Green Eggs and Flim Flam

To kick off National Education Month, President Obama sent out the missus to read Dr. Seuss to some school children. Then, apparently in conjunction with  quitting cigarettes, Obama also made a public announcement about the end of his Bush-bashing habit.  Not only is he no longer blaming George for leaving him a monumental mess, he is lauding the entire Bush clan as “outstanding public servants”.  He was joined by Jeb, former Florida governor, at a Miami high school this week, to announce some sort of weird hybrid between W’s No Child Left Behind  with his own Race to the Top education initiative, with a little of that nauseating Winning the Future P.R. tripe thrown in for good measure.

Outstanding public servants? Jeb a champion of education reform? While the collective bargaining rights of American teachers are under assault, while Republicans are threatening draconian cuts to education and all kinds of programs benefitting children and their families, the president chooses the Bushes for role models of social integrity?  I knew this guy was a corporatist president, but this was way over the top.

The most infamous Bush moment of education-championing chutzpah came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when matriarch Barbara made a public donation to a charity for victims – with the stipulation that the money only be used for son Neil’s educational software. His product, costing over $3,000 per pupil, conveniently was designed to help prepare students for the endless batteries of No Child Left Behind standardized testing. The NOLA kids had no desks, no classrooms, no teachers, no buildings – but they had some real nifty software!  Later on, the attempt by Jeb and Neil to sneak the software into Florida schools via no-bid contracts was brought to public  light and then apparently abandoned. From an AP story:

"A software company run by Neil Bush, a younger brother of Gov. Jeb Bush, hopes to sell a program to Florida schools that students would use to prepare for the test that is key to the governor's education policy.Texas-based Ignite Inc. makes software being used in a pilot program at an Orlando-area middle school to help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which the governor has championed as a yardstick for school performance.

Ocoee Middle School, which has received millions of dollars in state grants to study ways of lowering costs, is using the software for free.But a company spokeswoman said Saturday that Ignite soon hopes to sell its early American history course to other Florida schools, at a cost of $30 a year per student.

Ignite spokeswoman Louise Thacker denied the company had an unfair advantage because its founder and CEO, Neil Bush, is a brother of Florida's governor. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Education said Friday that Ignite officials had not approached the state about its product. Mike Eason, formerly the top technology official for the department, is a member of an Ignite advisory board.Katie Muniz, a spokeswoman for Jeb Bush, said the governor has never talked with his brother about the business”.(Associated Press, 2007).

It is widely reported that the Bush clan, including George and Laura, Poppy and Barb Sr., as well as investors from some of their oil-rich Middle East potentate friends, have made a profiteering fortune from the No Child Left Behind Act. One of their historic fortune-making accomplishments, it will be remembered, was when GrandPoppy Prescott Bush hid some money for the Nazis, kind of illegally. What a distinguished family, indeed.

But back to the bad blood between Obama and the Bushes. The feud continued all the way  through the bitterly fought 2010 campaign season, with the president sniping that the Republican president had left him a huge stinking mess of a car in a ditch, and Jeb grousing that Obama was like the kid who always complains that the dog ate his homework.  And it got personal. The president, Jeb said, was like “Hubert Humphrey on steroids.” (not a pretty picture).

Then Obama took his shellacking in November and decided to come around to the GOP's way of thinking. Not only did he cut, is cutting and will forever cut, he can never get enough of asking the Republicans just how much more deeply he needs to slash. This, at the Miami photo op:

“So what I’ve done is I’ve called for a five-year freeze on annual domestic spending -– and that freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and it will bring that kind of spending to a lower share of our economy than has been true for the last 50 years.  To achieve those savings, we’ve proposed eliminating more than 200 federal programs.  We’re freezing the salaries of hardworking civil servants for the next two years.  We’re finding ways to save billions of dollars, of tax dollars, by selling, for example, 14,000 government properties that we don’t need anymore.

And that’s just a start.  If we’re serious about tackling our long-run fiscal challenges, we’re going to have to cut excessive spending wherever we find it -– in defense spending, in spending on entitlements, spending through tax breaks and loopholes.  And I’m going to be sitting down with Democrats and Republicans to figure out how we can reduce our deficits.

