Budget Shock & Awe

Spring is here, and so is another season of Budget Kabuki in the Feudal States of America. This is the horror show where the extreme right wing attacks and sucks up all the oxygen in the media room, forcing the gasping pseudo-journalist class to treat them seriously because they talk about personal responsibility and sharing the sacrifice. This is the movie where only the lonely Paul Krugman has the courage to call them out on their fraud and perfidy and end yet another column admonishing the liberal class to feel some outrage. 

Feel Krugman's outrage:

One answer you sometimes hear is that what Republicans really believe is that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but they’re afraid that the public won’t find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.

But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.

But this is, of course, not a policy direction the public would support if it were clearly explained. So the budgets must be sold as courageous efforts to eliminate deficits and pay down debt — which means that they must include trillions in imaginary, unexplained savings.

Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were never sincere? Yes, it does.

Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence. But please try. We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.

Krugman is so mad that he forgot to mention that there is even an alternative. So I mentioned it in my response to his column:

The GOP budgets are the usual dystopian manifestos we've come to know and despise, immiserating regular people as they leave the departments of surveillance and military aggression largely intact.

These Ayn Rand potboilers not only cause an annual shock-and-awe media frenzy--they allow the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party to move further to the right, as they trade more bliss for the rich for less drastic cuts to social programs. The military and Homeland Security budgets are always left largely intact, even increased, because Permawar has become essential to this financialized economy.

In the end, thanks to Citizen United, the interests of the oligarchs and the war-mongers will be served, because they own the place.

You might not know it, but there's also a progressive congressional People's Budget out there. It hardly gets covered at all, because cruelty and terror and outright fraud make for better copy. This humane budget contains a government jobs program, expansion of Social Security and other safety net programs like SNAP, a minimum wage increase, a debt-free  ollege education, a transition to single payer health care and a tax on carbon pollution.

It allocates $820 billion for infrastructure, taxes investments at the same rate as work, creates a new tax bracket for incomes over $1 million and terminates the carried interest deduction.

We need a lot more than outrage at the GOP. We need the People's Budget. We need a revolution.

Of course, with a name like "People's Budget," the corporate media crowd will automatically assume that it's a commie socialist plot. (And the Times moderators immediately buried my comment under their Golden Times Picks, all seemingly of the male persuasion* which variously cast aspersions on the evil GOP, the weak Democrats, the stupid voters, and, to show how fair and balanced they are, upon the "radical" Krugman himself. None of the comments mentioning the People's Budget was highlighted, lest The People discover its existence.)

And the sad part of it is, the People's Budget isn't even all that radical. As they did last year, our progressive congressional leaders deemed it necessary to immediately placate the phony plutocratic austerians by boasting that their budget reduces the deficit and balances the budget. It only offers a "pathway" for individual states to adopt Single Payer health insurance rather than calling for an immediate implementation of Medicare for All. Check out the neoliberal buzzwords in the intro:

The People's Budget fixes an economy that, for too long, has failed to provide the opportunities American families need to get ahead. Despite their skills and work ethic, most American workers and families are so financially strapped from increasing income inequality that their paychecks barely cover basic necessities. They earn less and less as corporations and the wealthy continue amassing record profits. It has become clear to American workers that the system is rigged.
The People’s Budget levels the playing field and creates economic opportunity by increasing the pay of middle- and low-income Americans. More customers and higher consumer spending advance American businesses, not tax cuts and relaxed regulations. The People’s Budget drives a full economic recovery by creating high-quality jobs and reducing family expenses, restoring the buying power of working Americans.
The People’s Budget closes tax loopholes that companies use to ship jobs overseas. It creates fair tax rates for millionaires and provides needed relief to low- and middle-income families. It invests in debt-free college, workforce training and small businesses within our communities, helping return our economy to full employment and giving a raise to Americans who need it most. Investments in The People’s Budget boost employment and wages by addressing some of the biggest challenges of our time: repairing America’s rapidly aging roads and bridges, upgrading our energy systems to address climate change, keeping our communities safe, and preparing our young people to thrive as citizens and workers.
A fair wage is more than the size of a paycheck. It’s having enough hours, paid overtime, sick and parental leave, and affordable health and childcare. It’s being able to afford a good education for your kids and never living in fear that your job will be sent overseas. It’s knowing you can make ends meet at the end of the month. The People’s Budget helps achieve that with a raise for American workers, a raise for struggling families and a boost to America’s long-term global competitiveness.

But I quibble. The document does go on to call for public financing of elections and admits that our real unemployment rate is well over 11 percent. So were we still living in a functioning democracy, I would rate the "progressive" proposal as just left of center. It passive-aggressively emphasizes aid to states to finance their own programs, rather than federally mandate reforms.  It doesn't call for a free college education -- it only espouses a restructuring of onerous student debt and "investment" in pre-school education. Using the term "investment" when it comes to people is one of my biggest pet peeves. Stop referring to kids as though they were pork belly futures that might someday provide a huge return to speculators!

And then the alleged progressives use the weasel-worded phrase "modifies our defense postures to create sustainable baseline defense spending." What the hell does that even mean? I looked and I looked, but saw nothing in the "progressive" budget that would demilitarize the economy, defund or dismantle the NSA and other totalitarian Homeland Security behemoths. But, to their credit, the progressives do call for an end to the nefarious and open-ended war mongering slush fund euphemized as "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Meanwhile, President Obama is ignoring even these modest proposals and, like Krugman and other liberal pundits, is limiting his remarks to lambasting Republican cruelty and math deficiency. He has vowed to veto any cuts to military spending (and should this veto be overridden, that's where the OCO will come into play) while continuing to tout plutocrat-friendly small bore public-private initiatives like My Brother's Keeper and enterprise zones. So far, anyway, he hasn't threatened to veto any of the proposed cuts to the safety net. Those slashes will be modified in Congressional back rooms, as they have been in every other year, when such various manufactured crises as the Debt Ceiling and the Fiscal Cliff are dragged out of the Kabuki prop department for our terrorized delectation.

