Snake Oil and Water

It's enough to make grown men (and women) cry -- with gleeful satisfaction.


First, we have a group of gazillionaire oil barons weeping to the Senate Finance Committee today that taking away their tax subsidies will just cut that whole "Drill Baby Drill" mantra off at the knees.  USA won't coddle them any more?  Then they'll just leave and find a new country to drill into.  All those windfall profits go toward investing in new sources of oil for the greater good, by golly!


And then there are the 42 Republican House freshmen who are sorely regretting their adventures in Mediscare and are begging -- begging! -- President Obama to make the Democrats stop rubbing it in already.  They wrote him a letter whining that "as the freshman class, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and fulfill the mandate set by the people to strengthen our country for future generations — not continue the petty politics we have seen in the past, which only creates an environment of stalemate."


They want us to forget they voted for Young Serious Gun Paul Ryan's plan to kill Medicare by transforming it into a junk insurance voucher system for seniors.  They want us to forget the wrath of their constituents at Town Halls.  They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.


NY Rep Nan Hayworth of affluent Westchester County, NY was among the freshman Tea Partiers decrying the nasty tone of the Democrats at a news conference Wednesday. She complained that the President was "playing politics" with entitlement reform.  As an ophthalmologist who gave up zapping  cataracts and had no trouble accepting a fortune in Medicare payments for same, she does the crocodile tears act supremely well.  And that familiar Republican facial expression that falls somewhere between a pout and a snarl...what elitists call a moue -- where have we seen that before?

Update: Victim of Breitbart Hoax Gets His Teaching Job Back

Ralph Giljum, the University of Missouri labor professor who was summarily dismissed by his school after professional provocateur Andrew Breitbart smeared him in a doctored video, has been invited back. Public pressure got the University to change its mind.  But the professor's union, while acknowledging that Giljum was victimized, is still not fighting back against Breitbart, or even mounting a vigorous defense. To the contrary, they forced Giljum to resign from the AFL-CIO to placate the Republicans of the Show-Me State.

While the Missouri AFL-CIO claims to be "incensed that we have scoundrels who go out and character-assassinate good people in our community" any further statement beyond denying that trade unions endorse violence would only "fan the flames" of anti-union sentiment, according to union official Herb Johnson.  And despite his characterization of Giljum as“a great trade unionist” he was pressured to resign -- just days before he was due to retire anyway. 

The union made haste, however, to issue a statement that it did not advocate violence, as Breitbart's hatchet job made it appear the teacher was doing. 

The video, which is no longer available because it was posted without permission of the university, was so clumsily and choppily edited that it showed Giljum magically wearing different shirts during the same purported lecture. Despite the obvious hoax, University officials announced they would not be inviting him to teach next semester.  

 But then came the public blowback. The United Association of Labor Education  led the charge with a petition and letter. University faculty and students launched an email campaign in Giljum's behalf, and the university quickly backed down.

 UALE member Steven Ashby of the University of Illinois said, “It’s no coincidence this attack comes in the wake of the biggest workers’ upsurge in 30 years, in Wisconsin.”

And Breitbart has made it no secret that he is launching a fullscale attack against teachers and unions. It's all part of the corrupt Republican plan to demonize public sector workers, destroy collective bargaining and turn American education into a dumbed-down, for-profit enterprise for sale to the highest bidder.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear-Mongering

I was struck last night by the difference between the lead stories on MSNBC and CNN in their 8 p.m. news slots. The first 15 minutes of the liberal-leaning Lawrence O'Donnell show were devoted to the continued Assassination Celebration and the Obama bump. Over on (centrist? conservative?) CNN, Eliot Spitzer was giving full coverage to John Boehner's insane talk to the Economic Club of Wall Streeters in which he threatened no debt ceiling agreement unless tax increases are off the table. To his credit, O'Donnell did mention the Boehner rant later in his newscast, once he got the Obama as War Hero vs. The Bush Torture Failures out of the way.  MSNBC, you will recall, is owned by G.E., whose CEO is the Obama Jobs Czar, who has continued to ship more of those jobs overseas and all the while avoids paying taxes.


In light of nine percent official unemployment and as much as 25 percent defacto unemployment, the Democrats have deflected attention away from our domestic ills and embraced the Politics of Fear as their own.  Hope and change didn't work out all that well, so they have co-opted the tried and true panic button of the right to make fear of terror trump fear of job loss, fear of going hungry because of crazily rising food prices, fear of going homeless because of the continued foreclosure crisis and scandal, fear of getting sick because that much vaunted health care reform has somehow lost its luster now that more of us are uninsured and underinsured and jobless and broke than ever before.


