The criticism of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders comes in three distinct flavors, depending largely upon the source.
1. Criticism from the center. These are mostly cheap swiftboating attacks and straw man arguments coming from the mainstream media and Democratic Party insiders. The attacks are usually passive-aggressive, as in the New York Times ignoring him for long stretches and then coming up with the occasional dismissive "he can't possibly win, because we say so" tripe. They often reek of cheerful condescension. See this and this.
Centrist critics are overly fond of casting Sanders as a convenient prop for Hillary Clinton, a supporting actor who exists only for the cosmetic purpose of "pushing her to the left." This trope is becoming so over-used that people are beginning to notice that it is a trope.
Or, centrists can even be openly hostile, like former Congressman Barney Frank. He's penned a vicious little hit piece ("Why Progressives Shouldn't Support Bernie") in Politico, suggesting that it would be better for the Democratic Party to be undemocratic and skip the actual debates and primaries against Hillary the Inevitable. Because otherwise, Republicans! (I forget if he remembered the standard Supreme Court fear-mongering. Truth be told, I couldn't even stand to read the whole thing.)
Or, they can simply be brazenly co-optive, as in that other stuffy establishment organ, the Washington Post chiding Sanders for not co-opting the BlackLivesMatter protesters at Netroots Nation as skillfully as other Dems once co-opted Occupy. (actually, Occupy was co-opted by police crackdowns and Homeland Security fusion centers, but facts are messy things) As if the Washington Post gave a rat's ass about a group of ragtag protesters at a ragtag progressive event that Hillary Clinton found it beneath her dignity to attend. Joan Walsh of Salon is also emerging in the role of official Sanders Scold. But so far, I have to say that Vox is beating her in the shallow corporate Dem propaganda game, which entails pitting liberals against progressives, blacks against whites. And they say the GOP is a hot mess?
A subset of critics from the center are also chiding the young black protesters themselves for being crude and rude. This smarmy allegiance to political correctness is a racial dog-whistle in and of itself. Young black kids, understandably upset about their peers being frisked and stopped, maimed, stalked and killed by police, are just too naive for their own good. Even worse, they refuse to be corralled into the vaunted Democratic veal pen. What a slap in the face to the established American order!
2. Criticism from the left. This is relatively rare, because the Left itself is rare, but for the most part, the beefs are entirely legitimate. I'm not ready to go quite so far (yet) as Black Agenda Report does in claiming that Sanders is nothing but a fraudulent Democratic plant, whose assigned sheep-dogging role is to herd the free-range disenchanted masses into the corporate Democratic pen to make the world safe for Hillary. I think that Bernie is entirely sincere in his run for national office. His domestic policy agenda, which runs more toward classic FDR-style liberalism than to "socialism," would be considered mainstream if the two corporate parties hadn't been veering off the neocon/neolib cliff over the past three decades or so. Polls have shown, for example, that a majority of Americans favor single payer health care.
But I think we should look at Sanders' political history with our eyes wide open. Read, for example, Paul Street's excellent biographical piece in Counterpunch about how Bernie came to join the Democrats in everything but name.
I've been troubled, too, by Sanders' sometimes bellicose foreign policy record and his radio silence on the security/spy/eternal war state in his stump speeches. He does not handle hecklers well. Last summer, he ordered people protesting his vote for foreign aid to Israel in the wake of the Gaza massacres to "sit down and shut up." And I am also troubled by his frequent statements that he is not a spoiler, that he likes and respects Hillary Clinton, and that he would endorse her wholeheartedly should she win the nomination. It smacks of pre-emptive capitulation.
And, I am troubled by the rise of something resembling an Obama cult around Bernie Sanders. The "Berniebots" will brook no criticism of him, not even legitimate criticism. To these people, who are easily found in media comment sections, you're either totally in the bag for Bernie, or you're a traitor to the cause. Some progressives are describing the young black activists who interrupted Bernie as naive and rude. Some people are even accusing them of being agents provocateurs from the Clinton camp. Some of this "controversy" is also probably being totally made up by corporate sock and meat puppets and bored political horse-race reporters.
These are dangerous times in the Age of Political Correctness and corporate neoliberal propaganda. If we become too afraid to question and challenge our leaders and politicians, then we have failed in our jobs as engaged citizens. I think it is perfectly reasonable to support and praise and even donate to Bernie Sanders without putting all your eggs in one Bernie Basket. Call the guy out when he's wrong, applaud him when he's right, and live to tell the democratic tale. Our activism outside the realm of electoral politics is what counts in the long run.
To Bernie's credit, meanwhile, his team is reportedly taking the criticism of his gruffness at Netroots to heart. And unlike Hillary, he is not backing away from the crowds.