Oh, and the troops will now be staying in Afghanistan indefinitely. It's Permawar, remember?

* There has been an actual scientific study conducted on the New York Times reader commentariat. It turns out that only 25% of the comments are written by women. Of course, of the dozen or so regular op-ed writers that the newspaper employs, only three are women (Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins and Linda Greenhouse.)  So it figures, much in the same way that the nihilistic GOP budget figures.

 

Race for the Bucks

For sheer tone-deaf chutzpah, Starbucks and its billionaire CEO Howard Schultz deserve every single one of the vitriolic Tweets being hurled their way over their latest phony marketing campaign. The ploy is to get the rich white people who buy their overpriced coffee -- and the poor white people who serve them their overpriced coffee --  to forget all about wealth inequality and the class war, and have an awkward concern-trolling conversation about black people instead.

As if you needed another reason to boycott Starbucks.

But, if you still insist on patronizing this franchise for your $5 fix of caffeine, I suggest you also instigate a conversation about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Starbucks is, after all, one of the 600 or so lucky multinational corporations negotiating in secret to take over the world. So, walk into Starbucks armed with a magic marker as well as your cash, and change the motto on the cup from "Race Together" to "Race Together to Stop Fast Track."

Initiate a conversation with your barista and your fellow customers about how this secretive deal will destroy thousands of American jobs. Saunter in carrying an anti-TPP sign. Demand that Howard Schultz tell his employees and his customers all about what the public is not being allowed to see. Godzillionaire TPP negotiator Mayor Mike Bloomberg, after all, has spilled the beans in a New York Times op-ed, revealing that Big Tobacco will supersede anti-smoking laws of sovereign nations by availing themselves of undemocratic corporate tribunals:

 If the Obama administration’s policy reversal is allowed to stand, not only will cigarettes be cheaper for the 800 million people in the countries affected by the trade pact, but multinational tobacco corporations will be able to challenge those governments — including America’s — for implementing lifesaving public health policies. This would not only put our tobacco-control regulations in peril, but also create a chilling effect that would prevent further action, which is desperately needed.

 So shouldn't fellow billionaire Schultz himself be willing to spill a few beans as well as roast them? Shouldn't he be just as concerned with health justice as with racial justice?

Flush the TPP has more helpful hints to help you harass Schultz and the whole cult of comfortable corporatists.

Meanwhile, what a coincidence that Schultz is initiating his Race Together murketing campaign in pro-labor Washington State, where activists and elected officials alike have been out in force protesting the TPP. Washington and neighboring Oregon just happen to be ground zero for the Obama administration's astroturfed propaganda campaign for fast track trade authority. These are major exporting states, and Oregon is also the home state of Senator Ron Wyden, Democratic chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and a TPP proponent.

 Gaius Publius quotes from the Obama-aligned P.R. firm's own press release:

With Congress set to debate concrete measures for strengthening the American economy this year, the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs (PCAJ) is launching today to pave the way to trade promotion [Fast Track] authority for President Obama and to help pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership. PCAJ is kicking things off with a significant digital advertising effort in Oregon and Washington State and will expand to other key states in weeks to come.
PCAJ will bring together progressive voices across the activist, advocacy, and business communities to share information about the benefits of this groundbreaking trade agreement—which is expected to support hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States.
Mitch Stewart, Battleground States Director for the 2012 Obama for America Campaign, and his fellow partner at 270 Strategies Lydia Tran, are coordinating the public launch and will provide strategic counsel for the coalition.

I'm surprised that the White House is not also urging "folks" to all race together to their nearest Starbucks for some refreshment to swallow along with the trade swill. Starbucks stands to profit big-time should the TPP get rammed through  Just think -- they can hire Vietnamese baristas for 30 cents an hour to schmooze with the local potentates over the plight of the nicotine-addicted peasants.

Starbucks is already doing phenomenally well. As the New York Times reports,

For the quarter ended Dec. 28, the company reported operating income of $915.5 million, up from $813.5 million in the period a year earlier. Revenue increased 13 percent, to $4.8 billion.

Still, the company is searching for new revenue streams, facing stiffer competition from rivals as it moves into higher-end coffees. With the race campaign, the brand may have been looking for a way to break away from its competitors, said Jeetendr Sehdev, who teaches at the University of Southern California.

“This is not about starting a conversation. This is about coffee wars,” he said. “The sole objective here is to try to increase the brand’s cultural relevance.”

Schultz never misses an opportunity to use his humble origins to justify his race to the top of the plutocratic pile. During her 2014 trip to China (where they're complaining about the high Starbucks prices) first lady Michelle Obama even oddly included Schultz in a list of civil rights and sports heroes for repressed Chinese students to emulate. 

What a coincidence that the Obama administration is now scapegoating China in its push for a coup by Starbucks and hundreds of other multinational corporations. Mrs. Obama, champion of healthy eating that she is, might want to take a look at Starbucks' food menu while she's busy touting Schultz's civil rights marketing campaign.  Here it is, courtesy of Food Babe:

Starbucks is a proud member of the Grocery Manufacturing Association, which lobbies for both the TPP and for GMO (genetically modified organism) food. And if any TPP partner country has the nerve to ban proplyene glycol from the food that children eat, Starbucks can haul them before an investor dispute tribunal and soak their poor populations for huge monetary damages. Starbucks and Big Tobacco and Big Pharma and hundreds of their closest friends and lobbyists can all Race Together, vying for the gold in the Greed Olympics.

