Links/Open Thread

Wall Street Powers Higher on Greece Hopes: because The Market is a sadist.

Greek crisis worse than the Great Depression: Plutocrats of the World, unite!

Tsipras Just Destroyed Greece: It seems that the popular referendum against neoliberalism was just a head fake, and that the Syriza leader never really expected hoi polloi to reject austerity. Perhaps the lefties over at the World Socialist Website were right about Tsipras being an Obama clone all along. I hear tell that the Masters of the Universe might even give him a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes, using the leftover confetti from today's World Cup festivities. Only kidding, of course. But at the very least, he can probably expect a commiserating congratulatory phone call from Obama, whose own bank-protecting economic policies he says he greatly admires. If, that is, the Troika doesn't pull a fast one and reject an austerity offer even better than the last one. The lunatics have definitely taken over the capitalistic asylum.

I nominate the people of Greece for the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite their own hardships they are welcoming refugees with open arms, feeding and clothing them and sharing their dwindling medical supplies. Over here in the USA, meanwhile, the corporate media give Donald Trump unlimited air time to vomit out his xenophobia, while the Obama administration has quietly imprisoned Central American women and children in privatized border internment camps. As Hillary Clinton has so hawkishly proclaimed, we have "to send them a message" that this land is not their land.

Down with the Confederate Flag, that odious symbol of racial oppression and slavery.

But, up with actual slavery: President Obama plans to deny the existence of human trafficking in Malaysia in order to grease the skids for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As long as slave-owners promise to tone it down a tad, maybe even abolish it by the next century, Obama can live with it. I somehow doubt that Michelle Obama will be holding up another one of her "Bring Back Our Girls" signs in solidarity with the kidnapped victims being smuggled through Malaysia. The Market could not bear it.

If the ruling class can declare victory over racism by simply taking down a flag, how easy it then becomes to declare victory over slavery the wide world over by a simple stroke of the pen. Orwellian possibilities for blanket deniability in the name of profits for The Market are legion, and they are endless. 

As Pope Francis saliently observes, unbridled capitalism is "the dung of the devil."

And he also took a swipe at Obama's "free trade" deals and the finance cartel's assault on the Greek people while he was at it:

The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain 'free trade' treaties, and the imposition of measures of 'austerity' which always tighten the belt of workers
and the poor," he said.

Wealthy Crime Pays, Even When It Doesn't

Goldman Sachs, the banking behemoth aptly described by Matt Taibbi as a giant vampire squid, has made big suckers out of the clients it grotesquely advised to bet on how long youths caught up in New York City's criminal justice system could stay out of jail after their initial releases.

A mere seven million dollars out of the trillions of Goldman's money was spent on privatized counseling services to young Rikers inmates in an effort to help them become responsible members of society. No Goldman money was spent on a jobs program to help them become responsible members of society once they were released. No Goldman money was spent on housing for young offenders or their families, many of whom who lost their homes and jobs when Goldman helped wreck the economy during its previous betting spree on subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations.

Nobody at Goldman has ever paid his debt to society by going to prison. Even rare criminal convictions have a way of eventually getting overturned.

And now Goldman's social impact scheme, placing odds on youthful recidivism rates, has been blessedly shut down one year early by the city. Not because cynically betting on the desperation of indigent people is morally wrong, mind you -- but because a couple of rich investors are said to have lost money on the deal. The black and Latino kids kept getting arrested and sent back to Rikers despite the Goldman-subsidized jail counseling sessions.

Knock me over with a feather.

As is typical for Goldman, though, it will recoup most of its own losses based upon a loan guarantee from Michael Bloomberg, Forbes godzillionaire and mayor of New York at the time the scheme was hatched.

Also as is typical for Goldman and other too big to fail/jails, the early shutdown of their gruesome scam is actually being touted as a resounding success story. That is because the rich were not taxed to pay for it! The paper losses by a banking casino using Rikers inmates as chips will in no way discourage the billionaire class from continuing to bet on the misfortunes of the poor. Social impact bonds will be part of the dystopian landscape as long as neoliberalism lives. The hyper-rich will always find new ways of extracting blood from the masses.

