Campaign 2016: When Bribery Meets Coercion

*Updated below

More than a year before the actual election, presidential politics and personalities have supplanted all else in what we love to call our Great National Narrative. The big plot twist this time around is how the hoi polloi have discovered, much to our great chagrin, that our democracy has suddenly turned into an oligarchy while we were glued to Dancing With the Stars. Political dynasties and big money have supplanted untold hordes of poor but deserving and qualified candidates aspiring to higher office. It's all the fault of that Supreme Court and its hideous Citizens United ruling. The Republicans are crazy and corrupt, and the Democrats are just plain corrupt.

Say what?

We've never had a true representative democracy in this country. Long before the Supreme Court decreed that money is speech, the oligarchy has ruled. It was decreed by design when a very tiny group of 18th century plantation owners and aristocrats and lawyers broke ranks with their fellow elites in the British Empire and cobbled together a constitution, which even they allowed was probably only a temporary fix to an out-and-out monarchy.

The reason that we're noticing the inbred corruption especially hard this campaign season is because for the first time in a long time, not one but two crazy-rich political families -- the Bushes and the Clintons --  are the current front-runners (at least according to the pundit and journalistic class which serves them.) But wealth in and of itself isn't bad. Nor are dynasties. Witness the Adamses and the Roosevelts, who by and large were at least semi-decent plutocrats despite their various racist and imperialistic proclivities. Where was the populist outrage during their heydays?

Although Hillary Clinton is oh-so delicately tip-toeing around class war semantics, she is certainly not lambasting the "malefactors of great wealth" as T.R. did, nor "welcoming their hatred" as did FDR. She is not even admitting that the permanent ruling class, or oligarchy, is running the show and always has done. She doesn't need to change or even acknowledge the status quo, even though Bernie Sanders keeps inconveniently nudging her in that direction. That may be because she is still merely nouveau-rich and hasn't yet developed the good aristocratic sense to keep her excess money under wraps instead of complaining how broke she recently was, and instead of Hubby whining about charging the oligarchs for his fondling of them because he has "bills to pay." (And they have Bill to pay.)

Maybe by the time granddaughter Charlotte is old enough to run for office, she'll have done an Adams Family pivot. Maybe, like Brooks Adams, great-grandson of John and grandson of John Quincy, she will publicly rail against unbridled capitalism and call for a revolution. Maybe, unlike Grandma and Grandpa Clinton, she will realize that extreme wealth inequality is just as dangerous to the rich as it is to the poor.

Brooks Adams, who was considered something of a Marxist crackpot by his First Gilded Age peers a century ago, presaged Bernie Sanders when he wrote in The Theory of Social Revolutions, "Roosevelt's offense in the eyes of the capitalistic class was not what he had actually done, for he had done nothing seriously to injure them. The crime they resented was the assertion of the principle of equality before the law, for equality before the law signified the end of privilege to operate beyond the range of law."

He added, "Sooner or later almost every successive ruling class has had this dilemma in one of its innumerable forms presented to them, and few have had the genius to compromise while compromise was possible.... the privileged classes seldom have the intelligence to protect themselves by adaptation when nature turns against them, and up to the present moment (1913) the old privileged class in the United States has shown little promise of being an exception to the rule."

Brooks Adams

It is just this insatiable, pathological hunger for sovereignty by the rich that is encompassed in the impending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and related coups d'etat operating under the guise of free trade deals.

Are you holding your breath for somebody -- anybody -- to go on TV and call the current claque of godzillionaire Waltons, Kochs, Adelsons, Bloombergs and Pritzkers as dumb as a bucket of rocks? Me neither. Even Bernie Sanders, bless his socialist heart, has been way too polite and politically correct to dare insult the pathocrats by each of their names. At least, as of today. Maybe his mind can be changed about that.

Since the political-media complex still likes to pretend that we live in a functioning democracy, the main dilemma facing the ruling class, as Brooks Adams saw it, is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority. Under a de facto permanent campaign season, they can now do both simultaneously. Hillary Clinton by self-interested necessity is in full bribery mode, calling for, among other treats for the masses, radical voting rights reform and the automatic inclusion of every citizen on the rolls. With record non-participation of eligible voters in the 2014 midterms, it is beginning to dawn on the politicians that without this participation, our government can claim neither legitimacy nor credibility. There is no consent of the governed, so let's toss the poor the privilege of choosing which corrupt politician they'd prefer to service the rich, and then call it a populist victory.

