Charity Begins in the Castle

Charity Of, By and For the Rich: the Berggruen Philosophy Study Center

Just because they're the feral rich doesn't mean they lack ethics. Far from it. When they call themselves philanthrocapitalists, they are not kidding. They quite literally love their own capitalistic humanoid gene pools above all else.

Their philosophical conceit - that one simply cannot help the teeming masses without first giving precedence to oneself and to one's own class - is all too evident in Town and Country's latest annual list of the Top 50 Philanthropists.

Each plutocrat (or more likely, the designated PR flack) was asked to give a brief synopsis (their "Grand Plan") of his or her goals for humanity. Following is a sampling of the winning entries - with the usual gratuitous supplemental explanations in parentheses provided by your helpful Sardonickist:

Whitney Williams's Grand Plan - "To help the high-profile - Ben Affleck, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, etc. - put their money and influence to seriously good use." (The serious good use is centered in extremely poor parts of Africa, which are in dire need of some good old fashioned high-profile corporate plunder investment. And this philanthrocapitalist should know: Whitney got her start as trip advisor to First Lady Hillary Clinton and later worked as finance chair for Clinton's first presidential campaign. )

Emily Tisch Sussman's Grand Plan - "Reduce gun violence, among other things, as campaign director at DC-based think tank Center for American Progress."  (Among the other things, presumably, is the election of the seriously high-profile Hillary Clinton, whose lobbyist-campaign adviser just happens to be the founder of the corporate-funded Center for American Progress. Emily's parents, donors to the Clintons, are part owners of the New York Giants football team.  Daddy founded the Loews Corporation, and Hubby is a private consultant to the Pentagon... among other things.)

John Steinbaugh's Grand Plan - "Stop deaths from hemorrhage among soldiers on battlefields through RevMedx's invention of the life-saving syringe." (Why have a grand plan to actually stop war when your company-slash-charity can also be the lucky winner of many a Pentagon contract for many an endless war? You can't get blood from a stone, after all. You still need human bodies.)

Jessica Seinfeld's Grand Plan - "Break the cycle of family poverty through the cookbook author's nonprofit Good+ Foundation." (No government-funded food stamp increases or jobs programs or wage increases for hungry poor families are needed as long as you have a wealthy comedian's wife to share her tips and tricks.  And just so you know, that cookbook she's selling to help poor moms feed their kids might be unoriginal, but it was not plagiarized. So shut up, all you haters and class enviers!)

Justin Rockefeller's Grand Plan - "Convince the wealthy not only to invest their money in a socially responsible manner, but to do it more effectively through the ImPact." (You can make a ton of money by slushing giving just a little of it away. Poor people are opportunities. Incidentally, Justin apparently is a real Rockefeller, unlike that con-man murderer Clark Rockefeller, who also convinced the wealthy to give him their money by way of class affinity fraud. Justin is redundantly described as both a venture capitalist and a Democratic activist. His daddy is former Senator Jay Rockefeller)

Bill Pulte's Grand Plan - "Rid Detroit of blight by tearing down houses and making room for safe communities." (Translation: buy up properties for pennies, evict tenants, tear down, gentrify, get rid of "black crime", re-sell to white people or rent back to evictees at a markup, ka-ching. Pulte is a private equity mogul, a/k/a Master of Creative Destruction. And wouldn't you know it, the brother of Mitt Romney  (the founder of vulture fund Bain Capital) just happens to serve on this "charity's" board. Double ka-ching!)

Deval Patrick's Grand Plan - "Prove that you can make money and do good at the same time by starting a new division of Bain Capital that focuses on investment opportunities that benefit society by still turning a profit." (It's a small world, after all. Patrick, like Romney, is a former governor of Massachusetts; they must have met on one of their revolving door trips.  Patrick also served on the board of subprime lender Ameriquest, which turned a profit by foreclosing on thousands of poor people's homes in Detroit and elsewhere.) 

Kim Fortunato's Grand Plan - "Reduce childhood obesity and hunger through Campbell Soup's  signature philanthropic program, Campbell's Healthy Communities." (One small serving of Campbell's Healthy Request soup contains more than half the daily recommended allowance of sodium. The company actually increased the salt in its products after an initial ballyhooed reduction depressed sales. Since the mega-charity, the American Heart Association. also added its healthy logo to the cans of salinated soup, both it and Campbell's were the subjects of a class action lawsuit, charging fraud.)

The Cucinelli Family's Grand Plan -"Prove that capitalism and humanism can co-exist through business and the Brunello and Federica Cucinelli Foundation..." (Never mind that capitalism is to humanism what cancer is to a body. In his native Umbria, Cucinelli, known as the King of Cashmere, reigns as a literal feudal overlord. In a real castle, no less, with real-live peasants toiling in the surrounding countryside to provide some co-existing ambience.)

Anida Kamadioli Costa's Grand Plan - "Ensure that an iconic brand puts its money where its mouth is on such issues as conservation through the Tiffany & Co. Foundation." (The issues apparently don't extend to Tiffany divesting from the part of its gem supply chain allegedly responsible for Middle Eastern massacres.)

