President Svengali

If you believe the piece in today's White House propaganda bullhorn (a/k/a the New York Times), President Obama thinks the reason he lost the Grand Bargain last time around was because he didn't do a good enough job selling "folks" on the idea.

His place in history in danger, Barry will first have a meet-up with a group of corporate fat cats to ask them what they want. He will later hit the road and do what he does best: hold rallies, and campaign, campaign, campaign. He will persuade crowds of adoring fans to pressure Congress to just get along and shovel the bipartishit. I am not kidding. Here is exactly what the Gray Lady is spewing this morning:

And with the election campaign over, the campaign for the Obama legacy begins: Mr. Obama will keep his grass-roots organization in place to “have the president’s back,” as its members like to say, on the budget negotiations and other issues in the second term.

(snip)  

Some of the business leaders the president will meet with on Wednesday are members of the new Fix the Debt coalition, which has raised about $40 million to urge lawmakers and their constituents to support a plan that combines spending cuts with new revenue. That session will follow Mr. Obama’s meeting with labor leaders on Tuesday.

His first trip outside Washington to engage the public will come after Thanksgiving, since Mr. Obama is scheduled to leave next weekend on a diplomatic trip to Asia. Travel plans are still sketchy, partly because his December calendar is full of the traditional holiday parties.
 

This is so sickening, on so many levels. First, his campaign operatives persist in falsely portraying him as a hapless warrior prince. We, his loyal subjects, must give him cover as he battles the dark knights of the Republican Party. But as temporary Emperor, he must first travel to the Far East to extend the American realm, chest-thump at the Chinese, and negotiate trade deals for the creation of more wage slaves. Then, he will sacrifice his precious time in order to mass-hypnotize regular people between rounds of holiday parties to which only the elites are invited. What a busy, busy man. So much to creatively destroy, so little time.

Not that it will do any good, but I did write a response to the White House press release. Here it is:

Let me get this straight. President Obama is going to "rally the public" by first making nice with the deficit scold/corporate crowd.Then he will essentially fall back into endless campaign mode, somehow convincing us that cutting Medicare and Social Security will be good for us.

What's he going to say? "Call Congress and tell them you can make do with a smaller retirement check if Warren Buffett pays a few dollars more in taxes! Tell them it's not fair to ask you to cut back on your medical care without first asking Jamie Dimon to give up the tax loophole on his corporate jet". That will go over very well at public rallies, I'm sure. 

Oh, he'll use more subtle phraseology. Words like "shared sacrifice" and "economic patriotism" and "the wealthy should be asked politely to pay a little more" will flow like honey from his lips.

The president should get a clue, pronto. A lot of people voted for him only because Romney would have been worse. If Barack Obama thinks he's Svengali, and we are a nation of Trilbys who will sing for our own destruction, he'd better think again.
 

Lo-o-o-o-k Into My Eyes, Sh-a-a-a-re the Sacrifice

 
Paul Krugman wrote a follow-up to his last column, warning the president not to listen to deficit hypocrites Erskine Bowles (rumored to replace Tim Geithner) and Alan Simpson. Uh-oh. Too late. Krugman's paper just informed us that Obama will indeed be listening to them, real hard, this coming week. But the good professor in certainly right about the nefarious methods to their madness:

It’s not just the fact that the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far. Recent events have also demonstrated clearly what was already apparent to careful observers: the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net. And letting that happen wouldn’t just be bad policy; it would be a betrayal of the Americans who just re-elected a health-reformer president and voted in some of the most progressive senators ever.

But, same as last time, he stopped just short of mentioning that it was President Obama himself who dreamed up the Bowles-Simpson Catfood Commission. He does not mention that the president himself is taking a leading role in the slashing of the safety net. My response: 

The only thing scarier than appointing Erskine Bowles to replace Timothy Geithner is appointing Geithner to replace himself. BFF to the banksters that he is, he agreed to stay on at least through January to steer us through the fiscal bluff -- oops, "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

Cutting Social Security and Medicare is so unpopular that every politician who ran on a platform of deficit reduction based on the Bowles-Simpson plan was defeated last week. Every single one, that is, except President Obama. He made his wish for a B-S grand bargain a highlight of his acceptance speech. He mentioned it frequently during his campaign. Far from being pressured, he himself is pressuring "the party of regular folks" to join him in the dismantling of the New Deal.

Editorial boards and centrist think tanks and greedy CEOs are in bandwagon echo chamber mode. They're clamoring for safety net cuts right in the middle of this humanitarian crisis of unemployment and plummeting wages. The other looming catastrophe of climate change coupled with crumbling infrastructure is ignored, while B-S trial balloons are soaring through the stratosphere.

Former OMB director Peter Orszag (now a Citigroup vice chairman), just wrote a piece suggesting that Social Security needs to be cut, despite admitting that it has zilch to do with the deficit!

Something is rotten inside the Beltway. Mitt may have lost, but this whole thing is beginning to smell like the Bain method of creative destruction.
 

The other reader comments, for the most part, fall along the lines of "gee, I hope the president gets a backbone and fights back this time." The kool-aid opiate has a long half-life. I reckon. It's going to take some time for them to emerge from the post-election euphoria in order for the full impact of the Barack Smack to register. 

The readers who responded to my comment were right on the mark, though. To view those, scroll down to mine, the seventh comment under "Oldest". Robert Sadin of Brooklyn thinks we need to Occupy Obama. The trick, of course, will be getting past that new law that protects elected officials from having to actually hear the voices of citizen demonstrators. 

President Obama, you remember, signed H.R. 347 last spring to make sure that protesters at the NATO summit in Chicago were neither seen nor heard by his invited guests and global dignitaries.

He doesn't really need the law, though. The few hecklers at his campaign speeches all tend to get drowned out without the help of the Secret Service. As if on mass hypnotic cue, the crowd roars.

"Four more YEARS. Four more YEARS. Four more YEARS."
 

By Populist Request....

Several of you have been asking how the alternative presidential candidates fared in our quadrennial exercise of citizen participation. Here, courtesy of Global Research, are the preliminary unofficial results: (the Florida count wasn't made official until after the release of this chart, so although I corrected the electoral vote count, the popular vote is still off. And anyway, we won't see the final tally until all the absentee and provisional ballots are counted.)

I was surprised to see Roseanne Barr of the Peace and Freedom Party coming out ahead of Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party. Barr, incidentally, shared the ticket with Bush bete noire and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

Candidate (Party)	Electoral votes	States carried	Popular vote	Percent
Obama (Democratic)	332	25+DC	61,304,426	50.51%
Romney (Republican)	206	25	58,230,919	47.98%
Johnson (Libertarian)	0	0	1,178,442	0.97%
Stein (Green)	0	0	414,545	0.34%
Goode (Constitution)	0	0	113,947	0.09%
Barr (Peace and Freedom)	0	0	49,380	0.04%
Anderson (Justice)	0	0	35,490	0.03%
Others	0	0	39,822	0.03%
Total	538	51	121,366,971	100.00%

The Slippery Slope of the Fiscal Cliff

Feel like reading the handwriting on the wall about what your overlords have in store for you this week? Even better, are you up for getting really bold and reading between the lines? Look no further than the homepage of The New York Times on any given day for the latest trial balloons, controlled leaks, fear-mongering and all-purpose propaganda.

Connecting the dots is the way this game is played. There are two stories and one op-ed up today that at first glance may not seem to be related. But they definitely are.

The first headline screams something about lawmakers in Washington scrambling like mad to cut a budget deal in the lame-duck session to avert a national catastrophe quaintly known as the "Fiscal Cliff." This totally manufactured piece of disaster theater was set up after the Debt Ceiling Kabuki a year ago by an unelected senatorial "Supercommittee" which stipulated that unless Congress cuts a budget deal this year, there will be horrible terrible cuts to Pentagon spending and the Bush tax cuts will expire. Sounds pretty good, huh?

Not so fast, citizens. Another headline shrills that one of our unarmed American spy drones was shot at by the Iranians a few miles off their own coast, in a terrifying act of misplaced aggression! So if you thought that going off the fiscal cliff and cutting money off from our eternal war machine is still a good idea, be afraid be very afraid. Feel the terror, and submit before you hurl.... off the cliff.

