The New Obama Campaign Talking Points: EGAD!!!

Since Congressional Democrats are not exactly champing at the bit to fight for the president's PASS AMERICAN JOBS ACT NOW!!  (Senate votes are lacking), his campaign strategizers figure they had better distract those amorphous swing voters from the crappy economy and unemployment crisis post-haste.

According to a N.Y.Times blog post by John Harwood, Obama will use social issues and his security state cred as wedges between what he calls his "like-minded thinkers" and the unwashed, uneducated right-wing rabble who jeer at gay soldiers at Republican debates.  He will appeal to the sensibilities of the so-called "monied burbs" and run a campaign celebrating EGAD: the Environment, Gay Rights, Abortion Rights and the Drone killings of Al Qaeda suspects as well as the big get on Osama bin Laden. It's the Snob Appeal, stupid!

(Yes, it's OK to cheer for presidentially-ordered assassinations as long as a Democrat does them. Look at it this way: Obama outlawed torture at his ostentatious signing statement when he first took office. He is being merciful by using computerized Drone attacks to put enemies of The Homeland out of their misery quickly, without resorting to water-boarding first. Plus, he is being open and transparent about his murders. If Bush were still president, we would never have known that the CIA and the military are now one great big family and are killing American citizens. So eat your peas, civil libertarians. Don't let perfect due process be the enemy of some damned good pragmatism).

But back to the Harwood article: if it is even close to accurate, Obama will abandon the old-school Democratic plank (labor, the social safety net, poverty, the economy) and focus on what matters most to "lifestyle liberals" who are not particularly worried about their own money supplies.  He has already voiced his disgust at the redneck crowd booing a gay soldier at a recent Republican debate. Therefore, he is one of "Us." (if you make over $250,000, that is). Shared outrage at the right-wing fringe is now reason enough to vote for Obama and feel all warm and self-satisfied.  Pay no attention to 20 percent unemployment and 50 million uninsured and the highest childhood poverty rate in history.

And for God's sake, get over that white liberal guilt further instilled in you by Melissa Harris-Lacewell-Talkwell-Perry, accusing you of insidious racism if you no longer feel the Barry love. Agonize with Salon's Joan Walsh as she takes paragraphs and paragraphs to explain that she really, really likes and respects Melissa as a person but golly gee, it's not fair to call Obama critics insidious racists, yo.  And that of course, the disappointment in Obama is no reason at all not to actually vote for him again. Because, think of the alternative.

And if you have some free time, do check out the Patchwork Nation website where the Obama operatives apparently gleaned the demographic info on their targeted "Monied Burbs."  You can go to the map and find out where your particular locale fits in.  I looked up my county (Ulster, NY) and was not surprised to find out I live not in a Monied Burb, but in a Service Center.  I apparently used to live in a Monied Burb (Orange County).  And that is so weird, because one of the towns (Kiryas Joel) in "monied" Orange County was recently rated as the poorest of the dirt poor municipalities in the entire nation!

Another category is the Evangelical Epicenter (Obama will likely avoid those towns like the plague). Then there are Tractor Central and Military Bastion (battlegrounds for sure) and Immigration Nation ( another issue to be kicked down the road into the next millenium) and one called Mormon Outpost (Romney shoo-in) and an agonizing one for Joan Walsh dubbed Minority Central (no Black Caucus slipper-wearers allowed).

Occupations and Glitches

Just a few quick notes to start off Sunday morning.  Occupy Wall Street has become so important that it now has its own news aggregation site!  The movement is catching fire in all parts of the Feudal States of Amerika, so check it out, fellow serfs!

Also, several of you have been having difficulty posting comments to the blog in the past week.  I have just reformatted the comments option to full page mode (someone suggested this on the Blogspot troubleshooting guide) in hopes of that helping.  Also I am told that you must enable third party cookies on your browser in order for your comments to "take."

Until this gets fixed, you are more than welcome to submit your comments directly to me, via email: kmgarcia2000@yahoo.com., for copying and pasting on the blog.  Several readers are already going that route, and it is easy enough for me to do.  Anyway, I apologize for the inconvenience.