Because when you are obscenely rich, nothing succeeds like the failure of others. Or, as the Dowager Duchess of Downton Abbey was wont to say,"Nothing exceeds like excess."

The house never loses.

Social impact bonds are beginning to actually replace the government safety net as a means of "helping" the poor. From the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Pay-for-success efforts, also known as social-impact bonds, involve private or philanthropic investors funding new approaches to social issues, with an opportunity to earn returns if programs meet preset targets and governments take them over. Goldman Sachs ended up spending $7.2 million on the Rikers effort but will recoup $6 million from a loan guarantee offered by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The model "can unlock new pieces of funding, private capital especially," said Jim Anderson, who leads the Bloomberg foundation's government-innovation program. "Even though we didn't get the result with the [recidivism] program that we all wanted and hoped for, we now know that definitively, thanks to the social-impact bond structure that we put in place."

Not once did the philanthrocapitalists question why black youths failed to stay out of prison. Not once did they ponder whether crushing poverty, police brutality, the racist war on drugs, stop and frisk policies and other forms of racial profiling contribute to the prison recidivism rate. Never once did they condemn the culture of cruelty at Rikers itself. All they care about is making money and "unlocking the potential" of capital as more and more people are locked up in the increasingly privatized American prison system.

As I have written about before, President Obama's own "Brothers Keeper" scheme is also modeled upon the social impact bond structure. When he first announced his initiative, he pointed to Bloomberg/Goldman's Rikers Island program as one of his inspirations.  Under Obama's version, corporations will be given government money (tax breaks) in order to study social problems and "invest" in black youths, while the black youths themselves will not receive any direct cash aid at all. It was under the 90s Neoliberal Bill and Hillary Clinton regime, after all, that direct cash aid for the poor was triangulated right out of existence. And then came their own personal version of Social Impact on Steroids, aka the Clinton Foundation. There is so much money in poverty. It's a most ingenious paradox.

A few experts, though, have questioned the ethics of using social impact bonds as a means of profiting from social ills while purporting to cure them. From an August 2012 New York Times article on the Rikers scheme: 

“I’m not saying that the market is evil,” said Mark Rosenman, a professor emeritus at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, “but I am saying when we get into a situation where we are encouraging investment in order to generate private profit as a substitute for government responsibility, we’re making a big mistake.”

Rosenman is too kind. The market is indeed evil when it's unregulated. It's not that mistakes are being made, it's that crimes are being committed... by the wealthy investor class and the political system that enables it.

You Cruise, You Schmooze

How would you like to be a passenger on an Impact Cruise Ship run by the dicey Carnival line? 

No, it isn't a thrill-ride replica of the Costa Concordia experience or even a remake of the Poseidon Adventure. It's a whole new way of vacationing --  the neoliberal, philanthrocapitalist way. It's the Peace Corps for people who are too busy or too important to spend two whole years of their lives actually living and working in the harsh conditions of a third world country.

Starting next year, and for only a couple thousand bucks, give or take, and only one week out of your busy schedule, you can become a "Voluntourist" to the Dominican Republic or Cuba, where residents are said to be waiting with bated breath for the great American Barging-In.

 The whole idea behind impact cruising is to make you feel better about your privileged, selfish life.  Now you, too, can be Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Bono, and Chelsea Clinton all rolled into one self-satisfied do-gooder. And the beauty of it is that you need never even unpack for your impacting experience. Hedonism will still prevail. You will still gorge on multi-course Carnival meals served by The Help. You will still sleep the sleep of the just in a soft, clean, oversized bed in your exquisitely appointed, ocean view Carnival state room. You will still be entitled to spa treatments and laps in the onboard pool. You will spend more time floating (four days) with like-minded tourists than you will engaging with actual poor people on actual land (three days.)

The SS Impact: Neoliberal Ship of Peace

Needless to say, the New York Times travel desk is on it:

The cruises to Cuba, approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Treasury Department, fall under the rules that allow licensed travel companies to bring in visitors who will spend their time doing activities that support the Cuban people. Carnival is in talks with Cuban officials to finalize the deal, the company said in a release.

“We know there is strong demand from travelers who want to immerse themselves in Cuban culture, so this is a historic opportunity for us to enable more people to experience Cuban society,” said Arnold Donald, president and chief executive of the Carnival Corporation.

