The TPP Tango

For want of a fig leaf, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-.01%) had to find another way to cover herself.  So she took to the House floor on Friday afternoon to announce a trial separation from Barack. She really still loves the guy, really wanted to find a way to Yes, but then all of a sudden he was going way too fast for her. It has nothing to do with that slobbery kiss a few years ago in the wake of her advice to "embrace the suck" -- when all she'd really meant was that Democrats should join with the GOP in cutting struggling people off their long-term unemployment benefits to get a budget passed. Awwwkward, yet oh so titillating.

  The real awkward moment came on Thursday night, when he showed up, armed security entourage and beer in tow, at her charity insider baseball game, expecting her to fast-track all the way home on the TPP without even touching first base -- which in a functioning democracy, would include the release of its actual contents to the public. He didn't even call first, the cad.

Not to be suspicious of Pelosi's virtue or, god forbid, ethics, but let's be perfectly honest here. She is really hot to consummate the corporate coups disguised as trade deals. But she has simply been unable to catch a privacy break. (also look at her uncivil bringing-up-the rear treatment by Obama at the game, above) Not only were members of her own caucus publicly dissing her for whipping pro-TPP votes behind their backs on a fevered daily basis, but her own constituents back home in San Francisco were beginning to act up. Hanging up on their calls wasn't working. They just began showing up at her office in person, showing all the telltale signs of discontent and opprobrium:

Nancy Pelosi presumably wants to stay in Congress well past her sell-by date. Therefore, after bragging about what a great speaker and leader she's been all these years (regardless of her refusal to impeach war criminal George W. Bush when she had the chance) she regretfully took out her little jar of harmless designer sand and sprinkled it all over Obama's fast-track luge run of dreams. But she and Barack both see this for what it is: a theatrical attempt to retain an outward appearance of democracy and propriety. They and their pals in Congress will be back at their orgy of greed again as early as next week. They just need to  provide a slightly larger fig leaf than the weak, separate, cynical Trade Adjustment bribe proffered by the GOP to grease the skids for TPA (fast track). Even paltry displaced worker assistance was voted down by the Dems, partly because it involved robbing Medicare recipients to pay for worker re-training. As   Pelosi hinted, restoration of Medicare funds and horsetrading with Republicans over some infrastructure spending might be just the ticket for a smoother trip to TPP paradise for the oligarchs.

The fix is still in. Fig leaves are a dime a bribed dozen, so therefore we progressives must not rest on our laurels. Today's temporary victory is by no means the "stinging defeat" for a cruelly spurned president that the corporate press is making it out to be. A New York Times news analysis* by Jennifer Steinhauer, for example, makes the TPP all about personalities instead of about the actual corporate power-grabs contained therein. To Steinhauer, we have ourselves a breach of etiquette problem instead of a corruption problem.  It was neither fear of the electorate nor a new-found moral compass, but the same old Beltway "dysfunction" that caused Democrats to "abandon their president", she says.

After years of Republican derision of President Obama’s fiscal agenda, which they frequently describe as socialism, in the end it was the president’s own Democratic Party that deprived him of what would have been the largest economic policy victory of his second term.

The stunning defeat was the culmination of years of political dysfunction in Washington, with a twist.

Where do you even begin? Instead of ordinary citizens both here and abroad temporarily dodging the cruel neoliberal bullet (hollow point, because once TPP enters the body politic, it explodes into a thousand little bomblets ripping apart the whole fabric of democracy) we have a multimillionaire politician being stabbed in the back by a twisting Democratic knife.  It's all about Obama -- a true hollow man for the ages.

After decades of watching presidents secure trade agreements from South Korea to Mexico, even in the face of opposition from their base, Democrats have broadly come to the conclusion that such agreements exacerbate income inequality. They refused to come out in sufficient numbers to help Mr. Obama bring a broad agreement over the line.

Steinhauer insinuates that only bitch-slapping Democrats have come to the "conclusion" that trade deals exacerbate income inequality. She doesn't bother to research whether or not this is true. She cares only about the spurned hollow man.

Mr. Obama’s struggle also reflected a longstanding policy of the administration of maintaining a cool distance from Capitol Hill, enraging members of both parties. He delegated most of the arm-twisting to his unpopular trade representative, Michael Froman, thus allowing a populist figure, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, to take up much of the oxygen on the debate. She railed against trade deals on television during the period when the White House was trying to seduce those on the fence.

Can there be a mainstream article mentioning Elizabeth Warren without taking the obligatory dig at her? In this episode, we envision Warren greedily sucking up all the oxygen as she "rails" (like a banshee) to torture poor Barry. Slanted journalism like this is how public opinion gets manufactured to side with plutocratic interests. This is the journalism of what Tariq Ali aptly calls "the extreme center."