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg's Grand Plan - "To give away 99% of their Facebook stock, currently worth $45 billion,  through numerous nonprofits like the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative." (As has been widely reported, this charitable endeavor is not only a tax dodge, it aims to supplant democratic programs, such as public education. The bulk of the excessive Facebook cash is parked in a Delaware LLC.)

Nicolas Berggruen's Grand Plan - "Create a space to shelter the world's elite thinkers in a peaceful yet intellectually fervid sanctuary for reflection and dialogue through the Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center." (Even rich thought leaders need charity and safe spaces. Berggruen was once known as the "homeless  billionaire" because he was reduced to living in his private jet after losing a third of his fortune in the Wall Street crash. But now he's opened his new lush California Zen paradise to such wealthy war-mongering luminaries as Tony Blair and Condi Rice, who can fervidly shelter in place for "Thing Long" bull sessions with their class peers.

It's one more example of charity literally beginning right in the home. Or, if not in an actual castle, at least in the second, fourth or eighth vacation home.

Now, this isn't to say that all 50 of the winning philanthropists showcased in Town & Country are as crass as the individuals and corporate persons I highlighted above. There still exist the usual rich people giving and raising money to study diseases which have personally afflicted them or their family members. There are the usual celebrities and their sincere pet causes. For example, Matt Damon modestly aims to provide clean water for the whole wide world, while Stephen Colbert is merely trying to humor regular people into donating supplies to public, not private, schools. There's no money or investment opportunity in it for them, other than the positive publicity and maybe a clever tax write-off of some sort.

So read more about the leisure class at your own leisure. You are guaranteed to be amazed and perhaps even inspired to add an updated chapter or two to Thorstein Veblen's landmark sociological study on the rich. Stung by accusations that they're a bunch of wealth-hoarding greedsters, the plutocrats have joined forces to create their own "Idle No More" movement. They're very busy conspicuously helping one another to aspire to help others to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's a hard knock life for sure... for the rich.

Pop quiz questions: What, if any, difference is there between conspicuous consumption and conspicuous giving? 

Is it uncharitable to ask whether we can actually afford rich people?

Campaign '16: Media Lothario Wars

Who's the more disgusting dirty old man, Donald Trump or Bill Clinton? Well, it kind of depends on which cheek of the duopoly you happen to favor.

Fox News got the Lothario sweepstakes started on Friday, with the revelation that Clinton was much more frequent of a flyer on convicted billionaire sex offender Jeff Epstein's jet than inquiring minds ever cared to know. The Big Dog took more than 26 separate international trips on the "Lolita Express," giving a whole new meaning to the Clinton Global Initiative. The plane was so named because it contained a bed for pig-men to have sex with underage girls. Mind you, there has never been proof that Bill Clinton himself victimized any teenagers on his trips, which date back more than a decade.

In the interest of bipartisanship, the New York Times today has its own big colorful spread on the misogyny of Donald Trump. However, in the more important interest of political correctness, the Paper of Record is framing its exploitative investigation into the seamy underworld of depraved plutocrats around how "uncomfortable" Trump has made various women feel over the decades. Dozens of women dished to Times reporters about how shabbily they've been treated by him both in the workplace and in private social situations. Bottom line and the Big Reveal: the Donald is unique among wealthy bosses. He is a pig-man extraordinaire, and the Times is on it. He therefore should not be allowed anywhere near the White House, which has such a grand history of treating women with the utmost dignity and respect.

 And in the meantime, the Gray Lady is not above titillating her readers just as much as Rupert Murdoch titillates his. What's an election for, if it's not about the ratings and circulation numbers of our famously free press?

It's going to be a very long six months, people.

Feeling the Brand

Granted that you have take anything you read in Politico with a grain of salt, but this little trial balloon sounds plausible enough if you happen to suspect that the Bernie Sanders campaign has already embarked on the first leg of its road to Clinton capitulation:

 A group of Bernie Sanders staffers and volunteers is circulating a draft proposal calling on the senator to get out of the presidential race after the final burst of Democratic primaries on June 7, and concentrate on building a national progressive organization to stop Donald Trump.

Operating under the assumption that Sanders will win the California primary but still fall far short of amassing enough delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, the document calls for the Vermont senator to exit the race and launch an independent political group far larger than any other recent post-campaign political operations, such as those started by Howard Dean or Barack Obama.

The main purpose of the so-called Revolution '16 movement would be to "mobilize voters under 30" to show up for down-ticket progressive candidates as well as for Hillary Clinton. The draft proposal also suggests holding a separate convention event for Sanders supporters to supplement his speech at the official (and closed to the general public) Democratic convention. Nothing like a party to soothe the feelings -- and the consciences -- of the uninvited and the disenfranchised!

If the group at first focused primarily on combating Trump, the thinking goes, it would provide those Sanders fans with justification for eventually voting for Clinton.