Even though reasonable people reasonably state that the fiscal cliff is more like a gradual slope and that there is no urgency in letting us slide gently down it for awhile next year until a new,
somewhat more liberal Congress can deal with it at its customary leisure, The Times is having none of this calm rationale. It sees a "rising urgency" in getting a deal cut. That is because Catfood Commissioners Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (the B.S. Duo) are leading an astroturf rampage of Wall Street CEOs in a Bain-like campaign to gut the social safety net in order to enrich themselves. The Times article reads like an unedited press release from a centrist think tank (Third Way comes to mind):

 Senior lawmakers said Thursday that they were moving quickly to take advantage of the postelection political atmosphere to try to strike an agreement that would avert a fiscal crisis early next year when trillions of dollars in tax increases and automatic spending cuts begin to go into force. (hurry to take advantage of a cowed populace still basking in the O-gasmic afterglow and too busy trashing Karl Rove to notice the incipient betrayal.)   

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, said he had begun circulating a draft plan to overhaul the tax code and entitlements, had met with 25 senators from both parties and “been on the phone nonstop since the election.” (Before his own self-congratulatory tears had even dried on his face,President Obama was also on the phone, reaching out to Boehner and McConnell, while his starstruck fans slept, blissfully unaware of the incipient betrayal.)

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the Maine Republican who will retire at the end of the year, made it clear that she intended to press for a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff and get serious on the deficit, lame duck or not.

“The message and signals we send in the coming days could bear serious consequences for this country,” she said. “It could trigger another downgrade. It could trigger a global financial crisis. This is a very consequential moment.” (What a bunch of bullshit. It's not critical, it's not consequential, the deficit is not important to anyone but CEOs, and no way are these clowns even remotely serious. Seriously cynical, maybe. Did Olympia mention she is under consideration for an Obama Administration appointment in between revolving door spins to lobby shops?)

 

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, extended an olive branch to Republicans, suggesting Thursday that he could accept a tax plan that leaves the top tax rate at 35 percent, provided that loophole closings would hit the rich, not the middle class. He previously had said that he would accept nothing short of a return to the top tax rate of Bill Clinton’s presidency, 39.6 percent. (Democratic mandate? What Democratic mandate? Oh, never mind. Chuck's constituency is the Wall Street plutocracy. But since he's not up for re-election to his permanent seat for several years yet, it's safe to play Bad Cop.) 

Meanwhile, the Iranian attack on a piece of flying metal that resembles an upside-down-spoon was announced for the blatant purpose of scaring us. Call your Congress Critters pronto, and demand that open-ended funding for the eternal war machine to avoid the precipice! If we go down the fiscal cliff in a few months, that will not be good for American Empire and definitely not good for the defense contractors' bottom lines. Drone production will come to a screeching halt unless we act, and act right now, to avert fiscal catastrophe.

Oh, and although the alleged attack took place a week before the election, it was not revealed until the Fiscal Cliff crescendo had reached a fever pitch, within hours of the Obama victory. What a coincidence.

And now for the op-ed. The president has safely won re-election, so Paul Krugman is finally getting around to playing Good Cop, urging him not to "cave" to Republican demands for a deficit reduction deal in the lame duck session. The only thing he seems to miss is that it's President Obama himself and the Blue Dog cohort who are leading the charge for a B.S. type of deal. Too many people are still under the impression that Barry is the hapless victim of Republican intransigence, and that it is up to us to urge him to stand strong for the People. Inveterate letter-writer Bernie Sanders says he should go on another 50-state tour (as if the last two years of campaigning were not enough) to repudiate the Grand Bargain the president himself wants. Oh yeah. We are really going to hold Obama's feet to the fire now. Here's my response to Krugman: 

We can't say we weren't warned. The president did promise throughout the campaign that he would collaborate with the GOP on a deficit reduction program. Social Security and Medicare will be put on the table in exchange for a bit of token revenue from the plutocrats. The free market, which is laughably portrayed by the media as an actual living being with feelings, must be placated at all costs. Wall Street actually went all droopy the day after the election. Fetch the smelling salts, quick.

But no worries. The confetti was still floating through the Chicago air when the president picked up the phone to reach out to Boehner and McConnell.Never mind the liberal mandate that was handed to him by an increasingly progressive nation. Never mind that only 10% of respondents in exit polls said their main concern is the deficit.

The "fiscal cliff" is a contrived bit of disaster capitalism dreamed up by the corporate class that runs things in this country. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are leading an astroturf movement of 80 CEOs, yammering hysterically for social spending cuts in the name of increased profits and lower taxes for themselves. Meanwhile, the complicit news media spews endless propaganda to keep the populace cowed. Economic collapse, we are told, can be averted only by tightening our own belts, funding the endless wars, and enriching the oligarchs.

Grand Bargain? More like a Bargain for the Grandees, and a grand betrayal of everyone else.
 

Even though Mitt Romney lost, the powers-that-be are still operating under the theory that the deficit hawks and the vulture capitalists hold all the cards.  No matter that, excepting for Barack "Teflon Don" Obama himself, every single candidate who voiced support of Bowles Simpson, lost their races this week.

So, you voted and thought you were giving the victors a mandate? Think again.

As Sheldon Wolin wrote in "Democracy, Inc.",

Today elections have replaced participation. Elections enact a kind of primal myth in which “the people” designate who is to rule them, that is, who is to authorized to wield government power. Authority or authorization means not only that some official is enabled to perform a particular action (e.g. has the means  to enforce the law) but also that he or she is entitled to assume that citizens will accept the decision and comply. Thus an election, at one and the same time, empowers a Few and causes the Many to submit, to consent to be obedient. Submission entails more than obeying the law. Citizens, regardless of whether or not they voted for the elected candidate, are expected to defer to those who were elected, to give them the benefit of whatever doubts there are about the wisdom of a particular action or law, to the identification of democracy largely with voting, there is the risk that legitimation can become automatic, tantamount to a slippery slope ending in Tocqueville’s submissive citizenry.

    

Morning After Open Thread

For your venting pleasure, consider this your post-Election Day open thread. No big surprises in the congressional results, but at least two glimmers of hope are standing out this morning.

 Elizabeth Warren beat Scott Brown. The big question is how long she will last as an "independent voice of the people" in the Senate. My prediction: she will come out swinging, ease some of Bernie Sanders's lone voice lonesomeness, deliver many a rousing speech and write many an indignant letter railing against Wall Street. Then one day, sooner rather than later, her new bffs President Obama and Harry Reid will invite her to lunch. And, I fear, she'll gradually start toning down the rhetoric. She will discover the reality that congress critters have to spend an inordinate amount of time fund-raising and meeting lobbyists.

I hate to sound cynical, and I hope that I am wrong. But elected office and corporate dollars and peer pressure do have a funny way of corrupting people. Moreover,Warren has already gone to the dark side when it comes to wholeheartedly supporting the Homeland Security State, championing the permanence of Obamacare as opposed to eventual Medicare for All, even sabre-rattling for war in Iran. Can it be much longer until the submission is complete, and she crumbles completely to the financial forces that foot the bill for all these wonderful things?

Oh. and Florida Rep. Alan Grayson will be coming back to town after a two-year hiatus. You may remember him as the champion of the public option in the health reform debate, way back when. So I guess we can at least look forward to a few more moments of biting sarcasm on the House floor.

I shut off the TV last night when, despite the frantic, overblown, red-white-and-blue nail-biting theatrics on CNN, it became obvious that the president would easily be coasting to a second term. The suspense had been contrived and empty all along. But after two years and more than two billion dollars, I guess it's understandable that the pundit class just couldn't bear to see the lucrative, nasty and small-minded horsey race end.

I'll post more later, unless the coming Nor'easter knocks us off the grid for the second time in two weeks. Many locales in my immediate region are still powerless from the first storm. Just yesterday, an elderly couple in a nearby town were discovered dead in their heatless home, reportedly from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a gas-powered generator. 

