A Balanced Approach to Sadism

Studies show that government austerity policies are actually killing people, and that record poverty is immiserating at least one in five American families. Most, if not all of them, qualify for some sort of government aid. So, what do you think the House of Representatives will do about the crisis of poverty in America?

Believe it or not, Democratic leaders are willing to compromise with th GOP majority in a move to cut more than $20 billion from the food stamp program (now known as SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.) This is on top of the $4 billion cut already approved by the Senate. Those upper-crust Dems certainly saved the day, given that Tea Party sweetheart Rand Paul had hoped to destroy the food stamp program altogether.

 If snatching food from the mouths of children is what it takes to ram another agribusiness-subsidizing, corporate welfare farm bill through Congress, then so be it. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has reportedly signalled her willingness to whip her caucus into a balanced approach to cruelty, in order to meet the GOP Hate Machine halfway. Hungry people will be put on the table rather than having enough food on their table.

 Meanwhile, about 400,000 tons of refined sugar will continue to be subsidized by taxpayers. The politicians must reckon it'll help the austerity medicine go down, or something. Who knows what they're thinking, or even if they're thinking at all.

 And in order to sweeten the deal with the Republican nihilists even further, Democrats are also willing to decouple home heating assistance from food stamp approvals, thus forcing applicants to jump through more hoops to qualify for both programs. (currently, acceptance in one program automatically enrolls you in the other.) This will steer more federal dollars away from the poor,  because fewer people will even realize that they're qualified for both programs.

 Putting one over on struggling people is, unbelievably, giving our supposedly liberal politicians deficit bragging rights.That the austerity prescription has now proven to be snake oil for economic growth is a moot point, because the sadism is not only addictive, it has a long half-life. It produces a toxin that is very slow to excrete from the collective political brain, be it Democrat or Republican.

And so it is that Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-MN), considers it "indefensible" that some of his fellow Democrats selfishly don't want to cut "even a penny" of SNAP benefits during this time of record unemployment and underemployment and wage stagnation. "I think that's a ridiculous position," he peevishly snapped at a press conference on Friday.

Very silly indeed, when you take a look at some of Peterson's campaign contributions in the past year: (source: Center for Responsive Politics.)

Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs

American Farm Bureau	$17,500	$0	$17,500
National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn	$12,500	$0	$12,500
American Crystal Sugar	$12,000	$2,000	$10,000
Land O'Lakes	$10,500	$500	$10,000
AG Processing	$10,000	$0	$10,000

Top 5 Industries, 2011-2012, Campaign Cmte

Industry	Total	Indivs	PACs
Crop Production & Basic Processing	$207,818	$53,986	$153,832
Agricultural Services/Products	$159,000	$5,000	$154,000
Food Processing & Sales	$47,500	$1,000	$46,500
Dairy	$39,750	$750	$39,000
Forestry & Forest Products	$34,500	$0	$34,500

When you consider that the Farm Bill is worth $940 billion, those campaign contributors to Rep. Peterson are certainly getting a lot of bang for their relatively puny bucks, wouldn't you say? I mean, only $12,000 from a sugar company that stands to share in an $80 millionbailout from the American taxpayer? Sweet. (sorry, I couldn't help it)

Meanwhile, from the Feeding America public policy group,  here are the grim statistics which show that cutting "even a penny" from SNAP will cause a world of pain for the struggling people who depend on it:

76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. These vulnerable households receive 83% of all SNAP benefits.

SNAP eligibility is limited to households with gross income of no more than 130% of the federal poverty guideline, but the majority of households have income well below the maximum: 83% of SNAP households have gross income at or below 100% of the poverty guideline ($19,530 for a family of 3 in 2013), and these households receive about 91% of all benefits. 61% of SNAP households have gross income at or below 75% of the poverty guideline ($14,648 for a family of 3 in 2013).

The average SNAP household has a gross monthly income of $744; net monthly income of $338 after the standard deduction and, for certain households, deductions for child care, medical expenses, and shelter costs; and countable resources of $331, such as a bank account.

It's pretty despicable that Pelosi and the Democrats are negotiating any food stamp cuts at all, given that sequestration has already threatened the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program (WIC) and other anti-poverty programs. And, the fact that so many liberal politicians and celebrities have taken what's called the "food stamp challenge" and discovered that it's very hard to survive on an average $30 weekly grocery stipend, makes it downright stupefying that they are not demanding that benefits be increased. Most people run out of SNAP benefits by the third week of every month. They go hungry, or if they're lucky enough to live near a food bank or soup kitchen that hasn't closed, they avail themselves of that shredding safety net as well. 

The stupefaction doesn't end with both parties merely bickering over whether people should literally starve, or simply go on a starvation diet.

Here is a scandal the corporate media are not talking about: JP Morgan Chase, which administers the EBT card program for SNAP recipients in some states, is just one of the corporations mightily profiting from the poverty of others. CEO Jamie Dimon even has the chutzpah to charge a quarter every time clients check their dwindling balances, making sure there's enough money left in Week Three for a quart of milk for the kids. In New York State alone, this too-big-to-fail/jail bank was awarded more than $125 million for handling SNAP debit cards. In Montana, for some strange reason, defense contractor Northrup Grumman was awarded the debit card food stamp contract. If I were a betting woman, I'd wager that some level of bribery was at play in order to magically transform a defense contractor into a safety net facilitator.

Naturally, not one politician is suggesting that these profiteers of penury take a cut of their own. And that's the unkindest cut of all.