 “This is a populist year in American electoral politics with signs that it may mark the beginning of a populist era. It would be very unwise for the decidedly un-populist Hillary Clinton to move with too much confidence towards a full-on confrontation with Donald Trump,” they continue. “A Sanders-led (as opposed to Sanders-centered) independent entity could provide a much needed, articulate and energized economic populist voice to the anti-Trump effort without the intrinsic compromising effect posed by close association with Neoliberal Democratic elites, as well as weaning the volunteer base off total reliance on individual candidates during one-off election cycles.”

Of course, this is only a trial balloon coming from anonymous sources "close to and within the Sanders campaign". Bernie Sanders's hands are still clean. He will have the final say, depending on whether his "fans" are actually willing to pay the toll for this bridge too far. There's no immediate pressure for the candidate himself to don the full herding costume. The campaign has already sent out its pack of media cattle dogs to do the teasing preliminaries.

Meanwhile, that giant lasso is coming closer and closer, making the thundering herd a tad skittish.

 So in order to bewilder them and head off a threatened mass stampede for the exits, the humane neoliberal factory farmers will build a spanking-new shiny customized slaughterhouse large enough to hold millions of enthusiastic voters. And there will be plenty of cud to chew and lots of togetherness to keep the herd placid and compliant and anesthetized as the Hillary brand is seared slowly into their backsides.

So... what'll it be, proles? This:

Or this?

Nothing New Under the Corporate Media Sun

Even though Bernie Sanders now has little to no chance of getting the Democratic nomination, the media are not letting up on him. The fact that he is still campaigning and still railing against the malefactors of great wealth has the malefactors screaming for him to stop, just stop already and be quiet or go away and leave them alone unless it's to help "unify" their private, closed Party.

The latest incident that has them clutching their pearls in elite hysteria was his appearance last week on The Rachel Maddow Show, where he had the effrontery to criticize the corporate-owned media.

Though he speaks truth to power about the shallow, sporting-event, identity politics-driven nature of the coverage, his solution -- for a Democratic Party-financed TV network to counter Fox News propaganda -- had me scratching my head. I sadly suspect that his particular "revolution" is now devolving into a public relations battle between the two big business parties. Why not go whole hog and call for a resurgence of an independent socialist press that is not beholden to advertisers at all? He could have plugged Jacobin, Counterpunch or any of the several genuinely leftist outlets. 

I suppose I quibble. But personally, I wouldn't want Debbie Wasserman Schultz's lunch-hooks anywhere near a new progressive version of Fox.

 MSNBC, for years the unofficial house organ of the DNC and the Obama administration, only recently pivoted to general election coverage. Comcast is not stupid. The "overlords," as Maddow calls them, know a good Donald Trump deal when they see it. There is more advertising value in airing an empty Trump podium or an empty Trump suit for minutes or hours at a time than there is in discussing "issues" or covering a Bernie Sanders rally. 

Since Bernie is still out there, New York Times pundit Paul Krugman continues to falsely equate reactionary Trump supporters with "Bernie Bros," who allegedly are sending harassing Tweets to both himself and the Two Nates (Cohn and Silver) -- the duo who so successfully predicted a near-zero chance for a Trump nomination.

Krugman just can't seem to quit his angry white Bernie straw-dudes, even though the Left actually does include women, older people, and black and brown citizens to boot. The scary socialist trolls are as big on "empirical denial" of "center-left" facts as conservatives!

Although it’s a bit worse when some of those supporters are actual campaign surrogates. Of course, campaigns can’t be held responsible for everything their supporters say, all, we can ask whether Sanders himself is inclined to dismiss inconvenient facts. Well, as you know, I think the answer is yes, on issues ranging from economic projections to the sources of Clinton primary victories.

 I was therefore primed to notice when Sanders declared that Democrats need their own version of Fox News. What does he mean, exactly? Should the proposed network engage in similar factual distortions and outright falsehoods, except this time in the service of progressive goals?

 By the way, it wouldn’t work. Fox caters to an audience of angry old white men; the angry young white guys who would want a left-wing version of this message are fewer in number, have less purchasing power, and anyway don’t get their news from TV. But that’s a side point.

I broke down and wrote a response, because it seems that despite my avowed boycott, I just can't quit the habit of occasionally calling out the Conscience of a Neoliberal:

 Krugman is right. Some on the left, whom he persists in denigrating as "Bernie Bros", are indeed in empirical denial. They have trouble accepting the fact that wealth rules the world, and that the corporate-owned media do not represent the public interest.. They believe in a utopia of debt-free public education, health care for all, a decent job at a decent wage, a secure retirement, a more or less permanent roof over their heads. How silly of the desperate ones to want change today or tomorrow instead of 50 years from now, if even then. How anti-pragmatic of them not to get with the program, and join in the team effort of lambasting Trump and cheerleading Clinton to the finish line.

Why won't they listen to Krugman and former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell, who has already warned them not to make a fuss at the convention of party bigwigs?