Steinhauer snarkily and falsely and centristically concludes,

As they return to their home districts for the weekend, Democrats will now have the distinct pleasure of experiencing what Republicans have undergone for the last few years — a narrative of their party in disarray and divided.

Huh? With all but 39 House Democrats "spurning" lover boy, the party is hardly divided. It is, however, beginning to lean ever so slightly and gingerly to the left.

The Times editors chose wisely when they assigned Jennifer Steinhauer to concoct her Beltway-centric TPP confection. Before her current gig covering Congress, she covered Hollywood. She is also the author of a new recipe book about how to recreate such toxic junk food classics as Twinkies and Sno-balls in your own kitchen.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

She gushes, "For Americans of a certain age, memory lane is paved with Ho-Hos."

Just like the paving stones of Pennsylvania Avenue, K Street and Capitol Hill.

Blue Dogs, Devil Dogs, Horn Dogs, Corn Dogs, All-American stadium Hot Dogs -- it's one big happy cash party for all the greed-junkies who are slow-dancing the TPP and trampling the rest of us underfoot in the process.

 Wall Street didn't even blink in the wake of the "stinging defeat." Maybe because Friday's vote is in reality a teasing butterfly floating for more bribery dollars?

*Update, 6/13: Sorry to mix metaphors from the above post, but since publication last night, New York Times reporter and Obama publicist Peter Baker horned in on Jennifer Steinhauer's piece in order to bat cleanup, relegating her to second banana in the byline department. Baker rewrote the lede, spinning the narrative in a way most favorable to Obama. His overwrought pathos begins:

  He made it personal. He appealed to their loyalty. He asked them to give him what every modern president has had. He argued the facts, disputed the politics, quarreled over the history and at times lashed out at those who still refused to stand with him.

This makes Obama seem like a hero-martyr rather than the hapless knifing victim portrayed by Steinhauer. Baker goes on to repeat the White House excuse that Friday's vote was just another one of those procedural snafus, and that Obama is actually victorious. The vote was belittled as "a nasty little issue" by one of the political operatives in Baker's part of the news analysis. The White House is also quoted as finding Nancy Pelosi "oddly in a mystery zone" -- which, I suppose, is a politically correct way of saying that she's senile. Before voting against all aspects of the trade package, Pelosi is described by Baker as having been "uncharacteristically shaken" and "vague." Baker all but called for an assisted living ambulette for this woman. You almost feel sorry for her.

Key word: almost. Maybe Jennifer Steinhauer can whip up a batch of Devil Dogs and bring them over to Pelosi as she engages in yet another secretive frenzy of weekend whip counting. The vagueness is a big act. It's how these people flirt and seduce one another.

The Ugly Carbon Footprint of American Aggression

When state paranoia runs deep, political hypocrisy cannot be far behind. And let's not forget the irony. And the profits, of course. Because in the end, this is all about the money wending its way from your pockets to the secret limitless Pentagon budget to the voracious war investors of Wall Street.

Only a few days after blaring the G-7's intent to reduce global carbon emissions (by century's end, when the planet could already be near death) Barack Obama is blaring his intent to ignore his own ecological prescription. He's escalating the never-ended Iraq War (now euphemized as a 30-year war against ISIS) by fast-creeping 450 more boots on the ground and building yet another global military base in that destroyed country. This is all so that the American imperium can "re-take" one more foreign city, even as the cities in the actual United States are crumbling and dying.

The US military already uses more than $20 billion of fuel a year, more than any other single American consumer.

Despite the fact that the military has managed, over the past several years, to slightly tweak its fuel consumption through the use of lightweight Predator and Reaper drones to kill people, that green policy is swiftly transforming back into greed policy. Big Oil can't make money and pay its investors unless big oil is extracted and burned on a global scale. The Pentagon's use of alternative fuel, as touted by a climate-conscious Obama administration, will only go so far in achieving the nirvana of proportionality (neoliberal-speak for cost-benefit measurements -- acceptable human casualties are weighed against acceptable pollution of the air that we humans are used to breathing.)

The more that Obama (and future salesmen and servants of the military-industrial complex) wage Permawar, the faster will come the death of the planet, despite all the sanctimonious and meaningless pledges of carbon emission reductions by this or that agency, or this or that luxury confab of world leaders.

And, as a Project Censored report has laid out, environmental groups rarely directly take on the military as the main culprits of worsening climate change. The burning of fossil fuels by the Pentagon is also virtually ignored by the media, despite the hideously-named "defense industry" being the worst polluter on the planet. Instead, activists rail against the Koch Brothers and the oil cartel serving the hegemon. Part of the reason is that the Pentagon is largely exempt -- thanks in large part to a Bush-era Kyoto Accord loophole and lack of Congressional oversight -- from revealing  the true extent of its dirty, filthy bestiality. The military is now responsible for 80% of all the energy consumed by government agencies.