In other words, altruism must be seen to trump co-optation and plunder -- at least for now. The Times doesn't tell us exactly what activities the American voluntourists will be doing to "support" the  Cuban people. But I suppose if they were honest and said the support will involve throwing a few American dollars at people living in poverty while scoping out the distressed real estate landscape for future development, it might look a bit too crass. Naturally, voluntourists will not be required to sign a pledge attesting to their well-intentioned bona fides. Donald Trump himself could theoretically strut up the gangway claiming to be a missionary and nobody would throw him overboard.

Maybe Carnival's "fathom" website itself can give us a few more clues about what the "activities" of American voluntourists might be. Then again, maybe not.

According to the online brochure, voluntourists will spend much of their impactful cruising time in a crash course of Spanish in order to teach English to the Spanish-speaking. While the Cuban agenda still remains shrouded in mystery (you will somehow "immerse" yourself in their culture and thereby magically improve their world) the Dominican experience centers around  harvesting cacao with the locals. Otherwise, it is an a la carte menu of philanthropportunism, the cost of each extra impact payable by you, the voluntourist. So don't leave home without a valid credit card.

But included at no extra charge in the Voyage Out:

During your outward journey, workshops and other on-board activities will help prepare you for your impact experience and help you learn how to apply your skills and talents in the most effective way. For example, you could learn about water shortages in developing countries and put yourself in the role of an aid worker to improve access to clean water. When it’s time to begin your chosen impact activity in earnest, this kind of on-board training will enable you to hit the ground running.

In other words, although you will not become an actual career aid worker, you will get to play one for three days. The schmooze-cruise will get you all fired up and ready to go... just like the politician who once played Community Organizer in order to prepare the way to his own glorious, impactful, and very rewarding career.

Carnival's "fathom" voluntourism subsidiary is the brainchild of one Tara Russell, self-proclaimed "social entrepreneur" and  alumna of such multinationals as Nike, General Motors and Intel. (I am dying to know how she impacted the 40 cents-per-hour  lives of the Vietnamese children making $100 sneakers for rich Americans who take cruises, but that's a story for another day.) A Davos woman, Russell last year was invited by the World Economic Forum to become the founding curator of something called the Global Shapers Community.

More like Global Shape-Shifters, if you ask me. Because it has been only a plutocratic hop, skip and jump to improve the tattered image of Carnival by turning one of their smaller, less popular cruise ships (the Adonia) into a floating neoliberal Peace Corps. Carnival's venture has the value-added, admitted goal of attracting liberal millennials and baby boomers with disposable incomes back into the cruising lifestyle -- which has taken quite the impactful economic hit in recent years, what with on-board crime, food poisonings and various other disease outbreaks, and massive infrastructure failures resulting in near disasters and backed up sewage. You can pretty much rest assured that the riffraff will not be lining up to become voluntourists. The Adonia doesn't even have a casino or a stage show.

So what better way to alleviate your own guilt and contribute to the bottom line of a great multinational corporation fallen upon public relations hard times than becoming a voluntourist?

Life is a carnival. Life is a cabaret, my friend.  As Tara Russell explains, as she invites you to send in your $600 deposit right now:

Like you, I want life abundant – I want my and your heart and soul to sing.  I believe that humans deserve the opportunity to flourish, and I believe that when we unleash our personal gifts, talents, and passion in a way that serves the needs of others, we achieve a beautiful sweet spot and flow.
I’m addicted to this incredible high of finding energy in serving the needs of others – and I invite you to join our fathom journey and discover how to unleash your greatness in simple, meaningful ways that bring you joy and delight every day.
You can’t change the world in seven days, and we don’t expect to – but we do believe that our holistic impact experiences before, during and after the trips, combined with our long-term systematic approach to holistic transformation in our partner communities will allow for impact on a scale the world has never seen.  We know the journey will be as meaningful for our travelers as it will be for the places we visit.

Even God didn't change the world in seven days. He only made it in seven days. And if God can make it, you can make it. That, fellow travelers in neoliberalism, is the American way.Never do for free out of the goodness of your heart. Do unto others while also paying a rent-seeking corporation its own tribute in the process.