But I want everybody to understand, our job is not just to cut.  Even as we find ways to cut spending, what we can’t do is cut back on investments like education that will help us create jobs and grow our economy.  (Applause.)  We can’t sacrifice your future.

Think about your family.  Let’s say something tough happens — somebody gets laid off in the family, or you have a medical emergency.  If you’re a family that has to cut back, what do you do?  First thing you do is you give things you don’t need.  So you give up vacations.  Maybe you eat out a little bit less.  Maybe you don’t buy as many new clothes.  Maybe you don’t buy that new car that you thought you needed.  But the last thing you give up on is saving for your child’s college education.  (Applause.)  The last thing you give up on is making sure that your children have the books they need and the computers they need — because you know that’s going to be the key to his or her success in life, over the long term."

Is it me, or was that just a whole truckload of doubletalk?  Cut, slash, starve , get evicted – but save for that college education, by golly!  Don’t eat, but buy the kids their computers (and don’t forget that educational software from you-know-who).

Meanwhile, I hope the president took the time to read the N.Y. Times op-ed today in which Bob Herbert wrote about American students’ abysmal lack of critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Obama’s main education thrust has been to “out-compete and out-educate the rest of the world” in science and technology (and  lead the way in acquisitions of huge, obscene profits presumably). He has mentioned little to nothing about the humanities or the liberal arts in his futuristic Race to the Top agenda. Wall Street has certainly proven you don't have to be a deep thinker to make, or even steal, money. You too can be in the one percent ownership of a third of all the wealth and leave your countrymen behind. It's called innovation, people!

So, the story of Jeb and Obama has a happy Dr. Seuss ending. Jeb has gone from singing “That Bam-I-Am, that Bam-I-Am, I do not like that Bam-I-Am” to taking a gander at Obama’s corporation-loving No Child Left in the Race to the Top of the Future, and chortling:

“Say! I like green eggs and flim flam!

I do!

I like them, Bam-I-Am!”

International Human Rights Agency Calls Out U.S. on Workplace Abuse

A week after the international Human Rights Watch came out with a scathing report on the USA’s abysmal lack of paid family leave policies in the workplace, the Obama Administration unveiled its own report revealing that women are still being paid only about 80 cents to a man’s dollar. And what is our president going to do about it?  Why, consult private corporations of course.  We can be sure these behemoth, tax-dodging, profit-hoarding, overseas job-shipping, male-dominated, hoggish bonus-awarding conglomerates will immediately do the right thing and start paying women what they’re worth.  And not only that – they will hire more women, give them paid maternity leave, set up on-site day care centers and establish remunerated liberal leave policies to care for sick family members.  All because President Obama asks them, nicely, to do the right thing. His assistant, Valerie Jarrett, has announced a partnership with private industry that would “encourage” girls to enter more lucrative professions. Cool.

The Human Rights report story, which was buried in last week’s Times and got little corporate media attention, points out that the United States is an “extreme outlier” when it comes to family-friendly workplace policies. Of 179 other countries in the developed world, the USA  is alone in not providing mandatory, extended paid maternity leave. And contrary to the constant haranguing of our politicians that social safety net programs are the cause of our deficit, the truth is that nations with humane employment laws actually do better economically.  They are competititive and they are productive.  Workers are more rested, they get more vacation time, they work fewer hours and they don’t feel forced to come to work sick.  Oh, and they can afford all this because, because they tax the wealthy at reasonable rates. They don’t make working people suffer so the wealthy can get even richer.  Their top one percent of millionaires and billionaires don’t hold a full third of the wealth of an entire nation, like ours does.

The Human Rights Watch people conclude that as a result of our economic barbarism, we Americans are less healthy and definitely not as happy as our global fellows.  Our children don’t do as well in school and they tend to get into more trouble.  The parents are tired, the kids are bored and neglected. The elderly are shipped off to nursing homes, putting a further unnecessary strain on Medicare and Medicaid. Other countries are more liberal in providing in-home care.