Votapalooza

Yawn. So I filled out my mail-in ballot over the weekend, tongue held firmly in cheek. Were it not for the storm, I would have done the deed earlier. There was one local law on the ballot I wasn't familiar with, and I wanted to do some research on it first. It turns out I now have the choice of either allowing my county legislature to draw redistricting maps, or allowing an unelected board of people I don't know to draw redistricting maps. So I chose the former, lesser of two evils. From the dregs of the backwaters to the heights of the presidency, ain't it always the way?

I deliberately do not endorse any candidates on this blog because I don't want to add to the phony political mania. Plus, I realize that making a Hobson's choice in a battleground state must be nearly as stressful as living in a hurricane state. But let me tell you how I voted anyway. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala of the Green Party, for prez and vp, as you may have guessed.

  I voted against my Democratic senator, Kirsten Gillibrand. Although her general voting record is relatively "liberal", she also happens to be the Number 1 senatorial recipient of Wall Street money. Grounds for immediate dismissal right there.

As a direct result of those bribes, she was silent while the NYPD pepper-sprayed, tased, illegally detained, billyclubbed, jackbooted, trashed the camps of, or otherwise inconvenienced Occupy Wall Street protesters last year. She was silent during the SOPA and PIPA protests (Hollywood and Silicon Valley Money) too.  And most loathesomely of all, she sided with President Obama and voted with 85 of her cohorts for the National Defense Authorization Act, allowing for the detention without trial of American citizens. As Gail Collins pointed out in a recent column, Gillibrand reportedly does have a Republican challenger, whose name nobody seems to know. So-- I checked off the Green Party candidate once again. Her name is Colia Clarke, a former assistant to Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers; she is one of only six Greens on the ballot in Senate races nationwide.

I did vote for the unknown Democratic contender for retiring Rep. Maurice Hinchey's  seat, a guy by the name of Julian Schreibman, on the alternate Working Families Party line. Julian is a former CIA agent, so I held my nose with fingers crossed, just to keep the sole close contender, from the Tea Party, at bay. See? I can be a pragmatist too, at times. Plus, there are no third party candidates running in my district.

 I voted for New York State Senator Blank, because the long-time GOP incumbent, John Bonacic, is again running unopposed. Four years ago, Senator Blank actually beat him. Even so, no living human being could come up with the money or the chutzpah to challenge J.B. this cycle.

Finally, I cast my ballot for incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Kevin Cahill. This guy has actually personally helped me out on a couple of matters. So when they tell you to put all your energy into local politics, believe it. Bottom-up change is pretty much all we have to cling to anymore.

If you're feeling that what little is left of the Left is crumpling up into a pitiful ball, urging us to hold our noses and vote for Barry, you are not alone. Such erstwhile stalwarts as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Daniel Ellsberg are among the recent sellouts, or semi-sellouts. But don't despair. Not everyone has fallen abjectly into the Nose-Holders for Obama League.

Chris Hedges calls it The S&M Election, and he is all too painfully correct. Echoing the famous George Orwell essay, Such, Such Were the Joys, he compares this horrid presidential campaign to his own torture at the hands of boarding school bullies. A choice excerpt:

Obama tells us that we better lick his boots or we will face the brute down the hall, Mitt Romney. After all, we wouldn’t want the bad people to get their hands on these newly minted mechanisms of repression. We will, if we do not behave, end up with a more advanced security and surveillance state, the completion of the XL Keystone pipeline, unchecked pillage from Wall Street, environmental catastrophe and even worse health care. Yet we know on some level that once the election is over, Obama will, if he is re-elected, again betray us. This is part of the game. We dutifully assume our position. We cry out in holy terror. We promise to obey. And we are mocked as we watch promises crumble into dust.
 

He truly gets it. Personally, I don't think I've ever been subject to so much animosity from the tribalists of the Pseudo-left for even mildly criticizing Dear Leader in the comments threads of the New York Times. Thank God for Chris Hedges. He soothes even as he inflames the victims of attempted gaslighting by hordes of well-meaning Obamabot concern trolls.

Speaking of the 'bot attacks, Matt Stoller got a real earful when he painstakingly laid out the The Progressive Case Against Barack Obama for Salon. He blows away the choking kool-aid propaganda powder that would have us believe the president is a proto-feminist, or that the much-vaunted Supreme Court nominations are a reason to give him another term, or that the so-called pragmatic progressives (translation: right wing enablers) have a leg to stand on:

As a candidate, Obama promised a whole slew of civil liberties protections, lying the whole time. Obama has successfully organized the left part of the Democratic Party into a force that had rhetorically opposed war and civil liberties violations, but now cheerleads a weakened America too frightened to put Osama bin Laden on trial. We must fight this thuggish political culture Bush popularized, and Obama solidified in place.

(snip)

At some point soon, we will face yet another moment where the elites say, “Do what we want or there will be a meltdown.” Do we have enough people on our side willing to collectively say “do what we want or there will be a global meldown”? This election is a good mechanism to train people in the willingness to say that and mean it. That is, the reason to advocate for a third-party candidate is to build the civic muscles willing to say no to the establishment in a crisis moment we all know is coming. Right now, the liberal establishment is teaching its people that letting malevolent political elites do what they want is not only the right path, it is the only path. Anything other than that is dubbed an affront to common decency. Just telling the truth is considered beyond rude.
 

Read the whole thing, as well as this follow-up addressing the torrent of criticism. Stoller is a profile in journalistic courage.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, CounterPunch can always be counted on to deliver many a dead-aim left hook/knockout punch. The blackly humorous Good Voter Larry  by Riley Waggaman provides a grim Election Eve chuckle. Seeing how MoveOn has been more than usually annoying lately, I especially enjoyed the parody of the MoveOn member who gets mistakenly arrested while handing out Obama propaganda. MoveOn has been inundating me with emails informing me if I don't send them money right now, and if Romney is elected, I will be unable to live with myself for the rest of my brutish life. Real subtle persuasion tactics.

Toledo voter Michael Leonardi talks about going to the polls in a decimated area of Swing State Ohio,"land of the serfs and wage slaves". And while I wrote a couple of posts ago about the epidemic addiction to the Obamaopiate class of designer drugs, Randy Shields informs us that Obama can also be smoked. "For American capitalism, that Obama is some good shit," he writes. "Using Obama makes some people prone to wild mood swings and abrupt changes in personality."

And sometimes, short, sweet and succinct just says it best. The hilarious Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy has an excellent rejoinder to Obama voters who think they will able to hold Barry's feet to the progressive fire once he is safely re-esconced as the Temporary Emperor (temp emp.) --

If Obama wins, and you didn't push for a Democratic primary challenge or a left third-party vote or a non-vote... when you post your smarmy "now the real work begins" thing on Wednesday, I respectfully suggest that the real work for you is to go fuck yourself.

Damocles, Deflected

 I know you've been worried about all the rich people who were forced to evacuate their luxury condos when the crane on an even more luxurious skyscraper in their neighborhood was ripped loose last week by Superstorm Sandy. But this morning, a palpable sense of relief is wafting through the plutosphere. The bothersome hunk of twisted metal dangling over many an entitled head has finally been tamed. The Sword of Damocles has been resheathed, to threaten again some other day. (Maybe in as little as two days, when another nor'easter is forecast to whip on through.)

The financially secure in this Park Avenue-area community are once again mentally and physically secure. One well-heeled woman was actually quoted as saying that her long national nightmare was over, as she hastened back into the Briarcliff building on W. 57th Street. (the cheapest condos there start at $1 million.) The pain of the crane is gone with the rain.

Meanwhile, as many as 40,000 less well-off people have been rendered homeless by the storm, and are expected to remain that way for quite some time. Now that Mayor Bloomberg has gotten personally involved in fixing the crane and opening the New York Stock Exchange, he is finally admitting that housing is quite the dilemma in a city where it was at a premium to begin with. Even before Sandy hit, though, Bloomberg was being his proactive self, hatching a plan to construct shoebox-sized housing units as part of his ongoing public-private partnership real estate racket. This is defined as public money being funneled into projects that ultimately end up enriching developers.

