Silly Season

While we slog through the Dog Days of Great Depression II  (2008 -  ) we can at least count on nonstop entertainment  The '30s had Shirley Temple and Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. We have Michele and Sarah and Mitt and Rick and 'Rack.


First of all, we should all breathe a sigh of relief that Michele Bachmann is not running to replace Judge Judy.  As she somewhat tetchily revealed to hard-hitting interviewer David Gregory on Meet the Press Sunday, she is not in the business of judging the gays. She will not necessarily ban gays from her cabinet, as long as they agree with her (anti-gay) views She is running for president, not Judge, David! She reminded him she has raised five uterine children, 23 foster children, was a tax attorney, and has been happily married for 33 years, and that submission means the same thing as respect in her household. And that she is not judgmental. So good. She is absolutely qualified to say she is running for president.


Poor Tim Pawlenty dropped out before he even got started.  So no President Pawlenty.  T-Paw won't morph into P-Paw.  On the other hand, we might just get a P-Rick, as in Rick "Concealed Weapon" Perry, a.k.a. Governor Goodhair of the Banana Republic of Texas. He's been caught joking about secession again, saying we can leave any time we want to. So I guess if he wins, the USA can just secede from itself. Sounds good to me. 

 And let's not forget President Obama.  He is embarking on a three-day bus tour through the Heartland, as I am sure you already know.  I kind of thought it was going to be a jobs tour, and that he'd be announcing plans for .... jobs or something.  But it's really more like an Empathy Tour, which I guess is as close to Emp-loyment as we are going to see from him.  But don't ever call it a campaign tour.  Those million dollar buses he's riding in battleground states are not campaign buses.  They are Secret Service buses, and will be used for all manner of future presidents and VIPs and such.  I don't want to make a big deal out of the $2.2 million cost to the taxpayers of these luxury tanks, because Fox News and Rush are already doing that. But suffice it to say, the ObamaCares Bus does not look like this: 

But more like this:

With a luxuriously appointed interior like this:

Complaining about government waste is a waste of breath anyway.  Remember when Vice President Joe Biden announced that new Department of Government Waste, Fraud and Abuse, to cut such frippery as those thousands of disgusting 99-cent cute animal websites?  The endangered Desert Tortoise was actually also on the Endangered Website List.  A double death knell if there ever was one.

That was in June. You will be pleased to know that the Desert Tortoise gov page is still up and running in all its glory.  Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, home heating assistance will all be thrown under the austerity bus.  But the Tortoise is still here. He is protected by his hard shell of resistance.  And he still pees copiously on any cruel human hand that dares mess with him.  Maybe we should all take a tip from the turtle.






It's the Re-election, Stupid!

Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors -- New York Times, 8/13/11.

Team Obama is officially nuts.  Granted, not as nuts as the Tea Party they like to hold up as a measure of their own supreme sanity, but crazy nonetheless.  Their campaign strategy is for the Boss to do as little as possible between now and November 2012, despite 20 percent real unemployment and an official poverty rate of one in five adults and one in four children, in order to appeal to all those "independent" voters.  Obama apparently thinks suffering people would rather vote for a nonconfrontational nice guy than somone who will fight for them.  And not only does he believe paralytic good will get him a second term, he makes no bones about slashing the social safety net with abandon if he does get a re-try. Again, from the Times front page article:

As part of this appeal to centrist voters, the president intends to continue his push for a so-called grand bargain on deficit reduction — a deal with Republicans to make even larger spending cuts, including to the social safety net, in exchange for some revenue increases — despite the strong opposition of Congressional Democrats who want to use the issue to draw contrasts with Republicans.

One of the advisers pushing for the do-nothing approach is Big Banker William Daley,  late of Morgan Stanley and the Chicago political machine. David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager, came to the White House after a million-dollar stint with G.E. Yes, that G.E. -- which offshores jobs and evades taxes, whose CEO heads the president's utterly fake Jobs Council.  What, exactly, Plouffe did for G.E. remains vague, but of course he swears up and down it had nothing to do with lobbying.  Obama promised he would allow no lobbyists in his administration, and we all know how well he keeps his campaign promises.

And what about those trade deals they insist will create American jobs?  More prevarication.  The deal with Columbia will enable even more corporations to pay off local drug cartels to get rid of trade unions who might be impeding their free enterprise.  No jobs for us here, but plenty of graft, death and corruption south of the border.  Ditto for Panama.  This job-creator of a trade deal will allow tycoons and corporations one more safe, tax-free haven for their hoarded profits.  The deal with South Korea will be Nafta-esque in its scope and consequences, with one more cheap labor market creating even more job exports and the potential for even more worker abuse if the impoverished "free zone" North Koreans are used as wage slaves.