The corporate Democrats and Republicans running for office are going the bribery route, while the corporate Democrats and Republicans currently holding office are going the coercion route. The security state spies on all our communications. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, maintain nearly a thousand military bases around the globe and spend the highest percentage of our GDP on vicious aggression. Despite the fact that polled majorities favor single payer health care, the insurance predators are alive and well and feasting on our misery. The looming TPP, meanwhile, is at the top of this year's plutocratic Christmas wish list, even going so far as to embrace Malaysian slave trade as a means for them become richer and more powerful. And all of this is being plotted by Barack Obama & Co. while the salivating potential slave-owners headquartered in the USA have plummeted their own country of origin to close to dead last in nearly every measurement of social well-being. And our Democratic president still stupidly and Reaganistically insists that his now-abandoned  austerity crusade and deficit reduction, post-economic meltdown, were net positive things for the economy. (Has anybody ever asked Obama if he voted for Reagan? He would have been just old enough.)

"The so-called Great Society bribed," wrote another prescient scribe named Gore Vidal several decades ago. "Today coercion is very much in the air."

We gasp. We choke. And then we revolt.

* Update, 6/8. I should have added that bribery and coercion work not just against the voters, but against the members of a politician's own party. The AP  mentions in passing, in a largely stenographic piece, that Barack Obama effectively bribed four Democratic congress critters for their Yea votes giving him secretive fast-track authority to ram though the various "trade" deals benefiting the hyper-rich. He gave  them free luxury rides on Air Force One to the G-7 meeting at a luxurious Bavarian Alps spa that was once aptly the site for a group of artistic Nazi sympathizers to get together to unwind and schmooze. There was also a lot of apt sausage-making and the usual fear-mongering, with one state aggression-funded think tank honcho (Richard Fontaine of the CNAS) urging passage of more riches for the rich, because China might win "the race" otherwise. As far as Fast Track for Obama is concerned, the AP takes dictation writes,

While the Senate already has sided with Obama, the House is another matter. Just 18 Democrats have expressed support publicly, and that is short of what the White House is believed to need in order to supplement affirmative GOP votes.

Four of those lawmakers traveled with Obama to Germany: Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and Mike Quigley of Illinois. Their invitation appeared aimed both at rewarding lawmakers backing one of Obama's priorities and showing G-7 leaders that he is getting some Democrats to join the effort.

OK... make that bribing and coercing the citizens, bribing and coercing the politicians, and bribing and coercing the rest of the free world. The Hegemon's desperation is showing. 

Women in the Media: Still MIA

One giant leap for man, several small steps backward for women journalists.

I knew it was bad at the New York Times, but what I didn't know is that female reporters wrote fewer than one-third of the Paper of Record's bylined stories last fall. These articles, moreover, were largely of the family, health and culture varieties. Few women at the Times and other major outlets report on politics, technology, war, and the economy. Politically correct publishers may have relegated the sexist "Woman's Page" to the dustbin of history, but it still exists in the various Mommy blogs and Style sections. Even Oprah Winfrey's pseudo-feminist network features shows directed mainly by men.

"Media in all platforms are failing women," writes Julie Burton, president of the Women's Media Center whose fourth annual report on the status of women in communications professions was released this week.

Coverage of the presidential elections is even more heavily dominated by men. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the stories on the campaigns are being written and reported by males. So do you think this is where all the sports metaphors are coming from? The macho description of Obama's lame-duck status as his "fourth quarter" and narratives comparing politics to a horse-race are big clues to the barely suppressed sexism rampant in every article and broadcast segment, even those reported by the few token women working under male bosses. The two men to every one woman ratio  has been standard across the media spectrum throughout the millennium. The only exception is in online news blogging, where women can effectively hire themselves. Slightly more than 40 percent of independent blogs are run by women.