Big Brother's Holding Company

By Anne Lavoie

No, I am not referring to Janis Joplin's great band (for those of you of a certain age who remember them.) I am referring to our federal government, Big Brother, and the corporate cabal that has a stranglehold on almost everything that has economic value in our country, the Holding Company. I like the definition I found that describes a Holding Company as 'a parent corporation that owns enough voting stock in another corporation to control its board of directors and, therefore, controls its policies and management'. It fits the description of corporate control of our government, from Congress to the Presidency.  

Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse in our country, the plot sickens. There is a bill that was introduced in April by Republicans in Congress, HR 1505, otherwise known as the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (NSFLPA). This bill merges the two in a new and insidiously powerful way. Janis would be screaming out, not in song, but in outrage as I am.

This bill is a pure power and land grab that also takes away our freedoms, rights, and protections. I consider it a corporate power grab because The Holding Company doesn't just call the shots in Washington, but owns and controls nearly the whole show, providing unknown numbers of private contractors conducting military, national security, guard, prison, surveillance, and border control related functions among others. The numbers are unknown because of they are hidden behind the veil of national security secrecy. Here is what this bill proposes to do: 

Under the guise of national and border security, and in order to eliminate pesky obstacles such as environmental laws, this bill gives to Homeland Security (and its innumerable private contractors) waivers for a whole list of environmental laws which allows them to trump management of these lands by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture and gives DHS unfettered access and control without ANY public accountability. Officials in both Interior and Agriculture are opposed, but they are not elected officials, so they really have no clout, and as we saw when they spoke out strongly against allowing loaded weapons in National Parks, Congress passed it anyway and Obama signed off.

With the adoption of this bill, a total of 36 environmental laws would be waived affecting federal, state, and private lands, including coastlines. They include, among others, the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act, Antiquities Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, etc. Rather than kill each pesky law individually, they are simply waiving them all, for the sake of security of course.   

Oh, but I'm still building up to the worst parts. The power, control, and authority they wish to give to Homeland Security over federal lands would encompass all the land within a 100 mile swath around the entire United States, including the coasts, not just borders with Mexico and Canada. A map of the area can be found here. You've got to see it to believe it. The area covered would even encompass the entirety of ten states and large portions of most of the others. 

The bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security immediate access to any public land managed by the federal government within this area. They would be able to conduct activities that 'assist in securing the border', including access to, maintaining, and constructing roads, constructing fences, using patrol vehicles, and setting up monitoring and surveillance equipment. Patrol vehicles are not just trucks, but would probably include helicopters, drones, and any other technological marvel, such as those butterfly cameras that look and fly like the real thing. Homeland Security wouldn't have to consult with tribal communities or even private landowners before entering the areas either.

This is somewhat familiar to me. I saw what has happened to Organ Pipe National Monument, on the Arizona/Mexico border, even back in the early 2000's. After paying to get into this national park, we found that areas of it were closed to the public for security reasons. The following year, even more area was closed off.



Keep Out



There was even an incident where a couple of our hiking club friends in their 80's were stopped by a helicopter that landed near the trail they were on and the camouflaged and heavily armed Border Patrol agents interrogated them. They did not show up to stop the hundreds of Mexicans we saw hiking openly across the desert every day, probably because it would be too much work. They preferred flying around in a helicopter in full combat gear, harassing elderly hikers. So I saw firsthand what happens when they get the authority to take over an area. 

I always thought they'd try to steal the public lands by privatization, but never did it occur to me that they would use a reverse and twisted form of eminent domain for phony security reasons. Now they call them 'federal' rather than 'public' lands, and they no longer want to be mere stewards of our lands but prefer total and unaccountable control. 

I consider our public lands, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas in particular, very special places that nourish the body and soul. Some I consider sacred, particularly our beloved Glacier National Park that sits entirely within their proposed 100 mile area of control. I am sure the long range plan is to open all those areas for resource development since they will be building all those convenient roads on the taxpayer dime, making them shovel ready for development, and environment laws will conveniently no longer apply.

Glacier National Park

Republican Congressmen want to help Big Brother for the benefit of their partner in crime, The Holding Company. Unfortunately, with everyone on both sides of the aisle in on the act and bought off by lobbyists, this thing could pass with both parties' help. If that should happen, everything they do on the federal lands encompassed by this bill could be kept secret and immune from court review. What more could they ask for? Oh, maybe 200 miles, or the whole country, for security reasons of course.