Whither Progressivism?

by Fred Drumlevitch

(cross-posted from http://freddrumlevitch.blogspot.com/)

Why do we blog? Do progressive political bloggers and the more structured progressive information sources matter, in the context of contemporary mainstream media’s massive footprint? What is the nature of mainstream media’s betrayal of democracy? How are mathematical models of infection relevant to dissent? Most important, what is to be done to advance progressivism? Those seemingly diverse questions are in fact intimately related, and can provide useful guidance as we strive to reverse the decades-long deterioration of the national social compact.

Bloggers: Pissed Is Prologue

It is apparent that serious political bloggers (and online commenters, as well) do so for a wide variety of reasons that may include the honing of one’s thoughts that hopefully results from formally presenting them, the desire for full control over their exposition, and the benefits of dialogue with like-minded individuals and rational opponents who may be quite dispersed geographically. Some old-fashioned idealism, a dash of ego, a hogshead of outrage, and a visceral appreciation for that old A. J. Liebling quip that “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” might also be involved! We believe that we have an inalienable right to make our voices heard with regard to the governance of this country, and that right includes frequent and detailed expression if desired, not simply a largely co-optive vote every few years. We hope, in bits and bytes, for at least a modicum of influence with regard to the future of the nation.

Truth be told, though, the average independent blogger/commenter’s audience is minuscule, and even those that are most widely read reach an audience orders of magnitude smaller than that influenced by mass media’s “news” coverage and pundits. Worse yet, we are often “preaching to the choir”, addressing a self-selected group of generally similar-thinking people; much the same might be said about the more traditional progressive sources. In the parlance of an infectious disease political analogy, our contact rate is low, and mostly with those already “infected” with our political opinions — and that will not do much to further the spread of progressivism.

An aside: While the analogy of dissent in general and progressivism in particular as a communicable infection may initially be a bit off-putting, it ultimately should not be. A related metaphor is already in common use, the rapid spread of information being labeled “viral”. If an “infection”, progressivism is a beneficial one that immunizes people against the pustulant selfishness currently widespread among American right-wingers, much as cowpox protects against smallpox. If progressivism is an infection, I’m thankful to be infected. I assert that such a model is analytically useful even when the spread is not rapid, and has not — yet — produced an “epidemic” of rebellion.

Mass Media: Memory Holes and Burial Mounds

Moving on, well, what about the mainstream media as vector for progressivism? Here, we encounter other issues relevant to the control of information flow, and therefore to the control of dissent: unwarranted trust, and the low signal-to-noise ratio and high structural biases of modern Western mass media.

Despite the wide availability of alternative information sources in the Western democracies, the relative influence of accurate, bona fide alternative sources, measured across the still-important broad political middle of the population, may not be that much greater here than under authoritarian regimes. This occurs because some of the alternatives are not what they seem, and because the mainstream media in the democracies, inadequate though it may be, retains enough credibility with the bulk of the populace to maintain its dominance despite the many alternatives available.

That dominance comes at great cost to our society. Certainly, it is obvious to the thoughtful citizen that adequate coverage by the mass media of important problems and progressive solutions does not occur; the scant reporting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget proposals and of Senator Bernie Sanders’ trenchant analyses — even by the New York Times, the supposed U.S. “newspaper of record” — stand as clear examples. Even Paul Krugman, avowed liberal columnist for that paper, admitted on April 22, 2011 in his NYT “The Conscience of a Liberal” blog to inadequate coverage of the Progressive Caucus “People’s Budget”; he did mention it favorably two days later in his regular column at the paper, but never again referred to it by name within the Times. Nancy Folbre, of the University of Massachusetts, writing July 18, 2011 in the NYT “Economix” blog also noted the poor coverage of it by the Times, and elsewhere.

More recent coverage remains similarly deficient. The Progressive Caucus’ subsequent budget proposal, the fiscal year 2013 “Budget for All”, was released March 26, 2012. According to my own searches, done May 12, 2013 using LexisNexis, Google, and site-specific search tools, this moderately-progressive budget alternative has in the more than a year since its release received no formal news coverage or analysis whatsoever from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, or USA Today, all “top-ten” newspapers based on U.S. circulation data. Upon release, it was superficially looked at in the Washington Post’s “2Chambers” blog of March 26, 2012. As commenter “kwilson4” succinctly noted there on April 1, 2012: “Ryan's budget got news stories in this paper. This budget is mentioned in a blog. Hardly balanced coverage. What gives?” There would be neither answer nor improved coverage from the Post. The only other (and very brief) mention of the “Budget for All” in that paper was in their “Wonkblog” of November 21, 2012. The CPC’s later and more limited “Deal for All”, House Resolution 733, was the subject of an August 1, 2012 photo and caption, and an op-ed piece by Congressman Keith Ellison on November 18, 2012, both in USA Today (and neither indexed by LexisNexis). An online column by Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Washington Post on December 31, 2012 made passing reference to that “Deal for All”. And Greg Sargent penned a WaPo opinion column February 5, 2013 on the CPC’s more recent “The Balancing Act” proposal, H.R. 505 (summary, full bill). Then, on March 14, 2013, the CPC’s just-released FY2014 “Back to Work” budget was referred to briefly by Paul Krugman in his NYT column and in more detail by Jamelle Bouie and Ezra Klein in two blogs at the Washington Post — with Klein beginning favorably, but pivoting to deride it as a “fantasyland” … “analogue to Ryan’s budget”. The New York Times editorial board gave this latest CPC budget a one-sentence derogatory reference in a March 15, 2013 editorial, columnist David Brooks devoted his March 18 NYT opinion column to lambasting it, and the Times referred to it in a March 20 article focused on House of Representatives budgetary polemics — all three assiduously avoiding mention of the CPC budget’s actual name. A Washington Post opinion column by Katrina vanden Heuvel on March 19 did a good job of advocating for it, while the Post’s Plum Line blog of March 19 references that vanden Heuvel column and adds one sentence of comment. And an article in the Los Angeles Times on March 20 (not indexed by LexisNexis) gave it one sentence of superficial description after its defeat in the House. These citations constitute the full extent of more than thirteen and a half months “coverage” by the above-referenced “journalistic” enterprises of all CPC budget proposals released since March 26, 2012. In contrast, a Lexis-Nexis search for co-occurrences of “budget” and (“Paul Ryan” or “Paul D. Ryan”) at those same four publications during the same March 26, 2012 – May 12, 2013 period produces a total of 1285 hits. And the Obama budget released April 10, 2013, which violates basic principles of progressivism (and morality), has already received extensive favorable coverage from those newspapers. Lastly, let us not forget the 2012 presidential election, where Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, and all other third-party candidates were barred from the televised debates, and virtually ignored by the mainstream media not only during the campaign but even in defeat. My November 7 examination of the web sites for the New York Times, the PBS NewsHour, and the news divisions of NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX, found national vote totals for the third-party presidential candidates only at CBS News.