The Bloomberg micro-units are micro-managed with young affluent one-percenters in mind -- meaning that poor families will face even more of a squeeze when it comes to locating affordable living spaces, according to public housing advocates.

Want to add insult to injury? It turns out that the developer of One57 (a/k/a the Billionaire Crane Building) qualifies for a special tax break in return for "sponsoring" construction of affordable housing elsewhere in the city. The savings will be passed right on to the wealthy purchasers, while the developer, Extell, collects the usual high rents from the poor, laughing all the way to the bank.

Under the plan, the buyer of One57’s $90 million, 13,554-square-foot penthouse on the 75th and 76th floors would pay just $20,000 a year in taxes, instead of the estimated $230,000 without the break.

Even more injuriously insulting is the loophole by which Extell doesn't even have to actually build the affordable housing itself. Corporate-friendly law allows it to wheel and deal on the open voucher-type market with building contractors. One deal that would have used the tax abatements to construct a low-income housing project in the Bronx fell through last year, so the developer is still shopping it around. And now, with the sudden windfall of a housing shortage resulting from Sandy, I imagine that even more mighty hordes of barbarians will be clamoring at the gates for a piece of the disaster capitalism pie.

Critics at the Pratt Center for Community Development point out that the $755 million in revenue losses caused by the tax abatements could have saved the jobs of every laid-off teacher and firefighter in the city -- not to mention the $100 million in cuts to the library system.

I can just hear one huge oligarchic sigh of relief, one giant mutual back-slap in the hallowed halls of the corporatocracy, as the Sandy clean-up continues. In the immortal words of that other craven mayor, Chicago's Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

One57: The High Price of Tax Breaks for Billionaires

Power to the Powerless

Much to the chagrin of the candidates and their spinmeisters, climate change and income disparity have reared their ugly heads to become defacto issues in the waning days of Eternal Presidential Campaign 2012. Superstorm Sandy has wedged out the wedge issues. Big Bird has flown the coop.

Even corporate media giants like CNN are noticing the inequality. Side-by-side images of desperately hungry people in Brooklyn sifting through garbage in search for food, and VIPs bemoaning the closing of the Dumpling Bar at JP Morgan Chase would never have been possible without the cooperation of Superstorm Sandy.

Poverty was once the word that could not be spoken, especially during political campaigns. Not any more. The shame of the richest nation in the world is hung out for all the world to see. New York City boasts the most glaring income inequality in the entire country. Its arrogant mayor is our 10th richest plutocrat, with a net worth of $25 billion. But more than a fifth of his subjects (you can't really call them constituents) fall below the national poverty line.

It's easy for Michael Bloomberg to brag about the resilience of his fair city in the face of the storm, because he doesn't have to look at the people who are bearing the real brunt. He triumphantly presided over the reopening of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday. He thumbed his nose at Sandy by insisting that the annual Marathon will be run this Sunday.* But thanks to the magic of TV, the rest of America now bears witness to  the grinding existence of ordinary New Yorkers who must run the equivalent of a city marathon every single day just to earn a subsistence wage. According to the Pratt Center for Community Development,

We found great disparities in transportation access between higher-income, professional workers and low-wage manual and service workers. High housing costs mean that most low-wage workers live in areas outside the city's subway-rich core. Those workers also must travel to work sites dispersed widely around the city and region. This leaves the lowest-paid workers with the longest commutes to work, and limits the geographic range of job opportunities for residents of high-unemployment communities.

Three-quarters of a million New Yorkers travel more than one hour each way to work, and two-thirds of them earn less than $35,000 a year. By contrast, just 6 percent of these extreme commuters earn more than $75,000 a year. Black New Yorkers have the longest commute times, 25 percent longer than white commuters; Hispanic commuters have rides 12 percent longer.

Meanwhile, Wall Street plutocrats are telling harrowing tales of their own. One investment banker had to find his way to his wine cellar in the dark to scarf down a $1000-dollar bottle of wine before it went bad when the temperature controls failed. The CEO of Morgan Stanley had to hoof it three miles from his corporate suite to his domestic suite. Local news coverage of the storm was interrupted with a breathless announcement from Lexus to luxury car owners whose rides were damaged by flooding. A concierge service will pick you up and take you wherever you want to go while you're waiting for a replacement vehicle.

Jason Sheftell, who covers the luxury real estate beat for the Daily News, is totally blaming utility giant Con Ed -- not the hurricane -- for disrupting the lifestyle to which he is accustomed. His piece epitomizes the high-end whining of the entitled:

Con Edison has temporarily rendered a large portion of the greatest city on planet Earth irrelevant. They are treating us like we’re some kind of small town in Connecticut. In the sticks, power is an afterthought after 10 p.m. New York is the city that never sleeps.... Power is our lifeblood. It is our backbone. Without it, we are nothing. One day, acceptable. Two days, fine. Five days, in downtown New York, an egregious error where someone, somebody, some power company, must be accountable. No more excuses.

It is to the credit of some would-be Marathoners that they are forgoing the Bloomberg staged event and volunteering on hard-hit Staten Island instead. Despite the televised orgy of mutual back slapping and self-congratulations by swarms of political candidates, the government response is not all that it's been cracked up to be. People are stranded, people are hungry, people are cold, and people are getting mighty pissed off. Brooklynites waited in line for hours for National Guard handouts of water and MREs (meals ready to eat) The indy newspaper Gothamist has coined a new phrase for the forgotten people and where they live: The Powerless Zone. The lack of electricity is obvious; the lack of political power, not so much.

But  guess what? Occupy Wall Street, that social movement that the PTBs had either written off or co-opted into President Obama's re-election bid, is making a comeback. They're setting up aid camps in the Powerless Zones, even creating their own electricity with those exercise bike generators used in the Zuccotti Park encampment. Information on how to help can be found here.

Mayor Shrillionaire wouldn't dare send his paramilitary police army to bust heads at the new humanitarian Occupy encampments. Or would he?

* Update 5:30 p.m. Sanity prevailed, and the race has been cancelled.

Going to Extremes

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is a multidimensional study in contrasts and similarities.

The battered seaside estates of the obscenely wealthy and the flooded inner city housing projects of the neglected poor vie for our split screen attention.

Polished Mercedes Benzes and battered Ford pickups are equally vulnerable, it turns out, to falling trees and bricks and metal signs.

A Democratic Laurel and a Republican Hardy are equity actors in post-disaster consolation theatre. Even though Halloween was cancelled in New Jersey, Thanksgiving came early. They spoke their lines with barely a prompt, in what some critics are calling a blatant plagiarization of that disaster hit from yesteryear, "Heckuva Job Brownie."

Chris Christie: "And I cannot thank the President enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state and for the people of our state. And I heard it on the phone conversations with him, and I was able to witness it today personally."

Barack Obama: "At the top of my list, I have to say that Governor Christie throughout this process has been responsive; he has been aggressive in making sure that the state got out in front of this incredible storm. And I think the people of New Jersey recognize that he has put his heart and soul into making sure that the people of New Jersey bounce back even stronger than before. So I just want to thank him for his extraordinary leadership and partnership."

While the presidential wannabes of 2012 and 2016 respectively were careful to avoid Bush-like photo-ops of themselves peering at the New Jersey devastation from aboard their cushy helicopter, Mitt Romney was more ham-handed. His production company made the mistake of buying up all the diapers and infant formula and canned goods from a local Walmart SuperCenter to ship directly to the scene of the storm. If there is one thing the Red Cross always stresses during national disaster appeals, it's "Don't send STUFF. We don't have the time to sort and distribute it. Send MONEY."

If there is one thing Mitt Romney stresses during a national campaign, it's "Don't send money. We don't have the time to give some of it to the national treasury and distribute it for the common good." In Romney World, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, especially if the dog is tied to the roof of your car. (Sorry, Gail Collins.)

For me, the iconic image of Frankenstorm is the partially collapsed crane dangling dangerously over Manhattan. It is attached, sort of, to what has become the symbol of obscene wealth in this country -- a residential luxury skyscraper with units so expensive that only billionaires can afford to live in them. It is a pinnacle of the plutocracy, a monolith of greed. The crane is like a perverse Sword of Damocles misdirected at those hapless victims far, far below. Should it fall, it will plummet to earth like a bunker-busting bomb, tearing open the concrete, exploding gas and water mains, sending projectiles of concrete and steel to slash and impale any of the hapless lesser people lingering below.