3. Criticism from the right. So far, this has largely consisted of right-wing outlets simply letting the New York Times do their job for them -- they simply steal the centrist swiftboating and run with it. But Kevin Williamson of the conservative National Review has just written a zany column calling Sanders a "national socialist" -- as in Nazi. Bernie couldn't possibly be a real socialist, a L'Internationale, you see, because he is an America-firster. Williamson also disgracefully co-opted the already stale centrist false-equivalency talking point of comparing Sanders to Donald Trump. The Times' Nate Cohn should sue him for plagiarism.
But, would I be a Bernie-hater if I said that I, too, am a little concerned about Sanders restricting his criticism of the corporate coup trade deals as being harmful only to American workers? I wish he would talk more about what they're doing to 40 cents-an-hour child laborers in Vietnam, or the suicidal wage slaves in Chinese FoxConn factories, or the imprisoned Walmart textile workers of Bangladesh. (Go ahead, call me an idealist internationalist commie hippie purist from the Professional Left if you want to. I can take the criticism. And so, I suspect, can Bernie.)
But it's early days yet. Bernie is putting stuff in his stump speeches to gin up the enthusiasm. And the evils of globalization are being addressed more than adequately by Pope Francis. Bernie is a huge fan of the pope. And where there is pope, there is life.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
What's the Matter With Kids Today?
Despite the alleged economic recovery, American children are just not getting with the feel-good public relations program. In the five years since the financial meltdown solidified the permanent wealth of the plutocrats, the child poverty rate in the One Indispensable Nation has been steadily creeping up. Twenty-three percent of all American citizens below the age of 18 now live in poverty. Unsurprisingly, it's worse for black children, nearly one-third of whom are now deemed to be officially poor.
Between 2008 and 2013, the actual number of poor children in the US increased from 13.2 million to 16.1 million, an increase of four full percentage points. The Annie P. Casey Foundation, which just released its Kids Count report, notes that one especially disturbing finding is that urban childhood poverty is now at the highest level since 1990. Statistically speaking, poor children from cities are more likely to drop out of school and develop behavior and emotional problems.
The authors found that although the employment rate for parents of poor children has improved somewhat, wages have not. Nor are parents who have dropped out of the workforce and stopped looking for jobs even counted in the statistics. The shift toward more low-wage, part-time and precarious employment has, in fact, been detrimental to children. They were better off when their parents were collecting the now-defunct unemployment benefits than they are with parents working two or three part-time jobs, or driving for Uber with cars bought on high-interest credit.
Moreover, the child poverty stats in the report cover only the most desperate families of the USA. Taking into account that families need an income of at least twice the official federal poverty level in order to live comfortably, 45% of all American children can be said to be enduring a precarious existence.
An earlier report noted that even Greece, with its official Great Depression-worthy unemployment rate of 25%, is actually better off than the cities of Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Fresno, Memphis and Miami.
And the bipartisan slashing of the social safety net goes on and on with a vengeance. In just the past two years alone, Congress has cut the food stamp program by $13.7 billion. Long-term unemployment benefits for jobless parents are a thing of the past. As multimillionaire Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi so charmingly put it as she joined the War Against the Poor right before Christmas in 2013: "Embrace the suck."
At least Marie Antoinette is said to have told the peasants to just eat some cake and get on with their lives. All the American political aristocracy has to offer is more hot air and endless campaigning and a vague promise of help to only the "hard workers" out there. They mouth platitudes about "investing in" children so as to improve the lot of future generations. They say nothing about feeding them, and giving their parents a living wage and a decent job right now, this very minute.
As the late Eduardo Galeano wrote in Upside Down, "Day after day, children are denied the right to be children. The world treats rich kids as if they were money, teaching them to act the way money acts. The world treats poor kids as if they were garbage, to turn them into garbage. And those in the middle, neither rich nor poor, are chained to televisions and trained to live the life of prisoners."
And that is just the way the ruling class racketeers like it. If they ever read Dickens, they probably look upon Mr. Murdstone as a role model.
Between 2008 and 2013, the actual number of poor children in the US increased from 13.2 million to 16.1 million, an increase of four full percentage points. The Annie P. Casey Foundation, which just released its Kids Count report, notes that one especially disturbing finding is that urban childhood poverty is now at the highest level since 1990. Statistically speaking, poor children from cities are more likely to drop out of school and develop behavior and emotional problems.
The authors found that although the employment rate for parents of poor children has improved somewhat, wages have not. Nor are parents who have dropped out of the workforce and stopped looking for jobs even counted in the statistics. The shift toward more low-wage, part-time and precarious employment has, in fact, been detrimental to children. They were better off when their parents were collecting the now-defunct unemployment benefits than they are with parents working two or three part-time jobs, or driving for Uber with cars bought on high-interest credit.