Plutopods on Their Perches

We can only hope the now-viral video of champagne-guzzling oligarchs ogling the Wall Street indignados gets as much traction as the ones of Inspector Gadget squirting his pepper spray. Nothing beats an infuriating optic for giving a movement that nice added oomph.


Of course, aristocrats on balconies have been amused by peasants in the streets since time immemorial.  Or at least since 1789......

Marie Antoinette & Co Ogled at Their Peril

Or as recently as last May, when the same plutopods at the Cipriani Club at 55 Wall Street peered and sneered at another protest march. (Yes, there have been protest marches, demonstrations, rallies and sleep-ins galore in lower Manhattan this whole year.  But they have not been covered by the mainstream media, apparently because the participants were not bused in by the Koch Brothers.  And although there were a few arrests this summer, they lacked the drama of pepper spray and other assaults. In other words, since they didn't bleed, they didn't lead.)

(photo by Christopher Robbins)

Remember all those horror movies from the 50s and 60s where critters ran amok and attacked out of the blue for no apparent reason, and we come to find out it's because  humans have been so vile and corrupt for so long that nature finally has enough and retaliates?  (Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" comes to mind, along with "Them" and other giant insect films made in the wake of The Bomb).


Well, it just so happens that a swarm of 20,000 angry bees did attack the original Stock Exchange building in 2010.  They must have been pissed off about the TARP bailouts, the trillions of dollars in secret Fed loans to the multinationals and banks, the foreclosures, the foreclosure robosigning scandals, the CEO bonuses, the impunity, the fact that the current owners are convicted tax evaders, fraudsters, alleged mobsters, bribers of government officials  -- and yet, in the fine corrupt Wall Street tradition, the Cipriani clan still manages to maintain possession of its property and get richer by the minute.


Were the bees harbingers of things to come?  Let's hope.  But let us also pray that the "OccupyWallStreet" resistance movement does not meet the same fate as the bees.  The NYPD sucked them up with a giant vacuum cleaner and shipped them out to a farm in Connecticut.  So for those who plan to march on One Police Plaza this afternoon to protest the Inspector Bologna brutality, be careful out there!  Remember -- New York's finest also have weapons designed to shoot planes out of the sky.

The Cipriani Club, for those of you not in the know (and I was among the unknowing myself until earlier today) was constructed during the Gilded Age of  Wall Street's glorious heyday  and comprises an entire city block. (the better to view the hoi polloi).  It now houses restaurants, condos selling in the mid to high seven figures, spas, bars. The restaurant has the dubious distinction of being home to a $32 hamburger. It's gotten many a lousy review in the New York Times, for its terrible food, tiny chairs and conspicuous consumption.  As far as I know, the Cipriani is not among the financial district eateries donating food to the Zuccotti Park campers.  But we can always call and ask!  Here is their number: 212-699-4096. 


And speaking of reviews: Ginia Bellafante, the Times columnist who made fun of the Wall Street protesters and their regalia last weekend, should have gone into Cipriani instead.  According to the Indagare travel site, the uber-wealthy Cipriani crowd " truly verges on Fellini-esque with extreme hairdos, face-lifts and implants on parade."  And all Bellafante could come up with was a topless dancer and some cheap masks?  What has journalism come to? 



The Decline and Fall of the Wall Street Empire (Fellini "Amarcord" Poster)



Barry Loves Him Some Privatization

Inquiring minds want to know how President Obama feels about the ongoing assault on postal union employees by House Republicans who want to "improve" the USPS  by privatizing it. The Postal Service is on the verge of going broke, as explained in the previous post, because Congress has required it to fund medical pension benefits pretty much into perpetuity, making it appear bankrupt when it isn't.  It's in the best tradition of the "Shock Doctrine" school of crisis creation.  Make something up and then cash in on it.
 
Reader Pat Reynolds (a postal employee) has discovered a video shot in 2009, at the height of the health care reform debates, in which Obama talks about the wonders of privatization, and how a public option in health care would not necessarily hurt the for-profit insurance industry.  To prove his point, he compared the post office unfavorably with FedEx and UPS.  "I mean, if you think about it," he says, "UPS and FedEx are doin' just fine.  It's the post office that's always havin' problems."  (Yeah, he was at one of those folksy, g-droppin' town halls).