They are milking the Bin Laden assassination for all it's worth.  It took a week of suspense for the president to give his exclusive interview to Sixty Minutes.  Dribs and drabs and thrilling details emerge daily.  Today The New York Times is breathlessly reporting that we almost got into a war with Pakistan over it!  We were ready to fight our way out, guns blazing.


Meanwhile, the terror level has risen to a new high and our politicians have sunk to a new low in the scuzzy art of fear-mongering.  Take my own senior senator from the State of New York, Mr. "I never met a camera I didn't like" Chuck Schumer, for example. Now he wants to establish a "no ride" passenger list for trains, since some of the senile ramblings of Osama contained explosive trainspotting fantasies.  So, Schumer apparently believes that terrorists who blow up trains via cell phone remote control or do it the old fashioned way and boobytrap the tracks, will then get on those very same trains to take a leisurely ride.

Conductor Chuck: "Papers Please!"

Actually, he doesn't really believe that.  He is not a stupid man. But he and his wealthy Wall Street buddies want to make us so afraid of "the Other" that we forget all about how Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are still robbing us blind, and that none of the real terrorists -- the ones who gamble away the wealth of a nation with impunity -- get any unwanted attention.  The Democrats are using the very same tactics perfected by the Republicans.  Why not just call a spade a spade and rename Homeland Security The Ministry of Fear?  Because that's what it is.  Our bloated security state does nothing to keep us safe, as has been well documented in the cases of the Underpants and Times Square bombers.  It's usually regular citizens who thwart the bad guys.  The so-called terrorists our spy agencies actually "catch" are usually the victims of FBI provocateurship.


The Fear Crusade in the wake of the assassination appears to be working.  In New York City yesterday, the bomb squad blew out the windows of a van left idling outside a hospital because it contained some suspicious looking foam tubes.  It turned out the driver was a windshield installer who had rushed into the emergency room for treatment of a severe asthma attack, and the tubes were just tools of his trade.


On a New York to California flight Sunday, a Yemeni man pounding on the doors of the plane's cockpit was tackled to the ground by passengers.  It turned out he thought he was banging on the restroom door because he had to go, really bad.  In another instance, a pilot refused to take off because an Iman headed for a conference on Islamophobia was on board.  The cleric was kicked off the flight.


Of course, these events make for great pictures and must-see TV. The Patriot Act is coming up for review, and it needs some PR to keep moving. Paranoia is a great way to help us all feel connected. Forget about the class war here at home and feel as one with Lloyd Blankfein as we battle the evil menace from over there.



And Now He's a Sank Engine



Winning the Future is Losing Today



Work Work All Week Long, Good Times, Happy Days are Here Again. Yada Yada Yada


President Obama just doesn't seem to get it.  Rather than addressing our current jobs crisis, he is persisting in ignoring it.  Here is what he said during an Indiana factory tour yesterday -- the same day we got news that unemployment has again risen to nine percent: 

"This is the kind of company that will make sure that America remains the most prosperous nation in the world.  See, other countries understand this.  We’re in a competition all around the world, and other countries -- Germany, China, South Korea -- they know that clean energy technology is what is going to help spur job creation and economic growth for years to come.
And that's why we’ve got to make sure that we win that competition.  I don't want the new breakthrough technologies and the new manufacturing taking place in China and India.  I want all those new jobs right here in Indiana, right here in the United States of America, with American workers, American know-how, American ingenuity."

I don't know anybody who actually thinks we are still the most prosperous nation in the world, or that we care about being in some imaginary competition with other countries. This is not the Jobs Olympics. This is not about patriotism or American exceptionalism. Other countries are not looking at the USA and thinking "Holy crap!  They're gaining on us!  Whatever shall we do?"  This president may have succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden, but he has his head in the sand about jobs.  The guy is starting to sound more and more like a G.E. commercial every day.  It's probably no coincidence that one of his former campaign managers, David Plouffe, spent a year and earned over $1 million at G.E. before coming to work at The White House in January.

"This is where the jobs of the future are at," Obama enthused during his factory tour.  That ephemeral, distant future.  Only problem is, people need to eat today.

And he is still buying into the Republican deficit hysteria, still comparing the United States government to a family trying to tighten its belt and live within a budget:

"If we’re going to win the future, we’ve got to cut out the things we don't need, but still make investments in the things that we do.  That's what you do at home.  If somebody in your family loses a job, if your hours get cut, what do you do?  You may stop going out to a restaurant to eat.  You may decide we’re going to put off buying that new furniture or taking that vacation.  But you’re not going to stop fixing the boiler or the hole in the roof.  You’re not going to stop making sure that you got enough money to help your kids go to school.  Those are the things -- that's like your seed corn.  You don't eat that."