What this is really about is a resurgence of socialist ideas, with or without Bernie Sanders. Back in the waning days of the last Gilded Age, vested wealthy interests were terrified of an anti-capitalist muckraker named Upton Sinclair. Getting the Bernie treatment in the NYT and elsewhere is nothing new. Sinclair even went so far as to measure the column inches devoted to plutocrats as opposed to humanitarians to prove his point.

Read "The Brass Check," his exposé of corporate journalism, and you will see that nothing much has changed, except that the media are much more consolidated.

The "facts" still have a well-known money bias.

My comment was inspired by Chapter XXII of Sinclair's book, which begins:

The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public interests but private interests; they do not represent humanity but property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise, or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth. And suppose that you wished to make a test of this thesis, a test of the most rigid scientific - what would you do? You would put up two men, one representing property, the other representing humanity. You would endeavor rigidly to exclude all other factors; you would find one man who represented property to the exclusion of humanity, and you would find another man who represented humanity to the exclusion of property. You would put these two men before the public, having them do the same thing, so far as humanly possible, and then you would keep a record of the newspaper results.

Sinclair, never famous for personal modesty, compared his humanitarian self ("besides Jack London, the most widely known of living American writers throughout the world") to Vincent Astor, whose only claims to fame were first that he was born; second, that he lived on an estate; third, that he married money, and fourth, that he inherited $65 million -- at the time, beating the all-time record for inherited wealth. Sinclair continued,

And now for the action of the two men. It appears that the New York Times, a great organ of world capitalism, in its effort to camouflage its true functions, had resorted to the ancient device of charity, used by the Christian Church ever since it sold out to the Emperor Constantine. Early in December of each year, the Times publishes a list which it calls "One Hundred Neediest Cases" and collects money for these hundred families in distress. The Times never goes into the question of the social system which produces these harrowing cases, nor does it allow anyone else to go into this question; what it does is to present the hundred victims of the system with enough money to preserve them until the following December, so that they may never again enter into competition for mention in the list, and have their miseries exploited by the Times.

That should help answer Bernie's question. Plutocrats don't want you to know about their game, because what they don't want you know could hurt them, very badly. Sinclair self-published his book in 1919, ten years before the oligarchic greed he decried crashed the entire economy. Later, it was the activist pressure of the socialist movement that actually ushered in FDR's New Deal. If they'd had the likes of Hillary Clinton, Paul Krugman and their neoliberal free-market ilk around to lecture the proles and propagandize for the wealthy, who knows? We might never have gotten a national jobs program, publicly funded infrastructure, and Social Security.

The Times still does its annual charity drive as it serially glorifies the extremely wealthy all the year round. Just check out the real estate section on any given day, to see what kind of digs $10 million will buy you. 

 Were it not for real estate magnate Donald Trump's billions, do you really think he could have gleaned all his free front-page publicity from the Times and other outlets? You don't need a scientific study to prove that Trump has gotten more coverage than the Pope, Bernie Sanders and millions of actual poor people combined -- or anyone who can't afford the price of a subscription, let alone the price of a display ad.

Upton Sinclair finished his New York Times take-down with the following humorous anecdote. When he wrote an open letter to Vincent Astor in 1914, asking him to justify his lavish lifestyle when millions of his fellow citizens were starving, only one of the many city papers in circulation at that time published it. That was the New York Call, a small socialist paper. The Gray Lady turned up her nose at such a thing. An attack on capitalism? No way!

Then Astor got wind of the letter, and he answered it. Or, as Sinclair theorized, a shrewd family lawyer or a secretary probably answered it. Astor's reply was offered to every major newspaper, and every major newspaper published it. Most of them, including the Times, splashed it on their front page, with Astor's picture. They wrote glowing accompanying editorials about the magnanimous indignation of the young multimillionaire who deigned to defend himself against those nasty socialist attacks. Astor complained that Sinclair's ideas were "fallacious and impracticable," and that help for the needy would come over time, without the need for radical change. Besides, he sniffed, he'd spoken to experts, and was informed by experts that "the condition of laboring people has greatly improved over the last several generations."

Sound familiar? Upton Sinclair was a Bernie Bro.

And less than two decades later, the whole economic system came crashing down because of oligarchic greed and the media's enablement of it.

I have a feeling we won't have to wait 20 years for the next big "event." For one thing, the earth itself, drowning and burning and melting as it is, just never learned how to get with the incremental, pragmatic program. 

Mother Earth is an impatient Bernie Bro. Pass it on. 

This Just In From Hillary's Think Tank

Stop the presses! Straight to my in-box from the blog of the "progressive" Center for American Progress (founded by Clinton campaign manager and lobbyist John Podesta) were the top two click-bait teaser headlines to make your Mothers Day Weekend like, totally, rock the vote:

Hillary Clinton's faith is poised to play a big role as she turns to the general election.

And, how Secret deodorant miserably failed at explaining the wage gap.

You might think this was just another one of one of those unintentionally funny non sequiturs, but hold on a sec.