NAFTA on Steroids, or Capitalists on Crack. No matter what you call the teams, the game is always fixed.

Selling the TPP

This just in: President Obama will sell the corporate coup known as the Trans- Pacific Partnership by hilariously claiming that it's a sweeping renegotiation of NAFTA, and ideal for Etsy sellers, to boot.

That was the big takeaway from an Organizing for Action conference call last night with one of President Obama's top advisers. Besides spending an hour not answering a few pre-selected questions, White House communications guru David Simas provided the several hundred Obamabots who phoned in with some handy talking points to convince their progressive friends that the TPP is progressive. (If you call runaway unregulated capitalism progressive, then I guess that would be a correct characterization.) The TPP would, for instance,   make it easier for those struggling to get by in the New Economy to sell their crap on Ebay and Etsy.  Those tariffs are apparently real killers when you're trying to unload a shitload of knockoff Beanie Babies on some rube in Vietnam.

I took copious notes on the conference call, and what follows is a rough and truncated, but essentially accurate, transcript. The moderator identified herself as Sara El-Amine of OFA. I've saved the debunking of the many White House claims promising TPP Nirvana for the end of this post. Meanwhile, I have marked the outright lies with an asterisk; the veiled threats are in bold; the many boilerplate bromides should simply speak for themselves.

Sara: There are hundreds of activists calling in tonight to listen to some of the most incredible minds and senior advisers named David Simas!

David Simas: The TPP is the pillar of what the president wants to do. In 2008, he said he'd renegotiate NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement.) He will enforce labor and environmental standards. He won't sign anything that doesn't have American workers at its heart. TPP at its heart is a renegotiation of NAFTA.

Sara: Cool!

David: The Asian economy is the fastest growing in the world. Two billion Asian people will join the middle class economy. China has no labor and environmental standards. Will the world economy be ruled by Chinese values or progressive values? We have high trade surpluses*.  We have to break through high tariff barriers to level the playing field. Ninety-eight percent of our exports are from small businesses. We will renegotiate NAFTA. We will protect intellectual property.

In 2014, President Obama brought nine trade enforcement actions against China. We got China to stop with hoarding the rare earth minerals. We sued Guatemala on their labor abuses.*

I don't like it when people say Fast Track authority. I want you to call it Trade Promotion Authority instead, because it's not fast. We need fast track TPA because the next horrible president will then be forced to honor labor and environment clauses and progressive values. President Obama wants to fight for everyone who works hard and plays by the same rules on a level playing field.

Sarah: Wow. We received almost 6,000 questions and we have time for five. Next question: Is the TPP really NAFTA on Steroids?

David: NO,NO,NO.  It will renegotiate NAFTA. It will put teeth in NAFTA. We will accept no imports from forced labor. There are good dispute resolution provisions.* This is an opportunity to fix NAFTA. Tell your friends! China. Level playing field. Compete.

Sara: How do we get other countries to play by the rules?

David: Enforcement! We filed a Guatemala action. Progressives must seize the Progressive Moment. Because China. We included 150 new environmental regulations in DR-CAFTA (Dominican-Central American Free Trade Agreement) alone. 

Sarah: Beautiful!  The next question is, why is the TPP so secretive?

David: So, this fast trade TPA is anything but fast. There are three separate 90-day phases. Stop calling it Fast Track Authority -- it is Trade Promotion Authority. Congress will be allowed to make wish lists. We are taking unprecedented steps to increase transparency. We've brought special interest groups, unions, environmentalists, to the front end. They know our objectives. The text is available to Congress.* There is more dialogue and outreach than ever before. We are forward-leaning.

Sarah: Incredible! But, some progressives are against it.

David: President Obama is a Progressive! If not fast track TPA now, then when? If we cede ground to China, what will happen? What happens if auto workers are at a disadvantage?* We are Aggressive Progressives! We go to the heart of what it means to be a Progressive! We held Guatemala accountable! And we understand the concerns of past trade deals.

Sarah: Wonderful! One last question. What are some basic ways to talk about this? How do we go about it?

David: Begin with the status quo. If you're against the status quo of NAFTA, then the TPP is for you. This is an opportunity to compare the values that we hold dear to China's values. EBayers are exporters. Etsy could have its trade barriers lowered. Right now it's too competitive to sell our poultry to Vietnam. Exporters pay 18% higher wages. We have to out-compete and outsell everyone else. Thanks to OFA, wages are up*  and incarceration is down. It's all about We. Thank you.

Sara: We will be sending out more information on how you can bullshit talk to your progressive friends on President Obama's behalf. (end of call.)
 *****

That's the bullshit. Now for some reality.

Before I get started on last night's vapid propaganda, I'd like to point you to an investigative piece by Gaius Publius, about a related pro-TPP astroturf group co-opting the "progressive" mantle for fascist purposes.  Called 270 Strategies, it's also run by former Obama campaign and White House staffers whose job is to plant friendly corporate coup stories in the mainstream media and gin up some drama. Writes GP:

Selling TPP as “progressive” is a stretch, but it’s an interesting move. It creates and leverages confusion on the left, and by dividing the left, attempts to finesse support for Fast Track, to sneak it past the finish line. Say “job killer” and the left is united against. Say “progressive” and “groundbreaking” and some on the left may be intrigued, may even be interested, may even be flattered enough to be tempted to agree.