We currently have  unpaid family leave legislation, but that only covers about half the nation’s workforce.  Only 11 percent of companies provide paid leave to care for family members. Although two-thirds of American workers have some paid sick time, only one fifth of the low-income workers do. These benefits are decreasing as the glut of job-seekers increases and employers are less inclined to provide incentives for employees to stay on the job. The workers of America have become mere fodder and are emininently expendable. American life is cheap.

“ We can't afford not to guarantee paid family leave under law – especially in these tough economic times. The US is actually missing out by failing to ensure that all workers have access to paid family leave. Countries that have these programs show productivity gains, reduced turnover costs, and health care savings” said Janet Walsh, deputy womens rights director of HRW. "Millions of US workers - including parents of infants - are harmed by weak or nonexistent laws on paid leave, breastfeeding accommodation, and discrimination against workers with family responsibilities,” she continued. "Workers face grave health, financial, and career repercussions as a result. US employers miss productivity gains and turnover savings that these cost-effective policies generate in other countries".

The 90-page report, "Failing its Families: Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US," is based on interviews with 64 parents across the country. It documents the health and financial impact on American workers of having little or no paid family leave after childbirth or adoption, employer reticence to offer breastfeeding support or flexible schedules, and workplace discrimination against new parents, especially mothers. Parents said that having scarce or no paid leave contributed to delaying babies' immunizations, postpartum depression and other health problems, and caused mothers to give up breastfeeding early. Many who took unpaid leave went into debt and some were forced to seek public assistance. Some women said employer bias against working mothers derailed their careers. Same-sex parents were often denied even unpaid leave.  (from the Human Rights Watch report).

The White House-commissioned-study on women and girls was the first such report since President Kennedy commissioned Eleanor Roosevelt to conduct one in the 1960s.  Of course, back then, women were paid lousily when they had jobs at all.  But income tax levels were still equitable and there was a thriving middle class.  Families could actually survive on one paycheck.

Not so today. Families are barely making ends meet on two, even three or four paychecks, many of them earned at low or no-benefit, low-wage jobs.  Jobs that disappeared at the high end of the wage scale are not coming back.  Wages have not only stagnated  - they are plummeting.  President Obama himself instituted a wage freeze on federal employees which amounts to a virtual five-year wage cut.  States have not only followed suit in cutting wages and eliminating jobs, but they are instituting full-scale attacks on workers’ unions and collective bargaining rights.  Congressional Republicans have gone even further, aggressively attacking every program that benefits women and children.  WIC, which provides funding for mother and child nutrition, and Planned Parenthood, are just two of them. These Republicans actually seem to harbor a deep-seated hatred for families and all vulnerable members of society.  Better that a billionaire can buy another yacht than a hundred innocent children have a roof over their heads and enough to eat.  Even Dickens would be shocked by the barbarism of 21^st century America. Human Rights Watch  watch surely was, and they’ve certainly seen it all – from cholera outbreaks and homelessness in Haiti to the bloody streets of autocratic Libya.  We are officially a banana republic. So much for American exceptionalism.

And what would Eleanor Roosevelt think?  Well, we know she wouldn’t be hanging around the White House at a press conference and photo ops touting a new study about the plight of women and offering no solutions.  We know she would not be approaching the spawn of J.P. Morgan or Andrew Mellon to ask for "suggestions".  I have a feeling she would be camped out at the state capital in Madison to show solidarity with the nurses and teachers and firefighters being scapegoated by the oligarchs.

"You in the unions do not yet represent all of labor. But I hope some day you will, because I believe that it is through strength, through the fact that people who know what people need are working to make this country a better place for all people, that we will help the world to accept our leadership and understand that under our form of government, and through our way of life, we have something to offer them." (Eleanor Roosevelt, ACWA Convention, 1956).

Volunteers of America or Latter Day Serfs?

Wages are stagnating, corporations are sitting on record profits and still not hiring, income disparity is at its most extreme ever, and governments  are crying poverty after giving huge tax breaks to those same money-hoarding corporations.