The report gave outstanding grades to only three of the major news outlets, based upon their employment rolls containing at least as many women as men: the PBS News Hour, with its two women anchors; the Huffington Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Burton concludes,

 With the 2016 presidential election already under way, this is especially problematic.We hope that one good result of releasing these discouraging numbers will be that media can take a hard look at their newsrooms and make changes to improve the ratios in their reporting. Media companies should establish goals for improving their gender diversity and create both short-term and long-term mechanisms for achieving them. They should ask themselves why their newsrooms aren’t 50 percent women and what steps they need to take to get there. And if they aren’t asking themselves these questions, then that’s a problem.

Welcome to the New Same Old Normal, Baby!

Obama Comes Out Trans(parent)

Whoever keeps saying that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a big, fat, corrupt secret is a big fat liar, the Most Transparent President Ever (TM) announced today. Obviously angling for a Vanity Fair or Vogue cover, Barack Obama displayed his good will by announcing a brand-new website where Everyday Americans can read about the corporate coups designed to improve their everyday lives and livelihoods.. Because we have a right to know who is creatively improving us, as well as when, where, why and how.

Be the first to read all the juicy details right here and then pass this major scoop along to all of your friends. And then don't forget to email or call the White House to thank the president for his openness and devotion to democracy.

Those Magnificent G-Men in Their Flying Machines

(Optional mood music here.)

No need to worry that the TSA has been shockingly revealed as nothing but security theater, no need to fret over the slight delay in getting the hilariously-named USA Freedom Act passed to make cosmetic changes in the storage facilities used for your phone records and emails. The FBI has got all of you covered. Literally.

The AP reveals that the government, in what can only be described as paranoid overkill, has deployed a veritable domestic air force of low-flying planes to spy on you and your cell phone calls. To give themselves legal cover, the FBI has defined "you" as potential terrorists and enemies of the state.

The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.
For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans' privacy.

Privacy? What's that?

The FBI assures us that these manned drones are not in the business of bulk collection or mass surveillance. After all, these are tiny planes, not Air Buses. Weight restrictions do apply, even though Fourth Amendment restrictions do not. As the Freedom Act implies, we are free to give up our privacy just as government and corporate spies are free to take it without the inconvenience of a warrant or other judicial approval.

The FBI confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.
"The FBI's aviation program is not secret," spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. "Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes."
The front companies are used to protect the safety of the pilots, the agency said. That setup also shields the identity of the aircraft so that suspects on the ground don't know they're being followed.

Yeah. If a suspect on the ground notices that an aircraft bears a cute corporate logo instead of the scary FBI seal, he will never in a million years suspect that the plane constantly circling and buzzing over his head is following him.

The FBI is not the only federal law enforcement agency to take such measures.

But Ma, everybody else is doing it! The DEA and the US Marshals have been flying spy planes for eons and nobody complained. So why the beef that the Homeland is operating a clandestine military air force against its own citizens? Wahhhhh.

In the FBI's case, one of its fake companies shares a post office box with the Justice Department, creating a link between the companies and the FBI through publicly available Federal Aviation Administration records.
Basic aspects of the FBI's program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department's inspector general, and the FBI also has been careful not to reveal its surveillance flights in court documents. The agency will not say how many planes are currently in its fleet.

Typical bureaucracy. They'll spend billions on designer airplanes but they're too cheap to fork over an extra twenty bucks for a separate post office box rental to keep us safely in the dark. And besides, maybe the reason the DOJ won't say how many planes are in its fleet is because they simply haven't bothered keeping count. Congress can't throw money at ironically-named "defense" agencies fast enough. If our lawmakers can't be bothered with counting, why should mere hirelings?

The planes are equipped with technology that can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over to prosecutions. One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side.
Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they're not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is used in only limited situations.

They are flying vacuum cleaners. They take off ostensibly to catch Suspect A "aspiring" to join Isis, and then they ever so coincidentally catch Suspect B engaging in a peaceful protest, or Politician C cheating on his wife at the No-tell Motel. All info is safely placed in storage facilities for future reference and use.

"These are not your grandparents' surveillance aircraft," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. Stanley said the flights are significant "if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft."
The Justice Department recently published a privacy policy for its agencies' use of drones and unmanned aircraft systems. But that policy does not apply to piloted aircraft. An FBI spokesman said the FBI's flights comply with agency rules.

Wow. And here I was thinking that my grandma's spy-plane was so buff, so cool. But anyway, as long as the FBI has invented secret rules for spying on me in secret, who am I to complain?

Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and duration of the surveillance.

The rules devised by public servants are none of your damned business, Terrorist-Citizens!

Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a "cell-site simulator" — or Stingray, to use one of the product's brand names. These can trick pinpointed cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.

Leave it to those magnificent G-men to name their weapons of mass surveillance after a member of the shark family. They trust that all of you remember what happened to poor Steve Irwin. When you see that Cessna buzzing over your head you won't even have time to shriek "Crikey" before your private cell phone call is swept up into the fascist maw.

The FBI has recently begun obtaining court orders to use this technology. Previously, the Obama administration had been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology's use in open court.

Obama is balancing his future financial security with your privacy. Ninety-nine parts his security to one part your privacy, that is.

 The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government's involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI's request because the companies' names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.

(Insert your own hysterical laughter soundtrack here. Or let's help the hapless FBI save the taxpayers some money by sending in our own name suggestions for new fake companies. I nominate Lindsey Graham Tours, LLC. That way, the chickenhawk of the Senate can hawk his fake presidential campaign at the same time the domestic air force fakes keeping us safe from above.)

Hillary the Heroin Heroine

The first subtle clue that Hillary Clinton may be taking Bernie Sanders seriously after all is her sudden discovery that there is a huge heroin and meth problem in rural America. She is reportedly so rattled and shocked to learn that everyday desperate Americans have taken to self-medicating with cheap narcotics and stimulants that she is making the fight against drug addiction one of the cornerstones of her campaign.

Sanders, whose increasing popularity across rural, suburban and urban America is finally being grudgingly acknowledged by even the corporate media, is the junior senator from Vermont. Vermont is the epicenter of heroin addiction in America.

I can hear the Clinton campaign wheels spinning. I can hear the debates now:

Sanders: I support Medicare for every man, woman and child in America.

Clinton: Hah! Your own constituents are killing themselves with heroin and you can't even put a dent in it. Take care of your own miserable little state first, then we'll talk.

Sanders: I support a free college education for every American.

Clinton: Say what? How can brains on drugs in a frying pan be helped by college? Clean up your own act, Senator.

Of course, Hillary Clinton seizing upon heroin abuse for purely crass political reasons is mere conjecture on my part. But that this very savvy woman timed her sudden overwhelming concern about drugs with the sudden ascendancy of Bernie Sanders is a tad coincidental. Heroin and meth addiction have been in the news for a while now. But I guess Clinton is not a Breaking Bad fan. I guess she didn't read about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

According to Amy Chozick of the New York Times, 

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s carefully choreographed round-table discussions with voters don’t lead to many moments of surprise. But Mrs. Clinton has seemed to have had some legitimate jolts when conversations in Iowa and New Hampshire repeatedly drifted back to drug abuse.

Mrs. Clinton called heroin and methamphetamine addiction in rural America a “quiet epidemic” and told her policy advisers in Brooklyn to put it on the list of priorities as her campaign inched closer toward presenting a specific policy platform.

As part of that effort, last week senior campaign policy advisers held Google Hangout discussions with local officials and substance abuse activists in Iowa and New Hampshire to see how the campaign could best address the problem, the first of such discussions that will take place in the early nominating states, according to the campaign.

To her credit, Clinton has already repudiated her husband's war on drugs and called for prison reform and with it, the at least partial decriminalization of drug addiction. According to Chozick, she will espouse better treatment and prevention, and better access to mental health services. But so far, any concrete proposals -- such as raising taxes on the rich in order to fund treatment and prevention -- are lacking. So is any awareness that one of the root causes of rampant drug use in the United States is the despair and hopelessness wrought by the most extreme wealth inequality in recent memory. This inequality is manufactured in state and national neoliberal legislatures so cruel that they make Walter White's meth lab look like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in comparison.

Sometimes it's easier to use your last twenty bucks to score some chemical euphoria than it is to buy yourself a decent meal on a minimum wage paycheck or an inadequate food stamp stipend. Besides masking physical and psychic pain, drugs can also be appetite suppressants. And drugs also serve to cull the herd of what Henry Giroux calls the disposable people. Nationwide, deaths from drug overdoses exceed deaths from traffic accidents. In Vermont alone, the fatality rate has tripled over the past three decades.