Bear in mind that during this August 2009 appearance, Obama had already taken the public option off the table even as he continued to pretend it was still viable, and that he was actually for it.  Of course, in retrospect, his praise of those fine folks at WellPoint and Aetna and UnitedHealth was painfully prescient.  Thanks to what Jon Stewart recently called a "2,000-page clusterf**k", the insurance companies are still "doin' just fine" (especially with no Public Option to compete and make them behave). They are raking in record profits after sometimes doubling the premiums of policy holders.  The net effect is that people are so broke after paying the bills they have nothing left over to see an actual doctor or dentist.  The insurance companies are in a win-win situation.  They collect the money, impoverish the patients, and don't have to pay out nearly as much to the health care providers.  It gives a whole new meaning to hoarding.  It makes normal every-day capitalistic greed look beneficent.


So this is what we can expect if the post office is privatized.  FedEx (which treats its employees abysmally and has been known to fire drivers when they have accidents in their crappy trucks so they won't have to pay medical costs) will raise the price of a 44-cent stamp to four or five bucks, fire the union postal employees who haven't already been laid off, hire a bunch of people out of the millions who are desperate for a job, pay them maybe $10 a hour, put them in poorly maintained vehicles and pay no benefits as they sleepily careen down the interstates in 12-hour marathons, and probably lose a large portion of the letters and packages entrusted to their care.  It's the new normal.  To use Obama's two favorite words when he talks about jobs, it's "innovative" and "competitive."

"FedEx is Doin' Just Fine" -- Barack Obama

Oh, and speaking of that Jobs Bill -- you know, the one where Barry whips the crowds into a frenzy with his jeremiad-like  "PASS THIS BILL! PASS THIS BILL!" PASS THIS BILL RIGHT NOW!!!" harangue -- well, not so fast.  Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in no hurry to take it up, because a sudden new urgency has developed about punishing China for its currency manipulation.  That, according to Reid, is more important than JOBS RIGHT NOW.


The Washington Post quoted Reid as saying:  “We understand that there’s conversations going on about the president’s jobs bill — which I support, I’m in agreement with. We’ll get to that. But let’s get some of these things done that we have to get done first.”


You can't even make this stuff up.  No wonder Barry finally chose to go to Hollywood to spin his fantastical yarns.

P.S.: For a cogent analysis of the craven machinations of those who want to destroy the post office, read this New York Daily News editorial by Juan Gonzalez.

Support Your Local Postal Workers

Thousands of U.S. Postal Service employees are in danger of losing their jobs, thanks to a wholly manufactured budget crisis created by Congressional Republicans.  On paper, the Post Office is nearly bankrupt because of a law forcing it to prepay medical retirement benefits so far into the future (75 years) that the presumed beneficiaries haven't even been born yet.  The pension fund is actually flush with cash overpayments, $47 billion in the past four years alone.


Rallies to highlight the proposed closings of individual post offices, distribution centers and resulting layoffs are being held today (4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. local time) in every Congressional district in the country.  A list of events, along with a petition to save the post office, can be found here. (Thanks to reader Pat for calling my attention to today's rallies.  I hope to post pics later).*


The union aims to rescind a federal requirement that the post office pay a whopping $5.5 billion annually into the employee pension fund, as well as fight back against a bill sponsored by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) that would restructure the post office by privatizing it -- and thus destroy the union by doing away with collective bargaining and lowering wages and benefits.  The post office is the largest unionized employer in the country, and the second largest employer, period (after low-wage, anti-union Wal-Mart).


According to the union: 

Events will engage the public through speeches, handouts and gatherings to make our voices heard. They are not protests.

It's anticipated that a wide variety of supporters will participate in "Save America's Postal Service" rallies, including small business owners who use the mail to advertise, businesses that consistently ship products using the Postal Service, and faith leaders and progressive allies who have concerns for the plight of working men and women.

I have always had a soft spot for the post office. As a child, I was a stamp collector, and had "snail mail" pen pals all over the world.  I have never in my life encountered a grumpy post office employee. Mailing a first class letter for only 44 cents is still the greatest bargain the world.


I do have one suggestion on how the postal service can save money, though:  we should do away with Congressional franking privileges (mailing at the taxpayers' expense) and make Issa first on the list.  As the second richest political hack in Congress, he can afford to pay for his own propaganda.  Besides, I thought misuse of the mails by thugs for fraudulent purposes was a crime. 