The conclusion is inescapable: For the majority of the populace that does not take the initiative to actively seek out reputable alternative information sources, mainstream media’s minimal to non-existent coverage of progressive thought effectively equates to suppression. In our “kinder-and-gentler” megacorporation-run, advertising-sponsored information tyranny, no “ministry of information” directives prohibit certain coverage. No reporters are brutally “disappeared”. But the effect of the invisible hand is much the same.

In fact, mass media’s poor coverage of politics and other issues of great importance is, in some ways, worse than nothing. The trivial is abundant, and the most absurd far-right claptrap is presented with a frequency and deference unwarranted by any objective standard — while actually being fully explainable. Much of it may be understood as part deliberate noise component that obscures the signal of rational and moral solutions, part strongly-repeated Social-Darwinistic/ pro-business/ authoritarian/ militaristic/ jingoistic/ xenophobic content that seeks to phase-lock the populace to its reactionary paradigms. In 1956, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev ranted at the West “We will bury you”. He did not succeed, but the mainstream media of our modern so-called democracies has. That mainstream media, in its service to corporate, plutocratic, military, and governmental interests, has adopted a highly effective interment strategy with regard to progressive solutions to national problems, burying them under a never-ending flow of distracting rubbish and manipulative falsehoods. (For an in-depth look at this process, see the classic “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”, 2002 updated edition, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky). Progressivism has been thoroughly marginalized via domination, distraction, dilution, and distortion, the four horsemen of a disinformation apocalypse. Returning to the communicable infection analogy, both the absolute amount and relative strength of the infectious progressivist agent have been much reduced, thus greatly reducing the rate of transmission.

Under those conditions, waiting for progressive thought to passively spread to the majority of the American people is as futile as waiting for Reagan-inspired economic trickle-down to occur. The megacorporate mainstream media will not voluntarily assist — indeed, as I have argued, it is often an impediment — though profit considerations and fear of audience desertion may push them to anemically follow once a trend becomes too big to ignore. And the universe of progressive bloggers, websites, and traditional alternative press, alone or together, cannot solve the problem. In the United States, these elements have managed to communicate to a significant minority of the populace the ideological foundations for progressive opposition, plus important news and encouragement, but they have not remade the political landscape.

What Is To Be Done: Overall Strategy

A rational analysis suggests that a multi-pronged strategy is necessary, the first part of which is that progressivism should be actively communicated to all potentially receptive citizens. And one size does not fit all. We need a wide spectrum of information dissemination and involvement, ranging from modern electronic methods to old-fashioned leafleting and broadsides, picketing, marches, direct co-worker and neighbor engagement, broader organization, satire, and yes, even the theatrical absurdity, carnival-barkery of the late-1960s Yippie movement. We have begun to see those things episodically, and hopefully they will grow; in any season, the nation would certainly benefit from an “American Spring” rebuttal to the authorities’ anti-democratic efforts to quash visible protest.

But for the progressive message to be considered relevant by the broader target audience, it must be coupled with substantial progressive actions — serious electoral challenges by authentically-progressive candidates, unrelenting pressure by progressives on core issues such as adequate and fair taxation, proper national spending priorities, a livable minimum wage, the protection of civil liberties, and restraints on U.S. militarism both abroad and as expressed in corollary form by domestic law enforcement. We also need a broad range of other actions including the development of non-governmental institutions beneficial to the people and the movement (as suggested in Michael Kazin’s September 25, 2011 New York Times op-ed “Whatever Happened to the American Left?”). The breadth and depth of the national systemic rot necessitates a wide diversity of nonviolent actions both inside and outside of the system, vigorously pursued irrespective of which persons or parties hold political power.

Yet in all of that strategizing, there exists a significant paradox, game theory 101: A logical plan and extensive groundwork may well be a recipe for defeat, for the movement does not operate in a political vacuum, and every day the reactionary right acts in a multitude of venues to consolidate and extend its multi-decade dominance and looting of the nation. The seemingly-beneficial strategy of strengthening progressive foundations will actually be counterproductive if we excessively delay the actions that should arise from the foundations, or if enhanced foundations can be easily neutralized. We need to act accordingly.