Deaths by drug overdose have heretofore been a human catastrophe effectively ignored by both legacy parties. The exception was when Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosed and the political-media complex went into a very temporary frenzy of concern-trolling. When it comes to poor people on drugs, the question is how the rich can extract profits from them. (see, for example, the Times' excellent piece on the scam of so-called three-quarter housing for addicts.)

That Hillary Clinton would ignore Vermont's first place status as Heroin Abuse Capital of the World  in any debate with Bernie Sanders is highly unlikely now that she's seized upon it as a campaign issue. So far, she is acting as the gracious hostess, "welcoming" him to the race as though she were inviting him to her own private tea dance. Despite her falsely modest claims that she doesn't consider herself inevitable this time, she just can't help acting as though she owns the place.

This niceness will not last. It's not the Clinton way.  Stay tuned for unsheathed claws, oppo research and lots of dirty campaigning.

And just in case you thought Bernie Sanders himself is "soft on drugs," think again. He is agnostic about legalization of marijuana, for example. Probably the only difference between him and Clinton is how heroin and meth addiction can be combated and paid for. With Bernie, it's taxing the rich and universal health care. With Clinton, she is not telling. She's hiding behind focus groups and Google hangouts, while Sanders is drawing record crowds in rural Iowa.

Big Brother Depo$es

 The obscene multibillion-dollar profits of the Security State Complex are in danger of being ever so slightly curtailed should the Patriot Act be allowed to deservedly fade into the sunset this weekend. And thus have the greedy and the powerful panicked. Thus have the greedy and powerful duly authorized their current front man in the White House to shamelessly terrorize the crap out of the people who elected him to act on behalf of the greedy and powerful.

The only thing we have to fear, according to Barack Obama, are the invisible bogeymen ("terrorists") who plot in the dark to kill us all in our beds. With billions or even trillions of dollars at stake, Obama is desperately pushing all the paranoid panic buttons in his propaganda arsenal to guilt-trip Congress into passing the USA Freedom Act "reform" of mass surveillance of every man, woman and child on the planet.

Just 24 hours after the White House and its deep-state private army used the New York Times to anonymously press for open-ended and permanent spying on ordinary people, Obama has emerged from his Neocon closet to deliver the fear, up close and personal, via his weekly address (the quaint term used for his weekly reassuring dog-whistle to his corporate backers.) Just substitute the word "citizen" for "terrorist," for example, and the true intent of the USA Freedom Act becomes perfectly and abundantly clear: the Free Market god will rule over you and yours, forever and ever amen.  Because the Permawar Industry is one of the few things artificially propping up the plutonomy these days.    

You can read Obama's very flimsily disguised speech here.

But the subtext (parentheses mine) goes something like this:

Hi, everybody. As President and Commander in Chief, my greatest responsibility is the safety of the (ruling class) American people. And in our fight against terrorists (ordinary people), we need to use every effective tool at our disposal -- both to defend our (obscene profits) security and to protect the freedoms and civil liberties (of the hyper-rich investors in War) enshrined in our (plutocratic/political donor databases) Constitution.

 Today, when investigating (you) terrorist networks, our (state spies) national security professionals can (at their entirely optional and top-secret discretion) seek a court order to obtain (whatever we want) certain business records. Our (spies) law enforcement professionals can seek a roving wiretap to keep up with (anybody we like) terrorists when they switch cell phones. We can seek a wiretap on (anybody we like) so-called lone wolves -- suspected terrorists who may (be entirely innocent) not be directly tied to a terrorist group. These tools are not controversial (because the American people are a flock of sheep) Since 9/11, (civil rights have gone out the window) they have been renewed numerous times. FBI Director James Comey says they are “essential” and that losing them would “severely” impact (the profits of the Homeland-Industrial Complex) terrorism investigations. But if Congress doesn’t act by tomorrow at midnight, these tools go away as well. (and your sense of false security will be needlessly rattled as the Permawar Terror State is exposed as a rotten pumpkin-carcass.)