So what is a jobless person to do?  There is an alternative to wallowing in despair, people. Relieve your boredom and boost your self-esteem by working for free!  Call it what you want – volunteering, unpaid internship, being on the giving or receiving end of mentoring – unpaid labor is here to stay.  Wealthy business owners love it, and it seems there is an unending supply of willing slaves out there, eager for some real-life work experience and on the job training. And just think of your noble, selfless contribution to somebody else’s bank account!  It’s called vicarious satisfaction. And if you’re a conservative, it’s called patriotism, because you do not belong to a union, and the FICA Social Security contribution never raises its ugly socialist head.

Today’s New York Times has an article about a financially strapped California town using volunteers to perform routine police work, since it can no longer afford to pay a full department of trained cops. Unpaid workers range from retirees working the phones to young millennials learning the ropes in hopes of getting some remunerated gig sometime in the future.  This is taking the “neighborhood watch” program to a whole new level. As a volunteer, you can now dust for fingerprints and even use the law enforcement computer data base to track down DMV records (and spy on your neighbors).  The more I think about it, though, the more this whole set-up sounds a little creepy.  I don’t think I would want some unemployed Law and Order SVU junkie showing up at my house to investigate a burglary. Police work by its very nature attracts a lot of psychos and control freaks too, which is why big departments like the NYPD so rigorously screen applicants   You have to be psychologically squeaky clean before  they let you anywhere near a uniform and a badge. (and a gun).

And then there’s the huge world of unpaid bloggers, who used to be called free-lance writers. This category of unremunerated work got a lot of press recently when The Huffington Post was sold to AOL for mega-bucks.  The site, which relies heavily on recycled news and the aforementioned bloggers, did and still does get its revenue from computer-generated ads. Arianna Huffington, the founder, has been called upon to share her windfall with all her poor contributors by way of back pay and salaried positions. So far, that is not happening. Perhaps the most egregious example of a Huffington Post journalist who never got paid is Mayhill Fowler, who broke the story of Obama’s infamous “they cling to their guns and religion” remarks at a presidential campaign fund-raiser.  She didn’t get paid for that story, nor was she ever paid for the two years she continued to slog and blog for the millionairess Arianna, author of the best-seller “Third World America”.  I hadn’t known that Fowler was a “volunteer” or that Arianna apparently had kept her stringer stringing along all that time. I used to think Huffington was a witty, charming, albeit publicity-hungry progressive. I no longer think that way. Until she puts her money where her mouth is, I will avoid her like the plague.  The last time I checked in at the HuffPo, Arianna was blogging about (and paying herself for)  a tweetfest she had with Bill Maher at the Vanity Fair Oscar party.  The woman is a name-dropper as well as  a phony liberal. A few weeks ago, she let slip that  she was reporting from Davos, in between hobnobbing with other members of the rich and famous set, and waxing rhapsodic about the Egyptian demonstrators. So, byebye Huffy, you who hang out with Muffy, Buffy and Biff, and the whole hip, limousine liberal crowd.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I am also something of a willing-victim type, in that I frequently “comment” for free  on New York Times op-eds. As much as the powers that be at the Times don’t admit it, the comments threads are at least as popular as the paid columnists’ contributions, if not more so.  Hits generate mucho ad revenue - for them.  We get paid with “readers’ recommendations” though…. The more “Rs”, the closer to the top of the pile we climb. And then there is the coveted Big Blue Box  (“highlight”) that the 20-something J-School grad moderators award the most “interesting and thoughtful” contributions.  The highlights, in my humble opinion, are about equally divided among truly fine comments, truly off the wall ones (usually the lone right-wing viewpoint out of a hundred by the choir of liberals), and the inane.  One recent comment which the moderators deemed highlight- worthy simply said “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.”