It is just what happens when the top one percent of the population owns more than 40% of all the wealth. When wealth is disproportionately distributed toward the extreme top, the whole structure becomes unstable. Just as the lethal crane clinging precariously to the luxury high-rise threatens to destroy both the structure and what lies beneath, economic inequality leads to inevitable collapse of the whole society.

Frankenstorm is just one more freak of nature, one more indication of what happens in a society where regulations are few, where capitalism is unfettered, where the rich get rescued, and the poor just drown.

Back Online

We just got our internet/phone/cable restored in New Paltz after a two-day disruption, so I am still catching up on all the devastation outside my own little slice of real estate. Just a brief glance at TV and online news makes it apparent that the destruction wrought by Sandy is far worse than most people could have imagined.

Thanks to everyone who has written to me with messages of concern. We fared much better during this storm than we did with Hurricane Irene last year, when floods literally washed away whole towns. The latest damage to the Hudson Valley, where I live, was mainly due to high winds. There was little rainfall, comparatively speaking.

This is going to be a long recovery for untold millions of people in a huge, huge chunk of this country.

Good Night & Good Luck

The officials in the rolled-up sleeves are now going on TV to inform us that we may be off the grid for ten days or more. I suspect that this dire prediction is meant to make us idiotically grateful when they heroically restore our power in a mere week. We won't blame them like we did after Hurricane Irene. That debacle, you may recall, led to the resignation of more than one grossly overpaid utility CEO.

I have a friend who works for one of the utilities. Last year, he told me, they were too cheap to bring in extra crews. This go-round, they've got so many people in their control rooms that they forgot to get them enough chairs. They actually had utility trucks out aimlessly cruising the neighborhoods this afternoon, when the winds began howling at 5mph. It was Electric Company Theatre taking its cue from Homeland Security Theatre.

The only good thing I have to say about Hurricane Sandy is that he has one exquisite sense of direction. His priorities are straight. He is expected to directly unleash his wrath upon the sewer known as Wall Street. He will vomit saltwater all over Goldman Sachs and its fascist network of NYPD/Homeland Security fusion center spy cameras. The soakers shall become the soaked. The polluted financial swamp will become swamped with polluted river water. After the Stock Exchange bravely declared it would remain open and greedy throughout the storm, how it must have pained Mayor Forbes Shrillionaire Bloomberg to announce the evacuation of the entire Financial District and Club Cipriani Wall Street, home of the $25 hamburger. And what about those high-frequency computer trading vaults across the river in New Jersey? The Crawling Eye of the Storm is headed their way too. This is beginning to be almost bearable.

As far as this blog goes, I'll be back when I'm back. Unfortunately, I can't keep the comments open*, because lately I've been inundated with Spambots selling Uggs and Viagra. I did get spam from an actual person once. He picqued my interest by saying that he and his partner only discuss my subversive posts and those of Glenn Greenwald with their windows closed, for fear the government is eavesdropping on them. He included a link to his own blog. Turned out to be a commercial site for tinfoil hat software to prevent the National Security Agency from spying on malcontents. Oy vey.

For everybody in the path of Sandy, stay safe and dry and warm. Fill your bathtub with water so you can flush. If you forgot to buy designer water and batteries for your radio, you are probably out of luck. There are so many panic-stricken drivers out on the roads, looking for that last roll of toilet paper, that tonight's accident rate will probably exceed that of tomorrow and Tuesday.

* You can still write comments, but they may sit in limbo for awhile until they can be approved. As of 10:30 Monday I am still around to approve them -- we still have power, though for how long is the question. Winds are just starting to pick up here, about 20 mph w/higher gusts.

The Adventures of Sandy the Storm

As a storm of apocalyptic proportions barreled toward a population center with millions of bodies, with damage already forecast to be in the billions, President Obama today addressed the nation on..... Personal Finance! Forget about stocking up on bread and batteries. Drop everything and check your credit score, right this very minute!

I get it that climate change denialism is an unwritten plank in both rotten sides of the Uniparty, but this is too much. Although President Obama disingenuously expressed mild surprise that the looming catastrophe of man-made global warming just wasn't brought up in any of the debates, it apparently never occurred to him to actually act presidential and proactively bring it up himself before audiences totalling well over 100 million.

Instead, he went on MTV to let MTV fans know that's he cool enough to occasionally ponder global warming.

“We are not moving as fast as we need to, and this is an issue that future generations, MTV viewers, are going to have to be dealing with, even more than the older generation is,” he admitted, obviously putting the onus on the crumbling, irresponsible Geezer Generation.

As "Frankenstorm" threatens to hasten the demise of a huge chunk of the also-crumbling infrastructure here on terra firma, it turns out that even though we landed a rover on Mars, we haven't been maintaining the aging satellite system designed to keep track of the megastorms of the future. A combination of bureaucratic inefficiency and deficit hawkery has spelled a gap of at least a few years in which the tracking of storms will be grossly impeded. Starting as early as next year, we may be reverting back to the time when hurricanes took coastal areas by complete surprise, resulting in thousands of deaths.

This is what austerity does. It endangers lives in the name of saving a few bucks. But even that rationale is a lie. Austerity is the excuse given so that the rich can get richer and the poor can get screwed. The mega rich apparently have not yet learned that megastorms can destroy their seaside estates, yachts and manicured lawns just as effectively as they flatten mobile homes in trailer parks. And the two candidates of the mega-rich, says The New York Times,"have seemed most intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of coal, oil and natural gas — the very fuels most responsible for rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

None of the debate moderators brought up climate change because the oil and gas industry is a major sponsor of TV news shows. We've all seen those incessant "I'm Beavis, and I'm an energy voter" pro-fracking and drilling commercials sponsored by the industry. This propaganda attempts to convince us that what is good for their bottom line is good for the average Joe. We are not told that Big Energy is not in the profit-sharing business, that increased drilling does not ease the pain at the pump. Prices are set by international cartels. What's extracted in this country doesn't necessarily stay in this country. The much-touted jobs are temporary and dangerous, the damage to the earth and our health is incalculable.

The talking heads are not about to bite the oil-soaked hand that feeds them. The corporate-run Commission on Presidential Debates is itself owned and operated by lobbyists and CEOs, for whom climate change is the inconvenient truth that must not be told. Regulations attempting to ameliorate the effects of climate change eat into corporate bottom lines. Politicians daring to introduce climate change legislation will find the corporate wealth funding their billion-dollar campaigns drying up faster than a fracked community's water supply.

Maybe if we can overturn Citizens United and get the money out of politics, our voices will become louder than their dollar signs.

Oh, and speaking of dollar signs, don't forget to log on the internet and check your credit score so you can run up more debt and enrich the bloated banks and buy a ton of junk that you don't need and can't afford. It's the new economic patriotism.

I believe that the free market is one of the greatest forces for progress in human history, and that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector, not the government.-- Barack Obama, pre-Sandy presidential manifesto.
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A Mighty Wind

Hand-Wringing in Liberal Land

How's this for leverage: nervous liberals are operating under the theory that they can wait until Obama is safely re-esconced in the West Wing before convincing him to protect the New Deal. According to The Hill, a coalition of so-called progressives will be launching a campaign "immediately after Election Day to pressure Obama and Senate Democrats not to endorse any deal that cuts Medicare and/or Social Security benefits."

They are so fearful of their Leader co-mingling them with the maligned purists of the "professional left" that most of them won't even reveal their own identities. They are loath to betray their incipient betrayer. They have apparently forgotten that gay rights groups helped Obama "evolve" on marriage equality when they threatened to withhold support and money. Ditto for immigration reform activists, who demonstrated their own discontent with his lackluster support and "made him" order temporary amnesty for Dream Act candidates -- again, by threatening, not cajoling.