The USA Freedom Act also accomplishes something I called for a year and a half ago: it ends the bulk metadata program -- the bulk collection of phone records -- as it currently exists and puts in place new (fig leaves) reforms (to hide the fact that despite what Congress does or your president says, the NSA will continue to act with impunity because Congress doesn't really do oversight anyway.) The government will no longer hold these records; telephone providers will (be the government's complicit middlemen, or else they will face prosecution or other threats to their financial well-being). The Act also includes other changes to our surveillance laws -- including more (bullshit) transparency -- to help build confidence among (fool) the American people (into believing) that your privacy and civil liberties are being protected. But if Congress doesn’t act by midnight tomorrow, these reforms will be in jeopardy, too. (You're all gonna die.)

It doesn’t have to be this way. The USA Freedom Act reflects ideas from (surveillance state profiteers) privacy advocates, our private sector partners and our national security experts. It already passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming (politically corrupt) bipartisan support -- Republicans and Democrats. A majority of the (millionaire investor/lawmaker class) Senate -- Republicans and Democrats -- have voted to move it forward.

 So what’s the problem? (with willingly giving up your civil rights so that a handful of plutocrats can continue making grotesque amounts of money off you) A small group of senators is standing in the way. And, unfortunately, some folks are trying to use this debate to score political points. (Pick the right team: Obama's) But this shouldn’t and can't be about politics. This is a matter of (money begetting power begetting more money begetting more power) national security. Terrorists like ( the American hegemon and multinational corporations) al Qaeda and ISIL aren’t suddenly going to stop plotting against us at midnight tomorrow. And we shouldn’t surrender the (cold hard billions) tools that help keep (war profiteers) us safe. It would be (anti-capitalistic) irresponsible. It would be reckless. And we shouldn’t allow it to happen.

 So today, I’m calling on (spied-upon Americans) to join me in speaking with one (bleat) voice to the Senate. Put the politics aside. Put (the oligarchy) our national security first. Pass the USA Freedom Act -- now. And let’s protect the security and civil liberties of every American (9/11 boondoggle of a spy agency and private security contractor and the mega-rich people investing in same.) Thanks very much.

It's all about the money. As James Risen laid out in Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, the post 9/11 era has become a great marketplace of terror, in which we are simultaneously victims, culprits, and above all, consumers in a $4 trillion industry marrying the government, Hollywood and hyper-capitalistic private enterprise:

 The new Homeland Security-Industrial Complex.... is largely made up of a web of intelligence agencies and their contractors, companies that mostly provide secret services rather than large weapons systems and equipment. These contractors are hired to help Washington determine the scale and scope of the terrorist threat; they make no money if they determine that the threat is overblown or, God forbid, if the war on terror ever comes to an end.

It's no coincidence, as Risen and Top Secret America author Dana Priest have observed, that Washington DC and its suburbs have become the richest part of the country since 9/11, a true corporate welfare state employing millions of people in the high-growth Terror Industry. War is not only tolerable, it is desirable. The war on terror, Risen writes, has become a national stampede to the Beltway, the gold rush of the 21st century.

The only thing Barack Obama has to fear is the wrath of a relative handful of people who've gotten crazy-rich off death, fear, and destruction. His is the voice of a desperate man with a long, lucrative post-presidential life ahead of him and a foundation needing the endless flow of dollars from the same "folks" whose fat bank accounts he is now working so furiously to protect.

Obama Library: Estimated Cost, $500 Million

The Fire This Time: Black Youth and the Spectacle of Postracial Violence

By Henry A. Giroux

(Originally published in Truthout and reprinted with the kind permission of the author)

"Let's hope it isn't too late to listen, listen intently, carefully, minds open, hearts full. Let's hope." - James Baldwin.

In 1963, James Baldwin published an essay entitled "The Negro Child - His Self-Image," in The Saturday Review. Later celebrated as "A Talk to Teachers," his prescient opening paragraph unfolds with the following observation:

Let's begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced ... from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible - and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people - must be prepared to "go for broke." (1)

 The killing of young Black men such as 16-year-old Kimani Gray, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 18-year-old Michael Brown, 22-year-old John Crawford III and 25-year-old Freddie Gray, among others, are part of a historical pattern of racial terror in which Black populations have been contained and controlled by so-called legitimate mechanisms of state violence. (2) Not only is a Black person killed by the police "every three or four days," but "the rate of police killings of Black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century." (3)