Obama is counting on Republican greed and eagerness to please their masters to overcome any hatred they have for him, and allow this Trade Trifecta to pass, and then have a big old signing ceremony/ Bipartisan spinorama. The administration envisions brainwashed cheering crowds in Centristland, apparently.

 And that over-hyped patent legislation is simply designed to make it harder for poorer entrepreneurs to file the paperwork to protect their inventions, and easier for -- you guessed it -- corporations top-heavy with legal teams to grab up all the inventions for their own use and shut the little guy out. But in Obama's world, if they hire one or two people at minimum wage, they will be heroic job-creators.  And if they hire one or two disabled veterans, the president will proclaim himself a hero and invite them to the White House for a self-serving campaign photo-op.

It's safe to say that not only is the White House doing nothing to improve the lives of people victimized by this wholly plutocrat-caused economic collapse, it will be making it worse.  Much worse.  The plan is to make the corporations even richer, to make the income disparity in this country even more glaring.  If that isn't corruption in its deepest form, I don't know what is.  



Gone to the Dark Side



Weekend at Bernie's

For those of you sick of the he said/she said network and cable TV stenographers of the pundit class, here is a preview of C-Span's Sunday "Newsmakers" program featuring Bernie Sanders, independent Socialist senator of Vermont.

My only complaint about Bernie is he doesn't go far enough in condemning our current corrupt system. He is way too polite.  All the sell-out Democrats with whom he has to work are, of course, still "smart" and "experienced".  He buys into the "shared sacrifice" meme, when what he should be calling for is shared prosperity.  Wealth disparity is now inconceivably even worse than we thought: new estimates place the top one percent in possession of more wealth than 90 percent of the total population, combined.  They possess 40 percent of our total wealth, period. Notice I say "our" wealth, because not only do corporate persons pay little to no taxes, they are even entitled to tax refunds in many cases. (G.E.) The moneyed interests pay off Congress to write the laws for their exclusive benefit. So I don't think we should be "sharing" anything with these plutocrats.  These hoarders are in dire need of an intervention in the form of taxation U-Hauls to get rid of all their monetary clutter and put it in the permanent storage of the United States Treasury and the looted Social Security trust fund. 

Still, Sanders is refreshingly blunt about the upshot of the new Super Committee: "There's going to be pain, and there's going to be death." 

In Praise of Name-Calling

A guest post by Jay -- Ottawa.

I was a Democrat for decades and had relatives who were Democrats for all the right reasons, justice being at the core of what they believed in.  Some of the fine works from the New Deal where I come from are crumbling from neglect.  Others are being sold off into private hands, like the architectural gem of a post office in the center of the city that was sold to a developer for a song,  It’s what we see passing away from the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society that moves us to utter epithets.

In the middle of the Clinton years I asked my local elections bureau to change my affiliation to Independent.  My values didn’t change, but the Democratic Party’s surely did.  It’s what a party stands for and what it does that are important, not its label or its history.  The Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of the New Deal. The New Deal has been replaced by the Raw Deal, with Obama’s cooperation.

I voted for Obama in 2008.  He had promised to bring the Democratic Party back to its roots in the New Deal.  He was lying, we now know.  He didn’t struggle, slip and slide trying.  He just went with the flow of Wall Street money.  He betrayed his own promises to the voters.  The only serious conclusion is that he intended to deceive.  His actions since his inauguration are proof enough to millions of people who have been betrayed, thrown into want, made homeless, lost their jobs, and cut off from all those safety nets from the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society.  But don’t be too cross with Obama.  And for god’s sake don’t get labeled “Left,” which must be on the other side of the fence surrounding all loyal, card-carrying Democrats.  Actually, lots of us appreciate being lumped with the "Left," which term we don't consider an aspersion.

I am not yet the worst off among the betrayed.  It is they who have every right to call names to the people who injured them gravely.  Millions have had their life savings wiped out, with Obama’s cooperation.  Millions have been evicted from their homes, with Obama’s cooperation.  Millions have lost their jobs, and therefore their means of support, with Obama’s cooperation.  Some have lost their lives.  Is it getting serious yet?

Just look at the cast of advisors and administrators with whom he has stuffed his administration.  May we call them names for all the harm they've done?  Obama knows what he’s doing.  His ‘handlers’ don’t handle him – unless you think him an idiot, which I don’t.  It is he who runs the handlers, obviously.  Betrayals, penury, homelessness and more; but mind your tongue.  No name calling against people who kick you down the stairs.  In my opinion, making nice to him now is the most  childish thing to do.