Moreover, the child poverty stats in the report cover only the most desperate families of the USA. Taking into account that families need an income of at least twice the official federal poverty level in order to live comfortably, 45% of all American children can be said to be enduring a precarious existence.
An earlier report noted that even Greece, with its official Great Depression-worthy unemployment rate of 25%, is actually better off than the cities of Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Fresno, Memphis and Miami.
And the bipartisan slashing of the social safety net goes on and on with a vengeance. In just the past two years alone, Congress has cut the food stamp program by $13.7 billion. Long-term unemployment benefits for jobless parents are a thing of the past. As multimillionaire Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi so charmingly put it as she joined the War Against the Poor right before Christmas in 2013: "Embrace the suck."
At least Marie Antoinette is said to have told the peasants to just eat some cake and get on with their lives. All the American political aristocracy has to offer is more hot air and endless campaigning and a vague promise of help to only the "hard workers" out there. They mouth platitudes about "investing in" children so as to improve the lot of future generations. They say nothing about feeding them, and giving their parents a living wage and a decent job right now, this very minute.
As the late Eduardo Galeano wrote in Upside Down, "Day after day, children are denied the right to be children. The world treats rich kids as if they were money, teaching them to act the way money acts. The world treats poor kids as if they were garbage, to turn them into garbage. And those in the middle, neither rich nor poor, are chained to televisions and trained to live the life of prisoners."
And that is just the way the ruling class racketeers like it. If they ever read Dickens, they probably look upon Mr. Murdstone as a role model.
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| "We've fixed the place up special, even polished off your chains!" |
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Insurance Company Executioners
If a stoned vigilante security guard can't quite succeed in killing a young black man with a shot to the back of the neck, then the predatory insurance cartel will be only too happy to finish the job.
They might as well take out the "protection" part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Because if you get sick or hurt in the commission, or vicinity, of what the government-subsidized Predatory Insurance Cartel (PIC, as in nit-picky) deems to be "illegal activity," it can and will deny payment of your medical bills. And it's all perfectly legal. PIC is judge, jury and executioner.
Private insurance subscribers can die, for all PIC cares. If you happen to be employed at a no/low-benefit job, you're black, or you live in a state ( like Oklahoma) that has denied Medicaid expansion for the working poor, it seems like they're basically praying that you die, and die quickly.
The "illegal activity"of Monroe Bird III entailed making out with his girlfriend in the parking lot of his own Tulsa apartment complex last February. When security guard Ricky Leroy Stone approached the couple and demanded ID, the victim allegedly locked the doors and started to back out. Stone claimed he shot Bird in self-defense through the rear window of the vehicle as the victim was backing up. Bird himself, rendered a quadriplegic from the shooting, had no memory of what occurred, but insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
Stone was never charged, claiming the standard "stand your ground" privileges of white guys who want to shoot black people. Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, in blaming the victim, said “Mr. Bird might have made choices that might have gone a different way if he had listened to the security guard and obeyed his instructions."
Never mind that blood tests later revealed pseudo-cop Stone to be stoned on marijuana, and that he was not actually a sworn police officer, and that Bird was under no obligation to obey him. In Oklahoma, apparently, failure to obey a parking lot attendant can get you shot when you're legally parked while black. You made the "wrong choice" of living in an apartment complex guarded by a George Zimmerman clone. Too bad, so sad.
Of course, the story gets even worse:
Bird supposedly benefited from the much-touted PPACA clause which allows young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 28. Even so, his family is now left with more than $1 million in unpaid bills. Bird's insurance was through the plan of his stepfather, an employee of the elite and exclusive Southern Hills Country Club, where the application process alone costs members $40,000. You can just imagine how many black people (besides Tiger Woods) play golf there, and how many black people wait on white people there.
According to the New York Times, there are no statistics on how many Americans are denied insurance coverage based on the "illegal activity" clause in many policies.
Black lives matter. Repeal the Stand Your Ground laws. And let's keep pushing for Single Payer health care.
They might as well take out the "protection" part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Because if you get sick or hurt in the commission, or vicinity, of what the government-subsidized Predatory Insurance Cartel (PIC, as in nit-picky) deems to be "illegal activity," it can and will deny payment of your medical bills. And it's all perfectly legal. PIC is judge, jury and executioner.
Private insurance subscribers can die, for all PIC cares. If you happen to be employed at a no/low-benefit job, you're black, or you live in a state ( like Oklahoma) that has denied Medicaid expansion for the working poor, it seems like they're basically praying that you die, and die quickly.
The "illegal activity"of Monroe Bird III entailed making out with his girlfriend in the parking lot of his own Tulsa apartment complex last February. When security guard Ricky Leroy Stone approached the couple and demanded ID, the victim allegedly locked the doors and started to back out. Stone claimed he shot Bird in self-defense through the rear window of the vehicle as the victim was backing up. Bird himself, rendered a quadriplegic from the shooting, had no memory of what occurred, but insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
Stone was never charged, claiming the standard "stand your ground" privileges of white guys who want to shoot black people. Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, in blaming the victim, said “Mr. Bird might have made choices that might have gone a different way if he had listened to the security guard and obeyed his instructions."