*Update: Thanks to Deborah Klaus, aka "DreamsAmelia" for sending pics of the rally she attended in Virginia this afternoon. The man in the blue suit is Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA-08) who spoke in support of the beleaguered postal workers at a small gathering.  The young ladies holding their handmade signs are Hannah (left) and Deborah's daughter, Amelia.

Young Activists & Handmade Signs:  Save Our Mailmen! 

Scene Outside a Virginia Post Office Today

Blogger Deborah Klaus on Steps, center

Deborah writes:

Our Rep., Jim Moran, when asked at the protest why he thinks Republicans want to severely cut back the Postal Service, said because right now the post office is too stiff a competition for UPS and FedEx -- the US Postal service's low rates cut into the profits FedX and UPS could be making--both by eliminating their competition and getting more business, and being able to charge higher prices, since there would be no, or less, public sector alternative.

He said the pension requirement change was passed 5 years ago, and he has an amendment to eliminate it--doubtful it can pass this rabid Republican House, and even if it did, I asked him, what would we be looking at in 2012 if we have Republican sweeps of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency?

He smiled and said, "Well, in some cases, paranoia is realistic. I agree, I am very worried about the future of our country." I just adore him, and I grew up going to public school with his son, Jimmy, K through 12. The funny thing is, Jimmy was quite a fire brand, always getting in trouble and being sent to the principal's---but now I admire him for that, and think he has his Dad's admirable trait of not cowering before authority. He settled down to have a normal middle class life like the rest of us.
And it is our complacency that is the symptom of society's illness. We are suffering from a dearth of rabble rousers willing to stand up and speak out for the common good, to reject the purely selfish life.

Well said, Deborah, and thanks again! 

  

NY Times Sends Arts Critic to "Cover" Wall Street Occupation

The Grey Lady has stuck her long nose up in the air and given a mighty sniff, finally deigning to publish a story on the ongoing "OccupyWallStreet" demonstrations in its dead tree edition.  After more than a hundred people were arrested on suspicion of being pedestrians Saturday, the Times take is that the whole mass protest is nothing but an amateur hour performance by airheads.

Readers were outraged at the tone of the article, which carried the subhead: "Demonstrators on Wall Street this week seemed to lack hard knowledge about the system they were fighting."  The reporter, one Ginia Bellafante, chose to make the lead paragraph all about a topless dancer who's been waiting all her life to cavort on Broadway.  Further down, she writes:

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

Reader reactions were universally scathing.  Barbara of Mexico/New Mexico writes: "Considering this is taking place in the heart of the financial district, and that other major media is covering it well & seriously ( Al Jazeera, for one, is doing an excellent job), it is quite sad and very revealing the New York 'paper of record" chooses to treat this movement with such superficiality".

The tone of the piece is easier to understand in light of the fact that Bellafante is not a political reporter or even a metro beat reporter.  She is a Times arts section critic, who in the past has written about HBO miniseries and other TV fare.  She now does something called the Big City column. That's right: The Times couldn't be bothered to send a political or news reporter to cover the populist dissent.  They sent somebody to write it up as an entertainment piece, a whimsical look at the passing parade of weirdness in the Big Apple. 

Bellafante took the most heat recently for her negative review of the HBO series "Game of Thrones" -- spawning a revolt in the blogosphere from fantasy fans, accusing her of (surprise!) literary snobbery.  Here is how she explains her philosophy: "Writing criticism is completely personal and often impressionistic. I write from a perspective that is my own, not one that seeks to represent a big tent of varying opinion."

Assigning Bellafante to cover Manhattan's version of the Arab Spring speaks volumes about the Times editors, and their choice to treat it as some sort of  amusement for the elites. They can spend millions subsidizing safely-distanced reports by Tommy Freedom and Nicky Kristof on the Egyptian revolution, and  government crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain --  but I guess they couldn't come up with cab fare for them to ride the few blocks from Times Square to Zuccotti Park to watch our own indignados getting pepper-sprayed.  For real coverage, check out the links in my previous posts, or just troll the Internets. Here, for example, is some real reporting from New York 1, the local 24 hour news channel. The truth is out there, in plain sight and out of the control of the editorial boards of the American corporate media.



Just Another Day of Street Theater or Maybe a Lost Episode of "Law & Order"