But I digress. Let’s get back to volunteerism.  I recently wrote a post titled “Jackboots for Obama” which told of a recruitment effort by “Organizing for America”. This thinly disguised Obama reelection campaign arm of the Democratic National Committee is seeking “interns” for a summer training program that aims to put “boots on the ground” to get some sort of message out to the neighborhoods of America. It sounds a lot like the Christian right’s movement conservatisim, just with a neo-liberal twist, or fascism-light.  I did some more investigating, and it turns out that in order to be accepted as an intern trainee, you must commit to 40 hours a week with no pay, no transportation costs, and no compensation of any kind. OFA will, however, attempt to find you housing in whatever outpost to which you are assigned, but there’s no guarantee.  Then, once you "graduate" you will continue your unpaid work by recruiting even more unpaid volunteers to knock on the doors of America.

Here’s where it gets dicey. The Department of Labor has very strict rules about unpaid internships. Rule Number One states that in order to qualify, the program must provide a greater benefit to the intern than it does to the employer. In other words, the employer must be able to demonstrate, among other things, that the training/internship will qualify participants for future employment. And that is exactly what OFA is claiming. “Be a community organizer!” the email enthuses. We’ll show you how! Opportunity beckons.

Actually, opportunity does not beckon, not be a long shot. Obama himself just cut funds for such initiatives in his own budget proposal (to show his  conservative street cred) and House Republicans this week eliminated the Corporation for National and Community Service and  an additional $1.4 billion for community organization programs such as Habitat for Humanity, City Year and Americorps.  Talk about job-killing!

Since it is doubtful that Hilda Solis, Obama’s labor secretary, will ever investigate the OFA “internship” program, volunteers who feel they are being, or have been, taken advantage of can always sue for back pay. At least that’s what labor attorneys are saying about similar cases. AOL (new owner of HuffPo) had to settle with its unpaid news blog moderators recently after being sued under federal Wage and Hour statutes. The ball, so to speak, is in the workers’ court.  And there is precedent, incidentally, for presidential campaigns paying its workers.  The John Kerry campaign paid some students $300 a week to work the phones and distribute literature. Of course, that was during the boom years of high employment and before Wall Street crooks tanked the economy.  And Obama did say we must all tighten our belts and share the sacrifice.  That presumably also entails working for him just for the sheer joy of it.  See you in court, Mr. Prez, and I don't mean the basketball court!  Maybe you and Arianna can have a tweetfest while the jury is out.

We're All Being Psy-Opped

Uncle Svengali Wants YOU!

The senators reputed to be targets of a nefarious Psy-Ops campaign by the U.S. Army to get them to fork over more cash and troops for the Afghanistan War for Nothing all insist they were not victimized.  From what we know so far, the plan to use special techniques on the lawmakers was discussed, but never actually carried out. (much like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker "discussed" planting provocateurs amidst union demonstrators without actually doing so.  Uh huh.)


Among the lawmakers allegedly targeted were John McCain (who should know mind games when he sees them, but given his recent trajectory toward the right-wing cliff, that is debatable); his pal and mind-gamer par excellence Joe Lieberman, Democrats Al Franken ( an expert on lies and the lying liars who tell them),  Carl Levin, and Jack Reed.  Lieberman said he couldn't possibly have been brainwashed, because he has been pro-war all along. He deemed the psy-ops report "weird."


Which is so weird, because the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thomson once said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." And Lieberman is definitely weird, pro, and was probably born with a washed-out brain anyway.


One of the commenters on this blog recently asked if I thought President Obama could actually have been "psy-opped" by General David Petraeus into escalating the war.  Since both men are Machiavellians, willing to manipulate others to achieve a desired end (re-election for one, duty/honor/country/legacy for the other) I suppose their hypothetical mutual hypnotic techniques may have cancelled each other out.


The real victims of psy-ops, of course, are us - the great unwashed hoi polloi, viewers of cable news, victims of the military industrial complex, of the plutocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs and corporations.... the list is endless, but the techniques used are basically the same.  Here is how "they" control us (these techniques are all found in the official military Psy-Ops manuals, readily available online - the examples, however, are mine):


Appeal to fear:  example - when the House of Representatives recently failed to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano immediately warned of an imminent terror attack from within our own borders and raised the alert level to red, smokin' hot!