Never mind that blood tests later revealed pseudo-cop Stone to be stoned on marijuana, and that he was not actually a sworn police officer, and that Bird was under no obligation to obey him. In Oklahoma, apparently, failure to obey a parking lot attendant can get you shot when you're legally parked while black. You made the "wrong choice" of living in an apartment complex guarded by a George Zimmerman clone. Too bad, so sad.
Of course, the story gets even worse:
The complication was a pulmonary thromboembolism caused by a blood clot in his leg. Blood clots in the extremities are a common condition in paraplegics and quadriplegics. They can be avoided through physical therapy and skilled nursing, either in a rehab facility or through intensive in-home care. Bird was deemed to be deserving of neither. His care was left to his mother and grandmother.Three months later, as he lay in the hospital hooked to a ventilator, Mr. Bird’s insurance company declined to cover his medical bills. The reason? His injuries resulted from “illegal activity.”Yet Mr. Bird was not convicted of any crime in connection with the incident. He was not even charged.Without insurance, Mr. Bird’s family could not move him to a rehabilitation center specializing in spinal cord injuries. He was discharged from the hospital and died at home last month from a preventable complication often seen in paralyzed patients.
Bird supposedly benefited from the much-touted PPACA clause which allows young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until age 28. Even so, his family is now left with more than $1 million in unpaid bills. Bird's insurance was through the plan of his stepfather, an employee of the elite and exclusive Southern Hills Country Club, where the application process alone costs members $40,000. You can just imagine how many black people (besides Tiger Woods) play golf there, and how many black people wait on white people there.
According to the New York Times, there are no statistics on how many Americans are denied insurance coverage based on the "illegal activity" clause in many policies.
Despite the alleged "protections" against denial of care based on pre-existing conditions, the PPACA affords no protections against any and all other forms of predation. You can still be denied coverage if you get sick, should some unelected, unaccountable, anonymous claims adjustor decide you are morally not entitled to it. You can have an insurance card and still be condemned to an unnecessary painful death.Insurers have long relied on allegations of illegal activity to deny coverage to patients injured in a variety of contexts, from traffic infractions to gun accidents. The judicial rationale is that “we don’t want to reward illegal activity,” she said.In one court case, a union health plan denied the claims of a worker’s son who was injured while allegedly building a pipe bomb, Ms. Patterson (Crystal Patterson of the American Bar Association) noted. In another, an insurer declined to cover the medical expenses of a man who lost control of an uninsured, unregistered car while trying to pass another driver in a no-passing zone.Courts have upheld the denials even when there were no convictions for illegal activity. The administrator of the policy can deny claims even when no criminal charges are filed, Ms. Patterson said.
Black lives matter. Repeal the Stand Your Ground laws. And let's keep pushing for Single Payer health care.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Hillary Clinton's Malpractice
Last week, a Michigan physician named Farid Fata was sentenced to 45 years in prison for prescribing unnecessary chemotherapy to hundreds of patients he had deliberately misdiagnosed with cancer. The motive was the usual one: pathological greed.
Four years ago this month, an American secretary of state named Hillary Clinton traveled to Greece to prescribe what she called "chemotherapy" to millions of otherwise healthy Greeks. She deliberately misdiagnosed their economic suffering at the hands of Eurozone leaders as a disease to be cured, paradoxically enough, by those same banksters and their partner in malpractice, the USA-centric International Monetary Fund. The motive for their toxic prescription of austerity was, and is, the usual one: pathological greed.
Even though Hillary Clinton's Rx has proved ultimately deadly -- both literally and figuratively -- she is living proof that the love of finance capital means never having to say you're sorry. Hillary, of course, isn't going to jail, or even being scorned by the Establishment for proclaiming that austerity is good medicine which fosters fiscal growth and healing. She is running for president. And she has a good chance of winning office, thanks to voter apathy and unlimited bankster money, and the GOP opposition being even more pathological than she is.
Her good friend Donald Trump has already served his own usefully idiotic purpose: that of being so vile that the other vile Republicans in the race are beginning to look vaguely, miraculously human. Hillary must run against someone who appears vaguely human -- otherwise, people might notice that this so-called democracy of ours is a big fat sham.