Independent Vermont Senator and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, famous for his marathon anti-plutocracy filibuster and frequent indignant letters to the White House, is apparently the spokesman for the cravenly pragmatic crew of anonymous malcontents. He has urged passionately, and he has urged often that President Obama be held to account, that he should promise to protect the safety net as a condition to his re-election.

But at no time has Sanders gone so far as to suggest that we actually withhold our vote for this Democratic president, and vote Green or Socialist instead. Despite all his populist rhetoric, Sanders is still giving his tacit endorsement for another Obama term.

After running themselves ragged door-belling, phone-banking, contributing their meager dollars, and mindlessly cheerleading the incumbent, the groups will begin to apply their pinky-finger pressure on Nov. 8, two days after Election Day. (They need 48 hours to gather steam for the Big Offensive. They will take two bold baby steps forward on the road to recovery in the wake of their mass exodus from collective sanity during Horserace 2012.)

The AFL-CIO, which showed up at the Democratic National Convention for the purposes of improving their own unfair thuggish image, rather than making demands on their candidates, will also join in the attempt to put the toothpaste back in the tube. One bold agitator even dared give his name ahead of time:

There’s going to be a major effort by lots of groups to make sure the people we vote for don’t sell us down the river,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future.

“People, groups, organizations and networks are working very hard to get Obama and the Democrats elected, and yet we are worried that it is possible that we could be betrayed almost immediately,” he said.

Ya think, Roger? Why, it was only yesterday that Obama salivated, for the umpteenth time, over the prospect of ripping open that can of Simpson-Bowles Catfood to shove it down our throats. After thinking he could importune an Iowa newspaper into endorsing him on the basis of an off-the-record interview -- and the paper subsequently calling him out on his ridiculous secrecy -- this is what Obama said:

It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.

And we can easily meet -- “easily” is the wrong word -- we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.

Obama is obviously still operating under the debunked notion that austerity helps grow the economy in the middle of an economic recession. If he reads Paul Krugman, it is obviously not sinking in. Then again, Paul Krugman is so focused on how bad a President Romney would be that he is essentially giving the incumbent a free pass. Presumably, he will return to form once the election is over.

And I don't know if Roger and Bernie and the rest of the gang have noticed.... but have you ever picked up on the fact that President Obama always promises to negotiate with the Republicans, yet never expresses the slightest interest in talking to the so-called Progressive Caucus of his own party? These doe-like Congress critters, led by Raul Grijalva of Arizona, have put together a "People's Budget" that puts people back to work, imposes a living wage, slashes the deficit, scraps the cap on Social Security FICA contributions and all kinds of good stuff.

It sounds great, but that's about it. You don't hear Grijalva and the other progressives forming a schism and walking away from the Blue Dog prez, do you? These people are what we can kindly call "useful idiots". They form the pretend-left flank of the spineless Democratic Party, which exists solely to provide a cosmetic balance to the right wing extremism of the Ayn Rand Cult. We feel better listening to them liberally and impotently rant and rave on MSNBC, and then the right-center President and his Senate lackeys swoop in to split the difference and pretend that they tried. They really, really tried. But you know... gridlock and stuff.

So-called pragmatic progressives are fond of maligning their backwoods, mouth-breathing kin for voting against their own interests when they elect Teapublican crazoids. And if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and still expecting different results, then perhaps immediate self-commitment in a fancy liberal rest home is in order. The differential diagnostic grounds for admission: cognitive dissonance disorder consistent with battered spouse syndrome, complicated by addiction to a designer drug of the Obamopiate class.

Hawks & Vultures

Everything I needed to know about American foreign policy, I learned at last night's presidential "debate".

I learned that no matter their side of the Duopoly, our politicians are firm believers in raining down democracy from the skies upon recalcitrant bodies in dire need of some crushing American freedom.

I learned that is vital for America to champion education and gender equality in Iran at the very same time we surround their country with military bases and destroy their economy with sanctions.

I learned that our political and media leaders persist in the notion of American exceptionalism even though a sizable chunk of the world is feeling neither the love nor the respect.

I learned that "foreign policy" does not encompass either of our immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The world is comprised of China, Israel, the Muslim nations of the Middle East, and Russia. It apparently does not include Europe, although South America did get a brief mention from Mitt Romney based on all the "opportunities" it presents for people like him. (I think South America should maybe think about watching their skies for both circling capitalist vultures and drones.) They didn't mention Japan, maybe because American soldiers are still raping women on Okinawa, which we have occupied for no apparent reason since World War II. Judging from what the contenders were saying last night, Sinophobia is now vying with Islamophobia for first place in the American Fear-Mongering Industry sweepstakes.

I learned that presidential candidates and the corporatized Commission on Presidential Debates seem to be going out of their way to choose over-the-hill, inside the Beltway, right wing and preferably incipiently senile "journalists" to act as facilitators for the dissemination of political bullshit. Although Bob Schieffer did have one fantastic line: "Obama's bin Laden."

Other memorable (not to mention frightening) moments of verbiage:

"Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea." -- Mitt Romney. (Iran has a nice coastal area all its own, thank you very much.)

"But unfortunately, in nowhere in the world is America's influence will grow. But unfortunately, in -- nowhere in the world is America's influence greater today than it was four years ago." -- Mitt Romney. (needs remedial English as well as remedial geography.)

"America is the one indispensible nation." -- Barack Obama. (the rest of the world is not important and therefore, dispensible garbage.)

"...we're going to have to have training programs that work for our workers and schools that finally put the parents and the teachers and the kids first, and the teachers' unions going to have to go behind." -- Mitt Romney. (and lo, the angels of privatized education shall vanquish the demonized teachers' unions. No argument from Barack on that.)

"We need to be thinking about cyber security. We need to be talking about space. That's exactly what our budget does, but it's driven by strategy. It's not driven by politics. It's not driven by members of Congress, and what they would like to see. It's driven by, what are we going to need to keep the American people safe? That's exactly what our budget does, and it also then allows us to reduce our deficit, which is a significant national security concern. Because we've got to make sure that our economy is strong at home so that we can project military power overseas." -- Barack Obama. (slash the social safety net at home so we can impose our almighty will on the rest of the planet as well as on other planets and throughout the space-time continuum. Cutting your Social Security and Medicare benefits will keep the military industrial complex safe, fat, happy, bloated and financially secure forever. The goal of a strong domestic economy is not to serve the citizens, but to flex our military muscle and 1000-and-counting military bases, a k a mini-occupations.)

"We then organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy. Their currency has dropped 80 percent. Their oil production has plunged to the lowest level since they were fighting a war with Iraq 20 years ago. So their economy is in a shambles." -- Barack Obama. (I create human misery, and I'm proud of it.)

"I'd make sure that Ahmadinejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention. His words amount to genocide incitation. I would indict him for it. I would also make sure that their diplomats are treated like the pariah they are around the world." -- Mitt Romney. (If he meant the Geneva Conventions, somebody should tell him that the United States stopped abiding by their precepts when it legitimated torture, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, and presidentially decreed drone strikes against civilian populations. And in what justice system would Mitt even indict him? The USA has refused, for example, to participate in or ratify the World Court, in order to shield the Bush War Criminals from an international tribunal.)

"There -- there are people in Iran who have the same aspirations as people all around the world for a better life.... And it turns out that the work involved in setting up these crippling sanctions is painstaking. It's meticulous. We started from the day we got into office. And the reason is was so important -- and this is a testament to how we've restored American credibility and strength around the world." -- Barack Obama. (I want you to believe that crippling sanctions abroad, not to mention austerity here at home, will somehow stimulate people's aspirations for a better life. Earth to Barack: the only credible thing is that poor opinions of American boorishness have been growing and spreading exponentially.)

"And when it comes to our military and Chinese security, part of the reason that we were able to pivot to the Asia-Pacific region after having ended the war in Iraq and transitioning out of Afghanistan, is precisely because this is going to be a massive growth area in the future. And we believe China can be a partner, but we're also sending a very clear signal that America is a Pacific power; that we are going to have a presence there. We are working with countries in the region to make sure, for example, that ships can pass through; that commerce continues. And we're organizing trade relations with countries other than China so that China starts feeling more pressure about meeting basic international standards." -- Barack Obama. (Oh, before we get to that nation-building here at home, I am deploying my military might to surround China on all sides. War is forever, baby. We make friends the old-fashioned way. We saber-rattle with a predatory smile.)