"We believe in building bridges, relationships, and strong teams that have the talent and focus necessary to deliver results. We believe in managing well. We believe in transparency. And we believe in impact – impact on behalf of the American people we serve". --- HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell (alumna  of Walmart, the Gates Foundation, Robert Rubin's Glass-Steagall-killing Citigroup Treasury Dept. and McKinsey) on the gospel of free-market Neoliberalism.

Oxi To Austerity

That's Greek for the unmistakable overwhelming No to the banking cartel currently trampling all over democracy, all over the world, one nasty grind of the hyper-capitalistic heel at a time.

 The Greeks not only stood up for themselves, they just did the whole rest of the world a giant favor, too. They exercised some good, old-fashioned, bottom-up democracy. They spoke out against a group of very powerful, very sadistic people who thought that they could exercise their will through the instillation of fear and mass suffering. The pluto-sadists still do think that, but at least they've been rendered a little more uncomfortable as they bask in their pathology.

The victorious Greek referendum makes me wish that we had a parliamentary system of government right here in the Birthplace of Freedom for the Propertied Classes. How awesome it would be, for example, if the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its evil offshoots were subject to a popular referendum instead of a quickie  ratification by a corrupt Congress! How democratically old-fashioned if we could all vote "no confidence" the next time the clowns manufacture their own debt crisis as an excuse to cut food stamps and unemployment insurance! Those aristocratic Founding Fathers that some of us celebrated yesterday knew exactly what they were doing when they invented "representative" democracy.

It's still too early to tell if democracy will prevail in Greece, the birthplace of true, bottom-up democracy. After all, remember when some naifs were silly enough to predict that such corrupt regimes as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup had gasped their greedy last back in 2008 when they were caught red-handed, wrecking the global economy?

 And then, spitting in the face of all that is decent and moral and humane, these same entities and their various subsidiaries were allowed to rise up again, bigger and more gruesomely powerful than ever before? 

Never satiated, the hedge fund operators, the private equity moguls, the too big to fail banks, the oligarchs, the rentier and investor class of billionaires --  are on a rampage, bleeding their victims dry before grinding them into pulp.

The financial terrorism now being practiced on Greece is nothing new. It got its start decades ago with the "Washington Consensus" method of plundering Latin American countries under the guise of "aid" provided by the International Monetary Fund (part of the troika imposing austerity on Greece). In exchange for loans to strapped or corrupt governments, the banksters  demanded and got "fiscal discipline" to curb budget deficits; a reduction in public expenditures; deregulation of the finance sector and the economy, with interest rates determined by "the market"; trade deals that favored American multinationals over local companies and sovereign governments; promotion of direct foreign "investment" with an ironclad guarantee of property rights for corporations.

This Washington Consensus (thought to have been discredited when Argentina told it to eff off) has been duly exported to the rest of the world, which of course now also includes such Wall Street-devastated All-American cities as Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore. Can you imagine if there were a Greek-style referendum in which people could just say "Oxi" to school closings and water privatization?

Legend has it that vampires die when they're exposed to the light. Dracula Neoliberalus has become so monstrous and so strong that it probably will require multiple exposures to light (and a banshee wail of populist outrage) before finally crumbling.

It needs multiple stakes of truth through its corrupt heart. It's become so used to getting its own way, sucking up bailouts and corporate welfare with such bloodthirsty abandon that it thinks it is invincible. And it very well might be.

So there is much work to be done. The first task is to debunk the propaganda which dictates that the world is one vast open-air marketplace devoid of national legislatures and judiciaries and governments for the greater good of all. Trickle-down prosperity is a lie that won't easily die. Repeat early, repeat often: the production and sale of goods is not the heart of civilization. People are.

Rather than pursuing the public good, neoliberalism employs technocrats (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, etc.) who treat individual governments as businesses ripe for the plucking.  They treat people as consumer-workers who must pay the price whenever the bankers and the bosses (whose greed has made them terminally stupid) make their inevitable bad deals and bad choices.

Engaged, caring citizens are anathema to Neoliberalism. We must refuse the directive to become "entrepreneurs" acting in our own self-interest, clawing our individual ways up ladders of opportunity.