The reason that I'm bringing up Hillary Clinton's relatively recent visit to Athens in July 2011 is because of the frenzied "apology war" currently being waged on her behalf by the usual liberal suspects and proxies. They're claiming that the 90s years of Clintonian right-wing neoliberism are so far in the distant past that it is patently unfair to blame her for the tragedies that her husband's malpractice (Wall Street deregulation, his criminalization of poverty via welfare "reform", his embrace of globalization/NAFTA) have spawned in the interim. Now that she is verbally repudiating "Third Way" centrism in her stump speeches, we are supposed to believe that she has evolved into the progressive she has always wanted to be. The ultimate proof of her good intentions, supposedly, is in The Speech she gave last week, vaguely and feebly echoing Elizabeth Warren's populism. (see my previous post, The Extreme Centrism of HC.)
But four years ago -- seems like only yesterday because essentially, it was -- Hillary Clinton, like a reanimated Maggie Thatcher, was lecturing the world on the therapeutic benefits of free market unregulated capitalism and the necessity of punishing "ordinary" people with toxic chemo. She promised the austerity cure, yet the disease of wealth inequality spread.
It gets even worse. When Hillary Clinton traveled to Athens only four years ago this month, she also congratulated the unpopular Greek government for preventing a ship called The Audacity of Hope from joining the humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza, then under cruel lock-down by the Israeli government. As people demonstrated in the streets against neoliberalism, she congratulated the unpopular Greek government for joining her misbegotten air war on Libya, even as the Troika's imposition of economic martial law on ordinary citizens sent them reeling. Belt-tightening orders from non-elected banksters did not prevent NATO (aka the American War-for-Profit Industry) from ordering Greece to use its American-made weaponry get involved in Hillary's war on Libya while Greek citizens were going without food and medicine.
Bill Clinton felt your pain. Hillary Clinton, just four short years ago, wanted the pain to be felt -- with a vengeance. From her July 2011 press con with former Foreign Minister Stavros Lambrinidis:
Four years ago this month, an American secretary of state named Hillary Clinton traveled to Greece to prescribe what she called "chemotherapy" to millions of otherwise healthy Greeks. She deliberately misdiagnosed their economic suffering at the hands of Eurozone leaders as a disease to be cured, paradoxically enough, by those same banksters and their partner in malpractice, the USA-centric International Monetary Fund. The motive for their toxic prescription of austerity was, and is, the usual one: pathological greed.
Even though Hillary Clinton's Rx has proved ultimately deadly -- both literally and figuratively -- she is living proof that the love of finance capital means never having to say you're sorry. Hillary, of course, isn't going to jail, or even being scorned by the Establishment for proclaiming that austerity is good medicine which fosters fiscal growth and healing. She is running for president. And she has a good chance of winning office, thanks to voter apathy and unlimited bankster money, and the GOP opposition being even more pathological than she is.
Her good friend Donald Trump has already served his own usefully idiotic purpose: that of being so vile that the other vile Republicans in the race are beginning to look vaguely, miraculously human. Hillary must run against someone who appears vaguely human -- otherwise, people might notice that this so-called democracy of ours is a big fat sham.
The reason that I'm bringing up Hillary Clinton's relatively recent visit to Athens in July 2011 is because of the frenzied "apology war" currently being waged on her behalf by the usual liberal suspects and proxies. They're claiming that the 90s years of Clintonian right-wing neoliberism are so far in the distant past that it is patently unfair to blame her for the tragedies that her husband's malpractice (Wall Street deregulation, his criminalization of poverty via welfare "reform", his embrace of globalization/NAFTA) have spawned in the interim. Now that she is verbally repudiating "Third Way" centrism in her stump speeches, we are supposed to believe that she has evolved into the progressive she has always wanted to be. The ultimate proof of her good intentions, supposedly, is in The Speech she gave last week, vaguely and feebly echoing Elizabeth Warren's populism. (see my previous post, The Extreme Centrism of HC.)
But four years ago -- seems like only yesterday because essentially, it was -- Hillary Clinton, like a reanimated Maggie Thatcher, was lecturing the world on the therapeutic benefits of free market unregulated capitalism and the necessity of punishing "ordinary" people with toxic chemo. She promised the austerity cure, yet the disease of wealth inequality spread.
It gets even worse. When Hillary Clinton traveled to Athens only four years ago this month, she also congratulated the unpopular Greek government for preventing a ship called The Audacity of Hope from joining the humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza, then under cruel lock-down by the Israeli government. As people demonstrated in the streets against neoliberalism, she congratulated the unpopular Greek government for joining her misbegotten air war on Libya, even as the Troika's imposition of economic martial law on ordinary citizens sent them reeling. Belt-tightening orders from non-elected banksters did not prevent NATO (aka the American War-for-Profit Industry) from ordering Greece to use its American-made weaponry get involved in Hillary's war on Libya while Greek citizens were going without food and medicine.