Appeals to authority: cite prominent figures to justify courses of action. Example - all Republicans reference St. Ronald Reagan to justify austerity and attacks on social welfare programs.


Bandwagon approach:  propaganda that fosters a sense of belonging to the same club. The Tea Party was born of a CNBC rant by Rick Santelli after the financial meltdown caused by Wall Street. Right- wing Christian fundamentalism, close cousin to the astroturfing Tea Party, fosters that same feeling of togetherness and ultimate salvation.  Closely related is the "obtain disapproval" approach. To be fair, let's put the onus on Obama for this one. Calling his base "sanctimonious purists" for not going along with his Bush tax cut extensions distances them from the mainstream... and his own supreme self.


Glittering generalities: intensely, emotionally appealing words not matched by supporting information or reason. Take your pick - "Change We Can Believe In".... "Take back our freedoms"..."We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"...."Winning the Future"...."Fair and Balanced."   Ad nauseum, ad absurdum.  Repeat something often enough and it doesn't have to make sense.  Rationalization and deliberate vagueness are also tried and true techniques.


Transfer:  projecting positive or negative qualities on a specific group or person in order to discredit it. Example - the right-wing spawning of "Islamophobia,"  as well as the continuing march of the birthers. An estimated 50 percent of all self-described Republicans now believe Obama is a Muslim, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Fox News repeats the myth, and "establishment" Republicans don't bother condemning it.


Oversimplification:  easy answers to complex problems.  Example - anything Sarah Palin tweets.


Common Man: Politicians use the "plain folks" speech in order to ingratiate themselves with average people. Example - Obama uses a genteel version of ebonics when addressing town halls, but a bland vanilla American accent when speaking to the press. Perhaps the most vile example of over-the-top folksiness is Mike Huckabee.  But they are all guilty of this, every last phony one of them.


Testimonial: name-dropping to give credence to a position.  Example - God. Republicans say the Lord tells them everything, presidents all say "God bless America" and the Pledge of Allegiance had "one nation under God" inserted sneakily into the text during the Cold War.


Scapegoating:  Casting blame on those who don't deserve it to cover the identity of the real culprit.  This is an easy one - public labor unions.  Teachers, cops, firefighters, snow plow operators.... these people are all being blamed for the financial collapse, caused by the banksters and  colluding public officials.  And let's not forget to blame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for exposing embarrassing government secrets, and Michael Hastings for writing articles that don't heap praise on the military.


Virtue words: used by propagandists to produce a positive image when attached to an idea, person or action:  Peace, security,freedom.... the Koch Brothers' "Americans for Prosperity", or child abuser Lloyd Dobsons "Focus on the Family."


Slogans: repetitive, self-perpetuating memes. "Winning the Future" - used by both Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama.  "We bring good things to life" (G.E./Obama). "Job-killing Obamacare" (John Boehner).


I mentioned earlier that both Obama and Petraeus are Machiavellian advancers of their own self-interest.  But the nihilistic Republicans are much, much worse.  They are Svengalians - sadists who rejoice in the infliction of pain and the exercise of raw power, just because they can.

Billionaires Tapped by Obama to Perform in Trickle-Down Theater

The very same  corporate billionaires sitting on nearly two thirds of the nation's wealth, the plutocrats responsible for the biggest wealth disparity in American history, are now being asked to hang out at the White House and solve the unemployment problem.  President Obama convened the group for its first meeting on Thursday.  His opening remarks were an exercise in wishy-washiness - even for him.  Let's face it: his heart was just not in what he was saying to this biggest concentration of living, breathing  mega-wealth in purportedly human form seen in D.C. since....I dunno, last week?  Let his words speak for themselves:

"So my main purpose here today at this first meeting I think is to listen, to get a sense of where all of you think the economy is right now, what kinds of steps we need to be taking.  As I talked about during the State of the Union, we want to remove any barriers and any impediments that are preventing you from success and from growth.  At the same time, we want to put a challenge to America’s businesses that even as we're working with you to streamline regulations, to reform our tax system, to take other steps that have been sitting on the shelf for quite some time under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, we want to make sure that we're also putting a little pressure on you guys to figure out how do we make sure that the economy is working for everybody; how do we make sure that every child out there who’s willing to work hard is going to be able to succeed; how do we make certain that working families across the country are sharing in growing productivity and that we're not simply creating an economy in which one segment of it is doing very well, but the rest of the folks are out there treading water.