I think it signals that Donald Trump will be unable to make this cold saintly woman sweat as he lobs his barrage of sexist insults at her. It's the next chapter in the Prescribed Hillary Narrative: sucking up some anti-Trump votes from the horrified religious right, while simultaneously allowing her to outdo a deodorant brand in explaining gender wage disparities. She is doubly poised for triangulation and armpit hygiene. And she's making no secret about it. She is cool, calm, and collecting. She is confident, and so should you be.

"I'm With Her" (Ad for Poise Deodorant)

The Secret deodorant brand might have landed in the liberal refuse dump right along with her paid speeches, but Hillary Clinton is still perfectly willing to share a couple of her other personal care habits with all of you everyday ladies out there... on this very Hillary Mothers Day weekend:

"My two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And if you can't, use Purell or one of the hand sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it!"

 two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And, if you can't, use Purell or one of the sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I eat a lot of hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. Hillary Clinton
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hillarycli458809.html

My two secrets to staying healthy: wash your hands all the time. And, if you can't, use Purell or one of the sanitizers. And the other is hot peppers. I eat a lot of hot peppers. I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swe
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hillarycli458809.html

Hillary might be wise to rethink at least one of her product recommendations. Overuse of hand sanitizer and constant hand-washing are not just symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, they can be a health hazard in and of themselves.

 With its high alcohol content, hand sanitizer is harmful if swallowed by the poised-for-success kids or grandkids poised to climb their ladders of opportunity. It can turn your hands into sandpaper-like husks. It speeds up the skin's absorption of the toxic BPA lurking on the surface of the plastic bottle. Anti-bacterial soap kills protective skin flora, which you need to repel fungi, viruses and harmful kinds of bacteria. It, and some hand sanitizers on the market, also contain triclosan, which can damage the endocrine system. In animal studies, this chemical additive has been shown to reduce muscle strength while amplifying testosterone levels. Given that Hillary and her minions love to tout her "muscular" foreign policy credentials, this could pose a real threat to her hawkishness down the road.

Hand sanitizer is not effective against the norovirus, which causes many "stomach flu" outbreaks.  And most importantly, the germophobia which seems to afflict Hillary (and too many other Americans) could theoretically harm those with whom she comes in physical contact. Overuse of antimicrobial products can lead to a generalized resistance to antibiotics.  And since Trump, too, is a hardcore hand sanitizer addict and germophobe, the next six months might be hazardous to our well-being in more ways than one. This campaign could well turn out to be a real MRSA-thon unless Donnie and Hill can get over their squeamishness.  The handshake part of the debates alone will be a real hurdle for them. So they'll probably stick to the usual elite politesse: air-kissing.

And as far as religion and pandering to evangelicals are concerned, Hillary should dump this whole church lady routine and put more of her faith in actual science. After all, she's a Democrat, not a Republican.

Oh, wait....
 

Obama to Flint: Drink Up and Pipe Down

President Obama finally got around to bringing the pipes to the residents of Flint, Michigan this week. His rich baritone pipes, that is - not the kind they desperately need to replace the corroded system still leaching toxic lead into the drinking water supply of thousands of families.

Did you really think that the slow genocide of an entire city full of non-rich working people would qualify as a national disaster prompting an emergency presidential declaration and the immediate presence of billions of dollars and the Army Corps of Engineers? Since there is no immediate profit to be made from lead-poisoned children, the lead-poisoned children will just have to quite literally suck it up until some tax-averse charitable corporations can partner with politicians and figure out how to leach some extra bucks for themselves out of this tragedy.

The residents of Flint will have to wait years for the expensive new pipes, Obama vowed.  Meanwhile, in a downright bizarre effort to prove that lead in human bodies is not really as bad as it's cracked up to be,  the big man himself took a couple of tentative sips of filtered Flint tap water. (Presumably after it was thoroughly refiltered, retested and deemed safe by the Secret Service, who normally supply and serve Obama's a la carte potables.)

Unlike the emergency bailout of the Wall Street bankers, unlike the rescue of the state's auto industry, there is no "fierce urgency of now" in Obama's Flint playbook. Check out the typical neoliberal buzzwords in bold:

 We are ensuring that we have a plan for the system to work over the long term; and that we are certain that our kids here in Flint are going to be able to take advantage of their talents and opportunities well into the future.

Just because kids have ingested and bathed in near-lethal levels of lead and developed behavior and learning issues and broken out in sores doesn't necessarily mean they can't eventually "live up to their potentials", he soothed. Expensive fresh fruit and vegetables can even ameliorate the effects! (He doesn't give any tips on how to actually wash your produce, however.) And sometimes all it takes is a trip to the doctor to reassure parents that a little potential brain damage is not necessarily such a bad thing. The important thing now is that parents act responsibly, use the free filters and the expanded Medicaid being so magnanimously provided for them. Meanwhile, rest assured that politicians and bureaucrats are working hard on planning to come up with a plan for maybe eventually getting some additional funds that somehow never are an issue when it comes to spending trillions on Permawar and tax loopholes for the wealthy.