The wars that were ongoing under Bush have been expanded, with Obama’s cooperation.  Drones and small team raids drop into a number of countries repeatedly.  If you are not aware of that, you’re not keeping up with events.  Do you suppose the people labelled "Collateral Damage" have a right to look up and call names?  Are the problems getting serious enough yet to let slip an epithet once in a while?

At home the Bill of Rights is being shredded, with Obama’s cooperation.  The three branches of government have let millions of us down repeatedly.  There’s no end in sight.  The wolves will eventually reach every door outside the gated communities of America.  But, hey, Obama’s only the leader of the Democratic Party with more corporate money in his pocket than all his likely opponents combined.

FDR called people terribly naughty names.  Tut, tut.  So did Truman and Johnson.  There was precedent for that.  Moses called people names, as did Christ.  Look it up.  Some of my favorite atheists are good at it too.  And, oh lordy, the words Mark Twain used while chewing on a cigar.

Name-calling is not childish.  Serious adults do it all the time, for good reason.  The issue is whether the crime in question deserves such rebuke.  You have my long list of particulars above.

There comes a point in human affairs when the lectures and proscriptions of Miss Manners become dilettantish and absurd -- not to mention complicit with the status quo.  And so, at times, I am obliged to conclude with a disparaging name or association.  The following is an example of the practice, with apologies to Venezuelans who invented the trope.

The Republicans and the Democrats, the Kochs and Cote, McConnell and Obama: “They’re caiman crocodiles from the same pond.”

Jay -- Ottawa

** Note to Readers: Thanks for your many astute, wonderful and thoughtful comments.  I welcome guest posts too.  These should be submitted directly to me at kmgarcia2000@yahoo.com.

Obama to America: Call Congress If You Want Your Precious Jobs

President Obama pivoted to rolled-up-sleeves anger mode in Michigan today, blaming Congress for gridlock on the jobs situation, and telling his audience that if they want something done, they should hound their representatives into crafting some legislation.  Not that he has any specific jobs plan himself.  He is still leading  from behind, only this time he wants the American people to be his human shields. In other words, become his unpaid surrogates and do his job for him.  It's all on us.  He never said yes he could, he said Yes We Can. If we don't succeed in lighting a fire under their butts, don't blame him.  He's busy jetting around the country doing photo-ops and multimillion-dollar fund-raisers for his campaign.  He has his own precious job to worry about.  Apparently, that job does not involve work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.


In making this national economic emergency and humanitarian crisis all about presidential politics as usual, here's how N.Y. Times reporter/White House stenographer Helene Cooper puts it:

President Obama, seeking to jump-start public enthusiasm for his handling of the sputtering economy, delivered an angry speech on Thursday before auto industry workers in which he sharply criticized Congress for the political divide that he said had worsened the country’s economic crisis....

(Not jump-start the economy, mind you -- just get people all excited about him).

For Mr. Obama, Thursday’s trip, coming at perhaps the lowest point in his presidency, was a chance to try to regain his footing and present himself as an assured leader with programs and proposals that will not only help put the American economy back on track, but will also boost competitiveness.

Only trouble is, he had no specific proposal, other than some vague mumblings about infrastructure and trade deals that will serve to export more jobs along with creating another tax haven or three.  The person with the real ideas is Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has proposed not only a Super Jobs Committee to counter the unconstitutional and undemocratic Budget-Slashing Super Congress, but a detailed bill that would create over two million jobs, right away!  Funny that Obama accuses Congress of not having any ideas, when Schakowsky's plan is staring him right in the face.  Oh wait.... it's a left-of-center progressive plan. It must not be grand-bargainish or corporation-friendly enough.  Here's what's in it:

• The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.
• The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act.  Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands include restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.
• The Student Jobs Corps would creates 250,000 more part-time, work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.
• The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 teachers, 40,000 new police officers, and 12,000 firefighters.
• The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.
• The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.
• The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do needed work in our communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.

To be fair, Obama could have done worse at his factory tour photo op.  At least he didn't sweat profusely, get heckled and admit right out loud that "corporations are people, my friend" like Mitt Romney did in Iowa. Republicans also like to claim that corporations and tax-avoiding big businesses are job creators. But the only Jobs they're creating are of the fire and brimstone, sadistic Old Testament variety:
 

A Vision of Austerity (William Blake)



Escape from the Veal Pen

1. Veal Pen: an individual's cube in the feed lot that is corporate America. The unsuspecting worker occupying the cube is kept in the dark and restrained to keep him or her tender until he and or she is butchered. (Urban Dictionary)


2. Veal Pen: Soon after the election, the (Obama) Administration began corralling the big liberal DC interest groups into a variety of organizations and communication networks through which they telegraphed their wishes — into a virtual veal pen.  (Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake).