From the Project Censored report:

While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. . . . That war emits more than 60 percent that of all countries. . . . This information is not readily available . . . because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under US law and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

How convenient does it get? Lack of transparency enables Barack Obama to concern-troll climate change, hypocritically scolding China and Russia out of one side of his glib mouth, and barking orders for ever-escalating American pollution out of the other.

And it's not just the carbon emissions continuously spewed by the biggest polluter in the world. It's all the leftover toxic waste, such as depleted uranium. It's US-made landmines and cluster bombs and poisonous chemicals that continue to kill and maim innocent people long after the Americans have left and cashed in.

Despite these ugly realities, the White House has grotesquely touted Obama as "the greenest president we've ever had." I suppose this could be true, but only if the shade of green we envision is of the harsh bilious variety. Or maybe this:

 

Greenest Prez Evah

To be fair,  the accolade is actually based solely upon Obama's announcement of an "initiative" (neoliberal-speak for bullshit) to write a report that highlights the harmful health effects of man-made climate change. Remember, though, that the Pentagon and all the other secret unaccountable agencies of aggression are conveniently exempt from any and all blame.

What we don't know is most assuredly hurting us.

Links/Open Thread

Not Everyone Hates Citizens United, particularly local TV stations, pithily writes Michael Socolow in Slate:

For local broadcast channels and their it-bleeds-it-leads newscasts, the Supreme Court might as well be that mythic relative who leaves you an unexpected fortune in his will. The cascade of political money to your local channel began for real in 2012. That year, according to the Pew Research Center, local television stations received $3.1 billion in political advertising revenue. That was 48 percent more than was spent just two years earlier (before Citizens United) and represented more than double the amount raked in during the previous presidential election in 2008.

Read the whole thing. In case you were still wondering why you keep getting that queasy feeling whenever you unwittingly morph from Judge Judy berating the poor and marginalized into local news berating the poor and the marginalized, Socolow lays it all out for you.  My own local news fare lurches between lambasting "progressive" Mayor De Blasio for his un-tough on crime demeanor, to ads for charter schools produced by anonymous dark hedge fund money, to big bank lobbies honoring recently re-elected NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo (whose administration is currently under investigation for alleged corruption) for his support for Wall Street. These local propaganda mills make the national network news conglomerates actually seem journalistically responsible, even with their feel-good animal videos and their hideous Viagra and Big Oil ads. Cancelling my cable is looking more and more like a treat to be savored, rather than a deprivation in my infotainment diet. Plus, all those books that must be read before one dies are piling up on my nightstand.

*

Where were you when you discovered your own personal political and moral conscience? Was it a book, a friend, a teacher who opened your eyes? Henry Giroux tells his own personal story in a heartfelt Truthout essay about his simultaneous embrace and transcendence of his working class roots. He recounts the epiphany that the dreck that the ruling class sells us day in and day out is not only harmful to our health, it is pure poison:

 The struggle to redefine my sense of agency was about more than a perpetual struggle between matters of intelligence, competency and low self-esteem; it was about reclaiming a sense of history, opening the door to dangerous memories, and taking risks that enabled a new and more radical sense of identity and what it meant to be in the world from a position of strength. I found signposts of such resistance in my youth in Black music, stories about union struggles, the warm solidarity of my peers, and later in the powerful display of public intellectuals whose lectures I attended at Brown University. The people who moved me at those lectures were not academics reading papers I barely understood, or intellectuals who seemed frozen emotionally, spewing out a kind of jargon reserved for the already initiated, smug in their insularity and remoteness.

 ***

Speaking of stories on union and class struggles, one of the great influencers of my own youth was the folk music group The Weavers. Ronnie Gilbert, the female voice of that quartet, died this week at the age of 88. From Rolling Stone:

The Weavers' first concerts were often free performances at union meetings and on picket lines. In 1949, about to break up, they were offered a two week residency at the Village Vanguard in New York City that proved so successful they stayed for six months. The stint earned the Weavers a deal with Decca Records, which led to television and radio appearances, and extensive touring.
Amidst their success, the group maintained their progressive and leftist politics, which drew the eye and ire of those in the anti-communist movement of the 1950s. In 1951, the Weavers were investigated by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which sought to probe potentially subversive citizen threats, and soon they were blacklisted from performing and recording.

The daughter of Russian/Ukrainian immigrants and labor activists, Gilbert was inspired in her own youth by the voice of Paul Robeson. Her activism was her music. And luckily for us, she also wrote an autobiography before she died, to be published posthumously this fall. While you're waiting, here's a link to one of my own Weavers favorites -- Which Side Are You On?