This strategy may not work, but regardless, that’s the plan. 270 Strategies was hired to execute it — to put the confusion-sowing message bolded above, that TPP is a progressive treaty, into the mainstream press, to get that message mainsteam-blessed and make it part of “what everyone already knows.” As I said, a stretch, but that’s the job.

And just like magic, we suddenly see this in Politico.....

“Progressives Split on TPP”

Nice — and excellent message placement by the newly formed “Coalition” and their helpmates, 270 Strategies. Was this Politico paragraph the result of a nice “catch” by Politico, whose writers naturally read the same Daily Kos non-front-page diaries we do? Or did someone at the media-connected “270 Strategies” whisper into Politico’s ear on behalf of the “Coalition” and get them to put their — as I said, confusion-sowing — frame and message in the headline and then to bury the criticism (“astroturf” operation) behind a link that few will click? If I had to put money on it, I’d say the latter.
Notice that the “Coalition”-friendly framing is threaded throughout the paragraph. And notice that the only goal of this piece — of this whole operation, in fact — is to brand TPP as “progressive” and the disagreement as a disagreement “among progressives.” They don’t care, at this point, if the disagreement is covered, so long as it’s framed as a left-on-left discussion.
Mission accomplished. If 270 Strategies tried to be successful, they succeeded. If they didn’t try to succeed, they got very very lucky. Your call on which way this went down.

Just to make sure they succeed, OFA is enlisting "hundreds" of the same unpaid stalwarts who walked door to door selling Obamacare insurance policies to now go door to door in order to propagandize for a corporate coup. The White House is openly encouraging people to lie and say it's a whole dismantling of NAFTA. Smells pretty desperate to me.

As well it should. What David Simas didn't see fit to mention on his conference call is that the trade deficit is actually worse since the passage of free trade deals. Government data released last week show that the trade deficit with Korea has skyrocketed by more than 80% since the passage three years ago of Obama's North America-Korea Free Trade Agreement. His promise that the pact would expand exports and create American jobs turned out to be the exact opposite of the reality. The equivalent of 85,000 American jobs have been lost because of that ill-conceived pact. And meanwhile, exports from Korea to the US have gone up by 18%.

 Simas should be worried about auto exports. While the administration will try to spin the statistics, showing that American auto dealers sent an additional 23,000 passenger vehicles to Korea, South Korea exported an additional 450,000 of its own cars during the same time frame. That is real progress.

And then there was Simas's repetitive talking point about Obama's DR-CAFTA lawsuit against Guatemala over unfair labor practices. That trade pact, too, has had paradoxical consequences, to say the least:

Contrary to the promises of U.S. officials—who claimed the agreement would improve Central American economies and thereby reduce undocumented immigration—large numbers of Central Americans have migrated to the United States, as dramatized most recently by the influx of children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras crossing the U.S.-Mexican border last summer. Although most are urgently fleeing violence in their countries, there are important economic roots to the migration—many of which are related to DR-CAFTA.
One of the most pernicious features of the agreement is a provision called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism. This allows private corporations to sue governments over alleged violations of a long list of so-called “investor protections.”

As for Obama's promise that he will also insist on environmental protections in any TPP deal he signs, the history gives lie to his claim. Central American countries have been devastated and workers' lives destroyed,by predatory multinational mining industries laying waste to the landscape. His recent suit against Guatemala over its labor practices came conveniently just as Guatemalan children began crossing the border in the hundreds. Many of them were deported and others remain incarcerated in private Texas holding pens pending adjudication of their refugee status. The crackdown is also widely seen as a fig leaf for the TPP, a political ploy for the president to show that he's "serious" about protecting workers in trade partner countries.

Now, let's get to Simas's boast that the TPP will protect intellectual property. This is the part that neoliberal economist Paul Krugman mildly dislikes the most about the TPP:

So why do some parties want this deal so much? Because as with many “trade” deals in recent years, the intellectual property aspects are more important than the trade aspects. Leaked documents suggest that the US is trying to get radically enhanced protection for patents and copyrights; this is largely about Hollywood and pharma rather than conventional exporters. What do we think about that (slide 7)?

Well, we should never forget that in a direct sense, protecting intellectual property means creating a monopoly – letting the holders of a patent or copyright charge a price for something (the use of knowledge) that has a zero social marginal cost. In that direct sense this introduces a distortion that makes the world a bit poorer.

There is, of course, an offset in the form of an increased incentive to create knowledge, which is why we have patents and copyright in the first place. But do we really think that inadequate incentive to create new drugs or new movies is a major problem right now?

You might try to argue that there is a US interest in enhancing IP protection even if it’s not good for the world, because in many cases it’s US corporations with the property rights. But are they really US firms in any meaningful sense? If pharma gets to charge more for drugs in developing countries, do the benefits flow back to US workers? Probably not so much.

Which brings me to my last point: Why, exactly, should the Obama administration spend any political capital – alienating labor, disillusioning progressive activists – over such a deal?

Um, maybe because Hollywood is one of Obama's biggest donors?  In case any studio bigwigs were listening in to last night's conference call, David Simas wanted to send the message to them loud and clear that the politicians they've bought are still on board with copyright protections.

Oh, and about that whole "TPP is NAFTA reform" malarkey. When Obama made renegotiating NAFTA a campaign promise in 2008, he was only kidding. Black Agenda Report has the long, sordid history of the president's serial NAFTA mendacity here. He was caught assuring the Canadians that it was just political posturing, that he had no intention of standing in the way of job-destroying hypercapitalism.

And as he'd told a group of banksters in 2006, at the launch of the conservative Hamilton Project, he is a hardcore free trader, fully aware that neoliberalism destroys jobs and is harmful to the middle class. "It's not," he blandly said,"a bloodless process." 