It may take a year.  It may take two years.  It might take more to get all the pipes replaced.  And in the meantime, folks have to be able to use water.  So trust that the tests have been done and the filter system works. 

It's safe to drink as long as you aren't below the age of six, chronically ill or immune deficient, in which case you are royally screwed.

 Third point.  In order for us to clean out the system, to flush out the contaminants, and to have confidence that, as we fix the system, it’s actually going to be safe for all the households in Flint, we need everybody in Flint to start helping us flush out that system.  And so I guess there’s a program called Flush For Flint.  It’s not the most elegant name.  (Laughter.)  But the concept is pretty simple if you think about it, and that is we need everybody to turn on their tap in the kitchen, in the tub for five minutes a day so that the water is running and whatever contaminants are sitting in there start getting pushed out. 

You will of course still have to pay for all that wasted water. If only we could flush out the whole contaminated pathocracy while we're at it. But no dice:

 Now, I understand if people are scared and they’re not using their water, that they may wonder why is it up to me to be part of this process of fixing it.  But the bottom line is, is if you’re not doing your part, then these outstanding folks around the table who want to help can’t do theirs.

Whether it's the housing crash or chronic joblessness and income inequality caused by Wall Street greed, at least half the onus must always be placed on the victims. Whether it's CIA "patriots (who) tortured some folks", or fine family men like Paul Ryan who cut social programs, they are all simply outstanding folks. So if you're not part of the public relations solution, you're part of the problem, proles! You have to have some skin in their rigged game.

 And what I’m encouraged by is I think a recognition at every level of government that we have to take what has been a crisis and see if we can turn this into an opportunity to rebuild Flint even better than before.

It's the dogma of creative destruction. Rich people view poor people as investment opportunities. The poor are reliable sources of profit, be it by forcing them to take out payday loans to meet their water bills, raising their rents, penalizing them unless they buy worthless junk health insurance, punishing them within the private prison system, using them as killing machines for profitable wars, experimenting with them in privatized schools, taking a cut from their food stamp balance every time they buy a gallon of milk, ad infinitum. The possibilities and the profits are truly endless. Flint is just one more opportunity for disaster capitalism to helicopter down and pounce once the pouncing is good.

I’m confident that we can do that if we’re all working together.  And I emphasized to the governor and I emphasized to the mayor that my job here today is not to sort through all the ins and outs of how we got to where we are, but rather to make sure that all of us are focused on what we need to do moving forward on behalf of the children of Flint.  That’s my priority.  And that’s got to be all of our priorities.

As per usual, there will be no accountability for the wealthy criminal class. Every man-made crisis must have either benevolence or ignorance at its core. Therefore, Governor Rick Snyder and the other officials who knew that the Flint water was contaminated for years and did nothing about it, will not be blamed and definitely not be prosecuted if Obama has his druthers. As he vowed at the beginning of his reign regarding the Bush-Cheney war crimes, his job is to look forward and not backward. The powerful must always protect their own kind and their own class, regardless of party affiliation.

 Last point. I think people are understandably scared when they hear that their child may have ingested some lead, it may have gotten into their system, and that that may have some long-term impacts or create particular challenges for kids.  But it is really important for all of us to remember that kids are resilient.  And every kid in Flint is special, and has capacity, and can do great things.  And the fact that they may have had some drinking water that was contaminated doesn’t automatically mean somehow that they’re going to have huge problems or that they’re not going to be able to reach that potential.

The glass is always half full of lead-tainted water. They don't call it Special Ed for nothing, after all. I'm just surprised that he didn't also nominate lead as an essential mineral. But wait, the best is yet to come:

When I was five or six or seven, a lot of homes still had lead paint in it. (sic)  I might have ingested some lead paint when I was two or three years old, because at the time, people didn’t know it.  So we’ve got an entire couple of generations of Americans who have done really we despite the fact that they may have had something that is not optimal.  And how lead interacts with any particular child is going to be different, and what each child needs is going to be different.  And some kids are going to be fine, and they’re not going to be affected.  Some kids may have more of an -- it might have more of an effect.  

He "might have " snacked on lead paint chips as a child, but look how awesomely well he turned out. Putting aside the utter sneering cynicism of that statement, let's take him at his word. Could his decision to drone to death hundreds and maybe even thousands of people residing on his presidential Kill List be a result of subtle organic brain disease that's left his IQ intact? Could his serial lying about corporate coups known as trade deals stem from a lead-based, neurological deficit in the areas of the brain which house aggressive impulse control and a moral compass?

Of course, the pathology does not belong to him alone. It's rampant throughout the media-political corporatocracy. It has been a long tradition of neoliberalism that the more abnormal the situation, the more vigorously the market-based thought collective will seek to normalize it. People can have their life-sustaining water poisoned due to the criminal neglect of their leaders, and then be urged to simply accept the band-aids of a little free medical coverage and a temporary filter for their faucets while their leaders stay wealthy and free and powerful.  If "folks" expect anything more, like emergency declarations and new pipes before next year, then they are harboring utopian delusions. They are letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Generally I don’t do stunts, but here you go.  (Takes a sip of water.)  Now, this had a filter on it.