Therein lay the genius of “Occupy”: finally, dramatic popular democratic action that hadn’t been expected, accompanied by a narrative at least part of which resonated quite broadly — a currency of protest, made current. Occupy melded action, education, consciousness-raising, solidarity, resistance to co-optation, unpredictability, and media spectacle. Even that combination, however, is insufficient to guarantee victory, particularly in the context of a mass media that shirks its duty to investigate and inform and an American public that has been extensively brainwashed into the meme of unfettered capitalism. As noted by Chris Hedges a year and a half ago (“Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent”, at Truthdig, October 24, 2011), the bulk of the American people do not consider themselves to be even liberal, let alone leftist; they often view those political philosophies as alien by reason of style and ideology, or discredited by past accommodation and ineffectiveness. But one must be careful to not take away an incorrect conclusion from that. While a better political education of the public in the value of true progressivism would be desirable, it should never be forgotten that to act is semantically implicit in the word activism, and that to delay action until some supposed necessary fraction of the populace has first been thoroughly schooled in progressivism is simply a prescription for permanent impotence. Drawing upon an old metaphor, I would say that the workers of the world aren’t much impressed to hear yet again that they have nothing to lose but their chains; they could, however, be responsive to clear evidence of timely actions to help free them. Or to put matters in a more modern way (and as any salesperson can attest): Interest in a product is not sustainable if there are no signs that the product will be available within a reasonable time frame. We need to bring some examples of the product to market now. The most impressive argument for progressivism would be progressivism’s dynamic, determined, contemporary actions in support of the people — and there are countless ways that such desired actions could find expression.

What Is To Be Done: Let’s Get Specific

“Occupy” made a good start, and showed that strategy and tactics should include an amorphous and unpredictable component. However, I believe that achieving progressivism’s ultimate goal of an equitable, just, and humane society requires a greater current focus on a strategically-chosen set of more proximate goals, plus crystal-clear relevance, a broader permanent base, a diversity and flexibility of tactics yet resolute firmness with regard to goals large or small. None of that should surprise — it was the playbook of the African-American Civil Rights Movement during the time of its greatest gains, and such a strategy is needed once again, this time in the service of broader public needs, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others envisioned. If social justice and economic justice are fundamental human rights as we claim, surely they merit, right now, specific substantive widely-supportable truly-non-negotiable demands, and concerted nonviolent action in furtherance of those demands, not merely the expression of anger or general yearnings that history indicates will likely permit continued co-optation and suppression by the traditional power structure.

In the near term, the most pressing item on the agenda must be to block all moves by the wealth-lackey Social-Darwinist Republicans and spineless complicit Democrats to cut social spending as even a partial response to the contrived crisis of the “fiscal cliff” and its sequelae. Members of the poor and middle classes have for decades been losing ground not only relative to the wealthy but also in comparison to their same-class historical peers, particularly when costs such as higher education, health care, and retirement are included. Note, though, that with regard to the poor, the argument needn’t — shouldn’t — be based solely upon a relative decline. By absolute measures, many in this country live under conditions of appalling deprivation that should shame the well-off who clamor for reduced taxes and cuts to government-funded social services. The bottom line is that our less-fortunate citizens bear little or no responsibility for our national economic problems, and it is patently unjust — actually, immoral — for them to be expected to bear any of the burden of economic remedies.

We must also effect a transformation of the very nature of the U.S. national economy, both governmental spending as well as the spending that comprises the rest of our economy.

Substantial cuts to our bloated military spending should be front and center in any attempts to reform U.S. governmental finances. It is often stated by progressives that U.S. military spending exceeds that of the next fifteen or so countries combined. Less well publicized is what that military spending would buy for this country and its people if applied to more rational and moral uses. The tradeoff is astounding, far in excess of the even-then high costs that President Eisenhower cited in his April 16, 1953 “The Chance for Peace” speech. At that time, Eisenhower equated the cost of one fighter plane to one-half million bushels of wheat. (Note: Eisenhower’s reference to one-half million bushels of wheat could not have been the lower flyaway cost (marginal cost), which for the F-86D, the most expensive F-86 variant/derivative operational at the time of his speech, was at 1953 prices the equivalent of only about 183,000 bushels of wheat. So he was probably referencing full life-cycle costs). Now, the procurement cost of the modern F-35B/C is an estimated $237 million per plane — nearly thirty-four million bushels of wheat (at May 10, 2013 closing prices for May futures) — with the estimated life-cycle cost even higher, $618 million — more than 88 million bushels — per plane, and $1.51 trillion for the entire F-35 program — 216 BILLION bushels of wheat at current prices! (Time Magazine in its U.S. December 3, 2012 issue incorrectly reported the F-35B cost at $160 million apiece, and $400 billion for the whole program; the New York Times in a November 29 article incorrectly reported cost per plane as $137 million, and total program cost as $396 billion. All those lower (but still massive) costs appear to be based on outdated and/or optimistic estimates of both the flyaway cost and R&D costs, both of which have already ballooned far more than the GAO and the Pentagon have been willing to admit. Most important, though, is that the vast majority of mainstream media references have grossly under-stated the true cost by ignoring all operating costs).  Calculate some relevant equivalencies — in health care, education, physical infrastructure, social services, environmental preservation and restoration — and then talk up — no, shout, scream — all the various numbers, as loudly and as often as possible, so that the obscene opportunity costs of our national militarism can be brought to the forefront of public consciousness. U.S. military spending should be significantly reduced, and it can be, without harm to either our national security or economy. The military spending reductions mandated by “sequestration” are actually only a tiny fraction of the much more substantial military cuts that should begin now and continue over at least several years. Worth noting is that an 89% cut in U.S. military spending occurred post-WWII, 1948 vs. 1945, and that very large cut, even at a time when military spending comprised a much greater percentage of our GDP than it does now, did not cause our economy to collapse. Rather, it heralded an era when our industry would greatly increase output of products that our populace needed and wanted.