Is he kidding?  People who don't have jobs are losing the very roofs over their heads and he talks about still having money to fix a hole in the roof?  You can lose a job, yet still save money to help your kids go to school?  I know he has been living in a bubble the past few years, but this is obviously a very clueless man who thinks every American family has thousands of dollars set aside for that rainy day.

The cognitive dissonance grows ever more jarring. Next thing you know, he'll be appearing in one of those scary-cheesy G.E. Ecomagination line-dancing commercials.  If he really wants a taste of reality, I suggest he hold his next town hall/campaign pit-stop at an unemployment office.  The people in line there are definitely not dancing. Somebody has to get him to change his tune. Maybe a John Philip Sousa March will take him right to Congress for some fist-banging and arm-twisting and soaring oratory for raising taxes on the rich to fund a New Deal-type jobs program.

Work, Work, Work...Countin the Days....For a Good Time

The Senator from Hell

Shelby (center) Tours Tornado-Devastated Neighborhood

Richard Shelby is the 15th richest United States senator from the 9th poorest state in America. According to The Great Class War plan of attack, he's getting richer with every passing year, while his Alabama constituents slide ever deeper into poverty and despair.  The fact that a sizeable chunk of the state was flattened by a series of damaging storms last month will only hasten that slide.

 True Republican senator that he is, Shelby wants to make sure his position in the kleptocracy stays secure by protecting predatory bankers from government oversight.  He wants to make sure that the Alabamans he supposedly represents remain confused by abusive credit card practices and mortgage companies as they struggle to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Even as his state is reeling from death and destruction, Senator Shelby flew back to Washington this week to do his real job: screwing the little guy.

Shelby happened to be in his home state during the Congressional recess  when the deadly tornadoes hit. "This is hell," he proclaimed after touring the debris-ridden streets of Cullan, AL  "This looks like a war zone. I have seen some of the damage in the rest of the state, but this is some of the worst that I have seen."

So he rushed back to Washington and wasting no time, penned an urgent letter to President Obama. He and forty-odd of his closest millionaire Republican senator friends don't want the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to get off the ground.  They admit consumers might need a protection or two, but it should be on their terms and the bankers' terms.  They think one person - the dreaded Elizabeth Warren - would be too powerful and just too damned undemocratic.  They want oversight -- oversight by them.  They want checks and balances. (checks for them, fair and balanced for Fox News). And if they don't get their way, they'll throw a big old filibustering tantrum.

Dave Dayen of Firedoglake thinks Shelby may have just shot himself in the foot with his demands, inadvertently providing the impetus for President Obama to finally, at long last, recess-appoint Warren.  Under the Dodd-Frank Law, the bureau must be made permanent by July.  Time is running out.  Obama himself may have been backed into a corner by the sly Republicans, well aware that Warren enjoys broad popular support and that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is probably just as opposed to the bureau as they are.  They can then either accuse the President of sidestepping the Senate confirmation process, or let him face the wrath of his progressive base if he continues to waffle. But if, as now seems likely, Warren does get in via recess appointment, it'll be ten times as hard to get rid of her next year, no matter who has the majority.  People -- even the constituents of Republicans -- appear to be waking up and not taking any more crap.  When Paul Ryan has to be police-escorted out the back door of a Town Hall, that is reason to rejoice.

But back to Shelby.  He has to at least give the appearance of fighting the Warren appointment and the existence of the whole bureau.  His major campaign contributors are from the financial services sector. Among his top donors have been JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  He lists his net worth at a conservative average of $7.5 million, but as high as $30 million.

And to say that as ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee he has conflicts of interests is to be putting it kindly. Much of his wealth comes from his real estate holdings and their financing.  He came under heavy scrutiny during the 2008 mortgage meltdown when it was revealed that he had financed an apartment complex he owns in Tuscaloosa with a $5 million loan from Freddie Mac, the same government-sponsored mortgage company falling under  his committee's  oversight. He owns a real estate title company valued at $1-$5 million. His earmarks sent federal dollars toward construction of the new $60 million science building at the University of Alabama -- which he humbly named after himself and wife Annette.(It kind of reminds me of Monticello). Tens of millions in additional earmarks have helped the college expand its enrollment.  His apartment complex houses mainly university students. The banks make billions in college loans. And round and round the great world spins.



What Being a Senator Will Buy You



And Now For Something Completely Different.....

Another Doctored Breitbart Video Costs Teacher His Job

Right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart just can't kick his nasty habit of doctoring videos to get good people fired.  This time, he spliced together some footage of a professor of labor studies to make it appear that the teacher was advocating union violence.  And even though the Univerity of Missouri acknowledged the video was a sham, they're getting rid of the professor anyway, out of fear.