Some well-known examples of liberal veal pens are MoveOn.Org, DailyKos, MSNBC,  and ironically, the new group that Andrew Breitbart victim/ fired White House staffer Van Jones has founded. Called "Rebuilding the Dream", it trumpets the grand resurgence of Democratic values.  I got all excited until I read through their list of "supporters" -- not only the usual veal pen suspects, but the Obama Re-election Campaign itself!  Van Jones was veal penned before he even got calved, for cryin' out loud.  Here is a trenchant critique of Van the Brand.

So much for the liberal organizations co-opted by the White House.  But most of the denizens of the veal pen belong under Definition Number One, above.  The miserable masses living lives of quiet desperation, cowed by the powers that be and their pundit stenographers.  But not so fast!  The anger is a-rising!


The Rant to End All Rants was delivered by a raging bull of a veal pen escapee Dylan Ratigan yesterday on MSNBC .  If you haven't seen it yet, do not miss it!  I was in my usual mid-afternoon semi-coma on the couch when he literally woke me up.  Here is an excerpt to give you a preview of its glorious content:

"Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren’t doing it, Republicans are not doing it, an entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. We’re sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible and stupid."

While we're waiting for Ratigan to get fired, there is this from today's New York Times, written by the guy in charge of moderating readers' comments, about reaction to the UK riots. The Times is amazed, just amazed, that readers are angry, fed up, decidedly unapathetic and are not going to take it any more.  We finally have proof that they actually digest what ordinary people write.

I got particularly ticked off reading another Times article today, by one of the Washington insiders of the journalistic class, Helene Cooper.  The article unquestioningly parroted the Administration drivel about Grand Bargains and the need to cut back "entitlement" programs in order to reduce the deficit.  Readers, God bless them, were not having any of her stenographic government propaganda:

Cutting the deficit will not stimulate the economy. And fixing social security is not a factor in the budget deficit. Yet these are the 2 main points of this article.
The bigger problem in this country is the superficiality of the news media. Allowing these comments as facts will help to insure that this country will struggle unnecessarily for longer than it should.
When will we start to see the NYTimes become the news organization of its past? -- Herje, Ft. Lauderdale.

Another propaganda piece for the deficit hawks!
Social security needs strengthening, not cuts. Our US system pays much lower benefits than any other modern country. We shold raise the cap on contriutions so the wealthy pay FICA on all their income, and use that revenue to make SS solvent "forever" while raising benefits to a more reasonable level. -- Ezra, Somerville, MA.

This writer is no doubt a rich neo con who, like all neo cons, wants to impose immense suffering on the elderly, the ill, and the working classes, and soon. She does not attempt to explain why it is that countries with much better credit ratings than the US manage to maintain much, much, much more humane and generous social safety nets which improve the quality of life for all citizens. There is no great hue and cry in the Scandinavian countries, or in Canada, or Australia, or France or Germany to throw senior citizens out on the streets. Why is that option so appealing to Americans, and to hypocrites like this one? -- Elizabeth, Florida.

The rhetoric of the hoi polloi is getting stronger and the activist anger is becoming palpable.  The "thundering herd" described by NY Times Public Enemy Editor Arthur Brisbane is getting noticed on Times Square itself.  The veal pen prisoners are calling bullshit on the whole culture of greed and corruption.  I knew it had to come sooner or later, and it appears that the sooner is right about now.



Moo



The Dark Knights of the Business Roundtable




The Overlords of the USA Plan Their Strategy

 If you were wondering just where this upstart renegade company Standard and Poor's gets off downgrading the credit of the United States Government, just follow the power money trail.  S&P is a subsidiary of the McGraw-Hill Corporation, whose CEO, Harold McGraw III, is also chairman of the Business Roundtable (BRT), heavy-hitting lobbyist bar none.  From the BRT's own website:

Business Roundtable (BRT) is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with nearly $6 trillion in annual revenues and more than 13 million employees. BRT member companies comprise nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock market and invest more than $114 billion annually in research and development – nearly half of all private U.S. R&D spending. Our companies pay more than $179 billion in dividends to shareholders and give nearly $9 billion a year in combined charitable contributions.