As to the non-governmental portion of our economy, much of it has failed both the nation and the people. While so-called conservatives continually denounce the government for its supposed distortions of what they see as an otherwise wondrous free market, the truth of the matter is that our most damaging systemic distortions originate with inadequately-regulated capitalism itself, and include: reckless financial system speculation and other misuses of capital; unfair advantage resulting from information differentials; anti-competitive domination by a small number of large corporations in many economic sectors; subjugation of labor leading to the exploitation, endangerment, and even deaths of workers; off-shoring and outsourcing destructive of individuals and communities; sophisticated manipulation of consumer demand via advertising; and countless instances of environmental damage, the costs of which are not borne by the perpetrators. All of this is greatly exacerbated by business’ subversion of democratic political processes through undue influence over politicians and by concurrent marginalization of opposition viewpoints. Not only are fundamental global, national, and human needs not being beneficially addressed by contemporary capitalism, they are often very much worsened by it. As FDR understood (but many contemporary capitalists do not), governmental policies and regulations reining in the excesses of capitalism and promoting basic social and economic justice do not harm capitalism, they assist its survival.

Fundamental changes to that non-governmental segment are necessary. The excessive political influence of corporations effected through advertising and political contributions must be ended; corporations are not people, and artificial economic constructs should not have the free speech or other rights of individuals. An increase of the minimum wage to living levels would permit those at the bottom of our economy to live with a measure of dignity. Progressive import tariffs based on the degree to which trans-border businesses negatively externalize costs would partially counter the current “race to the bottom” in worker compensation and environmental degradation caused by so-called “free trade”. Our present tax revenues being wholly inadequate to correcting the well-documented needs in this nation, particularly in the context of American capitalism’s inherent dedication to maximizing its own profit regardless of societal costs, we need a much more progressive domestic tax structure with some significant (but certainly bearable) tax increases on the well-off, on capital gains, on corporate profits, and most of all, on financial system transactions (especially for short-term holdings, which cannot with any honesty be called socially-useful investments). This would not only help fund government-directed infrastructure and social programs, it would also discourage the non-productive speculation that has become rampant in modern capitalism. The stick can be accompanied by carrots: a concomitant expansion of tax credits and subsidies for individual and business activities that responsibly address true needs could provide a modest financial incentive to “do the right thing”, as well as promote a competitive diversity of approaches to remedy our problems. (Caveat: Strong controls are absolutely essential to prevent inter-governmental “bidding wars” and other abusive manipulations by business of governmental incentives such as were detailed in New York Times articles in-print December 2, 3, and 4, 2012). A further benefit of an economic restructuring that increases our focus on true needs and genuine desires is that such an economy would be more resistant to recession.

For the long term, none of these issues should even require debate. Our fundamental human rights, as well as the obligations of government, the corporations, and the wealthy, to both the nation and the people, should all be legally codified via new Constitutional foundations — a twenty-first century Bill of Rights that establishes a framework for a rational and moral social contract. However, the degree to which our older Bill of Rights has been shredded during the past decade by deceptive or demagogic politicians aided by reactionary courts and a complicit mainstream press suggests that serious sociopolitical activism will always be necessary.

The great mass of ordinary Americans must escape the abattoir of mainstream-media-assisted co-optive American politics — where we are first herded to a place of individual and collective paralysis; then drained of our hopes, dreams, and future; carved up into manipulable political-demographic chunks; and finally rendered completely powerless. Genuinely-liberating transformative action is essential, and time is short.


Copyright: Fred Drumlevitch

http://freddrumlevitch.blogspot.com/
Fred Drumlevitch blogs irregularly at www.FredDrumlevitch.blogspot.com

He can be reached at FredDrumlevitch12345(at)gmail.com

(Fred asks that Sardonicky readers also leave comments at his blog.) 

Hustle Bustle and Flow

With atmospheric carbon dioxide now reaching Pliocene Epoch mass extinction-causing levels, is it any wonder that all the oxygen is apparently being sucked out of the brains of what passes for our national leadership? Money pollutes, pollution corrupts, and the absolute corruption of American politics is well nigh complete. The mass extinction of government for the common good certainly seems to gathering breakneck speed this week in what is overheatedly being called The Scandal Trifecta. (Benghazi, I.R.S, A.P. -- or, if you really want to be Beltway-trendy, Bengirsap-gate)

Perhaps most amazing is the rapidity with which Barack Obama himself seems to be falling from his pedestal. When he's lost his leg-thrilled fanboy Chris Matthews the same way LBJ lost Walter Cronkite, you might as well call it a duck. And it keeps on quacking. 

Why, for instance, is Obama apologizing to conservatives for the I.R.S. basically doing its job of ferreting out phony "social welfare" organizations, but not apologizing to everybody in America for the unprecedented attack by his injudicious justice department on freedom of the press and our right to know? Why did he fire the acting director of the I.R.S. and not Eric "Recusal Excuse" Holder? Um -- maybe because the I.R.S. guy was planning to retire anyway? (Obama has never bothered nominating a permanent replacement.) Maybe because Holder is actually doing the stonewalling job he was hired by Wall Street to do? Protecting press freedom in the Age of the Disposition Matrix was crossed off Obama to-do list years ago -- assuming it was ever a priority in the first place,  his platitudes at White House Correspondents' dinners notwithstanding.

His substitute for an apology to the media and the people who depend upon a free press is a self-serving, desperate move to re-introduce a federal shield law for reporters. This is laughable on its face, given that he effectively killed a similar bill in 2009. Four years ago, he was all gung-ho for actually putting journalists in jail if they dare protect sources who leak information that he wants kept secret, and requiring judges to always side with the executive branch over news agencies in cases involving that all-purpose excuse for government secrecy known as National Security. Charlie Savage of the New York Times wrote at the time: 

The administration informed Congress of its proposal after an Oval Office meeting Monday between Mr. Obama and several top members of his national security team, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III; and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, according to people involved with the negotiations. Military and intelligence officials have also expressed concerns about the bill.