And he wants volunteers to go out there and lie for him. This is how he always rolls. It's an m.o. that keeps on working.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of healthy skepticism out there. Congress critters are at least posturing their animus. Despite the transparency boasts of David Simas, House Democrats are upset that a White House meeting on the TPP set for tomorrow has been declared "classified."

Members will be allowed to attend the briefing on the proposed trade pact with 12 Latin American and Asian countries with one staff member who possesses an “active Secret-level or high clearance” compliant with House security rules. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told The Hill that the administration is being “needlessly secretive.”
“Even now, when they are finally beginning to share details of the proposed deal with members of Congress, they are denying us the ability to consult with our staff or discuss details of the agreement with experts,” DeLauro told The Hill.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) condemned the classified briefing. “Making it classified further ensures that, even if we accidentally learn something, we cannot share it. What is USTR working so hard to hide? What is the specific legal basis for all this senseless secrecy?” Doggett said to The Hill.

One more debunk and I'm done, but please feel free to let me know if I've missed any other lies. To be fair to David Simas, though, when he said that wages are up, he probably meant to say that income is up, drastically...  for the already hyper-rich plutocrats negotiating the TPP. High rollers gotta roll, right along with the nonstop propaganda.

Kochclintopia, Inc.

As I wrote this weekend in yet another comment to yet another New York Times article about the never-ending saga of the Hillary Clinton email scandal:

Just so we're perfectly clear: in the upcoming Neoliberal Death Match the choice will be which dynastic brand we proles would prefer to serve the uber-wealthy. Because while the rich and the well-connected have their personal servers, both internet and human, the public itself is not being served at all. Widespread poverty and racial/social injustice in the richest country on earth, underemployment, the creeping military/spy/police state, "trade" deals -- they're all being conveniently ignored in favor of the personal corruption of emperors and empresses in waiting. As Bernie Sanders notes, Hillary's emails are not being widely discussed in the town square. People have too much else on their (empty) plates.

What else is new in the New Abnormal?

Our post-Citizens United political system is so dirty that the elites of the two big business legacy parties no longer even pretend there's much difference between them. As a matter of fact, they gleefully rub our noses in their perfidy.They brag about how chummy they all are, slithering as they do within the same exclusive exalted circles.

Vote Democrat lest the Koch Brothers take over the place? You have got to be kidding me. The Clintons and the Kochs are buddies. They hang out at the same places and toast each other at galas. They brag about their philanthropies, which in brave neoliberal world aim to replace taxation of the rich and  government-mandated social safety nets. Money trumps ideology and the common good in what Gore Vidal called one political party with two right wings.

This incestuous corruption is hiding in plain sight in the New York Times Style section:

In a cocktail area in the front of the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center, guests primped and posed in floor-length gowns. Hair was sprayed to perfection, and many of the faces did not appear to move. A young crowd this was not.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the evening was that while David H. Koch and his wife, Julia, held court in one area of the lobby, Chelsea Clinton was in another.

Ballet apparently makes for strange bedfellows. Mr. Koch, the conservative billionaire who oversees a well-funded political network, said he has met the Clintons before, including at a benefit last year for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

“Toward the end, this U.N. ambassador asked if I wanted to meet the Clintons,” said Mr. Koch, who on this night wore a blue velvet tuxedo jacket and bow tie. “I said ‘sure.’ So I walked over to the next table, and Bill Clinton was there with Hillary and Chelsea. I started talking to them, and within three or four minutes, there must have been 30 people gathered around the table trying to hear my conversation with three Clintons.”

 Moments later, Ms. Clinton returned the compliment. “I have tremendous respect for the Kochs’ support of the arts,” said Ms. Clinton, who was wearing a black dress from Chanel and arrived with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. “We’re standing in the Koch Theater, and I’m thrilled Julia Koch is a fellow board member. She joined the board a couple of years ago, so I’ve had the privilege of getting to know her.”

And then they all dined on caviar and boogied together on the dance floor amidst their fluttering $1 million checks. I am sure that whether it's D or whether it's R, there's a seat waiting at the White House table for Julia Koch for some greed-washing public-private "initiative." 

If Hillary wins, I think it's a safe bet that Bill Clinton as First Dude will not be relegated to an office in the East Wing. It's very possible that Chelsea Clinton will be the de facto First Lady, just as Julie Eisenhower filled that role for her parent in the corrupt final days of the Nixon Administration.

If you still don't believe that Democrats and Republicans aren't joined at the hip, there was last night's incestuous Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington. This annual affair is restricted to the most insidery media-political complex insiders.  Journalists whose job description used to be affliction of the comfortable had to pledge a solemn oath not to write about the coziness that transpired. But according to controlled leaks, Barack Obama yucked it up big time with his frenemy, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and they all guffawed uproariously over the very serious national trauma that is the Clinton email scandal.

From the Washington Post's account:

The dinner is a love letter to a Washington that never really existed — a romanticized place where politicians, despite all the squabbling, share an abiding respect for each other, the press and the political process. If it was ever true, it’s certainly not now — but it must be nice to pretend for a few hours....
 With a guest list of 650 — a fraction the size of the much-hyped White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — Gridiron is arguably a far more coveted ticket within Beltway circles. Gridiron is also the most insular of the city’s press dinners. None of the speakers have to play to C-SPAN or CNN cameras, so they keep it for Washington, by Washington, with insider jokes designed for VIP political junkies who breathlessly parse every off-hand aside for hidden meaning....
 The skits are a mixture of hokey and slick, the journalists dressed in elaborate costumes but often bolstered by strong-voiced ringers for the song parodies. There were male reporters playing Colombian prostitutes in a Secret Service skit. There were puns and bad jokes but nothing damning: The same reporters who appear on Sunday morning talk shows decrying the letter GOP senators sent to Iran had nothing to say about it on stage.