Bill Clinton felt your pain. Hillary Clinton, just four short years ago, wanted the pain to be felt -- with a vengeance. From her July 2011 press con with former Foreign Minister Stavros Lambrinidis:
The steps ahead will not, they cannot, be pain-free, but there is a path forward to resolve Greece’s economic stability and to restore Greece’s economic strength. I have faith in the resilience of the Greek people and I applaud the Greek Government on its willingness to take these difficult steps. Greece has inspired the world before, and I have every confidence that you are doing so again. And as you (addressing her Greek foreign minister counterpart) do what you must to bring your economy back to health, you will have the full support of the United States.....
We believe that the recent legislation (another bailout for Eurozone banks and the global investor class predicated on austerity for working people) that was passed will make Greece more competitive, will make Greece more business-friendly. We think that is essential for the kind of growth and recovery that is expected in the 21st century when businesses can go anywhere in the world and capital can follow. We think that will provide a firm financial footing on which Greece will be able increasingly to attract businesses and create the jobs that Stavros said are absolutely important for the Greek people. Because businesses seek consistent, predictable regulatory and taxation regimes. Investors seek a level playing field. They expect transparency, streamlined procedures, protection of commercial and intellectual property rights, effective contract enforcement, all of which was part of your reform package.
Therefore, I am not here to in any way downplay the immediate challenges, because they are real, but I am here to say that we believe strongly that this will give Greece a very strong economy going forward. There are lots of analogies – having to take the strong medicine that tastes terrible when it goes down and you wish you didn’t have to, or the chemotherapy to get rid of the cancer. There are all kinds of analogies. But the bottom line is this is the best approach and we strongly support it.
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| "Hmm... I wonder if our chemo line will fit in that bottom?" |
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Barack in the Big House
The use of a real prison in on-location filming of blockbuster Netflix series Orange is the New Black must have inspired Barack Obama's own savvy media shop. The president himself now has a starring role in his very own prison-based special. He traveled all the way to the federal pen in El Reno, Oklahoma to play the part of celebrity chaplain-for-a-day.
It helps that Alyssa Mastromonaco, the new COO of VICE ( the media company filming the documentary) is former deputy chief of staff for strategy in the Obama administration. Barry didn't even have to audition for the part of earnest concern-trolling mentor to the incarcerated.
It's all part of his latest public relations gimmick -- feigning concern for mainly black, mainly male, inmates locked up in the War on Drugs. Out of more than 5,000 federal inmates currently serving long terms for non-violent, crack-cocaine drug convictions, Obama recently commuted the sentences of a mere 46 of them to show what a caring guy he is. (And what a coincidence that one of them just happens to be the mother of a millionaire star athlete.) The other 4,950 or so, sentenced before a 2010 change in the law forbade such draconian prison terms, will continue to rot in prison. As a matter of fact, the administration successfully appealed a federal court ruling that would have allowed those 4,950 to challenge their sentences. Obama continues to wage his "war on drugs" while he cynically bestows the very occasional symbolic favor for his own legacy-burnishing purposes.
It was only this past week, for instance, that the FBI raided a medical marijuana operation on Indian tribal land in California. Obama still means business.
That he chose Oklahoma as the venue of his star turn is all the more cynical, given that it was the recent botched executions in that same state which led to the failed Supreme Court challenge to the death penalty this year. Obama refused to get involved in that case, refused to budge from his longstanding support of capital punishment. When the Court ruled against the plaintiffs, who claimed that the use of untested tranquillizers for executions amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, the complicit mass media were mainly silent on Obama's own passive-aggressive role in the case.
It was last fall, also cynically enough, that the Obama Labor Department summarily shut down the Treasure Lake Job Corps training site in nearby Indiahoma. Job Corps, a direct offshoot of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, exists for the express purpose of keeping young people out of places like El Reno. Obama has cut funding for Job Corps in each succeeding year of his tenure, thus greasing the skids for closures based on "inefficiencies" and "poor performance" that are the precise, planned results of his draconian cuts. As I wrote last year,
Obama has proposed a permanent reduction in the Job Corps' "slot capacity" in his 2015 budget. Translated from Orwellian Newspeak, this means that about 10,000 at-risk youths will be left with no place to go. Since Job Corps centers feed and house participants as well as train them for careers, this will mean 10,000 more at-risk youths on the streets in such dystopian locales as Chicago and Ferguson.The Labor Department report actually pointed to the need for at-risk youths to share the sacrifice in order to boost America's "global competitiveness." Apparently, one way that they can help American innovation is to move from Job Corps sites into privatized prisons, which by Congressional fiat must maintain a steady population of inmates in order to remain "competitive."
Thankfully, the medium security El Reno facility is not yet privatized and also doesn't (directly) kill people, as does the nearby state penitentiary in McAlester, site of the horrific makeshift executions.