The banksters running the world have three distinct Washington Consensus-spawned policies that perpetuate their reign of error and terror: deregulation, corporatization via "free trade," and privatization of public goods and services. Social safety nets are slashed in favor of welfare-to-work schemes paying subsistence wages. Interest rates are kept artificially low to keep the non-existent inflation "bogeyman" in check. Offshore tax havens sheltering trillions of dollars in hoarded wealth are set up. All of this is done with the cooperation of "think tanks" and a media-political conglomerate that broadcasts the neoliberal agenda in forms designed to alternately tease, appease and enrage a victimized, exhausted public. (Things will get better someday.... but here's some health insurance for a lucky few to "consume".... we must close our borders to "those" people, but not ever to profits....  meanwhile,watch TV,  make friends on Facebook, drink, take brand-name prescription drugs at a 1000% markup.)

The Greeks said Oxi. Not only do they deserve debt relief, we owe them a huge debt of our gratitude. 

Democracy is catching on. Plutocracy is trembling in Dracula's Castle.

Here, for example, is what happened at a Brussels conference promoting the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership:

Links/Open Thread (Neoliberal Edition)

"Graft is a byword in American life today. It is law where no other law is obeyed. It is underminding the country. Virtue, honor, truth and the law have all vanished from our life."  -- Convicted mobster Al Capone, Liberty Magazine interview, Oct. 17, 1931.

 ***

Puerto Rico needs debt relief (New York Times): A bill allowing the territory's government to restructure its debt in bankruptcy court is currently before Congress, "but has not advanced due to the opposition of some hedge funds." (also see my previous post.)

***

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson claims that he has lost millions of dollars betting on the successful failure of both Greece and Puerto Rico. (Fortune) He bet big-time on hopes that thirsty jobless Athens residents would be forced to pay for privatized water, and it just didn't happen.  One of his investment arms owns a whopping one-third of all bank deposits in Greece. You know -- the recycled bailout money from the Troika washing machine. The banks are closed and on the brink of insolvency. Last year, he bought over a billion dollars' worth of tax-exempt Puerto Rican bonds, which the government now says it can't pay back. Anybody want to bet on whether Congress sides with millions of struggling people over John Paulson? Actually, it is a safe bet that the big banks are already shorting their customers and hedging their bets on Grexit and regime change, and the downfall of Puerto Rico into a failed colonial state. Heads they win, tails you lose.

***

Chelsea Clinton's hedge fund manager husband also has lost "a ton of money" betting on a Greek "recovery" from more austerity via an abject submission by the Syriza government to the Troika finance capital vampires. ( Business Insider.) But Chelsea is doing her plucky best to stem the bleeding, having recently charged $65,000 for a ten-minute speech, a short Q&A and photo-ops at a publicly-funded university. What a trouper for the neoliberal cause. She didn't even personally pocket her fee, instead tossing the cash into the churning money laundry spin cycle of her family's "charity" -- for altruistic tax-avoidance purposes.

***

Not to be outdone by the global banking mafia's assaults on Greece and Puerto Rico, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced more than 1400 new teacher layoffs and $200 million in public education cuts to pay for tax breaks for the hyper-rich as well as for the Wall Street looting of their pension fund. Teachers, students and parents planned a mass rally in front of City Hall today to demand such alternatives as a luxury tax, financial transaction tax, and tax penalties for employers who pay workers so little that they must go on public assistance. Reaction by the teachers' union to Mayor One Percent's austerity announcement is here:

Not to be outdone by his pal Rahm, President Obama is going to bat for Big Phat Pharma in an even more rapacious way than we knew. According to another draft document from Wikileaks, drug companies stand to squeeze trillions more dollars from the citizens and taxpayers of the 12 nations affected by the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If the agreement is ratified as the draft now stands, manufacturers of cheaper generics would be squeezed out of existence in those countries (including the US, which already pays through the nose for medicines.) Out-of-pocket payments from Medicaid and Medicare subscribers would also be jacked up if the deal goes through. There is absolutely no distance between what the predatory drug manufacturers want, and what the Obama administration is willing to give them, according to a spokesman from Doctors Without Borders.

Obama does have a self-glorifying library shrine to build on public property in cash-strapped Chicago, after all.