It's all an act, folks. The press conferences, the Sunday shows, the corporate newspaper op-eds. Acting in the private interest disguised as the public interest is such a hard job, but somebody's got to do it. I'm sure the liberals cackled as much as the conservatives over a misogynistic skit ridiculing Latin American sex workers.

No word whether the Koch Brothers were in attendance, or whether they hobnobbed with Obama. But there was a ditty (sung to the tune of an old Coke commercial) about them, composed and performed just for the special occasion. It's exploding into the public domain like a bottle of sugary soda left in the freezer too long:

“We’d like to buy the world for Koch
There’s a billion we will spend
We pay to play in the USA
So freedom doesn’t end.”

As Ken Vogel has revealed, the top 100 political donors gave as much money as nearly five million small donors in the last election cycle. This doesn't even take into account all the anonymous dark money being channeled through Pacs and SuperPacs and 501(c)s. Not only do our votes not count, our combined dollars don't count for much either. 

Welcome to the American oligarchy.

Open Thread

I'd meant to post something original today, but unfortunately a major plumbing issue affecting several of the units in my complex will be interfering with the blog. Our regular handyman threw up his hands in despair last night and the major troops and outside contractors are being called in. I've been told to stay out of the kitchen. From past experience with such things, I am expecting the noise to fall somewhere between a dental drill on steroids and a jackhammer.

If anybody is out there, talk about whatever you like in comments. Meantime, here are a few of my recent New York Times comments to inspire you or disgust you or just leave you in a state of numbed apathy.

First, Charles Blow wrote about the privileged Oklahoma frat boys of Sigma Epsilon KKK and their racist chants on the bus. He is not shocked, shocked. My response:

There's a reason they call them frat brats. Rather than go to college to develop their cerebral cortices, they exercise the tribalistic, primitive limbic area of their brains. Their majors are brawls, beer, babes and bigotry. If there aren't any freshman pledges around to haze, then they'll pick on other people whom they deem weak or marginalized. If there is no physical prey immediately available, they'll conjure them up, braying their KKK anthems and telling their foul jokes.

And when they get caught, what do you think they do? They go into full Paula Deen mode. Nobody feels as bad as they do, they pathetically sob. They are not bigots -- the beers and the peers made them do it! Even their Paula Deen clone of a housemother joins in the folksy fun, for crying out loud. And OMG, look over there! There are black students caught on video, threatening the poor white frat boys. Will horrors never cease.

Boys on the bus chanting odium is nothing new, because the school bus has been bullying central all their lives. Luckily, this country is currently in a rare self-examination mode, and schools are falling all over themselves to take hazing, rape and blatant racism at least somewhat seriously, lest they lose their government and corporate funding and precious reputations.

 But the rot is still simmering and will inevitably come to a boil. Just because racism isn't sanctioned doesn't mean it's not endemic. Sigma Delta Hate is as close as the house next door.

And where would the New York Times op ed page be without Hillary to kick around and obsess over?  Entering the fray is so very hard to resist. So here are my comments to Frank Bruni and Gail Collins respectively:

 Hillary Clinton's cover of Frank Sinatra's "I Did It My Way" fell flat. She came across like Nixon, testily defending her emails and mawkishly bringing up her sainted mother's funeral arrangements contained therein as prey for a ravening press corps. She made them grovel for credentials, then pre-emptively accused them of having no interest in the real scandal of the GOP's attempted sabotage of the White House-Iran negotiations.

"Now, I would be pleased to talk more about this important matter," she said, "but I know there have been questions about my email, so I want to address that directly, and then I will take a few questions from you."

She never did address the Iran question, nor was she asked about the fact that some of her charity and political donors (Goldman Sachs, hedge fund billionaire Richard Perry) are also among the donors funding the bomb bomb bomb Iran campaign currently in full throttle in Congress and think tanks and on cable TV. Her email scandal is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

If Mrs. Clinton thinks she can coast to the Oval Office while hiding from the public, treating the press like dirt, and avoiding debates with challengers from the left, she should have another think coming. Then again, we no longer have a functioning democracy. Perhaps we should let the people in charge of the DNC know, right away, that they can expect a voter boycott if they insist on shoving this damaged politician down our throats.

 ***

Gail Collins is right: the media should be pressing Mrs. Clinton on her policies. We know we're never going to find out whether she was micromanaging Chelsea's wedding on the public's dime and time instead of her own, so we might as well move on to more important stuff that will affect all of us directly.

Will she support expansion of Social Security in these tough times? Her family foundation has had an uncomfortably close partnership with Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson, who's made it his life's mission to cut our earned benefits. Chelsea herself teamed up with Catfood Commissioners Simpson & Bowles to try and convince college kids that their grandparents were stealing their medical care and futures. What's up with that?

Look at the advisers. If former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin comes on board, raise the warning flag. It was Rubin (helped by John Podesta and Larry Summers) who orchestrated financial deregulation, paving the way for the economic crash and the ensuing worst wealth disparity in modern times. Don't let her blame that mess on just the GOP or "irresponsible borrowers." We need restoration of Glass-Steagall, and as Elizabeth Warren suggests, a dismantling of the TBTFs. What's Hillary's position on that?

Ask her about drones, gun control, dealings with corrupt foreign governments like Saudi Arabia, and corporate coups disguised as "free trade" deals.