After an off-label drug cocktail led to the prolonged agonizing deaths of three convicted murderers, Obama could have issued a moratorium on the federal death penalty as a signal of his disgust. He could have used his bully pulpit to inspire the 36 states currently grappling with their own capital punishment laws to repeal them and thus gain humanistic parity with the rest of the advanced world. He could have dispatched his solicitor general to the Supreme Court to argue on behalf of the plaintiffs in the case, perhaps influencing the decision.
But he preferred not to. The Drone President ("I'm really good at killing people") really likes the death penalty, even though a poll conducted by Lake Research Partners shows that two-thirds of Americans favor life in prison, with no possibility of parole, for convicted murderers.
Although Obama did order former Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct an "investigation" of death penalty policies last fall, the administration later wimped out for the usual craven political reasons:
Advocates in particular worried that having Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder as the faces of the anti-death penalty movement would stoke conservative support for capital punishment at a time when some libertarian-minded Republicans, Christian conservatives and liberal Democrats appeared to be finding common ground in opposition to it.One of Obama's Harvard law professors opined that the president needs to be "pushed" into changing his tune on the death penalty, much as he was forced to evolve on marriage equality. So I guess only two thirds of the public not wanting to kill prisoners is still not enough for him.
Although whites on death row outnumber blacks, 55.5% to 34.7%, more than 75% of actual executions are performed on murderers of white people. Only 15% of executions carried out are for the murders of black people. This is despite the fact that 50% of murder victims are black. The racial identity of the victim is the determining factor in who gets put to death in America.
But these realities took a back seat in the media coverage, which concentrated heavily on the made-for-TV optics of a handful of Confederate flag-waving yahoos heckling Obama's armored motorcade as he arrived in Oklahoma for his combination Democratic fundraiser/prison gig. As his supporters go into outrage mode over the first African-American president being exposed to such ugly racist symbolism, Obama himself becomes magically exempt from his own complicity in the ever-burgeoning punishing/exterminating state. He is cosmetically and hypocritically able to establish solidarity with his own victims. He couldn't have asked for a better propaganda coup. The right-wing hate machine paradoxically advantages him, much as it has advantaged Bill and Hillary Clinton over the years. It tends to silence the legitimate criticism.
The VICE documentary in which he stars will no doubt be playing in an endless loop at his Chicago library shrine, virtually revising history as it paints Obama as a hero to the oppressed rather than the oppressor of such heroic prisoners as Chelsea Manning and other victims of his war on whistleblowers, and his war on poor people in general. Forty-six sentence commutations do not a criminal justice overhaul make. Not by a long shot.
This entry for the Obama library design contest unfortunately only got an honorable mention (it was judged distinguished, yet disturbing) probably because it adheres a little too closely to the president's real legacy:
Monday, July 13, 2015
The Extreme Centrism of Hillary Clinton
Despite a speech being touted as "sweeping" and populist, Hillary Clinton's ingrained market-based approach to governance kept shining through like high beam headlights aimed at the yellow line in the middle of the road.
She outlined her economic agenda on Monday in a talk at the carefully chosen progressive bastion known as the New School.
Reciting the standard litany of ills -- erosion of the middle class due to globalization, crushing student debt, increasing wealth disparity, lack of child care for working mothers, and Wall Street malfeasance -- she managed to totally ignore how Clintonian neoliberal policies themselves accelerated our race to the bottom and contributed to the pain of what she calls "everyday Americans." Hillary Clinton can deny reality every bit as glibly as her fellow neolibs and neocons across the aisle:
She outlined her economic agenda on Monday in a talk at the carefully chosen progressive bastion known as the New School.
Reciting the standard litany of ills -- erosion of the middle class due to globalization, crushing student debt, increasing wealth disparity, lack of child care for working mothers, and Wall Street malfeasance -- she managed to totally ignore how Clintonian neoliberal policies themselves accelerated our race to the bottom and contributed to the pain of what she calls "everyday Americans." Hillary Clinton can deny reality every bit as glibly as her fellow neolibs and neocons across the aisle:
“Twice now in the past 20 years, a Democratic president has had to come in and clean up the mess. I think the results speak for themselves.“Under President Clinton – I like the sound of that - America saw the longest peacetime expansion in history … nearly 23 million jobs… a balanced budget and a surplus for the future. And most importantly, incomes rose across the board, not just for those already at the top.
Random Thoughts on Greece
The truth is finally out there: the German hegemon is a Frankenstein monster sewn together with the body parts of every Batman and James Bond villain ever dreamed up by a Hollywood nightmare factory. Now that Angela Merkel and her henchman Wolfgang Schauble have turned Greece into a German colony, with global hedge funds and
too-big-to fail banks its de facto occupying force, will this tiny
country now be officially known as Griechenland? Will the Acropolis be
transformed into the latest Goldman Sachs bank branch?
Puppetized Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is either being hailed as a steely pragmatic operator, pitied as a pathetic beaten dog, or damned as a rich phony who brought a latte to a knife fight.