Several advocates for reporting groups reacted with dismay. They noted that as a senator, Mr. Obama had co-sponsored an earlier version of the “media shield” bill and that Mr. Holder had testified in favor of such legislation.

“This is the question I would have to ask, ‘Do they really want a bill?’ ” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “It doesn’t appear that they do.”

Fast forward to 2013, and make-nice-to-the-press Obama goes into damage control overdrive, urging N.Y. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) to reintroduce the "Free Flow of Information" bill that the White House helped kill four years ago. Ironically, it was during this same anti-First Amendment crusade by the administration that the WikiLeaks cables were dumped and published, despite all their best efforts at secrecy. And so they doubled down on their fetish. 

 The new legislation would give reporters some added protections in criminal and civil cases, but still contains a huge loophole of an exception for those all-encompassing national security cases -- including leaked information on drone strikes, kill lists, government spying on civilians, and whatever other opaque excuses the American Imperium can dream up to keep us safely dumbed down and compliant. 

Scapegoats, old goats, wise guys and fall guys -- the latest cast of characters in Grand Guignol, American-style. You have your choice between laughing hysterically and being scared to death.

Pick Your Scandal

It's a fact that the government spies on all of us. What's that massive new data center in Utah for, anyway? But when the DOJ brazenly grabs the phone records of one of the biggest press organizations in the world, it not only makes Nixon grin in his grave, it gives him and all the paranoid autocrats who ever lived a huge dose of post-mortem Viagra. Barack Obama makes them all look like raving civil libertarians, even as he vainly tries to distance himself from his own abusive orgy.

The man is so obsessed with leaks, he's plugging the ephemeral dike holes not with a judicious little finger, but with an overkilling bushel of Tena Twists. His administration has engaged in an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, succeeding in freezing enterprise journalism into a glacier, even as he melts the hearts of media courtiers with carefully meted-out doses of glib surface warmth. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed has an interesting take on Obama's micro-targeting fetish, illustrated with a clever gif of Nixbama himself. 

The best thing about this latest First Amendment outrage is that maybe the media themselves will finally become outraged, now that the National Police State has personally affronted them. Of course, it will not affect the all-powerful infotainment industry. I don't think Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd and the rest of the sycophantic steno pool need worry about being tapped or taped. They're insiders. They only serve their masters, a/k/a Pete Peterson and the rest of the shadow government. The Obama Administration is only seeking to ensare legitimate investigative journalists, preferably Pulitzer and Peabody winners.

That is why what should be the Scandal of the Century will probably not be treated as such, since the paid corporate hacks of the plutocracy have bigger fish to fry. Such as:

Turnabout is fair play: Bloomberg news reporters have been spying on Goldman Sachs via their computer terminals. Incest in cyberspace. Or is it cannibalism. Or just a gross violation of the Affinity Fraud Doctrine. This scandal is actually pretty funny, just by virtue of the two names involved.

Benghazi: CIA is now in danger of being upstaged by IRS! OMG. Republican heads are exploding. Pundits are asking how the latest scandal placement will affect Hillary's chances in 2016. What about Obama's legacy and his bipartisan Grand Bargain budget deal? Frank Bruni has written a pretty good column on the petty politicization of just about everything.

An American diplomat was arrested by Russians on suspicion of being a CIA agent, and an inept one at that. This story was initially buried by IRS, but is now front page news. CIA has at least temporarily overtaken IRS in the Scandal Sweepstakes!  Our Man in Moscow was wearing a baseball cap -- a dead giveaway. The fact that he was also carrying "a brown and blond wig, three pairs of glasses, several stacks of 500-euro notes, and an embassy card identifying him as Ryan C. Fogle" was another red flag. 

Some scandals that are not getting their fair share of attention:

Almost two million American families are living on less than $2 a day. We have now passed the Third World finish line and entered into the fourth dimension.... otherwise known as the penultimate act in the final collapse of Empire. Rod Serling must be chain-smoking in his grave.

Speaking of which....remember that Twilight Zone episode where the airplane got caught in a primordial time warp? It's already happening. There is now so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that it's a matter of when and not if climate change ushers in the next great flood, along with mass extinctions. But since so few people are scared out of their wits by impending catastrophe, the story is already up in smoke. 

Obama may have sent Jay-Z and Beyonce to Cuba not for P.R. and Cuban cigars, but to convince the Castro regime to smoke out exiled aging radical Assata Shakur, a/k/a Joanne Chesimard, given political asylum there after escaping from a U.S. prison. The renegade Justice Department has recently re-placed her on the FBI's most wanted list, doubling the reward to $2 million, after decades of obscurity. Margaret Kimberley theorizes that Shakur will be the quid pro quo for normalization of trade with the island nation. This development may or may not be related to another recent story out of Venezuela, where hip-hop artist/filmmaker Timothy Tracy was arrested on suspicion of being an American agent provocateur, dispatched by Obama to foment some destabilization.

Nothing would surprise me at this point. The recent front pages of the New York Times read like a collaboration between George Orwell and Graham Greene. Spies and lies and impending demise are the order of the day. 
  

Today's Dog Whistle to the Plutocratic Pitbulls

We have come to expect that President Obama's weekly addresses to the "Nation" will always be cloying exercises in sticky-sweetness. The latest edition, however, takes the cake for being an exercise in pure unadulterated chutzpah and noxious mendacity. The alarm bells at fact-check sites should be ringing hysterically. But since official campaign season is over, those who are safely esconced in office can now campaign and lie with impunity.