Don Giljum co-taught a course called "Labor in Society and Politics" at the St. Louis campus with Judy Ancel, director of UMKC’s Institute for Labor Studies. Spliced footage of their lectures originally appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s conservative Big Government website and showed the instructors talking about industrial sabotage. Giljum is also a former union business manager. The videos, which also appeared on YouTube, were later yanked because they were posted without the permission of the school.

Breitbart is a master of smearing people and organizations he doesn't like through the creative editing of videos.  He did it with voter registration advocacy group ACORN and again with Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod.  Now he's turned his ugliness against teachers and unions.

According to the Labor Notes blog, "In one Breitbart-distorted section, Ancel explains how neoliberal governments use crises to 'shift power dramatically.' This lecture was actually in an entirely different course. But Breitbart inserts the sentence into a lecture on union contract campaigns, so it looks as if Ancel advocates unions causing a crisis."

Another section of the Breitbart video has Giljum saying, 'Labor can’t deny its violent past in response to the repression that was perpetrated on it. It’s hard to say that was not appropriate at that time; it might have been. I don't believe those tactics are going to work today and I think they would do more harm than good."  Breitbart spliced out the words in italics to make his false point.

Chillingly, while acknowledging the video was a fake, neither Giljum's union nor the university is jumping to his defense.  The school has already informed him he won't be rehired next semester. (He was an adjunct professor without tenure).   Herb Johnson, Missouri AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, told Labor Notes he prefers not to “fan the flames” by mounting a too-vigorous defense of Giljum. (The Missouri Legislature is apparently crafting an anti-union "right to work" bill). But as if to make up for its wimpiness, his Board passed a resolution denying that unions condone or endorse violence. And to placate those real and imagined critics, the attorney for the Missouri AFL-CIO, Ron Gladney, called Giljum’s international union and asked officials there to pressure him to resign from his local and international positions.  They did, and Giljum handed in his resignation -- just days before he was scheduled to retire anyway.

This is all so reminiscent of Breitbart's success in getting powerful people to panic and act before investigating.  In the Department of Agriculture's haste to get rid of Shirely Sherrod, they fired her while she was driving to work, lest she show up and embarrass the Obama Administration.  Their apology and chagrin were too little, too late.  In Giljum's case, it's even worse.  His superiors knew Breitbart's video was a hoax, but they buckled anyway.  So Breitbart got his way.  His terrorism did the trick.

Letters of support for Giljum may be sent to University of Missouri-St. Louis Chancellor Thomas F. George, chancellor@umsl.edu, with a copy to Deborah Baldini, Associate Dean for Continuing Education, BaldiniD@msx.umsl.edu.  Ancel asks that letters should ask for Giljum's rehiring in future semesters and "question his forced resignation with no investigation, no due process, and violation of his academic freedom."

Meanwhile, Breitbart continues with impunity on his crusade of hate, lies and videotape.  And he is not even that good at it - his doctored  video actually shows Giljum miraculously changing shirts mid-paragraph!  But the mainstream media loves outrageousness, and even MSNBC invited him on last week to plug his new book.

James Rucker of ColorofChange, which successfully got the Huffington Post to drop Breitbart from prominent display on its site, has complained to MSNBC about Breitbart's appearance on the Dylan Ratigan show last week. Rucker said:

"At ColorOfChange, we had been contemplating a campaign to demand that MSNBC stop treating Breibart as a credible commentator. Breitbart's appearance on Ratigan's show seemed to be another case of a mainstream news organization lending Breitbart legitimacy -- and thousands of ColorOfChange members have taken action in the past to stop this from happening at ABC and Huffington Post. But in this case, when we reached out to Ratigan and MSNBC, they responded quickly and indicated they would not treat Breitbart as legitimate in the future.
We'll be keeping our eyes open to see how MSNBC deals with Breitbart moving forward. But while I still believe it was a mistake for MSNBC to host Breitbart in the first place, Ratigan and his producers deserve credit for being receptive to our concerns, agreeing with our assessment of Breitbart, and committing to treat him as the liar and race-baiter that he is."

MSNBC, while considered the liberal-leaning opposite of Fox, has a penchant for inviting crazy right-wingers on ita shows because they are sitting ducks and require little to no legwork or research to "expose" them.  Lawrence O'Donnell recently hosted Birther Queen Orly Taitz and allowed her to spew her nonsense before self-righteously kicking her off the show.  When will these pundits learn that provocateurs crave negative as well as positive attention?  Giving them a platform in order to humiliate them only perpetuates their martyr complex and ensures their continued survival.