continued survival.

The Truthers Are Out There

This just in from Conspiracy Theory Central: Osama was already dead. No, wait, he's really still alive. The CIA assassination of the world's most hated mass murderer was a monumental hoax, perpetrated by a desperate United States government for the purpose of further bending us to its nefarious will. The so-called insta-DNA testing was a sham; everybody knows it takes days to get results. The dead sister's brain was really Osama's brain in a jar. The White House photo that had Hillary holding a hand to her mouth to stifle a horrified gasp was really the cabinet watching a cheesy rerun of "24".  The possibilities are endless. 



"Hey. Over Here! Anybody Seen My Dialysis Machine?"



"Think about it," writes columnist and former Reagan Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts. "What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade?  If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?.....This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event.  The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting'USA USA.' Could something else be going on?"

Conspiracy theories usually pop up after the death of a larger than life figure.  Elvis sightings have been reported since he succumbed to a drug overdose. Princess Diana is hiding out somewhere with her lover Dodi: she staged her own death to get away from the paparazzi.  Truther Kevin Barrett claims Bin Laden has actually been dead since shortly after the terror attacks. "If in fact US authorities suspected Osama Bin Laden was involved with 9/11, and was still alive, they would have pulled out all the stops to take him alive" Barrett blogged. " And if they had screwed up royally and killed him, would they have immediately dumped the body at sea?! Given the formidable case that Bin Laden died in 2001, obviously US authorities would have taken pains to prove to a skeptical world that the corpse or specter or whatever it was they possessed was the real Bin Laden. Feeding the body to the fishes so fast looks...well, calling it 'fishy' would be an insult to the scaly denizens of the deep."  

No doubt about it - conspiracy theories are fun. I used to love wrapping myself up in the weekly paranoid cocoon of tongue-in-cheek "X-Files" episodes.  The only trouble is, I don't think our government is smart enough to have concocted such a convoluted fraud as a fake Osama assassination.  Too many people were involved.  The truth is out there, all right. A group of highly trained Navy Seals* took out a murderous creep and now the politicians are using it to their own advantage.  That seems pretty above-board to me.

* Update 5/4:  I took some well-deserved criticism from a reader, John from Louisiana, over my original characterization of the squad as "killing machines."  I have revised my copy accordingly. A more apt description is that the military utilizes its members as machines of war, damages their psyches in many instances, but by no means robs them of their core humanity. I stand corrected and thank John for his thoughtful commentary. 

How to Spend a Windfall in Political Capital

President Obama is having a very good week.  He actually got Donald Trump to zip his trap and go away. The killing of the world's worst terrorist and one of the most hated men in history went off without a hitch.  If Republicans aren't enthusiastically praising him, they are at least having the good sense to keep their mouths shut.*

Obama has got himself some real power, some political capital he has not possessed since his inauguration.  The question is, what will he do with it?

Will he strong-arm his opponents and push through legislation that's been stagnating in the doldrums?  If he were to march to Capitol Hill and demand passage of the DREAM Act, for example, can you imagine sourpuss Mitch McConnell responding that his main goal is not to give the president a second term?  Now is the time for Obama to come out swinging for Elizabeth Warren as permanent head of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and show he will stand up for the middle class.

  He must capitalize on this National Assassination Celebration. Political good moods are temporary things.  George Bush the Elder had 90 percent approval ratings after the routing of Iraq from Kuwait and not long after was soundly defeated by Bill Clinton.  It was the economy, stupid -- remember?

Now is also the time to declare Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan and start bringing the troops home, ahead of the tenuous July drawdown schedule.  Otherwise, the excuses for staying will start multiplying like rabbits. Clean breaks are better than compound fractures.  Let the President point to the reduction in the defense budget as a reason to start investing in jobs and infrastructure here at home.

The next few weeks will be crucial.  Progressives will be putting Obama to the test.  If he continues to intone the Bipartisan Mantra and stall on important legislation and invite the same old compromise, I will throw up my hands in despair. He has proven he is no Jimmy Carter, so he shouldn't feel he has to be Jimmy Carter.

And if he continues to talk about civility being an end in itself, we should simply point out this incontrovertible fact.  Mr. President -- you just ordered an assassination.  So how about kicking a little Republican ass for a change?  Prove once and for all you are not one of them. Either seize the day or watch your newfound support crumble as fast as it was resurrected. 

* Update 5/9 -  Wow, was that wishful thinking or what?  What a difference a week and 2500 cable news shows make. Cheney, Cheney, Condi, Rummy, Fredo, Mukasey... all the ghouls have arisen from the grave.

Osama is Dead, But We're Still in a Mess

Killing Osama bin Laden was like squashing an aged infertile spider long after it had already spawned thousands of genetic copies of itself to keep the toxin spreading.  While I'm happy that this monster no longer draws breath, neither am I dancing in the streets and waving the American flag.  I am glad if survivors and relatives of 9/11 victims are able to find closure today. I'll be really glad if the President uses the occasion to declare "Mission Accomplished: the troops are coming home!" -- but we know that's not gonna happen.  

While I was awaiting the President's speech last night, I endured Wolf Blitzer and John King's pontifications on the Most Important Day Ever, in the History of the Entire Universe.  During a lull, Wolf conducted a telephone interview with a New York City firefighter who spent days at Ground Zero and subsequently developed cancer, probably from breathing in all those toxins the EPA blithely assured us were all perfectly innocuous.  The exchange ended like this (No transcript - I am paraphrasing).

Firefighter:  "And now that we finally got him, I hope that we can bring the troops home from Afghani-"

Blitzer:  "Back to you, John!  I see since our cameras lit up the scene in front of the White House, thousands are gathering and singing The Star Spangled Banner!" 

Cynic that I am, I have to wonder about that massive compound surrounded by razor wire, practically right next door to Pakistan's version of West Point, going unnoticed all these years.  Doesn't the CIA have Google Earth?  Didn't they talk to the neighbors, who have noticed for a long time that the occupants of the compound never brought out any freaking garbage?  Does the timing have anything to do with the killing of K-Daffy's grandkids by a NATO strike getting all that bad press?  Did they think Osama's death would cancel out that collateral damage?

I don't know.  Meanwhile, let's forget all about this week's congressional deregulation of the financial industry and the Treasury's plan to exempt trillions of dollars of foreign exchange trades from any pesky oversight. Let's pretend there is not 25 percent real unemployment and show the nervous markets how confident we all feel.  Let's all go shopping and take in a Broadway show.