The New York Times is certainly confused. Juxtaposed with a stunning front-page photo of a starving woman collapsed on the street is a Panglossian, even cheery, article about Greeks sipping their lattes and waxing rueful-to-hopeful:
Wait till they find out that they can't use their dwindling Euros to make online purchases any more, and the wariness will escalate faster than they can order a double latte or collapse on the street from illness or hunger. Will Starbucks establish a concession next door to the Goldman Sachs Acropolis? Will American fast food multinationals start a greedwashing campaign urging euro-an-hour baristas to tell customers to embrace the multicultural suck as they help drive locally-owned tavernas out of business?
This is a nation in numbed shock. Is it proper even to call it a nation any more? It's sort of a hybrid between a failed state and ripe, paralyzed prey for Romneyesque vulture capitalists. Think of Greece as a Staples chain with a lot of soon-to-be privatized beaches for the pleasure of the oligarchs.
Given that the marathon negotiating session leading to the deal has been likened to a mental waterboarding of Tsipras, I wonder if the corrupt American Psychological Association was brought in as an enhanced sadism technical adviser. You really have to hand it to Tsipras, though: he exhibited no outward, physical signs of cracking as he capitulated to the demands of the global oligarchy.
Meanwhile, more people are starting to talk about the Goldman Sachs connection. MoveOn, that erstwhile smarmy veal pen for Democrats, is even starting an ad campaign lambasting Wall Street's role in the manufactured Greek crisis. Robert Reich writes,
Hillary was slated to deliver her own populist economic manifesto today, albeit with little to no mention of either Wall Street or the economic coup against Greece. I'll write more about her verbiage later.
 |
| The Neoliberal Monster: Die Slowly or Die Quickly, Just Surrender Already |
Puppetized Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is either being hailed as a steely pragmatic operator, pitied as a pathetic beaten dog, or damned as a rich phony who brought a latte to a knife fight.
The New York Times is certainly confused. Juxtaposed with a stunning front-page photo of a starving woman collapsed on the street is a Panglossian, even cheery, article about Greeks sipping their lattes and waxing rueful-to-hopeful:
Jubilation, almost immediately followed by wariness, filled the streets as Greeks learned of the agreement in Brussels early Monday.Many people were having their midmorning cafe frappé, while others were standing in the ubiquitous bank lines, as the news spread that after a week of agony — a tense referendum, sparring political rallies, bank closings — and a weekend of all-nighters in the Greek Parliament and among the eurozone leaders, a deal to address the country’s debt crisis and keep it in the eurozone had been reached.
 |
| (Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press) |
Wait till they find out that they can't use their dwindling Euros to make online purchases any more, and the wariness will escalate faster than they can order a double latte or collapse on the street from illness or hunger. Will Starbucks establish a concession next door to the Goldman Sachs Acropolis? Will American fast food multinationals start a greedwashing campaign urging euro-an-hour baristas to tell customers to embrace the multicultural suck as they help drive locally-owned tavernas out of business?
This is a nation in numbed shock. Is it proper even to call it a nation any more? It's sort of a hybrid between a failed state and ripe, paralyzed prey for Romneyesque vulture capitalists. Think of Greece as a Staples chain with a lot of soon-to-be privatized beaches for the pleasure of the oligarchs.
Given that the marathon negotiating session leading to the deal has been likened to a mental waterboarding of Tsipras, I wonder if the corrupt American Psychological Association was brought in as an enhanced sadism technical adviser. You really have to hand it to Tsipras, though: he exhibited no outward, physical signs of cracking as he capitulated to the demands of the global oligarchy.
Meanwhile, more people are starting to talk about the Goldman Sachs connection. MoveOn, that erstwhile smarmy veal pen for Democrats, is even starting an ad campaign lambasting Wall Street's role in the manufactured Greek crisis. Robert Reich writes,
People seem to forget that the Greek debt crisis—which is becoming a European and even possibly a world economic crisis—grew out of a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein.
Several years ago, Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt—and in the process almost doubled it. When the first debt deal was struck in 2001, Greece owed about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it had borrowed. Goldman then cooked up an off-the-books derivative for Greece that disguised the shortfall but increased the government’s losses to 5.1 billion euros.Reich didn't mention that Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, a Goldman alum, is in the cabal of hedge fund predators which stands to profit from the most recent bailout (of creditors and investors, not ordinary Greek citizens.) He didn't mention that Hillary Clinton has collected huge speaking fees from Goldman or that her family's slush fund charity has humanized Blankfein as an honored "thought leader."
Hillary was slated to deliver her own populist economic manifesto today, albeit with little to no mention of either Wall Street or the economic coup against Greece. I'll write more about her verbiage later.
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| Lloyd and Hillary Share a Tender Cackle |
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