***

Which side is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on? Well, we know it is not the crazy Republicans. Nor is it the crazy leftists, whoever they may be. They certainly do not exist within the moneyed realm of the ironically named Democratic Party. To his credit, unlike other pundits, Krugman rarely delves into the river of false equivalency in his columns. But he really stuck a big toe into it in yesterday's effort, cutesily titled Fighting the Derp. For the uninitiated unhip readers out there, Krugman helpfully explains that "derp" is a South Park cartoon neologism defined as repeating the same lies over and over and over again to give them legitimacy and currency. In other words, "derp" is another way to describe Goebbels-style propaganda.

Here's the "both sides do it" part of the column that really pissed me off:

Thus, if you’re a conservative opposed to a stronger safety net, you should be extra skeptical about claims that health reform is about to crash and burn, especially coming from people who made the same prediction last year and the year before (Obamacare derp runs almost as deep as inflation derp).

But if you’re a liberal who believes that we should reduce inequality, you should similarly be cautious about studies purporting to show that inequality is responsible for many of our economic ills, from slow growth to financial instability. Those studies might be correct — the fact is that there’s less derp on America’s left than there is on the right — but you nonetheless need to fight the temptation to let political convenience dictate your beliefs.

My published response:

  "Liberals" are admonished to also be careful of studies purporting to show that income inequality is responsible for many of our economic ills. And then PK neglects to mention any alleged lefty studies.

Is he referring to Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz's work on inequality, which shows that the wealth gap, deliberately manufactured by financial deregulation and political malfeasance, is indeed responsible for a tepid economy and slow recovery due to stagnant wages? Or is he referring to Barack Obama, who's been acting more like a Reaganesque supply-sider lately with his shilling for the Trans-Pacific Partnership "trickle-down" power grab by the ultra-rich?

I'll do my civic duty and read Stiglitz and others, like Bill Black and Michael Hudson, who rightly point to blatant corruption and rule by the plutocracy as a prime cause of economic inequality. I'll put my faith in my fellow citizens, 61% of whom believe, according to a recent NYT poll, that this inequality is getting worse. We believe, along with Sens. Warren and Sanders, that the whole economic system is rigged against us. I'll also put my faith in the most recent OECD figures showing that the US ranks near dead last in all Western measures of social and economic health.

There may be a derp problem, but the real problem is that of the insatiable greed of the pathocrats and the influence of their unlimited dark money in what is still quaintly called a democracy.

To be fair, Krugman did follow up his column with a blogpost/chart purporting to debunk a causal relationship between inequality and a bad economy. He first conveniently tossed out the widely used and respected Gini co-efficient measurements of wealth inequality because they apparently do not fit with his own theory. His argument was rather too technical for a layperson like me, but do read the comments. People with obvious economic backgrounds and expertise were not impressed.

***

 As an antidote to Krugman wishy-washiness, be sure to read Thomas Piketty's review of a truly radical economist's prescription to heal the scourge of historic and global wealth inequality. And then get a hold of the book (Inequality: What Can Be Done? by Anthony B. Atkinson) if you can. I got so excited that I plunked down an outrageous 16-plus bucks to download it from Amazon, but it's been well worth it so far. He addresses mere laypersons! In just the first few pages he tears apart the neoliberal metaphors that I love to hate -- level playing fields and ladders of opportunity! -- and gets right into how politicians and pundits avoid talking about how people often stumble and fall on those level playing fields and how "we" avoid talking about actual equal outcomes.

Piketty writes,

He also argues for guaranteed public-sector jobs at a minimum wage for the unemployed, and democratization of access to property ownership via an innovative national savings system, with guaranteed returns for the depositors. There will be inheritance for all, achieved by a capital endowment at age eighteen, financed by a more robust estate tax; an end to the English poll tax—a flat-rate tax for local governments—and the effective abandonment of Thatcherism. The effect is exhilarating. Witty, elegant, profound, this book should be read: it brings us the finest blend of what political economy and British progressivism have to offer.

In other words, Atkinson is even more radical than Bernie Sanders. And the fact that he concentrates on Britain should not at all dissuade us from translating his Rx to our own shores. After all, it's a global economy. The City of London and Wall Street are one and the same entity. Obama's consigliere Jim Messina just helped re-elect austerian David Cameron to another term as prime minister.

But as Atkinson cheerily writes in his intro: "The world faces great problems but collectively we are not helpless in the face of forces outside our control. The future is very much in our hands."

Like I said, quite the antidote to learned helplessness, one of the many neoliberal toxins being poured down our political gullets to induce the chronic condition known as Panglossitis. Things could always be worse in this best of all possible worlds, of course. But why not demand better? The only thing holding us back is the propaganda of the fear-mongers.

Give up that dark money-driven cable infotainment and embrace your inner Henry Giroux and Ronnie Gilbert. Life is too short not to.

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.)