That third of the Stock Market hasn't been doing so hot lately, has it?  And it's all the government's fault, according to S&P, aka McGraw-Hill, aka the BRT -- because the genius CEOs of its membership had forecast the economy would be booming, customers would be buying, and they would be hiring two months ago.  Here's what they gushed on June 15th:

..Our CEOs expect increased sales and as a result plan to increase capital investments, US hiring over the next six months.
So just quickly looking at the charts that you have in front of you, on sales fairly consistent with results from the first quarter, 87% of member CEOs anticipate sales will increase, 12% expect sales to remain the same and 2% of CEOs expect sales to decline.
Last quarter none expected lower sales, so it’s pretty close to last quarter’s results. On capital spending 61% of member CEOs project higher spending in the next six months, about the same as the 62% who projected increased spending last quarter; 32% expect spending to remain the same. And only 7% project a decline, again about even with last quarter’s 6%. On employment, 51% of member CEOs expect to add US employees, roughly the same as the 52% who did last quarter; 38% expect employment to remain steady, and 11% project lower employment which is exactly the same as last quarter.

Uh-oh. Who to blame for their glaring failure in forecasting?  Themselves?  No way.  Better to get their fall guy at Standard and Poor's to issue a bad report card and falsely blame the whole mess on the debt and the deficit. And then get Paul Krugman to blame S&P.  Heaven forbid the CEOs should blame the tanking economy on their own highly successful infiltration of all levels of government, their own responsibility for the very real Eurozone debt crisis, and their own wildly triumphant efforts at self-serving legislation here at home. And of course, get the two wildly alike political parties to blame each other. You can never have enough scapegoats when you're in the Forbes 400.

The BRT, which has been called President Obama's "closest ally in the business community", was founded during the Nixon Administration  for the express purpose of fighting back against labor unions and government regulation.  Among its early successes was the defeat of the first-ever Consumer Protection Agency, proposed by Ralph Nader in 1977.  It's been going strong ever since. It blocked a punitive labor law reform bill that would have made it illegal for corporations to intimidate workers who wanted to form unions.  During the Reagan era, it was instrumental in cutting corporate taxes.  It has had its tentacles in the enactment of every free trade policy initiative, including being the big money behind NAFTA.

It goes on and on ad nauseum. From Wikipedia: 

 The Roundtable also successfully opposed changes in corporate governance that would have made boards of directors and CEOs more accountable to stockholders. In 1986, the Roundtable convinced the Securities and Exchange Commission to forgo new rules on merger and acquisitions, and in 1993 convinced President Clinton to water down his plan to impose penalties on excessive executive salaries. Citicorp CEO, John Reed, chairperson of the Roundtables Accounting Task Force, argued that Clinton's plan would have had negative effects on U.S. competitiveness. The Roundtable's Health, Welfare, and Retirement Income Task Force, chaired by Prudential Insurance CEO Robert C. Winters, cheered President Bush's (Medicare prescription drug) plan, which consisted mainly of subsidies to the health care industry.

The Phony Debt Ceiling Crisis is a perfect example of Shock Doctrine Capitalism.  Instead of blaming the terrible economy on greed run amock, why not blame it on government overspending and the almighty deficit?  Pay no attention to the fact that the BRT spider web of toxic corporations caused the biggest loss of household wealth in American history. Blame it instead on its own victims and get more money for themselves by slashing the social safety net in order to save it for future generations.  Spread the false doctrine of debt, and call for shared sacrifice from the masses. Issue a phony credit rating report card and cow the masses into accepting an undemocratic "super congress" Politburo of 12 Partisans to seal their fate. Get a complicit Democratic president to change the meaning of the word "progressive" into a movement that embraces austerity as a virtue, and instills fear of an impending right-wing theocratic movement even worse than the soft fascism already squeezing us with its velvet glove and calm, dulcet tones.


Jobs?  Our government's idea of a job creation program is to make life easier for the Dark Knights of the Business Roundtable.  Cut their taxes, repatriate their profits, stop implementation of EPA clean air standards so these Lords of Finance will feel confident enough to hire.  Never mind they'd sooner have us choke to death than look at us.

Is it any coincidence that the chairman of Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is the same head honcho of G.E. and BRT official who pays absolutely no corporate taxes and has outsourced the vast majority of jobs overseas?  Is it any coincidence that the CEO of Honeywell International (biggest creator of superfund toxic waste sites in history) is Obama's Roundtable jobs spokesman on all the TV talk shows?  Is it any wonder that when Obama talks up climate change, he is not referring to greenhouse gases and the weather, but in changing the "business" climate in their favor? 


Roundtable Extension: White House Council on Jobs (not) and Competiveness (corporate profits)



Coming soon: the Occupation of Wall Street in September and the March on Washington in October.