Neoliberals Without Mercy

If you're a Puerto Rican resident suffering through that territory's current manufactured, Greece-like debt crisis, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has some friendly advice for you:

 Move.

In a blog-post that reads like it came straight from the devil's workshop of the conservative Heritage Foundation, Krugman says:

 And outmigration need not be such a terrible thing. There is much discussion of what’s wrong with Puerto Rico, but maybe we should, at least some of the time, just think of Puerto Rico as an ordinary region of the U.S.; at any given time, we expect some regions to be in relative and maybe even absolute decline, as the winds of technology and global trade shift. I wonder, in particular, whether Puerto Rico is suffering from the forces that seem to be leading to a general shortening of logistical chains and the “reshoring” of manufacturing to advanced economies.

Sure, just pack up and leave and travel more than a thousand miles by sea or by air with all your household possessions in a suitcase or trunk, in a pleasure-quest to that great job awaiting you on the mainland. Leave behind your family, your friends, your language, and your culture. 

Krugman doesn't even suggest, like odious American Enterprise Institute hack Michael Strain, that this not-terrible outmigration be subsidized by the government. And, as one commenter astutely replied to this multimillionaire columnist: "Moving from Puerto Rico to the mainland would be significantly harder than relocating from Princeton to New York City."

(Krugman recently devoted a couple of posts to the travails of packing up his papers and relocating from Princeton to the Big Apple. Outmigration must be a wonderful thing if you're rich and famous and can afford to hire a moving van.)

Krugman treats globalization and corporatism not as deliberate, sadistic man-made policies, but as natural winds and shifts. It's simply "logistics" that causes the detritus of humanity to drown while their livelihoods are passive-aggressively "reshored." Too bad Puerto Ricans don't live in an "advanced" economy like the rest of us, huh?

Among all the other things "wrong with Puerto Rico," Krugman also has a problem with its geography. It's inconveniently located right in the middle of the friggin' ocean! There aren't enough beaches. There is too much "inland" and too many people, who don't possess enough skills.  How can this crisis be, when even Appalachian rednecks from West Virginia know enough to move when the mines shut down! Why can't the Latinos pick up and leave when Big Pharma closes down its drug factories for the greener pastures of India?

Why can't Puerto Rican human capital get with the globalization program like the rest of the underclass?

What Krugman neglects to mention is that Puerto Ricans lack citizenship status, they're only represented by one non-voting Congress critter in the lower House, and are barred from voting in presidential elections. But he absolutely remembers to mention that "out-migrants" are usually young people, leaving the left-behind old folks depending on the government safety net.

Really. You have to read his post. It is pure Heritage Foundation, whence also came the Affordable Care Act. I'm even beginning to suspect that David Brooks might have hacked into Krugman's account in order to troll "those people."

I haven't been to the island in decades (my late husband had and still has family there) but three things stood out then: a tiny pocket of extreme wealth ( the beachfront condos were like fortresses, all their windows barred), a stunning amount of poverty, and a very obvious American military presence, particularly in the glitzy, touristy areas. That military presence is not so evident nowadays; thus the willingness of the neoliberal elites to give a giant middle finger to Puerto Rico. It's outlived its plunder possibilities. Cuba is no longer a looming Communist menace. The US Imperium has "pivoted" to the Middle East, Eastern Europe/Russia and China/Asia by encircling those chunks of real estate with ever more military bases.

Here's my published comment to The Conscience of a Liberal, actually in response to a reader named Nancy, who also seemed pretty miffed at Krugman.  (be sure to read the other comments, a few of which are critical):

I found the dismissive tone of this post offensive as well. It's indicative of the attitude of a super-power whose colonial outpost has outlived its usefulness for plunder and military "defense."

That Puerto Rico is now in such dire economic straits is no accident. This is a direct result of its diminished territorial status. But the elites will blame the unemployed, the retired, the old, the young, the geographical location (all of a sudden it's as inaccessible as Mars!), the lack of skills. It's the neoliberal way.

Residents of Puerto Rico might be citizens, but they are second class citizens. Despite being "represented" (in only the lower house of Congress) and invited to national political conventions, they are not allowed to vote in actual presidential elections. They are, however, military fodder. Puerto Rico is home to 10,000 veterans of the American armed forces.