"I've been -- Ann was with someone just the other day that was just weeping about not being able to get work. It's just a tragedy in a nation so prosperous as ours, that the last four years have been so hard." -- Mitt Romney (I run from weepers like the plague. I send the missus out to deal with the floods of lachrymosity.)

"But I love teachers. But I want to get our private sector growing and I know how to do it." -- Mitt Romney (I despise teachers' unions, which are an impediment to the charter schools and privatization of education for the sake of my crony capitalist profiteers. Here, Barack and I are in total agreement. Did you ever hear me saying I'd get rid of his Race to the Top? I love Rahm Emanuel!)

"And we've been through tough times but we always bounce back because of our character, because we pull together and if I have the privilege of being your president for another four years, I promise you I will always listen to your voices. I will fight for your families and I will work every single day to make sure that America continues to be the greatest nation on earth." -- Barack Obama. (Embrace the power of magical thinking and believe you will bounce back from the misery created by the unindicted criminal financial class just by dint of my stunning moralizations. Continue to believe the ridiculous canard that America is the greatest nation on earth. Feel the fear, beat the drums. Rah rah, zis boom bah.)

"I want to make sure our take-home pay turns around and starts to grow." -- Mitt Romney (Our profits will grow, not your lousy minimum wage, peons! Did I say anything about a living wage? Less FICA deductions, less withheld tax = less Social Security and Medicare, less revenues, less government and more misery.)

"I leave you with the words of my mom, who said: 'Go vote; it'll make you feel big and strong'". -- Bob Schieffer (Sure, Bob. It'll make us feel big and strong for all of 30 seconds. Then we can go back to living our solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short Hobbesean lives. Go USA!!!)

Links / Open Thread

Some Pakistani victims of American drone strikes are going to court requesting that arrest warrants be issued for two former CIA officials thought to have ordered two specific attacks in 2009. A separate case is seeking court action to declare the drone strikes to be illegal acts of war, requiring the government to shoot down the drones hovering over the tribal regions of Waziristan.

One of the plaintiffs is a TV journalist with two masters degrees whose son and brother were killed while the family was eating dinner on New Years Eve. The son was a quiet studious youth who enjoyed playing cricket and hunting partridges. The brother taught English. This does not exactly fit with the American propaganda of drone victims as illiterate militant peasants plotting mayhem in mud huts off the beaten path, does it?

The extended Romney family apparently owns a large stake in an electronic voting machine company, with some co-investors even implicated in a busted Ponzi scheme. And did you hear that the United Nations will actually be monitoring our elections this year? We are now officially a Banana Republic.

Paul Krugman explains for the umpteenth time that Mitt Romney's numbers don't add up. What does add up, however, are the number of Bush-era advisers and debunked economic policies surrounding him. (My comment is first under "oldest".)

The third and final presidential debate will be held in Boca Raton, site of the infamous 47% Romney fundraiser. But tonight, the two preapproved candidates of the plutocracy will be discussing something only 4% of American voters actually care about: foreign policy. Since our imperialistic war machine operates by totally bipartisan consensus, the bickering will no doubt be centered on who knew what when on the Benghazi attack and the various talking point inconsistencies.

Since the Democratic Party is now the party of rich white centrists, rich white guys like David Brooks and Mike Bloomberg should just come out of the closet and admit that Obama is the guy for them.

If you haven't seen the Bill Moyers interview with Chrystia Freeland and Matt Taibbi on "Plutocracy Rising", you can catch it here. The extreme wealth inequality now affecting the entire globe cannot hold. The so-called New World Order is bound to collapse. Globalization is not only economic, it's social. People do revolt, and it's already happening in austerity-torn Europe as well as the middle East.

"He Never Sold His Soul" -- Chris Hedges has written an affecting piece on George McGovern.

Garden Variety Ignorance

Much is being made of DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz's fantastic claim on Debate Night that she'd never heard of President Obama's Kill List. The jury is out as to whether DWS is truly an ignoramus (Glenn Greenwald)or just a disingenous obfuscator.

I will go with the latter. It is pretty obvious that Democratic surrogates have gotten their marching orders and talking points should they ever face the embarrassing question of Obama's self-appointed role as judge, jury and executioner of suspected terrorists (a k a Muslim males in the primes of their lives residing in Middle Eastern backwaters largely inaccessible to Western journalists.)

A reporter from Gawker had confronted various Democratic bigwigs and propaganda flacks at last month's DNC confab in Charlotte, asking if we can trust Mitt Romney with the Kill List. For the most part, they did what Debbie Wasserman Schultz did. They played stupid and walked away. Or else they played stupid and immediately launched into their preapproved scripts.

Included among those fleeing the questioner in abject panic without saying a single word were Senators Kay Hagen of North Carolina and Carl Levin of Michigan. Cory Booker, that hedge fund-loving mayor of Newark who got in so much trouble for defending Bain Capital on a Sunday talk show, has definitely learned his lesson. He simply adopted the other tried-and-true tactic of first demeaning the reporter before walking away. Publicity magnet Gloria Allred, a delegate, replied that she would not trust Mitt Romney with her body, or the bodies of any women. But she trusts Barack Obama with bodies in general. Rival publicity magnet Sen. Chuck "never met a camera he didn't like" Schumer just ignored the question and burbled out a word salad of non sequiturs. Lanny Davis (whose DNC position was defined by Gawker as "asshole") derided the question as beneath his dignity as a party hack.

And last but not least was the unidentified character in a fright wig, who said he trusts Obama with the Kill List, because his decisions to obliterate certain people are derived from a sound moral character. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, would even kill people who are not on the Kill List.

So, it is really unfair for Glenn Greenwald to single out Debbie Wasserman Schultz on her "remarkable, unfathomable ignorance." The ignorance is all too deliberate, common and banal. The ignorance spreads itself out in a putrid puddle a mile wide and half an inch deep. Despite its murkiness, it's shallow enough to see straight down to the bottom.

George McGovern

In his own words: (Op-ed published in The New York Times on April 3, 1982)

WASHINGTON— Ralph Waldo Emerson has assured us: ''A man may love a paradox without either losing his wit or his honesty.'' It is good that we have this assurance because these are certainly days when paradox rules.

There is, for example, the paradox of an allegedly conservative Republican Administration programming Federal deficits so enormous that if offered by a liberal Democrat, they would confirm conservative suspicions that liberals have no respect for the dollar. I'm supposed to be a liberal, but I find the Reagan deficit astonishing and irresponsible. If, as the Democratic Presidential nominee in 1972, I had even hinted at the acceptability of a $100 billion deficit, I would not even have carried Massachusetts!

When people ask me, as they do in growing numbers, ''What do the Democrats offer as an alternative?'', so sweeping an answer is required as to leave the questioner dazed or bored.

I can find almost nothing to support in the Reagan economic, military, foreign, or budget policies. Indeed, except for the first appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court, I disagree with virtually every action of this Administration. Mr. Reagan does not appear to understand the simplest economic truths. In foreign policy, he is splitting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance while reuniting the Sino-Soviet bloc and repeating, in Central America, the mistakes of Vietnam; his military budget is so wasteful and poorly conceived as to be a threat to the security of the nation; and he seems blind to the greatest danger of our age - the mounting threat of extinction posed by an uncontrolled nuclear-arms race.

What can the Democrats do? They can stop drifting along with policies that they know are weakening the nation and threatening world peace. They can stop endorsing sweeping tax cuts that feed inflation and unbalance the budget. They can stop endorsing illplanned weapons, while neglecting our real defense needs. They can stop supporting budget policies that weaken such productive investments as education, transportation, energy, agriculture, job training, nutrition, drug rehabilitation, public assistance, and dignity for our older citizens. They can stop supporting such nonproductive expenditures as tax relief for the wealthy, high interest rates for moneylenders, and gold-plated weapons that aren't needed and won't work under combat conditions.