Don't just let her get away with platitudes about breaking glass ceilings.

Billionaires For Bombs

Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision which wed money to politics, the billionaires running the place have thumbed their noses at representative democracy and are now more brazenly dictating foreign policy and starting wars. The American Republican Party and Israel's Likud Party are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same entity, led and funded by Sheldon Adelson and a sordid little cabal of predatory high rollers.

The latest kerfuffle that has everybody shouting "treason" and "sedition" involves freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) doing an end-run around the White House's nuclear negotiations with Iran and getting most of his Goplikud cronies in Congress to sign a letter to Iran, warning that once President Obama leave office, all deals are off, so let's call the whole thing off while we are still ahead.

Cotton's biggest financial backers just happen to be the Adelson-funded Club for Growth and Wall Street billionaire Paul Singer, whose stated main life objective is to bomb the hell out of Iran. A veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Cotton, the great young Neocon hope of the future of the Forever Wars, beat incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor last fall with two-thirds of his campaign war chest coming from outside his state.

Vice President Joe Biden yesterday issued a strongly-worded statement on the GOP's breach of protocol regarding the Iran negotiations, but without even bothering to note the slimy connection among Wall Street and Israel and domestic senatorial perfidy. From Politico:

“In 36 years in the United States Senate,” Biden said,“I cannot recall another instance in which senators wrote directly to advise another country — much less a longtime foreign adversary — that the president does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them.”

Cotton responded to Biden on Tuesday, saying that he and the other senators who signed the letter are “simply speaking for the American people.”

Just so you know, The American People are now defined as the Multinational Oligarchy. In this particular case, the American People are named Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer. Their money speaks for all of us, regardless of who we voted for in the last election.

Singer, who specializes in loading  foreign countries like Argentina down with debt, the better to plunder them in the future, openly and unabashedly wants to start a war with Iran for the future plunder of all its oil. He's largely gotten a pass from the corporate media for his malevolence, because he's the "rare moderate Republican" who backs gay rights -- not least because he happens to have a gay son. But as a 2014 profile of him in The Nation reveals,

First and foremost in Singer’s hawkish foreign policy portfolio is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative think tank whose scholars have promoted “crippling sanctions,” bombing Iran, and sought to downplay how ordinary Iranians might react to a pre-emptive bombing campaign. The hedge fund mogul contributed $3.6 million to FDD between 2008 and 2011, making him the organization second-largest donor after Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus.

“Too much has been made in the West of the Iranian reflex to rally round the flag after an Israeli (or American) preventive strike,” wrote FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht in 2010. And in October 2013, as Washington and Tehran were engaged in the early stages of an unprecedented diplomatic détente, FDD Executive Director Mark Dubowitz and Gerecht, writing in The Washington Post, called for the passage of more sanctions, a move which would have certainly hindered diplomatic progress, because “abandoning the long quest for atomic weapons would be an extraordinary humiliation for Iran’s ruling class. That isn’t going to happen unless Iran’s supreme leader and his guards know with certainty that the Islamic order is finished if they don’t abandon the bomb.”

Before Biden went apoplectic over the seditious Tom Cotton, his boss had mouthed a few mealy words about "donors" interfering with his negotiations with Iran, but he was quickly shouted down by the incensed Billionaires for Bombs party. Could the reason that Obama and Biden are now keeping mum about the big money behind Cotton's letter be that a Hillary Clinton booster is also behind the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran campaign? His name is Richard Perry, and he gives generously to her foundation as well as to the right-wing Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Again, from The Nation:

Perry, the media-shy owner of Barneys and manager of the Perry Capital hedge fund, runs in the Clintons’ New York City and Hamptons social circles. He gives to the Clinton Foundation and, along with his wife, makes no secret of his support for Hillary Clinton’s future political aspirations. A 2007 New York Times profile of Richard and his wife, Lisa Perry, describes two large portrait photographs of Hillary Clinton adorning the hallways of their penthouse apartment. In a Tablet magazine profile two years ago, Lisa Perry explains that she lost interest in politics because she “really wanted Hillary to be president.” Despite that disappointment, she contributed to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, though her husband, who had contributed in 2008, gave no money.

The Democrats can't call out the Goplikuds' dirty money without also calling out their own dirty money. So they'll pretend that this is all about a naive young Arkansas upstart named Tom Cotton and the Republicans' lack of respect for President Obama. 

* Update 3/11: Never thought I'd hear myself write this, but Tommy Freedom has written a good column on this same subject: Sheldon Adelson as the Doctor Evil character, de facto leader of the not-so-free world. Unfortunately, our favorite chin-stroking pundit does not follow his Eureka moment to its logical conclusion, and call for the ditching of Citizens United.

So which do you prefer: Goplikuds or Republikuds? 

Update #2: Mondoweiss has more on the Republikud letter ostensibly written by Cotton, (reportedly at a $1 million price-tag) pointing out more of the money/bribery details. Friedman's former Times colleague, Bill Kristol, was allegedly the scribe behind the bribe. This scandal is starting to make Hillary's emails smell like roses. I can't wait for the media to start asking her about her own donors. I can't wait for Eric Holder to convene a grand jury. I probably wait in vain.

Hypocrisy Marches On

Nobody ever promised you a bridge-crossing from mendacity to truth, people.

As a matter of fact, President Obama admitted as much Saturday during his Selma speech. While his dulcet words now waft high above the Homeland, waiting to be chiseled into the marble halls of his library shrine (if not into the hearts and minds of the populace), one of his paragraphs remains as firmly grounded in the American soil as a patch of ineradicable Alabama kudzu:

Look at our history.  We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters.  That’s our spirit.  That’s who we are.