 I reckon it's like those safe filtered cigarettes that the Marlboro Man who died of lung cancer used to advertise on TV.  But hey, if you only take one puff or one sip over the course of your entire lifetime, you most likely will indeed live long enough to reach your full, post-presidential potential. Ka-ching!

Meanwhile, even the Democratic mayor of Flint is not buying Obama's bullshit. Karen Weaver says the cheap filters are simply not working at all in many of the homes receiving the still highly contaminated water.

  But to hear the Neoliberal Thought Collective tell it, the only thing we have to fear is Donald Trump himself. The guy for whom scapegoating was a winning proposition is now the Scapegoat Du Jour. The whole world is apparently terrified of a Trump presidency. I imagine that his xenophobic Kill List would be even scarier than Obama's xenophobic Kill List. It would definitely be more sexist. 

Even neocon candidate Hillary Clinton is concerned enough to go email-trolling for donors to her brand new Stop Trump Fund.

 Dig that horror film devil-horned zombie hand coming out of the grave to grab you and bite you and turn you into another zombie!

Be afraid. Send Hillary a buck as she gathers together her own horde of Bush-Cheney neocons to fight the zombie menace. Then go guzzle some nice filtered water. 

Pathocracy: It's Even Worse Than We Thought

Despite the highly touted success of the Paris Climate Agreement,  corporate and government leaders have secretly colluded to all but ignore its already rather tepid recommendations. The planet will be permitted to burn as the plutocrats burn through all its extracted wealth. The capitalistic cancer will consume the host, with no cares or worries that it, too, will inevitably die right along with the host. 

The massive fire in the oil sands town of Fort McMurray, Alberta prompting the evacuation of some 80,000 people, is only the latest metastasis.

Thanks to a leak by Greenpeace International, a proposed transatlantic "trade" deal (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States reveals the full ugly extent of just one of the corporate coups now under discussion by the global ruling class racketeers.

Because of the leak of these secret documents, the people's dissent against getting hurt, burned out, evicted, or even killed in the name of endless profits for a select few billionaires can only grow stronger. The leak reveals the full extent by which United States intends to complete the client state status of the entire European continent. "The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environment, consumer protection and public health standards", warns Jorge Riss, director of Greenpeace EU.

The proposed TTIP agreement essentially allows the US to veto any regulations by European countries that would protect citizens' rights over those of corporations. Before the EU partners can even propose a new regulation, they would have to submit to a vetting process by the United States.

 And then there are the odious, extra-national corporate courts which would have final say over any disputes. If a country persists, for example, in banning cosmetic firms from testing their products on animals, the firms would be able to extract monetary damages from the citizenry for failure to comply with animal abuse in the name of endless profits. If Europe continues its ban on genetically modified foods, companies would quite literally be allowed to yank the food from  the mouths of babes in retribution.

Four aspects of the attempted multinational coup are of particular concern, says Greenpeace:

1.The longstanding environmental protections enshrined in the 70-year GATT agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) appear to have been totally dropped, putting profits over the lives of humans, animals and plants. The Paris Climate Agreement is rendered a moot public relations exercise.

2. Not only do the leaked texts contain nothing about climate protection, among the proposals is a clause deregulating the importation of fossil fuels, even such polluting fuels as tar sands oil. This importation has actually already been approved, even as the Paris Climate Agreement was being inked. Pipelines for the transport of highly flammable fracked North Dakota oil have already been constructed. The oil is bound for Europe. When those "I'm an energy voter!" TV ads talk about energy independence, they don't mean that fossil fuels will be stockpiled in the US for future use. They mean that Exxon-Mobil will grow richer as it exports its toxic product to the far corners of the world. 

3. Rather than accept the current bans on the use of hazardous substances in Europe, the United States wants its partners to be more careful about using them. It simply calls for better "management" of such things as inserting potentially harmful growth hormone into food products. The typical neoliberal weasel wording of "benefits outweighing risks" is rife throughout the leaked document.

4. The  documents make it clear that the world is wide open for continuing capitalistic predation. Big business will get its way and be allowed to intervene in even the earliest stages of any regulatory legislation by any sovereign nation. The leaked papers confirm that such multinationals as Monsanto and Coca Cola and Nestle have all been given seats at the table, while the general public has been excluded from the process. As a matter of fact, some details of the corporate coup have been designated to remain top-secret for the next 30 years.  The pathocrats know their takeover will not be popular. They have already threatened to criminally prosecute the leakers of their diabolical texts.

Since some European leaders had already started to waver (because of public protests) in their support of the deal even before Monday's leak,President Barack Obama personally interceded on behalf of the corporate interest he represents. As War on Want's John Hilary writes, his trip to the continent last week was made, in large part, to cajole his counterparts into doing right by the plutocrats. He was greeted by street protesters in Germany, where public approval for the trade pact had plummeted to 17% -- before the leak.