After years of despoiling the island of Vieques with their bombs, the powerful US Navy was finally blockaded from their weapons testing grounds by both permanent residents and activists from the mainland. (Another reason that Big Uncle Sam is now thumbing his nose?) That was in 2003. The island, accessible from Puerto Rico proper by both ferry and plane, is now a growing (and comparatively affordable) tourist destination and has some of the top-rated beaches in the Caribbean. Its bioluminescent bay is one of the most famous and beautiful in the world.

But as the Daily News' Juan Gonzales has written, the American Imperium has left behind an unknown number of unexploded bombs in the waters off the island.

 Half the people of Vieques still live in poverty. The island has the highest cancer rate of any municipality in Puerto Rico. Studies by Puerto Rican scientists have found 34% of residents with toxic levels of mercury, 55% contaminated with lead, and 69% with arsenic.

Paul Krugman would probably tell them to move to New Jersey. Barack Obama is just telling them to drop dead.

The good news? Not that you'd know it if you get all your news and views from the New York Times, but there have been absolutely massive protests against austerity in Puerto Rico, and they've been going on for months. It seems that young people would prefer not to "outmigrate," after all. They'd much rather stay, and fight.

 

Kinder, Gentler Points of Blight

David Brooks got the 3 a.m. phone call from the Board of Overlords:

Culture wars and right-wing wedge issues are Out. Diversity and loving-kindness are In. Otherwise, Ted Cruz might win the nomination and lose to Hillary Clinton. So enough already with the bigotry and the religious paranoia. Up with Obama-style centrism (social liberalism balanced with economic conservatism.)

Taking a page from the postmodern GOP playbook (see my previous post) Brooks told the reactionary Christian Coalition wing of the party to stuff it for awhile, and play the part of Obama-style community organizers. It worked once for a Democratic corporatist, so why shouldn't it work for a Republican corporatist too?

Of course, this synopsis is only the crass political subtext of today's New York Times column from the Pundit to the Plutes. Telling moralizers like his colleague Ross Douthat to stop moralizing over the scourge of birth control and gay marriage, Brooks moralized:

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

I am to the left of the people I have been describing on almost all of these social issues. But I hope they regard me as a friend and admirer. And from that vantage point, I would just ask them to consider a change in course.

Otherwise, rich Republican politicians might lose a few, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio might plummet from 350:1 to 348:1 under a Clinton restoration, and there might not be any more Scalia clones to amuse us to death once the original disappears into a puddle of bile. So think before you hate, haters!  Here's the Brooksian formula as dictated by the Wall Street wing of the party:

Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

Notice how Brooks strains to emulate Obama's "We Shall Overcome" eulogy. He even dips into Biblical anaphora -- the rhetorical device often used by the president (and preachers) which repeats the first part of sentences over and over again  -- "those are the people" -- for maximum emotional, moralizing, co-opting impact.

Here is my published Times response to Rev. Mr. Brooks:

 They thought their southern strategy to suck up the votes of poor white people was safe for all eternity, until a mass shooting in a Black church made everybody notice what a hateful symbol the Confederate flag truly is.

Their sustained ACA-repealing dog-whistle, sending the message that Poors and Blacks don't deserve to live, just got a big wad of gum stuck in it, courtesy of the Court.

And marriage equality becoming the law of the land in all 50 states? It's been a perfect trifecta of loss for the GOP.

So what to do, now that the rebel yell is losing its oomph? The GOP changes course overnight, resurrecting the stale Poppy Bush-era propaganda of "compassionate conservatism" This column is a very cute way of both endorsing Jeb! and repudiating such losers as Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee. There's an election to be won, bloodthirsty Neocons waiting to claw their way back into power, fear to be struck into the hearts of America in the name of "national security."

While reciting his Christian litany, Brooks is very careful to emphasize that love for the poor will be purely voluntary. The hyper-rich will not be taxed as they "tithe and nurture" on their own private terms. Opportunity will still abound for pathologizing poor people as conservatives dellcately venture into "underprivileged areas" for daytime photo-ops, and then slash the social safety net to ribbons under cover of darkness.

Brooks's litany of hypocrisy is the smell of GOP desperation in the morning.