So, Jeff, again, I want to thank you for your extraordinary work.  I want to thank all of you for agreeing to participate.
Last point I'll make is that I'm not interested in photo ops and I'm not interested in more meetings.  I've got enough photo ops and enough meetings.  I have a surplus of that.  So I expect this to be a working group in which we are coming up with some concrete deliverables.  I don't think that we have to be trying to hit homeruns every time.  I think if we hit some singles and doubles, if we find some very specific things that this group can help us on and we can work on together, then we can build on that success, and in the aggregate, over time, this will have really made a difference at a critical juncture in our economy."



The Non-Photo Op Photo Op



Members of the White House Council on Jobs and Competiveness:  (comprised of 19 CEOs, two union leaders, two academics, one chief operating officer, one investment banker and one expert in entrepreneurship. Nineteen of the members are men, seven are women.)


Jeffrey Immelt, Chair

• Ursula M. Burns
• Steve Case
• Kenneth I. Chenault
• John Doerr
• Roger W. Ferguson
• Mark T. Gallogly
• Joseph T. Hansen
• Lewis Hay
• Gary Kelly
• Ellen Kullman
• A.G. Lafley
• Eric Lander
• Monica Lozano
• Jim McNerney
• Darlene Miller
• Paul Otellini
• Richard D. Parsons
• Antonio M. Perez
• Penny Pritzker
• Brian Roberts
• Matthew Rose
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Richard Trumka
• Laura D’Andrea Tyson
• Robert Wolf

Across town, the U.S. Conference of Mayors was convening to discuss the unemployment crisis at its own, separate summit - this one addressing work opportunities for low-income people, a demographic apparently not on the CEOs' agenda at the White House.  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who did not speak to the elite panel of CEOs, addressed the mayors' group, as did Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  Obama was a no-show.  I don't think he's had a meeting with, or about, real live unemployed, poverty-stricken people yet.  Correct me if I'm wrong.


**Update -- the mayors have been invited to the White House for a meet and greet with the President tomorrow (Feb. 26).

Jackboots for Obama

I received a vaguely creepy email a few days ago from one Jeremy Bird of Organizing for America, asking me to apply for a summer grassroots training program that "aims to put boots on the ground and help foster a new generation of leaders."

Participants will undergo an "intensive training program", the email cryptically went on, be assigned to a specific community, and recruit volunteers who will be organized "street by street, (to) knock on doors...do what it takes to support the President's agenda." (kind of sounds like the U.S. Military Academy's summer "Beast Barracks"  weeks of hellish, intensive training in the trenches, huh?)

"It takes hard work to build a movement around a cause," Bird added.  He didn't explain what the "cause" was, but we may safely assume it is the continued reign of Barack Obama.

It is baffling that Obama, who has sold himself out to corporations and filled his cabinet with Wall Street insiders, would even dream of again enlisting volunteers to knock on doors for him.  It worked out so well in 2008, because he was able to fool so many people into working the phones, parting with their hard-earned money $25 at a time, and believing his message of change.

This latest outreach to common "folks" smacks of an attempt to resurrect, or reinvent, an Obama Personality Cult.  The tone is decidedly militaristic - be a soldier for the cause, boots on the ground - although there is no mention of wearing a uniform of any kind.

The rewards of the job presumably include the off-chance of an actual meeting, someday, with the president. According to the email:

"Summer organizer Paras Patel had an unforgettable experience - meeting President Obama at an event in Detroit. 'He shook my hand and told me he was proud of me and appreciated the work I was doing.... Meeting the president was definitely a surprise and something I will never forget!' " 

The email concluded, "Successful movements have always been built and grown by ordinary people who take responsibility for organizing their fellow citizens to make their voices heard. We're looking for folks who are willing to work hard to support the President's agenda and lay new groundwork to carry this movement forward for years to come."

