Hello, Carbon Dioxide

If there is one thing the cadre of Republican presidential candidates can all agree on, it's that they want to destroy the "job-killing" Environmental Protection Agency.  They think clean air and clean water are overrated. The government is trying to dictate our lung function.  We have the right to breathe all the air we want, no matter the color.  It's equal opportunity air.

Michele Bachmann, for one, wants to totally dismantle the "job-killing organization of America".  Proud mother of five womb-derived and 23 foster children that she is, she vows to make EPA "the mother of all repeal bills."  You'd think she might  have a vested personal interest in air quality, given that some scientific studies point to a correlation between high pollution levels and emergency room visits for migraine headaches.  Then again, the Teapublicans are famous for pretending to scoff at elitist science on purely fake religious grounds. But it's really all about the money, honey. If evolution were a profit-maker, they'd be all for it.

Rick Perry, who gained national notoriety for his pre-announcement Christian prayer-fest in Texas, is even more of an opportunistic crony capitalist than true right-wing ideologue. (Thanks to Marie Burns of RealityChex.com for this link). 

So who is really behind this venomous anti-EPA Republican campaign issue?  Not ordinary self-professed Republicans, who when polled, like the agency just fine and want it funded.  Look no further than the Business Roundtable and its corporate cousins, comprising the most powerful CEOs on the planet.

 Big Business put enormous pressure on the White House to delay new ozone emission standards for a record fourth time.  It just costs them too much to give up polluting.  The talking points in their letter to Obama* could have come right out of the Bachmann/Perry playbook, which really derive from the corporate playbook under the guise of that good old-time religion. If God didn't want us to breathe his air, he wouldna given us lungs... or something.

So, while the circumspect, rational and pragmatic President Obama would never go all fire and brimstone in calling for the end of the EPA itself, he is performing his Democratic corporatist role of defanging it, tooth by tooth, behind closed doors, at the behest of the powerful vested interests he, too, serves.  No explanation, either -- simply that the EPA needs more time to "study" how best to implement the tough new ozone rules.  Is it any coincidence that some of the major polluters/ "job creators" are in swing states crucial to the president's re-election?  One of Obama's overriding mantras in his jobs agenda is to make it easier for businesses to hire.  That means code for easing environmental regulations.

And the BRT cohort is most grateful to Obama for seeing things from their perspective.  From their Aug. 12 press release:  "The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to seek further delay on its proposed ozone rules tells us the Obama Administration recognizes the disastrous consequences that more restrictive regulations would have on the economy and job creation." (bold mine).

So there you have it, people.  You can either breathe or you can find a job.  You can't have both.  Wheeze while you work, (if you can) and stop griping about the heat dome overhead.  You can't actually see pollutants, can you?  They're a mirage, just like Perry's Texas Miracle. By creating yet another kicked can, our government (which purports to work in our best interests) has just become complicit in an estimated 12,000 deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks during the coming year.

*Text of  August 3 Letter to Obama:

Dear Mr. President:

As associations that represent thousands of American businesses, both large and small, who employ millions of U.S. workers, we are deeply concerned about the harmful impact the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed final rule on ground-level ozone could have on U.S. job creation and economic recovery. We strongly urge you to refrain from finalizing this rule and instead wait for the scientific review process currently underway in support of the required 2013 review to take its course.

All of us value clean air. The companies we represent, their employees and their managers all care about the quality of the air that Americans breathe. All of us breathe the same air and so do our families. We appreciate the fact that ground-level ozone levels continue to drop across most of the United States under the current de facto standard established in 1997. Moreover, U.S. companies are proactively making significant investments to meet the stricter de jure standard established in 2008, even though it has not yet been implemented.

The newest standard proposed by EPA, however, likely would cast hundreds of counties across the United States out of compliance, making it difficult for businesses to build new facilities in those counties or expand existing ones. Further, EPA has estimated the proposed standard will cost between $20 and $90 billion annually. In our view, EPA’s estimate is based on optimistic assumptions about the development of new control technology, meaning that the costs and impact on jobs and economic growth could be much worse.

What we do know for certain is that EPA’s proposed rule, whether the final standard is 0.060 parts per million (ppm) or 0.070 ppm, would limit business expansion in nearly every populated region of the United States and impair the ability of U.S. companies to create new jobs.

Mr. President, we urge you to delay this discretionary, out-of-cycle ozone standard and wait until 2013 before determining whether a new standard is needed. Now is not the time to saddle our economy with the extraordinary costs associated with EPA’s proposed national ozone standard.

Thank you for your attention to the grave consequences of this proposed rule.

Sincerely,

Business Roundtable, American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

And thus, the corporate titans shall give generously to both political parties, each of which shall operate in the interest of the Job Creators, while the Dems and Pubs go on pretending they don't have just tons of stuff in common. 



Job, Created (William Blake)



The Hokey Folky Pokey: Day Three

The United States of Cognitive Dissonance

 It is perhaps ironic and fitting that "American Gothic" by Grant Wood was painted in Iowa and was originally meant as a satiric vision of dour hard-workin' folks in the Heartland.  Iowans themselves were reportedly mightily ticked that a painting was making fun of them.  But famous works of art have a tendency to take on lives of their own after awhile, and the painting soon became an emblem of pro-Americanism.  And Iowans got their come-uppance by devising a satiric political scam of their own in the form of a pay-to-play, pick-a-prez straw poll.




Obama himself took on a meaning during his campaign that had little to do with any core principles of his own (he appears to have none) but everything to do with slick marketing and a gullible public hungry for change and grateful for a silver oratorical tongue to replace the chronic false folksiness of the villainous and speech-impaired George W. Bush.


Now, nearly three years after his election, Obama has unbelievably devolved from Dream Candidate to a bumbling Bush clone, complete with the down-home fakery and mumbling excuses of why he can't.  Instead of clearing brush at the ranch, he's posing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style on a haystack in front of a red barn.


His million dollar not-a-campaign bus tour through Minnesota and Iowa and Illinois is about two and half days too long at this point.  The man is a parody of every windrip of a politician who ever dropped a G and wiped the sweat from his brow with an expensive linen handkerchief.  And the pivot from man of the people to pampered elitist vacationing in Martha's Vineyard in less than a day is jarring, to say the least.  The Man must bask, golf, give Michelle "90 percent of what she wants" before he deigns to address the American people on an actual jobs program post-Labor Day.  I guess to do it before Labor Day would remind people that workers and would-be workers really have nothing to celebrate this year.  Unemployment is actually candy-coated at 9.1 percent.  The respected think tank "Shadow Government" is putting it closer to 25 percent.... worse than the worst months of the Great Depression.

It was Noam Chomsky who warned us to beware of the folksy politician.  "When a politician uses the word 'folks' get ready for the next series of lies," he said of Obama in 2009.





Official White House Propaganda Photos: The Law of Unintended Meanings





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)