At the risk of oversimplification, I would say that the proper Democratic agenda is to oppose Mr. Reagan at every turn and to offer an alternative. In other words, the Democrats' job is to offer tax justice and a balanced budget in place of tax concessions and a $100 billion deficit; to reverse the arms race and press for the ratification of a verifiable nuclear-arms agreement with the Soviet Union; to reduce the sky-high interest rates that are choking the economy; and, instead of encouraging the merger mania, take steps to buttress small business and family farms. The Democrats' job is to increase the productivity and usefulness of our people by investing more in such human capital as education, training, and whatever is necessary to provide work for everyone willing and able - in the private sector where possible, and in public works where that is the only recourse - instead of drifting along as we now are with nearly one out of 10 workers idled.

There is no excuse for a great nation such as ours failing to provide a job opportunity for every able worker. Nothing can be more wasteful than idleness when there are houses to be built, railways to be modernized, topsoil to be preserved, and young people to be redeemed from ignorance, drugs, and crime.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, perhaps our greatest President with the possible exception of Lincoln, led us through the Great Depression and World War II. Today's issues are of course different from those that faced F.D.R. The nuclear peril, the energy crisis, the environmental challenges, the decline of industrial productivity - these were not the problems that engaged F.D.R., but his innovative, pragmatic spirit may well be required to solve them. Right now, we could use the vision of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the bluntness of Harry S. Truman, the inspiration of John F. Kennedy, the Congressional leadership skills of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the essential fairness of Jimmy Carter. I yearn, too, for the wit and courage of men who were not elected President - Adlai E. Stevenson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy.

In short, I'm not yet ready to surrender the New Deal, the Square Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society -or the hope that America will again become the great land it can be when it is faithful to its founding ideals.

What a Racket

(Saul Loeb, Agence France Presse)

That the political system is corrupt is no longer even up for debate. That the two mainstream presidential candidates are beholden to the plutocracy is a foregone conclusion. That the United States will eventually collapse from its own imperialistic weight is a matter not of if, but of when.
The torrents of daily outrage are cascading so furiously that we can barely even keep track of them. Party tribalism is so rampant that if you're a Romney fan, you psychotically believe his opponent is a socialist. If you're an Obama supporter, there seems to be nothing he can do that will not meet with your cowed, tacit approval. Drone strikes against innocent civilians? That's just your godfather president keeping you safe. Having the Secret Service arrest two third party female candidates and chain them to chairs while your guy champions the rights of women? Never mind all that, as long as your birth control pills are safe. Obama is the presidential John Gotti, the Teflon Don. And Campaign 2012 is starting to look more like a mob war than a presidential battle.

It took an independent labor journalist named Mike Elk to discover a months-old audio of Mitt Romney subtly threatening anti-union bosses to strong-arm their employees into voting for him.... or else. In his New York Times column today, Timothy Egan wrote about the real Romney coming out of the closet at Tuesday night's debate. My response:

Romney just forgot where he was on Tuesday night. He was probably having an oligarchic flashback to that conference call he had with a cadre of so-called small business owners last spring. That was when he gave his consiglieres one of those offers they best not refuse.

"I hope you make it very clear to your employees", he warned, "what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees."

This guy doesn't want to be president. He wants to be mafia boss. Cajole, threaten, shake down, kneecap, repeat. The photo of him accompanying this article actually does look like a publicity shot for "The Sopranos."

Mitt as mob boss, however, is a ham-handed Tony Soprano-type who likes to off his victims direct and in person and then foolishly brag about it later. Barry, on the other hand, is a more circumspect capofamiglia. He subcontracts his hits out to his underlings and makes sure his Wall Street earners are well-protected by his underbosses in the Justice and Treasury branches of the hierarchy. He throws figurative block parties in the neighborhood, handing out trinkets of gay rights and temporary amnesty for Dreamers and health care for a few sick kids. He flirts with the ladies even as he has his underlings literally kidnap Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, bind them to chairs in a Long Island warehouse, releasing them only when the coast is clear and the fake debate is over.

Oh, and once in awhile people do get collaterally damaged. Shit does happen. To its credit, the New York Times ran an editorial taking both mobsters to task for not caring about assault weapon proliferation in the streets of America. My comment:

Whenever you hear politicians promising that they look forward to having a conversation on an issue, you can rest assured that it will be swept under the rug asap. Ms. Gonzalez is to be commended for asking one of the few questions at the stage-managed debate that was not bland, candidate-friendly and made for boring TV.

You expect a Republican NRA panderer like Romney to obfuscate, but there is no excuse for Mr. Obama, who'd vowed to push for a renewal of the assault weapon ban during his first campaign. What I found particularly off-putting was this remark:

"But there have been too many instances during the course of my presidency, where I've had to comfort families who have lost somebody. Most recently out in Aurora. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, actually, probably about a month, I saw a mother, who I had met at the bedside of her son, who had been shot in that theater.

"And her son had been shot through the head. And we spent some time, and we said a prayer and, remarkably, about two months later, this young man and his mom showed up, and he looked unbelievable, good as new." (page 7, debate transcript.)

It reminded me of the time when Bush blithely comforted maimed Iraq war vets with the promise of "we'll get you some new legs" and then invited them for a round of golf.

Prayers, platitudes, and bromides -- that's all our elected officials offer shooting victims. But what else can you expect in America, the biggest arms dealer the world has ever known?

If you believe the polls, Obama may win the electoral college vote and lose the popular vote, just eking out a victory that is more like a wash. But Mitt
Romney will prevail and be forever protected by the oligarchy. Paul Ryan will continue rising through the ranks, whether it be in Congress, K Street, or Fox. The rubout of democracy will continue, until the peasants and the wage slaves finally and inevitably reach the breaking point. Strikes and pitchforks are looming on the horizon.

Post-Debate Blather

Barack was all jacked up on a variation of his stump speech. Mitt was his usual smirky, stammering, gushing self. For a minute there, I thought these two one percenters were gonna get physical. But sadly, only the platitudes flew fast and furious.

Still, it was edifying to learn that both contenders are such staunch defenders of a tenth of the Bill of Rights (Second Amendment.) We absolutely need more armed militias. The president told a heartwarming story of how one survivor of the Aurora mass shooting who took a bullet to the head is now good as new. You wouldn't even know he'd been shot to look at him today! So it's all good, even though a few unlucky duckies died. Mitt bragged that back in Massachusetts, the AK-47 lovers and the AK-47 haters made nice and compromised. He did not say how, but maybe they split the difference and agreed on AK-23.5's.

Both of them want to deport the foreign gang-bangers made possible by the government's criminally misguided War on Drugs. The undocumented folks who want to stay here may be able to score green cards if they first demonstrate willingness to spill their blood for the sake of American Empire. Mitt said one solution is for them to self-deport, because there sure as hell aren't many opportunities left here.

Barry name-dropped Lily Ledbetter as proof that he likes females. That law he signed, by the way, does not guarantee equal pay for equal work. It guarantees women the right to find out how much more their male co-workers are making compared to them, so they can try and find a pro-bono lawyer to sue in their behalf. Mitt bragged that he used to hire whole "binders-full"of women. He said he is different from George Bush. If elected he will complete the BTK Trifecta of the presidency. Bush tortured, Obama killed, and Mitt will bind. The serial imperial presidency writ large, skewed and disordered.

If you're a Romney fan, then Romney won. Obamabots are just orgasmic that their guy didn't nod off again. Except for the woman who asked about gun control, the questions were soft as a baby's butt, designed to pit the two preapproved duopolists against each other in a way that was vapidly devoid of all meaning. Both the wives wore hot pink, and the pundits pontificated how awwwwkward that was. Awwwwwgh.

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the Green Party candidates, were arrested before the debate as they tried to get in. Even though they are on the ballot in 85% of the states, they were barred from participating. The corporatists have decreed that third party candidates have to be polling at least 15% to get invited. And since none of the pollsters include the Green Party in their surveys, the results were preordained. When the Quinnipiac people called me a few weeks ago, for example, asking if I wanted Romney or Obama, I said Jill Stein. And they said she wasn't on the list, so they were putting me down as "undecided". What a democracy.