If Rip Van Winkle had just awoken from a long coma and tuned in to the weekly blather, he would have gotten the impression that happy days are here again, that the American dream of homeownership is once more within the reach of the average Joe or Jane, that there is no chronic unemployment and wage stagnation, there is no record income disparity,  and that President Obama has always sided with regular people over the unpunished and unregulated predators of the banking industry.

Today's presidential propaganda, actually addressed obliquely to the slavering deregulated greedheads constituting the political donor class, is aptly titled Growing the Housing Market and Supporting Our Homeowners. I say apt, because the ugly reality is that a big chunk of today's home-buyers are Wall Street investors grabbing up distressed property right and left, even as much of the foreclosure inventory is deliberately being kept off the market by complicit realtors. The price of real estate, therefore, is once again being artificially inflated to bubble-icious proportions. The vulture capitalists-turned-landlords are now renting the looted homes back to their own victims, only to re-kick them back to the curb once the resale price is again right.

In case you missed Barack's soothing pat on the head to his property-grubbing pitbull paymasters -- let the parsing begin!

Hi, everybody. Our top priority as a nation is reigniting the true engine of our economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class. And few things define what it is to be middle class in America more than owning your own cornerstone of the American Dream: a home.

 

Grrrrr! How about a new speechwriter, someone who can come up with a better lead/theme than Reigniting the Middle Class Engine? That metaphor ran out of gas a long time ago. Home ownership as the cornerstone of the American dream? Not so much anymore, given that a record number of people have yet to wake up from the Great American Nightmare. Besides, people will be too busy paying back six-figure student loans while working two or three McJobs to even think about marriage and children, let alone owning a home in their lifetimes. Obama does not mention that this sad state of affairs is seizing up that middle class/family values engine of his.

Today, seven years after the real estate bubble burst, triggering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and costing millions of responsible Americans their jobs and their homes, our housing market is healing. Sales are up. Foreclosures are down. Construction is expanding. And thanks to rising home prices over the past year, 1.7 million more families have been able to come up for air, because they’re no longer underwater on their mortgages.
 

That old bubble just magically burst all by itself! Obama gives subprime lenders (including his sugar mama, Moneypenny Pritzker) a huge pass. No mention of fraudulent credit rating agencies and toxic mortgage-backed securities, followed by the double whammy of fraudclosures by too-big-to-exist banks. Our housing market is not healing. It's a festering sore covered up with a private equity bandaid. Prices are rising only because another artificial greed-bubble is inflating. People are being priced right out of the market.

From the the Wall Street Journal,

Currently, cash buyers—largely investors—make up about 32% of sales nationally, according to the National Association of Realtors. In Southern California, a favorite target for investors, absentee buyers accounted for 31.4% of purchases last month, up from an average of less than 17% between 2000 and 2010, according to DataQuick MDA, a real-estate research firm.

And incidentally, those checks being mailed to fraudclosure victims (assuming that they actually clear) are so paltry that they often don't cover a month's rent to the new bankster-landlord.

Obama, meanwhile, continues:

From the day I took office, I’ve made it a priority to help responsible homeowners and prevent the kind of recklessness that helped cause this crisis in the first place.  

Recklessness is Obamian Newspeak for unindicted epic conspiracy, fraud and grand larceny. And since the day he took office, his top priority was to screw the little guy and "foam the runway" for banksters to spread their widespread real estate theft out over time. They were given bailouts with no questions asked and suffered no consequences when they simply pocketed TARP funds instead of using them to recompense victimized borrowers. The Dodd-Frank reform law is still only one-third operative, deliberately underfunded, and rapidly being whittled away to nothingness by armies of lobbyists and complicit federal judges.

My housing plan has already helped more than two million people refinance their mortgages, and they’re saving an average of $3000 per year.
 

Lies, lies and more lies. His initial HAMP housing plan was never implemented. And wasn't that the whole plan, right from the get-go? To be seen as trying, but passive-aggressively doing the exact opposite. ProPublica investigated:

The program was launched with President Obama’s promise to help three to four million homeowners avoid foreclosure. Three and a half years later, the program is only approaching 1.1 million modifications. It’s spent just $4 billion [6] of its original $50 billion budget.

A recent study found a big reason for the program’s failure was that, despite all its rules, it didn’t change the behavior of the biggest banks [7]. The banks did a poor job of modifying loans before HAMP was launched and weren't much better after.

Oops. But President Obama glides glibly on:

My new consumer watchdog agency is moving forward on protections like a simpler, shorter mortgage form that will help to keep hard-working families from getting ripped off. 

Notice how he arrogantly calls it "his" consumer watchdog agency rather than ours, failing to give credit for its existence to Elizabeth Warren. And if you're unemployed or retired or disabled, forget about it. Obama does not even deign to acknowledge your existence, let alone your rights against ripoffs if you are not a "hard-working family".

But we’ve got more work to do. We’ve got more responsible homeowners to help – folks who have never missed a mortgage payment, but aren’t allowed to refinance; working families who have done everything right, but still owe more on their homes than they’re worth. 

"We've got more work to do" is another overused weasel phrase which translates into "We have done jackshit." And the above paragraph again inserts the typical moralizing against those families (victimized by the likes of mega-donor Penny Pritzker), who were steered into subprime mortages with ballooning payments, or had the poor taste to lose both a job and the roof over their heads. "Working folks" and "responsible homeowners", on the other hand, can be translated into upper middle class professionals in the monied 'burbs who never once missed a payment. Unlike those marginalized wrong-doers, they did everything "right."  Obama's Romneyesque "taker v. maker" libertarianism and subtle racism are glaringly put on display in the paragraph above.