Oh What a Tangled Web of Kudzu (credit: Alabama Press-Register)

Without a willing suspension of disbelief in our own mythic history and the endless spinning of our national yarn, where would we be as a country? We Shall Overcome our cognitive dissonance, or our heads will surely explode.

  But plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Without even a hint of irony, Barack Obama proclaimed: 

 We have endured war and we’ve fashioned peace.  We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives.  We take for granted conveniences that our parents could have scarcely imagined.  But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship; that willingness of a 26-year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.

It was only a day before Obama uttered those words that, risking their own freedom, a group of protesters was arrested outside a Nevada Air Force base, where soldiers are still at war, busily droning people to death with technological wonders from the safety of their trailers. The troops were operating from a Kill List of "militants" whom Obama himself has personally marked for pre-emptive extermination.

Anti-drone protesters who said they wanted to spotlight war crimes and connect with pilots were arrested after trying to block the entrance Friday at a US Air Force base in southern Nevada.

More than 100 people were assembled Friday morning outside the Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs near Las Vegas, officials said.The protesters attempted to block the entrance but the workers were able to come and go during the shift change between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., officials said.

 Organizers said protesters stood or laid down on the road in front of the two access gates. Others were stationed along the highway carrying photos and tombs to represent drone warfare victims....The protesters said they have been at the site for a week to speak out against remotely piloted aircraft flying armed missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Organizers said the protest drew people and advocacy groups from 18 different states. Casey Stinemetz of Veterans for Peace said the St. Louis-based organization saw the event as an opportunity to reach out to the "cogs in the machine," such as the pilots and other Creech personnel who carry out drone operations.

President Obama, for his own part, has been successful in keeping the names and other details of his drone victims -- said to number in the thousands -- a deep, dark secret from the American people. He is not about to cross that bridge. As he explained in Selma, "that’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction -- because we know our efforts matter.  We know America is what we make of it."

Predators and war criminals are magically made into aw-shucks hucksters and entrepreneurs. And speaking of entrepreneurship, the USA now leads the world in weapons sales and production, thanks to its endless war of terror and escalation of conflict in the middle East:

The annual study by IHS Inc.—which looks at military markets in 65 nations, excluding small arms, munitions, and surveillance programs—finds that the United States is behind one-third of all equipment and weapons exports world-wide.

This is no small amount: in 2014, global "defense" trade surpassed $64.4 billion, the report finds.

"Defense trade rose by a landmark 13.4 percent over the past year," said Ben Moores, senior defense analyst at IHS Aerospace, Defense and Security, in a press statement. "This record figure has been driven by unparalleled demand from the emerging economies for military aircraft and an escalation of regional tensions in the Middle East and Asia Pacific."

 The U.S., further, is the top profiteer from rising conflict across the Middle East, accounting for $8.4 billion in exports to this region in 2014, compared to $6 billion the previous year.Meanwhile, U.S. allies in the expanding war against ISIS are boosting their weapons imports significantly. Saudi Arabia blew past India to become the number one weapons importer in the world. Analysts predict that, in 2015, Saudi Arabia will account for one of every seven dollars spent on such imports.

No matter that Saudi Arabia has one of the most abysmal human rights records in the world, even going so far today as to physically bar the female Swedish foreign minister from addressing the Arab League meeting, on top of its funding of 9/11 murderers, its whippings of bloggers, its horrendous treatment of women, its beheadings of dissidents. Saudi Arabia is a respected partner in profit of the United States, you see.

And hypocrisy never stopped Barack Obama before. Just today, he declared socialist Venezuela to be a national security threat, and slapped it with economic sanctions for.... drumroll, please.... committing  unspecified "acts of violence or abuse of human rights, (penalization for or prohibition of) freedom of expression, or were government officials involved in public corruption." 

The White House said the order targeted people whose actions undermined democratic processes or institutions, had committed acts of violence or abuse of human rights, were involved in prohibiting or penalizing freedom of expression, or were government officials involved in public corruption.

"Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.

"We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents. Venezuela's problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent," he added.

The democratically elected government of Venezuela is not involved in a drone assassination program or a high tech arms cartel that colludes with autocratic governments, nor has it invaded any of its neighbors or established a thousand military colonies around the world. What it has done is accuse American hucksters and entrepreneurs of trying to stage one of their CIA coups in the national interest of the same multinational oil companies having long, sordid histories of Latin American plunder. The Venezuelan government is in the process of expelling "State Department" personnel from the country. And the Venezuelans own a huge chunk of the world's oil reserves.

And Barack Obama possesses an outsized chunk of the world's bullshit reserves. He has earned near-universal plaudits for his most recent speech. His power to wow the crowds with his voice is seemingly invincible.

The only thing more cognitively jarring than the president's gorgeous Selma speech was the presence of George W. Bush as an honored guest at the event marking Bloody Sunday. Bush was invited because he did sign the renewal of the Voting Rights law, before the GOP went totally off the rails with the election of the first black president.

The nearest thing to controversy about Bush's presence, as far as the New York Times is concerned, is that Bush was "cropped out" of their front page photo showing the Obamas marching across the bridge. The award-winning Times photographer claims he inadvertently "super-overexposed" Bush.

That's irony for you. The real sin of the Times is that they never exposed George enough while they had the chance, and when it could have made an actual difference. They planted phony stories on nonexistent gold cake uranium and Iraq WMDs, greasing the skids for an illegal invasion. Bending to White House pressure, they'd withheld James Risen's blockbuster story about illegal government eavesdropping on everyday Americans, helping Bush sail to a second term.

 So many hucksters, so little time.