Where is the American Anna?

Guest Post by Jay -- Ottawa

Anna Hazare – the “Anna” of this man’s name is an honorific meaning “Elder Brother” -- is enjoying enviable success at throwing the forces of corruption in India into considerable confusion.  Common people are flooding the streets of several cities in support of his demands for reform.  The Arab Spring must be moving east, not west.  The “spark” in India is not a reform party or a last-straw incident throwing the street into rage; this spark is a person.  They call him Anna.

Here in the US our op-eds and blogs with endless lists of particulars against X, Y and Z politicians and big shots are soporifics for the Average Jane and Joe.  What’s the use of loading any more word bricks on the crooks or on the MSM with paragraphs from our commentariat’s elite, be they world-class witty, blue-collar sassy or lawyerly elegant?  Aren’t we just a band of brothers and sisters in retreat consoling ourselves with right thinking?  Is the nation any better today than it was a last year or the year before, despite our critical elite’s rapier essays?  And our sincere applause?  Poetry changes nothing.  Ask any poet.

Something more is needed to whip up an effective level of attention.  I’m about to tell you what that is.  Given the nature of the world and the needs of politics, what we sorely lack is a hero.  To turn the country around we need intelligence and justice and commitment incarnate in human form – we need an ‘Anna’ -- a hero of integrity who is a visionary, who is not reluctant to use power, who is determined to turn the ship of state around before the current crew runs it up on a sand bar to be cut up and carted away.  Progressives need a person of the first rank in the front ranks of reform.  Until a hero steps forward the intellectuals are as doomed as the ignorant.  Awareness never saved timid kings from the falling axe.  Why should it spare us who wail and wring our hands in the bottom half of the economic pyramid?

We have allies, like the New Progressive Alliance (NPA) -- Homework assignment: visit their website OFTEN.  The NPA has gone beyond our intellectualizing and finger pointing.  Much like that most famous of advance men, John the Baptist, the NPA is laying the groundwork, preparing the way for “The Hero,” someone with a record, not too young, not to old, a leader who identifies with the common citizen and who knows how to deal with the frauds who are now in charge of just about everything.  The NPA has completed its work on a political platform for the New Progressive Party.  They are building the infrastructure for a third party at the state level.  All they need….

All they need is a real person to fill the top spot and shift the center of gravity from cake to bread, from greed to care, from Wall to Main, from Dives to Lazarus.  The US has about 310 million people, not as large a population as India, but still, a large pool of talent.  Are there not 50, are there not 10, is there not even one person of stature and integrity to serve as a magnet to pull together all our resentments and all our hopes into one unstoppable force to set things right in America?  If such a hero ever steps forward to lead, so will academics and business people like the brain trust FDR assembled to implement the New Deal.  Think about it: Would there have been any New Deal without FDR, any Great Society without LBJ?  One politician can make it happen.

We need a hero, a real champion, a happy warrior who holds nothing back.  If there were such a man or woman to back for high office, so much of our eloquent closet talk would be transformed into notes of a positive crusade appreciated by the entire spectrum of our society. 

Ideas alone will never engage majorities, but heroes with ideas will.  If an Elizabeth Warren seized the banner of the NPA, would we set aside our petty differences and work as hard for her as we ever had for any other candidate?  Progressivism will never make headway until it is advanced by a charismatic leader.  Am I asking for too much: a Messiah; some kind of Deus ex Machina?  Probably.  But I see no other way out of our present difficulty.

The Real War Crime

Guest post by Anne Lavoie

Consider this: Lockheed Martin, GE, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing are giant, wealthy corporations who have made most of their profits from war profiteering. Their wealth has come to them from a carefully laid out strategy conducted over many years, but the biggest payoff of all is close at hand  - fire sale prices on almost every public institution in our country, in every state and within the federal government due to the policy of Austerity. Hard to believe, but Endless Wars are simply not enough for these corporate Godzillas.

To get the full picture, realize that several of these corporations have deliberately and insidiously branched out from war/defense profiteering to becoming involved in nearly every public service the governments at federal and local levels provide, positioned to greedily benefit financially. They are wealthy enough to not just to have bought our federal government, but soon will be able to buy the states and anything else they want at bargain basement prices. The world is their oyster.

First they positioned themselves in the defense industry to profit from war. They then used their war profits, made from our tax dollars, to pay legislators to fund more spending on war equipment and supplies. Then they set up their corporate factories in nearly every Congressional district to influence the politicians with jobs and campaign contributions, again using money made from war profits, funded by our tax dollars. Then they had the audacity to use the same recycled tax dollars to get out of paying taxes on their profits, writing legislation and paying off our legislators to pass it, giving them tax breaks, loopholes, incentives, and refunds. They paid legislators to encourage and vote for war paid for with our tax dollars going to them, and gained more contracts to profit from those wars. We are now at the point where the country is nearly bankrupt from borrowing money for wars and paying for all the related ancillary costs to our society.  Even our Social Security funds went to them to pay for their wars.

They have not just stolen our democracy, they have stolen the wealth of the nation through endless wars conducted for their benefit. They didn't even have to fire a shot, not directly at us anyway. They let the 'enemies' do that, then made money with every shot fired, every tank blown up, every missile fired - more and more money for them as we replace equipment and supplies, not to mention the fallen soldiers themselves. Those war dead and all their suffering survivors are testament that theirs has been the cruelest, most hideous, and most selfish crime - death and destruction for corporate greed and power. A true war crime if there ever was one.

When you actually steal a precious Democracy and nearly crash a national economy, it is WAR in my book. A one-sided one that we have lost and they have won. These corporations are eager and waiting for the collapse of America so they can buy it up at bargain basement prices, then go on to the rest of the world to do the same. They want it all, and will get it, if we let them and if our paid-off government gives it to them.

Now consider this: Even individually these corporations are far and away wealthier than our entire country, because our country is $14 trillion in debt and mounting fast. Have you seen THEIR balance sheet? That's where our tax dollars went, so really those are our companies. They used OUR capital to make profits, profits that they don't believe in paying taxes on to save the nation. The Banksters are doing the same thing. Getting essentially free money and loaning it out at a profit. We all want that deal!

So I have a solution, and I don't care if it brings howls of derision. It is not to try to tax them. It is to nationalize all the war profiteering corporations, in the interest of National Security, of course. For once, let the government take on private wealth, not private debt, to save the nation. Then we can end the wars, liquidate their assets, resolve the debt immediately, and start over. If that doesn't do it, the banks can be next.

All's fair in love and war. This is War. And my dream. Don't wake me up!

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."