"Oh, merde", you might imagine Obama muttering. "Après moi le Greenpeace déluge. And just when I was revving up my self-burnishing Legacy Tour into third (way) gear!"

But guess what? There are no worries here in the Land of the Free, where the sycophantic press are still raving over Obama's weekend standup routine at the White House Correspondents' annual orgy. Judging from the laughter, it was even better than the time he joked about attacking his daughters' potential suitors with predator drones. It was even more hilarious than the time Bush pretended to look for WMDs under his desk.

And talk about his exquisite timing. Less than two days later, Obama published a truly hysterical op-ed in the Washington Post, joking about that that other corporate coup known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The latest scuttlebut has it coming up for congressional ratification after the November election, when all the players can wash their hands of any accountability. The lame duck session is the truncated, but very rewarding, political version of the gap year. It's that special time when all manner of crap can be tossed at the public without pressure or fear of consequences. They're all spinning madly in the revolving doors between public service and cashing in, or between cashing in and public service.

Meanwhile, I'm so weak from laughing over Obama's op-ed that I can't even stand to parse the whole thing. But here are a few nuggets of comedy gold straight from the glib pen of the Pathocrat-in-Chief, as dictated by his corporate masters. (parentheses are simply my interpretations of his free-floating dialogue)

Today, some of our greatest economic opportunities abroad are in the Asia-Pacific region, which is on its way to becoming the most populous and lucrative market on the planet. Increasing trade in this area of the world would be a boon to American businesses and American workers, and it would give us a leg up on our economic competitors, including one we hear a lot about on the campaign trail these days: China.

(The world is nothing but a plunderful market opportunity for billionaires. Never mind that Democrats and Republicans alike are worried that Trump's trash-talking of China is supposedly endangering America's stellar reputation abroad.  Obama can trash-talk China even better, and in complete, cogent sentences to boot. He can diss Chinese wage slaves in favor of American wage slaves and still not be called out on his own classism and xenophobia. He's got the rhetoric, baby!)

This past week, China and 15 other nations met in Australia with a goal of getting their deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, done before the end of this year. That trade deal won’t prevent unfair competition among government-subsidized, state-owned enterprises. It won’t protect a free and open Internet. Nor will it respect intellectual property rights in a way that ensures America’s creators, artists, filmmakers and entrepreneurs get their due. And it certainly won’t enforce high standards for our workers and our environment.

(He will protect his ultra-wealthy Hollywood and Silicon Valley donors at all costs. And he will hilariously complain that China isn't enforcing the high standards for labor and environment at the same time he's making damned sure that Europe's own high humanitarian standards for labor and the environment will be crushed into corporate dust through his efforts.)

 Simply put, once the TPP is in place, American businesses will export more of what they make. And that means supporting more higher-paying jobs.

(Simply put, American businesses will export more of what they make... in low-wage countries. As in the Nike sneakers that they hope to make in 40 cents-an-hour Vietnam. That will support more high pay for the CEOs who already rake in about 350 times the salary of the average American worker.)

This agreement also strengthens America’s national security. When fewer people suffer in poverty, when our trading partners flourish and when we bind our economy closer to others in a strategically important region, America is both stronger and safer.

(Obama here displays his full allegiance to the discredited, but still popular, Reagan Revolution, a/k/a the Neoliberal Thought Collective. If corporations are allowed to become bloated to bursting, some of that offal will trickle downhill to the impoverished, rather than being "bound" up like a bad case of constipation. This will make the plutocracy even more nationally secure and comfortable than it already is. America is the plunderer that will bind its almighty power to the still untapped and appetizingly exploitable regions of the world.)

 I understand the skepticism people have about trade agreements, particularly in communities where the effects of automation and globalization have hit workers and families the hardest. But building walls to isolate ourselves from the global economy would only isolate us from the incredible opportunities it provides. Instead, America should write the rules. America should call the shots. Other countries should play by the rules that America and our partners set, and not the other way around.

 (You're screwed, proles. Obama speaks the unbelievable truth when he touts the "incredible opportunities" that all those lost, off-shored jobs will provide to the obscenely wealthy, who just can't ever get enough. They set the rules for the whole miserable world. If that makes you skeptical, says Obama, then tough shit. America has to be meaner than China. America has to be a winner, just as the affable Obama is a winner.)

 The ruling class racketeers and the pundits are still trying to wrap their heads around the sudden electoral success of nastiness, as personified by Donald Trump. Historically, the bought-and-paid for politicians have managed to keep their own pathocratic tendencies very well hidden beneath their jovial grins and folksy speeches. It's the only way to keep the mob under control. It's the only way to keep the people laughing instead of weeping... or demonstrating on the streets.

Donald Trump is now emerging as the exception to that rule. He's figured out that misery and anger love company. He's co-opting a good chunk of the mob through the old fascist ploy of dividing them in hopes of conquering them.

Hillary Clinton doesn't appear to have figured anything out yet. But it's early days. Give her time. She's only been a major power player for about 35 years.