Last week, I nominated a man named Mel Watt to take on these challenges as the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Mel’s represented the people of North Carolina in Congress for 20 years, and in that time, he helped lead efforts to put in place rules of the road that protect consumers from dishonest mortgage lenders, and give responsible Americans the chance to own their own home. He’s the right person for the job, and that’s why Congress should do its job, and confirm him without delay.
 

Mel Watt? As a congress critter from Wall Street-South and Financial Services committee member, he's raked in more than $5 million in campaign cash  from such stand-up deregulated institutions as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Obama no longer even has to pretend,  because the clock has just about run out on the statute of limitations for bank prosecutions. Maybe he'll recess-appoint Mel Watt. Maybe the GOP will overlook Mel Watt's race in deference to their common allegiances. It's a toss-up.

And they shouldn’t stop there. As I said before, more than two million Americans have already refinanced at today’s low rates, but we can do a lot better than that. I’ve called on Congress to give every responsible homeowner the chance to refinance, and with it, the opportunity to save $3,000 a year. That’s like a $3,000 tax cut. And if you’re one of the millions of Americans who could take advantage of that, you should ask your representative in Congress why they won’t act on it.
 

All well and good, but this ephemeral tax cut is already more than wiped out by failure to extend the FICA tax holiday for working Americans. And if Obama's chained CPI method of reducing earned benefits goes into affect as part of his Machiavellian Grand Bargain with Republicans, it will constitute yet another stealth tax hike on what's left of his vaunted middle class. He doesn't want to reignite any middle class engine at all. If anything, he's pouring sugar into it and stalling it out.

Our economy and our housing market are poised for progress – but we could do so much more if we work together. More good jobs. Greater security for middle-class families. A sense that your hard work is rewarded. That’s what I’m fighting for – and that’s what I’m going to keep fighting for as long as I hold this office.

Thank you. And have a great weekend.

Poised for progress the way the burnt-out wreckage of the Hindenburg is poised for flight. How many more weekends of this drivel can we stand, until Hillary or Chris Christie come to the rescue, to seamlessly continue in the grand bloviating tradition?

i-Spy With My Little FBI

When I compared President Obama to James Bond and their two beloved Moneypennies in a recent post, I was half-kidding. But isn't it a coincidence that the title of his latest West Wing Week propaganda video is called "Nobody Does It Better" -- the theme song of The Spy Who Loved Me? Check it out. It's just as overblown and satiric as the typical 007 movie. Every time the camera pans to the White House press corps, for example, they're frantically transcribing every golden Obamian word on their steno pads. There are multiple shots of Obama in such an exalted state of being that the videographer had to have been groveling at the president's feet in order to capture all those precious moments:



Official White House Propaganda Photo

And speaking of the dark side, now comes word that Obama wants to force  social media and internet service providers to make it easier for his domestic goons to eavesdrop on the internet communications of every man, woman and child in the USA, the world, the universe, and points beyond. After all, the American Empire needs literally tons more data to fill the vast empty spaces of the newly-constructed super-secret Orwellian storage facility in Utah. (check out this site if you prefer your dystopia with a side of parody.)

According to yesterday's New York Times, the president is finally "on the verge" of submitting to the seductive FBI, which is apparently growing tired of the same old, same old-fashioned wiretapping. Those land lines are going the way of the dinosaur (or the faithful but aging first wife) . The much sexier Facebook, Twitter, Skype and the like are ripe for predatory Bondian picking.

It's not that the FBI doesn't already record our conversations, spying at will and without a warrant. It just figures it could use some of that good old retroactive cover from the executive branch. But the creepy part is that Obama is considering actually punishing large service providers if they, unlike him, do not swoon at the chance to act out Peeping-Tom fantasies and become full partners in government crime:

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.

(snip)

Under the new proposal, providers could be ordered to comply, and judges could impose fines if they did not. The shift in thinking toward the judicial fines was first reported by The Washington Post, and additional details were described to The New York Times by several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Under the proposal, officials said, for a company to be eligible for the strictest deadlines and fines — starting at $25,000 a day — it must first have been put on notice that it needed surveillance capabilities, triggering a 30-day period to consult with the government on any technical problems.

Such notice could be the receipt of its first wiretap order or a warning from the attorney general that it might receive a surveillance request in the future, officials said, arguing that most small start-ups would never receive either.
 

As Philip Bump of The Atlantic points out, the White House proposal does not take into account that those small, temporary or start-up service providers with few users could easily bypass the new rules for allowing back-door i-Spying:

Which brings us to the most obvious way for terrorists or drug dealers or law-breakers or, yes, privacy puritans to avoid the FBI's proposed wiretapping ability: if you want to reduce the likelihood that your communications will be observed, check out what will hereafter be known as "burner" companies — new shops that enable the sort of communications you want to do but are unlikely to have enough users that one draws the attention of the FBI. Become a TechCrunch afficianado! When a company announces it's "a new way to connect people," that's your best bet, as long as it doesn't become too popular. (The "burner" analogy to cheap cell phones — you've seen The Wire, right? — is flawed, of course; that would be more like creating new Facebook accounts to send messages for a day or so.)

And, in keeping with the theme of government of, by and for the plutocracy, the new rules will also make it easier for corporations to use the backdoor technology to hack into our private communications. One more reason not to use Facebook. And forget about Twitter. Whoever doesn't already realize that your every Tweet is out there for public consumption is a twit. Even deleted Tweets linger in cyberspace forever.

The FBI doesn't even need a back door when most of our lives are already an open book. Nobody Does It Better. The Homeland Security state is De Best!

We weren't looking, but somehow they found us. We tried to hide from their love light. But like Heaven above us, the spies who loved us are keeping all our secrets safe tonight. 

Not.