(there's that creepy "folks" word again....derived from the German fulka (people's army) and volk, with a German nationalistic context.  Beware of politicians using this word - they use it in an overfamiliar, condescending way to draw you in to their little cozy webs.)

Incidentally, there is no indication of any actual salary involved in marching for Obama, nor are we told why a sitting president is in need of a so-called movement, nor what agenda we are supposed to be supporting.  Are we expected to knock on people's doors and enthuse about the two-year pay freeze for federal employees? Are we supposed to propagandize for the continued spying on ordinary American citizens?  Do they honestly expect volunteers to approach strangers and cheerfully talk about the race for the top, Winning the Future, why we had to extend Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?  Are they willing to supply their unpaid lackeys with Kevlar vests and security details? 

I am afraid the Obama Army will be about as welcome at the front doors of America as the Jehovah's Witnesses. 

The Big Pain

The title alone should have warned us that the NY Times resident conservative, David Brooks, has finally fallen off the deep end. "Make Everybody Hurt" was not your usual Brooksian pseudo-intellectual pablum. It had a new twist: sadism.  Brooks, the outwardly mild-mannered, reasonable Republican, has stripped off the facade of politesse and revealed a wire hanger-wielding harridan just beneath the surface.


The protest movement in Wisconsin has finally caused David to snap. He accuses Democratic state senators of being "extra-legal obstructionists" for fleeing the state to save the teachers' union. And since the old Constitution doesn't go far enough, he is calling for an unwritten Austerity Constitution consisting of a set of practices that will cut, cut and cut again.  Night of the Long Knives, Night of a Thousand Cuts.  He calls the antics of demonstraters "amusingly Orwellian."  Only David Brooks and maybe the Koch Brothers would find Orwell a laugh riot.


Today's Brooks column provoked the usual outrage from readers.  Marie Burns outdid herself in a masterful job of Brooks slicing and dicing, taking each of his thought balloons and poking a fork in it. She accused him of getting his news from the Koch Brothers Gazette and being an insult to the readers of The Times.  "What happened to the David Brooks who wrote all that glowing stuff about the importance of education as a vehicle to American success?" she asks. "Maybe he took a sick day."


Brooks is supremely miffed that the governor has exempted cops and firefighters from the pain, conveniently failing to reveal that Gov. Walker spared them because they were contributors to his campaign. The limiting of torture to just the teaching profession is "unsustainable in the current tide of red ink." Actually,  David's thought processes are as unsustainable as Joan Crawford's red-lipsticked gash of an abusive mouth.


Finding fault with working people and labor unions for the current fiscal crises (manufactured largely by extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy), blaming cops and teachers and firefighters for something the Wall Street banksters did, is very Mommie-Dearish.  Remember the scene from the movie when an intoxicated Joan Crawford wakes her sleeping little daughter to perform the notorious coat hanger beating?  She drags young Christina Crawford into the bathroom, deliberately trashes it, and then accuses the girl of making the mess.  Here's a quotes quiz.  Guess the sources - you get four picks: David Brooks, Joan Crawford, Republican governors, or Regular People:


"Tina, bring me the axe!"


"Clean up this mess!"


"Scrub, scrub, Christina. It's not! This floor is not clean! Look at it!  This floor is not clean! None of it...this floor is not clean. Nothing is clean. This whole place is a mess..."


"Ah....you lost again."


"Ah, nobody said life was fair. I'm bigger and faster and I'll always beat you."


"Why can't you give me the respect I'm entitled to? Why can't you treat me like I would be treated by any stranger on the street?"


"Jesus Christ!"


"Don't @$#% with me, fellas!"


"I'm not gonna play with you anymore. EVER!"


"I...am...not...one...of...your...FANS!!!"




Postscript: there are no right and wrong answers on this test, just as there are no right or wrong answers in this crapfest of ambiguity we call life.